Anger - How We Live With It And How It Affects Our Daily Liv

im starting this thread as i think it may prove invalubale to those like me (i have an anger problem).

first i would like to thank storm moonsong for her kind words in the Do No Harm Thread.

i have had an anger problem since childhood to make an enormously long story short i was bullied through-out school and college, my parents divorced when i was 2 and my dad wasnt the best dad he could have been.

anyway it largly affected mine and my wifes life for the most part of our 8 year relationship about 2 and a half three years ago i took a stand an went to anger management which helped me realize a few things, mainly that i had the will power and confidence to take a step back and see i was only causing more harm by losing control.

i pointed out to my wife a few things she could do to help as she was the main trigger and things have been getting better since, i dont get as angry as i used to and feel alot happier in myself.

i hope that if there is anyone that needs any advice at all, that i may be able to help..

Nosllew,

I'm glad you started this thread. It is a heavy subject but also a fact of life that many people live with this, both as the aggressors and the victims. I heavily was involved with a support group that helped tens of thousands of victims of abuse, harrasment, intimidation and violence. I have also visited halfway houses where women have gone to try to rebuild their lives, met women (and children) placed in secret housing locations to protect them from violent partners/fathers and seen the heartbreaking after effects of long term abuse. Rage is a cancer, absolutely no doubt about it, and a thread on this subject is certainly worthwhile (although it may be an uncomfortable subject for many people).

There are ways to 'cure' this cancer (not always unfortunately), and the psychologucal and emotional scars on victims are rarely healed 100% imho, but either way the healing or recovery process is often a long and difficult road.

I hope this thread can help people who know someone who needs support, either directly or indirectly.

Anger, in and off itself, isnt a bad thing, its the user, and the context which gives it its connotations, and negetive ones at that. I feel that many of are emotions serve as an expedient, i.e a means to an end, they aid us in bridging the gap between one transitional atitude to another. Anger however is a clearly defined emotional structure, and serves a much greater purpose than some of our other 'emotive driven desires'. Anger-by and large-is a product of fear and uncertainty, and within the constraints of the human psychological state, anger is our most carnal emotion, completely in line with the decree of man; SURVIVAL! in order to survive we have to protect ourselves, however the tools that some of choose to have as an aid..can be sharp and deadly on closer inspection. marc, you saw that you were weilding such a weapon, and that it wanst defining your character, but controlling your character.i have alot of respect for people who come to terms with their anger, and seek to better themselves through a step by step process, in your case it was anger management.now you realise that even negetive emotions can be engraved into a positive form. How are we supposed to gain a perspective on life if we only see one side of the coin? From a phisiological perspective,it may be of some use to know that our emotions are stored in our body tissue (as well as in the mind and DNA) a good massage therapist would soon get rid of those anger knots ;-)

Fire Phoenix, I like what you are saying. It makes a lot of sense to me.

first off im glad this thread has had a good reception second (fire pheonix) through my experiences i absolutly agree with the coment that our emotions are stored physically in our bodies as i still am healing and i no longer refer to it as getting angry but getting tense (measured by the tension in both mind and muscle).

i have an open question for anyone who can answer,

fight or flight how do you choose between the two when forced into a corner (physically or mentally)?

mentally, walk a way - nothing you can do about it. i saw my mum experiance that when mum adam and his parants were having 'issues' with eachother. they all ganged up on her saying things which they have no idea about - wich is just not fair, so she walked away, adam tried stopping her from doing so, but she had no choice.

physically, it depends on the person. i used to struggle with being cornered even with just one person, this was when i was in primary school. but i wouldnt do anything, id just stand there, watching them.... at any time/age if i could i would have fought my way out. but i didnt have the strenght then

Noswelle, depends on what context you are regarding "fight or flight".
You may mean something entirely different than what I experience. Having been the aggressee with my ex-husband, I experience a fight or flight instinct when startled, or cornered and either a physical memory affect me or muscle memory is attuned.
If a muscle memory, I have a start factor so hard that sometimes I pass out instantly. If it's a startle affect, I have been known to swing not realizing what I'm doing till the other person is on the ground. It's very embarrassing always, and it's something I work on sometimes on a daily basis. I'm getting better, though I don't think I will truly ever get over the whole experience. Too many things to get into here, we will just say there was no way out other than leave as he wasn't going to get the help he needed.
Fortunately or not, I'm working with a young man who thinks it's amusing to sneak up on me. I keep warning him that one of these days it's not going to be pretty if he doesn't stop. Amazingly, I haven't already and I seem to be able to stop the "fight or flight" fancy within me now, for the first time in 24 years. Who knows...perhaps the young man knows more than I give him credit! *i'd still like to pull his tongue out of his mouth though for it!
Thanks for the thread, I do believe talking about it helps all involved in the disease

fight or flight is a basic human instinct wich cant be controlled no matter what specialists say but we can and do have the ability to choose at times wich of the to will be more prominent in times of crisis those who suffer this anger problem more offen than not instinctivly and conciously choose fight as its an easy physical way to release all that tension and it feels good too.

for people who dont suffer the instinct to do one of the two is still there but the will of the user determines the outcome whether you are cornered or not.

if you have the willpower and confidence you can achieve anything and that is something through my experience i believe and stand by

and storm the name looks good but its not right cheeky

*blushes softly* Sorry for my mis-spelling of your name Nosllew
*beats the crap out of the typist slamming fingers in piano bench*
**writes in to-do list "HIRE NEW TYPIST"**
*shrugs slightly* Can't hire good help around here for nothin!
Absolutely NO work ethic anymore!!!!!

i reckon we should all hug and hold hands

if it matters i love everyone

Hope you do not mind but I would like to get back to the serious side of the thread as I sincerely hope it will help prevent something tragic happening to someone else.

Anger may well be a natural emotion but our ability as normal members of society to control that anger or vent it in a non-harmful way is not in question.

The theme of the thread is about anger issues so I'll post a little more along those lines. People, both men and women, who take it that step too far. Often small steps at first - a little shove here or there, a stonger push, a hug that turns into a bear hug meant to harm, a grab of the arm that is just a tiny bit too hard. These will then escalate and escalate until eventually what is being justified as a normal response to being disagreed with, shouted at, argued with, verbal 'pushing', a glance in the wrong way, an inflection in someone's tone as they speak, etc, etc. will be a punch, or a beating or stangulation, of pushing someone's head through glass, into walls, a door or something similar, even trying to run someone over with a car. All justified in their now very contorted view of what is normal and not normal.

Thinking of the people I have encountered where this illness has engulfed them, regardless of the origins of that rage, I have often seen common traits amongst them. There are loads of signs, many are obvious almost immediate, others will only ever be found out once once the victim ends up dead or in hospital or being put in a secret refuge somewhere. Here is just a 'small' list off the top of my head.

People with anger issues: -

- They often find ways to justify their anger and suubsequent actions, regardless of how badly they can hurt others. There is always 'a reason' why they have been violent, even though the end often does not justify the means.
- They rarely believe that they are 100% at fault.
- They will often see themselves as a victim in some way or another, again to justify their actions. Many of us have been victims of life but do not use it as an excuse to hit and abuse someone. Please note that I am referring to the true aggresor here, not a victim who lashes out after being abused for years.
- They try to control their immediate environment to extreme degrees, often believing it is normal to have others behave a certain way in order to pacify their own anger. It is not normal to have people changing their behaviour to pacify someone all the time - this is called fear, living in fear is not what people call normal.
- Their victims are usually ones that are weaker from either a physical, emotional or pyschological standpoint so they cannot or will not defend themselves.
- They rarely pick on someone who can beat the c**p out of them. They are cowards.
- They are also cowards because most will not accept responsibility for their actions.
- If they feel humiliated in any way they will often take it out on their victims and not the source of their stress, dissapointment, sadness, distress, loss of control in their lives, etc.
- When they have no outlet for their anger, I have often observed that they will also try to inspire anger around them which they will sit back and watch or will use the situation to justify an angry retort.
- They are often plagued by paranoia.
- They are usually self-obsessed.
- They often try to alienate their victims by trying to get others to take the aggressors side, for example through lies and deceit, being two-faced, putting someone else down in front of others with the aim of isolating the victim or the person they are threatened by, from a larger group of people.
- In many cases I have found such aggressors actually believe things have been said or done that have nevre actually happened. If they believe that things that can justify their behaviour have actually ahppened, then blame can be attributed to their victim.
- They have a 'blame' mindset.
- They crave to be veiwed as the complete opposite of who they really are and will often go to extreme lengths to prove they are actually peaceful, patient, good people. Some of the worst case I have seen included a man seen publically as a hero, almost a saint. Kind patient, loving, caring, the perfect husband. He was actually someone who put his wife in hospital several times and nearly killed her before strating on his daughter as well who deserved it because she shouldn't have disagreed with him about nearly killing her mother. For their safety they were put into hiding by a women's help group.

This is not definitive, and also varies from individual to individual. Victims of abusive relationships are often left 'fighting for their safety' against the perceived threat around them for a long time, often without realising it, always ready to react to being attacked. The list can go on and I am sure that as nosllew has been to anger management he will be able to add to the list from not just his own perceptions but of others that he may have met during that period. I hope he will share more traits here so that the signs of someone with an anger management problem can be spotted sooner rather than later, so that person may be given a way to stop it or control it before it is too late. Too late could well mean the permanent emotional, physical or psychological scarring of their victim and at the worst, another death to add to the statistics.

I'm definitely not an expert. I am a sad observer.

EDITED TO ADD EXTRA POINTS AT 23:36 24/9/08

i am ashamed to say i recognise some of these signs but im not ashamed to say that my anger was not i repeat not 100% my fault i mean what happens when you poke a fire for a bit then decide to throw gasoline on it then fire crackers the result aint pretty i have a trigger that trigger is my wife, she would start a argument for no reason then poke fun at something i hold dear and then call me names now i have suffered my entire childhood to cause most of my issue but i couldnt avoid it i tried but nothing worked, walking away, leaving the house, nothing so the eventual outcome was enevitable.

since i have been to anger management and i explained to my wife i needed her help things have gotten better we dont argue so much now and the pointless fueling of the fire from my wife has stopped an now it seems i dont get that angry anymore in fact we are both the better for it.

my point is that even though the majority of what ook said is right i myself was pushed into the end result.

my advice is if you know someone who is in a relationship and one of the partners is quite around company very rarly seen out alone and never aloud out without permission you could say if one partner was severly under the thumb then there is some form of anger issue there that needs resolving

sadly some people have difficulty actually being angry to others so there for turn the anger inwards towards them self's. This makes things somewhat painful. Some people would give anything to be able to show anger to those that cause it but for some reason can't do it.
I for one am not a person that can show anger towards others.

Hi there Earth Angel.

In my humble opinion the reasons why people feel this way are much more complex and varied than those that are violent abusers. Because of the high complexity and individual nature of someone who turns their anger inwards and are unable to find an outlet in someway, the path to peace would be very individual for each person from what I've seen in the past.

Violent abusers follow an independent path as well but I personally observed that it appears to be a less complex an issue for many, compared to the journey that a victim has to take or someone who cannot express their anger in the way that you describe. Others may agree or disagree, I am just putting forward my opinion. Hope all is well with you regardless of what is said here.

Thank you Ook for taking the time to understand the journey of someone who cant express anger, as for most it is a painfull one, for almost 25 years the only way i could deal with it was by self harming but i suppose thats another topic lol.
Lonleiness was also a demon for me but in the past months I have made some very good reliable friends, that has helped quiten that demon.
I never used to leave my home and still stuggle with that but through Sarah, Annie and Tommi things are starting to become a little more social but it is still very hard to feel accepted and unafraid amongst those I dont know.
Once again I thank you for your kind words
blessed be