Getting in touch with Anger Constructively

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<b>free2bunme</b> - Sun 19 Mar, 2006 2:51 pm<br>
<b>Post subject: </b>Getting in touch with Anger Constructively<hr class="sep" width="95%">
I have got to find some way to get in touch with my deep inner rage. I am afraid of my anger. Yet pushing it down keeps me depressed. I did not get sober to stay depressed. I know that I am sleeping "addictively" in order to hide from deep anger and frustration about my life. I don't want to do it anymore. I feel very uncomfortable in my skin still a lot of the time. Does anyone have any experience that you can share with this? <hr>
<b>janbear</b> - Sun 19 Mar, 2006 5:09 pm<br>

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Frannie, i stayed very depressed after i got clean and sober for a quite a while. One of the biggest things that helped me was getting into therapy. Sometimes we need outside help, and i was one that definitely did. You said something very key in your post that several counselors told me-"Anger turned inward is depression" They worked with me alot as to what was the deep seeded anger about. We found the core. they often had me doing anger work, one form was writing anger letters to the ones i was really angry at, but i never actually gave them the letter. It was to be therapeutic for me and it did work. Also the program taught me the resentment prayer in the 3rd Ed. of the Big Book on page 552 and that helped me forgive who i really was angry at. Now, i wish i could tell you that i never have any more problems with my anger because every once in awhile it does create havoc in my life, but i am better about dealing with it and i dont tend to turn it in on myself creating depression. I find the quicker i get into a solution when i get angry the better i am and others around me. It has been truly a miracle that my anger and resentments have not sent me back into my alcohol and drug addiction.
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just said a prayer for you, frannie <hr>
<b>nachise</b> - Mon 20 Mar, 2006 7:58 am<br>
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I agree with janbear. Therapy helped me in ways that nothing else can. We are advised that we need to get down to causes and conditions, and nothing did that for me until I got therapy.

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I was also advised during this process to "keep God in the equation." Also, when I or any of the women I sponsor have resentment issues, it's time to pick up the Big Book and read "Freedom From Bondage."
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"If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don't really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love."
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Free2bunme, I used to feel that way about my anger, because I knew that once I started uncovering the rage, there was a well of deep sadness and despair. It was like Pandora's box. I was afraid that once I expressed and felt the sadness, it was going to take me so far out that I would never be able to come back. Like Pandora's box, though, I discovered that once I let all of that out and asked God to relieve me of the pain, what remained was Hope. <hr>
<b>Prescott</b> - Mon 20 Mar, 2006 9:00 am<br>

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<img src="images/smiles/13.gif" alt="grin" border="0"> Good Morning, "Anger and depression" this topic came up a week ago with my therapist. I've been clean and sober 8 1/2 yrs. and still see my therapist 8 to 10 times a year. She is in recovery and has become
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a friend who I tell everything to and she said I was angry. Well I don't feel angry and haven't acted out in years in any type of anger so this caught me off gaurd. Then she went on to say I had many reasons to be angry. Starting with my brother od'ing 2001, my mother in law dying 2002
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my wife dying 2005, her grandmother dying 2005, my mothers cancer and 2004 and her rapidly health decline 2005 - 06. Then the topper my own health issue Hep-c which is slowly killing me. I don't feel angry, but when I looked at all she had brought up I realized sub- consisously I am pissed and some self pity "why me lord". My biggest complaint was lack of sleep and nightmares..... which she said comes back to being angry
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even if I'm not aware of it , it's there.I guess that a form of stuffing it to the extreme. I'm not sure if any of this helps, but I'm still confused with how to deal with something so deep seated that I'm not really aware of it.
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I know I'm depressed but it is not like real depression that I've been though before it's a kind of mild depression that I've felt was apart of the grieving process. Thanx for letting me share .... John <hr>
<b>Doraine</b> - Mon 20 Mar, 2006 4:14 pm<br>

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I too get outside help. I've been in therapy for as long as I've been sober. I also had a problem with anger even into years of sobriety. Anger covered up feelings of fear and sadness. Fear of abandonment and sadness for past relationships that ended badly. Now I feel my real feelings instead of automatically getting angry. I can honestly say my tendency to get mad has been healed. I used to have a hair trigger temper.After my outbursts I'd get depressed.I'm not fighting with anyone anymore.I'm learning to say what I mean without being mean. It's not always easy to do. Anger is one of my character defects that has been removed but it took time.