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It’s OK To Get Angry… But

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Regina BannerIt’s okay to get angry and frustrated at times, but it’s not okay to make these a lifestyle.

I smoked cigarettes for twenty two years. I spent over two decades harming myself rather than having the courage to express what I was so desperately keeping bottled up inside me. After a back surgery that left me with a limp, I ate without awareness or responsibility, and gained over 60 pounds. Again I was attempting to stuff my pain with abusing myself. So frustrated with my confusing childhood, I spent without responsibility, trying to put on a good show for the outside world that I was okay and happy. Inside I was miserable. I lived in fear of never being able to pay off the debt.

Beneath the self-abuse was anger. So many years of not being able to express myself, not setting boundaries, feeling resentful and blaming others for my screwed up life, left me with huge holes in my heart. Anger quickly moved in and took up residence. Anger became my lifestyle.

Repression of emotions is one of the major causes of addictions, abuse, depression, and disease in our culture. In many families, emotions are either repressed or expressed in abusive ways. As children and young adults we’re told too often that being angry is bad and we should just move on. When I got angry I was punished or shamed into repressing my emotions. I felt rejected and my emotions discounted. I’d express that I was angry, sad, fearful, disappointed, only to be told, “Oh no, you’re not feeling that.” As a child I learned to mistrust my own perceptions and deny what I felt. But, if we do not express anger in healthy ways we tend to turn that anger inward or outward.

Expressing anger by harming ourselves or others is actually being out of control. We get angry when we feel powerless. We feel frustrated not being able to control or change other people. We feel disappointed when someone betrays our trust, or gossips about us, or does not do what we think they should do when we think they should do it. Anger stems from feeling disapproved of, cornered or bullied. Anger arises when we feel cheated out of something we feel entitled to. We get upset when we do not feel others hear us, or speak to us with disdain, and when we feel unseen. Anger is a gut reaction to ineffective communication, not feeling understood, feeling taken advantage of, being abused, and not being able to express ourselves.

No matter how smooth and fulfilling your life is there will be times when you get angry. You are going to get frustrated, disappointed, be inconvenienced or experience pain as a result of other people’s behavior. It is healthy to acknowledge your upset, frustration, and disappointment. It is never healthy to take your anger out on others in the form of physical, emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse. That is never love and is not appropriate no matter what excuses you come up with, no matter how much you try to place blame on your spouse, child, pet, mother, etc.

Yes, other people’s behavior can be frustrating. And yes, it is okay to get angry but find healthy ways (run, walk fast, punch a punching bag, or yell into a pillow) to release your anger so anger does not become a lifestyle.

It’s okay to get angry and frustrated at times, but it’s not okay to make these a lifestyle.

I smoked cigarettes for twenty-two years. I spent over two decades harming myself rather than having the courage to express what I was so desperately keeping bottled up inside me. After a back surgery that left me with a limp, I ate without awareness or responsibility, and gained over 60 pounds. Again I was attempting to stuff my pain with abusing myself. So frustrated with my confusing childhood, I spent without responsibility, trying to put on a good show for the outside world that I was okay and happy. Inside I was miserable. I lived in fear of never being able to pay off the debt.

Beneath the self-abuse was anger. So many years of not being able to express myself, not setting boundaries, feeling resentful and blaming others for my screwed up life, left me with huge holes in my heart. Anger quickly moved in and took up residence. Anger became my lifestyle.

Repression of emotions is one of the major causes of addictions, abuse, depression, and disease in our culture. In many families, emotions are either repressed or expressed in abusive ways. As children and young adults we’re told too often that being angry is bad and we should just move on. When I got angry I was punished or shamed into repressing my emotions. I felt rejected and my emotions discounted. I’d express that I was angry, sad, fearful, disappointed, only to be told, “Oh no, you’re not feeling that.” As a child I learned to mistrust my own perceptions and deny what I felt. But, if we do not express anger in healthy ways we tend to turn that anger inward or outward.

Expressing anger by harming ourselves or others is actually being out of control. We get angry when we feel powerless. We feel frustrated not being able to control or change other people. We feel disappointed when someone betrays our trust, or gossips about us, or does not do what we think they should do when we think they should do it. Anger stems from feeling disapproved of, cornered or bullied. Anger arises when we feel cheated out of something we feel entitled to. We get upset when we do not feel others hear us, or speak to us with disdain, and when we feel unseen. Anger is a gut reaction to ineffective communication, not feeling understood, feeling taken advantage of, being abused, and not being able to express ourselves.

No matter how smooth and fulfilling your life is there will be times when you get angry. You are going to get frustrated, disappointed, be inconvenienced or experience pain as a result of other people’s behavior. It is healthy to acknowledge your upset, frustration, and disappointment. It is never healthy to take your anger out on others in the form of physical, emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse. That is never love and is not appropriate no matter what excuses you come up with, no matter how much you try to place blame on your spouse, child, pet, mother, etc.

Yes, other people’s behavior can be frustrating. And yes, it is okay to get angry but find healthy ways (run, walk fast, punch a punching bag, or yell into a pillow) to release your anger so anger does not become a lifestyle.

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Be Genuinely Grateful

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Banner for SSRC…For what you already have in life and tearing up the list of what you do not have will be gratifying.

“It’s the thought that counts,” my mom would say as I opened a Barbie Doll when I really wanted a G-I Joe. Growing up I often heard this sentiment. But as a child I did not understand the concept of gratitude, for simply being thought of fondly in someone’s heart through a gift or for all that I did have, compared to what others did not have.

There was a time when my focus was negative. The grass always seemed greener on other people’s lawns. A co-worker’s relationship seemed better than mine. The job I really wanted went to someone else. My life view was that my glass was empty. I was wallowing in an attitude of lack. But an ungrateful attitude did not once result in my grass turning green, or my relationships improving, or the dream job to magically appear. Yet, my lack of a grateful attitude persisted until I was taught a very hard lesson by being downsized from an executive position right before 9-11.

Without any prospect of a job in the city where I’d lived for twenty years I had to move away. I was forced to sell the new home I’d moved into only two years earlier. I had to leave the beautiful English cottage garden I’d built stone by stone and plant by plant. I lost my relationship. It seemed overnight I was involuntarily removed from the familiar, from friends, from the life I knew. With a master’s degree I thought finding a job would be a piece of cake. The reality was far from that. In fact, for almost 18 months the only work I could find was picking up trash and cigarette butts for a lawn mowing crew.

In the end, I lost almost everything. In the process, I learned one of the most important lessons in life – the energy I put out returns to me. Being ungrateful for all I thought I did not have caused me not to appreciate all that I did have. I took everything for granted, always focused on getting something better or bigger. I was so focused on how what I had was not enough, I could not see the warning signs that it was all about to be taken from me. So the lesson I needed most, at that time, came in the form of overwhelming loss.

You can bet I was grateful for the executive positive – once it was gone. For the house, when it was gone. For the garden, once it was gone.

Today I am grateful for having gone through that painful lesson. It was through great loss that I learned how much we truly gain from being grateful for what we already have. This makes the list of what we don’t have seem so less important.

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You Don’t Protect Your Heart By Keeping It Closed

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Banner for SSRC… but by learning to choose which people you let get close.

I was in the waiting room of a physician’s office when I overheard the receptionist ask a woman for an emergency contact. The woman flatly said, “Just call the morgue because there is no one to contact.” The receptionist kindly replied, “How about a neighbor, friend or co-worker?” The woman sternly said, “There is no one. I don’t want anyone.”

It hurt my heart that someone wanted to be that alone. Yet, there was a time when I felt the same way. I grew up in a dysfunctional family and screwed up society. Abuse, disloyalty, ridicule, and bullying seemed more acceptable than kindness, respect, trust, and support. Over time I retreated inward, into a fantasy world filled with imaginary friends – those who never hurt me. I thought distancing myself from my emotions, other people, and my heart would keep me from being hurt.

I am grateful that one day I woke up to the truth. Closing my heart did not stop stress, unhappiness, rejection, pain, and disappointment. Life is filled with challenges and people whose behavior is hurtful and unkind. But being distanced from the love and responsibility of my heart actually caused life to lose meaning, direction, and prevented me from having intimate relationships – with myself and others.

We are emotional beings. We are designed to feel our way through life. We cannot prevent each heartbreak or every hurt and pain of life. We are no longer children without power over ourselves and the choices we make. As adults we can dramatically lessen the likelihood of being hurt by choosing to surround ourselves with like-hearted people, those who value the same positive behaviors we do.

The saying, “birds of a feather flock together,” is true because the safest, most respectful, and supportive relationships are those based on shared values. That is, patient people like to be around calm people. Compassionate people seek out those with big hearts. Honest people like truthful people. Self-disciplined people relate to other people who share their level of self-control.

You can do your very best to screen the people you allow to get close to you. Determine what behaviors (honesty, kindness, acceptance, patience, forgiveness, etc.) are important in the relationships you have. Then work on establishing friendships and relationships based on the mutual exchange of the behaviors you value.

It is absolutely okay and necessary to protect your heart. The most positive way to do so is by creating your own group of loving, kind, and encouraging people who you call family; those who prove through their consistent behavior.

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Every Soul Is Whole…

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No matter how wounded the human being…

When I was 21 I was briefly locked up in a psychiatric hospital. I had become severely depressed. At least that is what I was told I was. Deep inside I knew my depression was the result of no longer being able to outrun the personal issues I had struggled with all of my life. Without anyone to confide in and nowhere to turn for help, I retreated inward as an act of desperate self-preservation.

At the time I considered life too unbearable to continue. So the answer as “professionals” saw it was to medicate me and slap a variety of labels on my condition. That only served to further distance me from a real solution to my underlying problem – self-acceptance and self-love.

While I cannot speak for everyone, I have learned many things about the variety of reasons we get lost in the limitations of our mind. With our lives moving at ever faster speeds we are often too quick to reach for a drug, or to give up on ourselves, or to isolate ourselves in an attempt to cope, or to want someone else to fix our broken lives.

For me, healing began in earnest when I stopped looking for answers to heal myself from someone or something outside me. As long as I continued to give my power to other people to fix my life, my life remained broken. Their support and advice was good, but in the end, to truly heal, I had to take the actions necessary to move myself past the pain, loneliness, and lack of self-respect. That required letting go, and letting that part of me I cannot see and cannot touch, take over.

While one size does not fit all when we speak about moving past depression and traumatic issues, I feel it is important to remember that our soul (the spirit/heart that we are) is the motivating power behind self-change. Soul houses self-love, self-respect, and determination, all of which are necessary to successfully get us through life’s hard spots. So while physical and emotional trials are very real, the same is true of our soul’s willpower to move us past them. Our soul is the higher, wiser part of us with the strength of character to overcome any challenge or change any negative habit.

For me, and countless others who have taken our power back from abuse, addiction, bad relationships, and other negative life situations, we want to be of encouragement. You are truly powerful to overcome anything in your life because your soul is whole, no matter how wounded your human being.

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