Quote:
Friday, June 6, 2014
You are reading from the book Today's Gift
A good anger acted upon is beautiful as lightning and swift with power. A good anger swallowed clots the blood like slime.
—Marge Piercy
How does it feel when someone tells us we should play basketball when we don't want to? Often, it angers us that someone else is telling us what to do. After we have been told we should do something many times, we begin to believe it and forget how we really feel. Even though we have forgotten what we wanted to do, we feel angry, often without realizing it. Such hidden anger can leave us feeling bad without knowing why.
It is important to know when we are angry, and to say so. There are healthy ways of expressing anger without blaming others. Saying we are angry, and thereby claiming it as our own feeling and not something others force on us, is a way to express it, which also affirms our right to be angry.
If there is anger in me today, can I express it correctly?
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Anger has always been a danger to me. One time I was walking down the street with a sponsee. I don't remember what we were sharing, I just know that all of a sudden, my saliva tasted like it was pure alcohol, and I spit it out rather than swallow it. I talked to the counsellor at the YWCA who got me into recovery, and she said, "How did you handle alcohol in the past?" I replied, "I drank." She said that she saw it as a body memory and a warning, don't hold onto your anger, let it go. She introduced me to hitting pillows with a plastic baseball bat.