As a baby/toddler, my mother and I still had a terrible relationship. The earliest memory I have, is of myself standing in my living room, aged 1-3 years old. I'm standing against the wall, my mom working out along-side the woman on the fitness show on TV. We're screaming back and forth, not sure what about, I'm crying, and for some reason she won't let me leave the room. I tell her I have to pee, i have to pee let me go to the bathroom, and she's screaming that I can't leave for some reason or other. We continue to scream and fight, I piss myself to spite her (and being 2 yrs old i didnt really care about being soaked in my own urine). My near-16 years of life are like this. Day in, day out, getting screamed at, blamed, abused, framed, accused, etc etc. An argument breaks out between me and my mother at least once a week (an Argument being different from a disagreement), my siblings, on average every other day. Shit gets stolen from my parents and siblings all the time, and it's never me, but I'm always the one doing extra chores, getting grounded, whatever. Anyway, the point is, I'm very very very very fucking angry. I internalize it all the time. My parents won't enroll me in sports, I can't work-out to get rid of my anger because my mother is always excercising in the only suitable room. No friends I have could come close to understanding how incredibly angry I am all the fucking time. It might seem like an exaggeration, but I don't think this is par for emotional instability. Whenever I do release my anger, it's through swearing, hitting, destruction. I scream vulgarities at my family, it doesn't make me feel better. I beat myself, and it doesn't make me feel better. I pull apart beds with my bare fucking hands. I put holes in led pipes from punching through a wall. It doesn't make me feel any better. I know it's no good, but what can I do? I'd rather destroy my house, my possessions, myself, than hurt my family or friends or pets. The material things I have are worth nothing to me, my body included. I don't know why I havn't commited suicide yet. I've tried, but maybe I'm just too much of a coward.. I just don't know what to do. There are times during school I have to go to the bathroom because I'm about to break down, scream and cry, because of internal rage. I just wish I had a punching bag, and I'd be happy(er), cause I wouldn't have to patch up holes in my walls. What can I do? I don't want therapy, I don't want drugs. I want some release, I want to get the fuck out of this situation.
I think the only thing you can do is get the fuck out of the situation suicide is not worth it lifes beauty is to great for it to end now my friend
I know, I'm not going to kill myself. I'm too big a pussy anyway. But I can't really get outta the situation. I'm just turning 16, have no job, no money, no vehicle. I'd leave but my parents would only call the local boys in blue to pick me up.
How do you lose anger? This is what separates the enlightened mind from the unenlightened mind and why enlightenment can't be forced on someone. Can you force someone to lose the anger if they are not ready to? Tired of being angry? Just relinquish control and anger will be diminished. Anger and control go hand in hand. Some of these tendencies come from habit other times they stem from ignorance. Either way we can change our habits or extinguish ignorance with knowledge, mindfulness and practice. The first step is realization that something is disturbing our peace. And for many this realization can come about through writing or journaling. Putting our complaints down on pen and paper first crystallizes in our heads what needs to be changed or accepted in our lives. Getting it all out and putting it all down is the first start of this recognition process that leads us to recovery. Without this recognition, that we are sick or something is wrong in our lives, we cannot develop the desire for change. We don't even know what is wrong to change! Writing your complaints down is the first start to making the roadmap for restructuring your life. Restructuring our lives is very important if we want to get peace from our addictions. Those things that cannot be restructured need to be accepted. Either way we can find peace -- by change or acceptance. When you write, it uses a different part of the brain that mere speaking uses and I seem to get amazing results from writing as compared to just talking. Writing helps crystallize your thoughts, it shares recovery with other addicts and they can know they are not alone. Just remember what the Buddhists say in the eightfold path about right actions. We have to use the right thoughts, the right actions and take the right direction with recovery. Just spinning our wheels in the wrong direction does little for recovery, so write about things that matter to you and your recovery. Some people use the list for jokes and other off topic subjects. While it is important to laugh once in while it still boils down to what my father used to tell me about living life "you only get out what you put in." What I would do with your letter is to print it out and distill what needs to me changed in your lives. There is no better roadmap for change than this. On page 90 of the AA's 12 and 12 the writers mention how the addict cannot afford "justifiable anger" and it should be left to those better qualified to handle it. With reference to this statement -- it is gospel - there is no argument here. We can always settle such disputes by looking deeply into the person, place, thing or emotion in question and ask if it helps or hurts our practice? Does having anger and hatred in our hearts ever increase our peace or serenity or does it diminish it? Even is we are justified, so called, in having this emotion does it suddenly become a peace generator in our life with this newfound license to hate or is it still a peace buster whether we have an excuse or not? The path is clear about which direction to take and all that remains is the release of the anger. Some people get confused with this anger question and beat themselves for still experiencing this emotion thinking they should be a "perfectly spiritual individual" and above such lowly emotions as getting angry. They think they can perfect their lives and wipe out natural law with one blow called spirituality. Due to the diversity of thought we humans are capable of we have all sorts of thoughts and emotions that pop up in our heads. Without this ability we could not think as we do. But, just because thoughts or emotions pop up in our heads the choice is ours alone whether we foster and build on any particular thought or emotion. Spirituality does not eliminate such thoughts - it just helps decide what we do with them. Anger is also part of our natural make up. Anger is an emotions that can serve us when we need to summon it up in a life or death situation such as self defense or when our species had to hunt big game for a living - hunt with spears, clubs and rocks. Even if we are dealing with life or death self defense and must generate anger, the byproducts is still a disruption of our peace as we recover from the circumstance as a shaking and rattled mess. So, even if anger is justified, so called, it does not magically become a peace promoter in our lives instead of a peace destroyer. Anger is also an important emotion for self preservation in less dangerous circumstances than big game hunts, for without feeling anger we wound not seek out change - changing our environment that might be an unhealthy one for us. So, we should never regret feeling anger, but just as anger and excretion are two naturally occurring parts of being a human, we should let them serve us instead of we being enslaved to them. Anger comes in two forms. Nature Based Anger and Toxic Based Anger Always remember, anger is a nature given tool of defense and living right. But it takes humans to tun this healthy tool into an unhealthy, toxic tool of destruction. Besides justified anger, there are HUNDREDS of other things that one cannot "afford" in their life is they desire inner peace. Sure, we can all white knuckle it and just scrape by with, ready to slip off at a moments notice if we want to put our desires before our practice. But, learning what fits and what does not fit comfortably in our life is the ongoing battle we all have to undertake if we want peace. In short, we have to ask if our practice can "afford" the many things we come into daily contact with and the measure of our success will be determined by how well we live within our comfortable means by asking this "affordability" question. Before I could find lasting and peaceful recovery I had to learn to refuse many areas of my old life that did not serve me any longer. This is how I coined the phrase, "You are not recovering until your start refusing...refusing the old sick ways that got you here." The 3 paths that addiction (Yes, anger is addictive) can take are these: the addiction can be increased, it can be decreased or can be frozen. These 3 paths shows us which direction we are headed in with our recovery at any given moment. Clarity about affordability comes from a continual orientation of putting our programs wants first and our personal wants or desires second and by asking the question of how any person, place, thing or activity will affect my recovery program? Once the addict has this affordability mindset in place they can direct their thoughts towards the cultivation of recovery, so that whatever action they are engaged in - it is always evaluated from this perspective and they can find great success from applying this single minded dedication to change. Suddenly they find their recovery practice and life can become as one and asking such questions becomes second nature for them. But again, this is the textbook or idealistic way of looking at this affordability question, we need practical application in the real world. Many of us have families and jobs and to be a total renunciate of all things disruptive to our peace and our recovery program is not always possible or desirable when looking at the big picture. I often hear excuses from other addicts saying they can't stop this or that because of their family, jobs or other obligations, so we need to balance these two extremes of being a total renunciate with the other extreme of being paralyzed and not changing a thing because of excuses and justification. We have to work towards a balance if we want peace and just like exercise, we always seem to find reasons for not doing what we know is right. The way I work it is to be aware of what is disruptive to my peace and to change it if possible as a first choice or work on accepting it as the serenity prayer says as a second choice. I try to stay away from justification or looking for excuses to continue on the wrong path. I either change things or work on accepting them. If we base our decisions of proven principles of recovery it helps takes us out of the decision making process and rests our recovery on solid foundation instead of excuses. I don't beat myself for not being able to perform well in every given circumstance under the sun. I know that I do not mesh well with everything and everybody in life and I have certain limits and abilities. To do otherwise would say that we have the right to be perfect and violate our make up and that we have no limits or boundaries to govern us and are godlike. The 12 step programs reminds us to work within our limits by "staying right size" on pages 122-125, so it tells me right there I am not immune to all things destructive just because I work the 12 steps. In SCA they have a tool called abstention. They abstain the best way they can from people places or things they have found to be detrimental to their recovery program efforts from past experience with them. My recovery success is based a lot on abstaining from people, places and things that do not mesh well with me and if I cannot avoid them, then I work to make the unavoidable fit better by changing things on my end. Yes, we cannot change others, but we do usually have control of ourselves and how we participate in dealing with others. Even though we cannot completely change or wipe our many problem areas in our life we can usually change *some* aspects of most problems to make them more bearable. So, I am always looking for small changes to make in the right direction and this recovery orientation towards the direction of change helps by giving hope of possible larger future change as well. In addition you can work practice a meditation on the 4 Immeasurables aka Divine States of Dwelling. Radiate the 4 Immeasurables in all 4 directions as well, as above and below you so it emanates from your being throughout the universe. Meditate on: Limitless Compassion for all suffering beings. Limitless Joy for over the salvation of others from suffering Limitless Peace for all beings whether friend or enemy Limitless Kindness towards all sentient beings. But bottom line is either you must change from the inside out - or life will change you 'its way' from the outside in and this tends to rot your insides with the byproducts that a life of toxic anger produces.
This poor fellow was being eaten alive as the egg sacks hatch and the larvae feast on the caterpillar. Also a good reminder not to be a blissninny and be at peace with everything that comes down the pike. Sometimes we have to get mad and move! I have another photo of the other side where they started to tunnel into the body...but will spare you of the gore. So I emphasize, without feeling anger or discontent we wound not seek out change - as in changing our environment that might be an unhealthy one for us. So, we should never regret feeling anger, but just as anger and excretion are two naturally occurring parts of being a human, we should let them serve us instead of we being enslaved to them.
Getting out of the situation won't help. You'll be angry and pissed at life no matter where you go. You need to change something inside yourself. You could try writing. Also, deep, slow breathing helps control adrenaline naturally. I mean, okay. You're an angry person. So what? The world progresses because of angry people (I'm sure most political activists aren't happy-go-lucky). What you need to change is how you react to it. You need to channel it into something positive and stop killing yourself slowly with the inevitable high blood pressure and heart disease that comes from poor anger management. Why not channel it through a cause you believe in instead of just acting like an out-of-control brat all day? <3
you need to be away from what started the problem in the first place to start healing... emancipation is an option but you need a lawyer and whatnot, and its a big ordeal... its not your fault, you had shitty parents.
I meditate like fuck, until the last couple of weeks. I don't enjoy getting all 'bratty', there's just too much in me. I'm like a ticking time-bomb. The only thing that shuts off that fuse is love, and the only place i find that is in friends, and the only place I find friends is in the town 15 miles away that I can't walk to, and can't stay in for more than a few hours, before I get dragged back here and the fuse is lit again. Gaiabee, you seem to know what you're saying. Do you have any suggestions (aside from writing, I already suffer from carpal tunnel from writing so much in grade school) on ways to channel my rage?
Oh my god. I'm the same way. I quit the whole lashing out thing around 13-15 years old, but the feeling's never gone. I feel like I want to kick the shit out of something everyday after work. But no matter how much I vent, it's never out of my system. I'm thinking this sort of thing comes from parents/older siblings making you feel like total shit from the beginning of your existence. I have a great relationship with everyone... now, but it's like the mind gets trained to hate and feel self shame after being born into a world that only acts as a blueprint of how you're supposed to treat yourself.
my mom and i are like that too, not my dad and i (because he is very sick) but her and i are at it all day everyday. she is the only person that gets under my skin, i'm the parent in the house is almost seems. you could always run out your anger, since you can't be enrolled just run and run and run. my mom wont change, no matter how much i ask her to stop and try to have a serious talk with her she doesn't even care she blames the arguments on me. you may dig it or not but if you try and meditate in the morning and at night you can erase your mind and be less stressed and irritable the next day, it has helped me out a lot. we still get in arguements but i can calm down a lot quicker and stuff. i had a doctor once that told me to put glass in a bag and break it, it may not be safe but you could always try that with out getting too out of hand !
you have to remember to forgive the rest of society, they've done the best they could with the knowledge they understood and the resources they had don't be angry at them for not making it perfect, we have to start showing them what needs to be done to make it perfect. You have to have a clear definition of better before you can start heading there.
