Second Personal Pathway to Healing - Completely Dissolving Anger

Second Pathway – Completely Dissolving Anger

Anger easily seduces persons as it is more empowering than being a victim of harrowing circumstances.  The illusion of control always seems preferable to waiting patiently upon Almighty God.  Everyone seeks to determine his or her own destiny.  Anger consequentially follows as an understandable reaction to frustration and failure.  It boils in a person’s consciousness like hot lava, destroying anything in their path.  Fearing failure to obtain something he greatly desires or losing something he significantly values; anger ultimately undermines a person as it leads to regrettable decisions.  Further, anger robs people who feel it of peace, joy, happiness and other positive emotions.  Interestingly, people surrender joy in daily living when they stew in anger in response to disappointments and defeats.  Nursing anger rarely creates healing.

One of anger’s seductive qualities is its corollary perceptions.  “I will not be a victim!  I am not a victim!”  Additionally, “I will prevail over an y adversity.  You watch and see that I will be victorious.” Those fierce and penetrating emotions often mutate into more resentment and cynicism.  Internalizing these emotions eventuates possibly in clinical depression.  Externally, these formidable feelings may cause detrimental acts of rage and passion.  In extreme instances, manslaughter and murder may result.  These complicated mental and emotional phenomena feasibly explain two unresolved murders in Brentwood, California in June 1994.  These tsunami-like expressions of anger always feel preferable to humility; and the erroneous idea that this spiritual quality equates with self-effacement.  Despite countless historical and contemporary examples of anger’s detrimental consequences, most people prefer its narcotic inflation.  Not surprisingly, this emotional drunkenness fuels self-aggrandizing behavior. 

Anger is not a pathway to healing.  It often creates irreversible relational harm.  It mercilessly rages like a forest fire engulfing anything in its unforgiving path.  Like such a blazing inferno, anger never forgives.  It typically impedes a person’s ability to practice restraint of pen and tongue.  However, it does not feel as empowering when anger creates immeasurable guilt and regret following loss of self-control.  Sometimes, fury incapacitates yielding emotional and existential paralysis.  Seeing red blinds a person to the intricate colors of his or her life’s mosaic.  However invigorating anger may feel, harboring it resembles sinking in quicksand.

It is most ironic to think of vulnerability as a position of strength.  In “feeling the feelings (raw, brutal and hard),” a person garners grace and inner resilience.  The lessons, endurance and wisdom rooted within personal pain enhance character.  Further, it is odd to think that a person could win a battle or a war by simply surrendering.  A friend recently shared that he spontaneously ended his divorce conflicts by saying in a legal hearing without advance consultation with his attorney, “That’s it.  We need to end all of this.  Give her what she wants.”  In his words, “I surrendered to win.”  “My former wife’s mouth dropped wide open.  In time, “I got all of my money back.”  “Mostly, I enjoy a better relationship with my children than I would; had I continued to fight their mother.  The funny thing is that I actually have a better relationship with her too.”