Anger
Management ~
Managing Our Emotions
Anger is probably the
least understood of all the human emotions -- mainly due to its
power. Anger is
really about vulnerability and hurt. Think about it. Why do we get
angry? Because we
have been injured in some
way.
We are all entitled to our inner
experience of anger. We are not entitled to
use that anger to hurt or control another. Yet anger is such a
seductive emotion. In the heat of the
moment, it tricks us into thinking that we are entitled
to push someone else around with its explosive
power.
The good news is that acquiring the
skills to resist the temptation of anger is a fairly
mechanical process that most of us can easily learn. The capacity to manage
anger is one which I have taught regularly since 1993. With some sincere
application, results are assured.
Emotional
Literacy
School does a good job of making us
literate and numerate but it neglects the realm of human
emotions. Many of
us have difficulty identifying what we are feeling and some of
us don’t even have access to our
feelings.
It’s especially the darker emotions
that give us trouble: sadness, fear, grief and despair. And yet there is a
wealth of wisdom and intelligence that our emotions are
seeking to carry to us.
In my practice, I encourage patients
to befriend their feelings by helping them to identify them,
experience them, process and integrate them. When you learn to be
with the dark emotions, you enlarge your capacity for
joy. All feelings
exist on the same spectrum and sending the dark emotions away
will only create a condition of emotional flatness and rob us
of our capacity for joy.
What we resist, persists; what we examine falls away.
~ Neale Donald
Walsch
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