Originally posted by Realtruth
Now what personal successful solutions do people have that allow for anger to be released permanently.
I have a very successful solution to holding onto anger. First, I make a mental list of the assumptions I'm making or the positions I'm taking
around the anger-causing event or situation. And then I study them to see how much truth is in them. As I pick them apart, I find that my anger, since
it is BASED on these assumptions and positions, begins to fade away and I can release it.
Example:
Yesterday, my husband asked me to stop at the nursery for something on the way to my water aerobics class. We had just had a big rain. I parked at the
nursery and just as I got to the door, I slipped in a patch of thick mud and fell completely down, right in front of the store, ON MY KNEES, which are
injured and "bad" anyway... The people entering the nursery behind me came up to help me up and the proprietors opened the door to make sure I was
okay and everything... So plenty of people SAW me fall down, I was thoroughly embarrassed, covered in mud and in PAIN!
This was my first stage
of anger.
The second stage came when I was picking up my mud covered keys and money, and the clerk had the nerve to comment that my shoes were not appropriate
for mud!
(Let me say here that I was going to a STORE, not planning on hiking in the mud, so I wasn't wearing my hiking boots, but a pair of smooth-soled
rubber shoes. If I had planned on trekking through a mud field, I would have dressed appropriately!)
Having regained my composure somewhat, I suggested to the clerk that perhaps the answer would be to spread some gravel in front of the door, since she
had mentioned that "that's always the last place to get dry after rain".
Then, I found out that they didn't even have what I came there to
get! Now my anger turned toward my husband.
I used their bathroom to clean the mud off my knees and shoes and left, thinking I was going to go home instead of to my class because I hurt so bad
that I probably wouldn't do much good in class. But I decided that maybe some swimming would do me good and I wasn't crazy about approaching my
husband with all this anger roiling around in me.
As I soaked and nursed my poor knees in the warm pool, I thought about my assumptions and positions and started to pick them apart:
1. They should have had that mud taken care of. (They probably never considered that someone might fall. It just never occurred to them. Maybe it
should have, but it obviously didn't. If it had, they would have done something about it because no one wants someone to take a fall on their
property!)
2. They were trying to cover their asses by making a comment about my shoes. (This is probably true. Someone spoke without thinking. It was a stupid
thing to say at that instant, but people are imperfect and they don't want to be sued. If someone fell on my property, I'd start looking for ways
that they were at fault. So, they're just being human, like me.)
3. My husband should NOT have asked me to stop for him! (This one's simple. He had NO WAY of knowing that I was going to fall and the LAST thing he
wants is for me to be in pain. He adores me and would never take the chance of me being hurt.)
4. They were laughing at me. Probably laughed at me after I left. (Maybe they were. But it's not like watching someone fall down isn't funny. I've
laughed at it myself. I've laughed at myself falling down since then. And who really cares what they think? It doesn't matter.)
So, as I let these truths sink in, the anger just fades.
Sorry this is so long.