
Anger Management Support Group
Anger management commonly refers to therapeutic techniques by which someone with excessive or uncontrollable anger can control or reduce their emotions. Typical examples include the use of deep breathing and meditation as a means to relaxation. Psychologists recommend a balanced approach, which both controls the emotion and allows it to express itself in a healthy way.
So much of the anger I have trouble managing is related to extremely negative experiences in religious/spiritual contexts. The result is that anything which even has a whiff of my old faith in it (like the word "forgiveness") triggers my foam-at-the-mouth response.
There are some things I simply can NOT forgive. I can NOT forgive the way I was treated by my faith community when I came out. I can NOT forgive the anti-gay poison that still comes out of the conservative religious traditions that permeate this culture.
I absolutely HATE the time of year we are approaching because the reminders are so in-your-face EVERYwhere -sheesh, even the grocery stores ALREADY have up the xmas stuff - so it's not like I even have the option to AVOID the triggers.
Even writing this post my heart rate has elevated to a pounding I can feel.
Sigh - again. I suppose what makes it harder is I don't WANT to forgive them. I want them to suffer as much as they caused me to suffer. I want them to have horrible guilt pangs over how I was treated.
At least, that's how I feel when I'm angriest. Honestly, I really don't know what to do with the rage. Forgive? Not bloody likely.
So what do I do?
I speak as a devout christian of 20 years, who, after a prolonged "leaving" of my fanantical christian husband, was totally ostocised by my local church that I had been a member of for 11 years. But, looking back, they just did not have a clue how to deal with the situation. So I forigive....
Keziah - well yes, as an atheist I also agree that it was not God that wronged me but people. I think our experiences are similar in that, yes, those people didn't have a clue. We differ in that I'm not willing to forgive them on that basis. There's an institutional quality to the anti-gay (and anti-divorce) predjudice which in my mind allows it to perpetuate -unthinking and unexamined. The "good intentions" that those people may have felt do not make up for the self-loathing I endured as long as I believed what they said.
I don't know how to get past it. How did you?
C.S. Lewis quote
one day i will get there. but right now, sister, it seems a long way off.