“I am gonna STRANGLE you!” gesturing with his hands as if squeezing them around my throat, with a grimace of wrinkled brow and scrunched up lips and nose.
The twinkle of laughter in his eyes immediately following this angry display brings on a fit of laughter for us both. The intense energy is quickly dispersed through the laughter and we both feel free of the tension once again.
Have you ever noticed how dogs handle their intense emotions after the initial outburst of barking, growling or other shows of aggression? They shake their entire body usually starting at the head and working down to the tail. It is as if the moment has passed and they realize they have this residual emotion to dispense with. The shaking helps them to get past it and move on. My dog does not have a long memory for events that created ill feeling or anger.
Life is full of anger evoking moments. I have heard it said that anger is meant to motivate us to action. We each have our own method of dealing with emotional situations. What action do you choose when struck with anger?
I have been known to hold onto my anger and let it fester. I am sure, none of the rest of you out there have ever done that. It takes a lot of energy on a daily basis to keep that festering puss pocket from spewing foul smelling noxious ooze on innocent bystanders.
Some people, that I know but who will remain anonymous, find anger a call to pouting! It is quite an art to perfect. While I have tried it many times I found it took way too much energy to maintain the pout and had an unsatisfying result with most situations.
I have noticed that for most of my life I practiced and perfected the art of Denial!
“Are you angry with me for something?” would come the opportunity to express myself.
“I am not angry” I calmly reply, while simultaneously taking notice of the anger and stuffing it into the bubbling cauldron of unforgiven offenses. “Ignore it and it will pass” was the modus operandi.
I am having what my old hippie self calls a “psychedelic” moment as I type this. My husband, sitting here working next to me, started spontaneously expounding on the power of speaking the truth out loud.
“Speaking the truth about the thing most quickly makes it go away” he states adamantly. No, he was not reading my screen, though that was my first thought. He was looking through a microscope and expressing his frustration about having lost a package of labels we recently received.
“The more I like something the faster it goes away” he expounds looking for agreement from me.
“Perhaps if you stop saying that, it will change” I offer to his quandary, to which he instantly retorted with his personal wisdom regarding the very subject I was attempting to pontificate on. I made this statement to him just as I had finished typing about my propensity for denial!
It is my thinking, that the spoken word has great power. Speaking the “truth” brings it into the light where purification and cleansing can occur. This is something I have known and tried to practice for many years. I am always amazed to find my own need for further refinement! I sometimes go for long periods of up to two days without being seriously confronted with my true self. Those days are joyously blissful moments of rapture engulfed by self-righteousness. It requires a well developed skill in the art of denial to maintain self-righteousness.
To verbally acknowledge my anger gives me the opportunity to evaluate the situation more fully. Am I angry because I simply am not getting “MY Way”? This is a great call to pouting! Am I angry because I have been injured or worse yet a loved one has been injured? I am a fiercely protective mother, wife, daughter and sister. Am I angry because of perceived injustice directly or indirectly perpetrated on my world by outside forces? Non-violent protest is my favored response to social and environmental injustice.
Often I am angry because something has triggered a serious boiling over of the cauldron of Unforgiven Offenses. Perhaps it is a lack of sleep, lack of food or an urgent need to find a bathroom in the mall. It takes a lot of energy and focus to keep the cauldron at a slow simmer and deep enough that fumes are not wafting out and affecting my day. Suppose you said something that reminded me of some long ago Unforgiven event of which you had no knowledge and probably had no part in. This could precipitate a major spill leaving you severely blistered and wondering what this crazy woman is thinking.
Having been confronted with this part of myself countless times over the years, I have managed to empty much of the contents of the cauldron by practicing forgiveness. For years I thought I was forgiving, when in reality I was denying my hurt and feeding the cauldron. True forgiveness allows me, as per the Oxford English Dictionary, 'to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offense or debt'. This type of total forgiveness in my world comes only by the grace of God. While God’s grace is abundantly available it requires asking. If I am practicing the refined art of Denial then I see no need for that grace. I am above anger. I don’t hold a grudge! I am just tired or hungry or I need to use the bathroom and that is why I am acting like a raving lunatic.
My husband and I tried shaking from head to foot like our dog does to avail himself of God's grace. We saw that each of us had areas where we did not find our bodies shaking as well as we would like. Observing ourselves we saw that we were stiff and lacking free movement in the areas of our bodies where we tend to “hold stress”(unforgiveness?). I was stiff in my shoulders while he was stiff in his neck. We decided as therapy we should work at getting more limber for one month. Loosening the areas we have allowed to stiffen may well dislodge interesting emotional resistance. To test our success we will have a limbo contest to see if we have achieved our goals and can shake off our anger with the total forgiveness of our dog!
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