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Anger: An Inside-Outside Predicament by: Sandra T. Spalding, M.S., NCC, CCMHC We all tend to look outside to resolve our problems. It is easier to do and most of us believe our problems do lie outside ourselves. However, when we learn to look inside first it frequently reframes what we thought the problem was. Specifically, our society has problems with anger. We see violence acted out every day in real life and on television, but many of us do not recognize the anger that lies within us. Anger is greatly misunderstood. Anger is. a wonderful energy when one learns to deal with it directly. The problem begins with the fact that we as parents can't tolerate anger, so our children learn that they are not able to express it. Anger is a feeling like any other feeling such as sadness, happiness but because we see the damage that anger does, especially as it is exhibited today, we become afraid of it and want to deny it, internalize it, or anesthetize it. This brings me to the very serious problem that is undermining our society today - drug addiction. Yes, I am sure there are many contributing factors, but one that is little understood and therefore not addressed is the devastating role of buried anger. All those bad feelings get buried in us at a very early age. The problem is that they don't go away just because they are not allowed to be expressed. They get buried inside and cause depression, or disease that can turn into disease because it takes a lot of our energy to hold all of this in. In other cases, the anger discharges and its gets acted out violently. But, those who attempt to hide it are caught in a trap. They need their anesthetic fix to numb out the emotional path they do not understand. The pain is buried by the multifaceted societal addictive patterns, such as eating, alcohol, television, drugs, work, and there are many more. But these addictions are used to deny, avoid and not deal with the problems that lie deep inside. My hope in writing this is to introduce people to alternative routes to dealing directly with feelings rather than indirectly and introduce the idea that all feelings are OK when labeled, recognized, and discharged in constructive ways. This is the therapeutic counseling route. It teaches people to process and deal with what has been previously buried inside. Our world outside us is screaming that we live in an angry, violent world, but I leave you with the hope side of this, which is: maybe society is only reflecting what most of us have buried inside. And, it doesn't need to stay that way when each of us decides that maybe we need to address what is wrong inside, instead of putting so much energy into attempting to fix what is outside. We are looking the wrong way as we strive for peace! |