Ponderings (September 2009) - “ANGER”

According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary …

Anger is “to make angry; to become angry”

Sharing my thoughts …

Anger is one of the many emotions that we can experience.  The emotion of anger is not good or bad; however, how we handle this intense emotion can result in good or bad outcomes.  If anger is directed outward with reckless regard, it can cause irreparable damage to our relationships.  On the other hand, if anger is held within and repressed, it creates tension and can cause disease in the body.  The key is to bring awareness to how your experience anger.  Observe your anger, listen to and acknowledge its message, give it room to breathe, and then determine the course of action to release the anger in a way that will not harm you or others.  

Questions to ponder …

1. How do you view anger?
2. How do you deal with your own anger?
3. Where do you feel anger in your body?
4. Is there a pattern to your anger?  What is it?
5. How do you react when someone responds to you with anger?
6. The next time you experience anger, what can you do to give it room to breathe?
7. How has your way of dealing with anger helped or hurt you?  Helped or hurt others?
8. Think of a time when you were very angry.  What was the emotion hidden behind the anger?

Related quotes …

Anger as soon as fed is dead.  Tis starving that makes it fat.  [Emily Dickinson]

Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly – hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear.  [Joan Rivers]

My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration:  set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.  [Phyllis Diller]

Tremendous energy comes with anger … Do not suppress it:  that would only hurt you inside.  Do not express it:  this would not only hurt you inside, it would cause ripples in your surroundings.  What you do is transform it.  You somehow use that tremendous energy constructively on a task that needs to be done, or in a beneficial form of exercise.  [Peace Pilgrim]