Why People Try To Avoid Anger--Lesson 4

Most people have been taught and threatened with the belief that anger is bad, negative, uncivilized, rude, and unacceptable. Add these to the misinformation and misconceptions that anger leads to more anger and that expressing anger increases blood pressure and heart problems, it is no wonder we are racked with guilt and shame and increasingly tamp down and numb our emotions.
Everyone from parents to teachers and pastors have been telling children things like, “Good girls and boys don’t get angry,” for generations. “It’s not ladylike.” Girls have been told they are bitches, ball busters, nags, hags and witches if they get angry. Boys have been taught to think of “angry” women that way. We wonder why women are angry, look at what they are called!
Mostly people of all educational backgrounds, incomes, religious persuasions and inclinations have it in their heads, hearts, or rear-ends that anger equals pain.
When someone got angry in our childhood we felt the slaps, hits, silent treatment, and icy stares. We were punished by being sent to bed without supper or exiled to our bedrooms or boarding schools. In other words, when someone got angry someone got hurt.
Somewhere in our subconscious we decided early on that if anger equals pain then the best way to keep from causing others pain or incurring pain we would bust a gut, get a migraine, numb our bodies, and souls and just try with all our might to never get angry.

Question: How is this thinking about anger working for you?

In Lesson 5 the blog entry will look at what anger really is and the positive things it can do for you.


For more information go to johnleebooks.com and read The Anger Solution: The Proven Method for Attaining Calm and Developing Healthy, Long-Lasting Relationships, Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately, The Missing Peace--all available on Amazon.com.