I'm running late this morning, so I thought I'd try to answer Mike's
question before I hit the road. . .
Anger is a powerful emotion. In fact, of all of the emotions I have felt I
would have to say it is the strongest.
What I've come to realize, over the last couple of years, is that anger
can be a disguise for many other emotions:
Aggravation
Annoyance
Impatience
Irritation
Madness
Meanness
Rage
Resentfulness
Soreness
Disgust
Enviousness
Furiousness
Depression
Sadness
The first thing I had to do to work on getting rid of the anger was
accurately label my emotion: What am I actually feeling? Why am I feeling
it? This gave me something concrete to work with. The language of emotion,
for me, was difficult to learn. Identifying and labeling my emotions was
the first step.
The second step, for me, was being able to validate my own feelings: "I
feel ___[some emotion]___ because of ___[some event]___, which is
perfectly natural." My religious teachings taught me that it was wrong to
feel anger. This tenet was a major hurdle for me to get over. But when I
finally made it, and I could say to myself, "Ben it's OK and natural to
feel this way," then I began to feel some release from my darker
emotions.
The third step was saying, "However, the way I really want to feel is
___[some emotion___, and I can choose to feel this way despite what has
happened." That was a powerful experience for me, because I took control
of my own emotions. The implication, of course, is that I took control
away from those who had sought to control my emotions for so long. There
was a overwhelming feeling of freedom, and, interestingly, responsibility,
that came from this discovery.
The second and third steps are what I call "centering." What I mean by
this is I'm centered on being in control of my own emotions, and I take
responsibility for those emotions. It is nearly impossible, in this
condition, to blame others for how I felt. (I learned from sad and painful
experience that the only thing blame does is intensify the feelings you
want to get rid of.)
The process, then, that has worked for me is:
1. Identify and lable the emotion
2. Associate the emotion with it's source
3. Self-validate the emotion
4. Choose to feel what I want
There's a saying that says, "Feelings buried alive never die." The process
I discovered helps me kill and bury the feelings I don't want, while
giving a fertile environment for the feelings I do want.
One of the biggest pitfalls I found, early on, was that I thought the
feelings I had about my past were the only possible feelings. This kept me
chained to my past. What I learned is that the past can be re-interpreted.
For me I saw my past through the eyes of a child. . .what I had to learn
was to see the past through the eyes of an adult. Not an easy thing to do.
The thing that I think was the most important was that I was committed to
achieving emotional maturity. However bad I hurt I still went to therapy,
still read books, and still wrote in my journal. Writing my feelings
proved -- and continues to prove -- to be a very healthy thing. When I sit
and think about them I get all worked up, allowing my emotions to feed off
each other. When I write them down I actually reach conclusions and move
on. The easy road would have been to continue to deny my past and it's
impact on my emotional well-being. But I'm glad I made the choices I did
through the whole thing -- and which I continue to make each day.
Finally I came to the conclusion that my values impacted my emotions: What
I valued had a direct impact on how intensely I felt emotion. This caused
me to do a complete re-evaluation of my personal value system, which,
where I'm at now, has made my emotions much more controllable.
When I get to S.C. I'll write a message about the relationship between
thought, emotion, and values, which I think is important to understand if
we're going to practice personal mastery.
In the end, where I wanted to be was at an emotionally mature state. And
my current reality was much below that. The creative tension was strong,
but as I move closer I find greater satisfaction. The beauty of the whole
thing is that I'll never be an emotionally mature person; I'll just be
making progress toward that goal. I've got a lifetime to work on it.
Therefore I'll never be bored. It doesn't matter to me how fast I
progress, only that everyday I move closer to what I want.
I hope that helps. . .
Oh, a few good books to read:
1. Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
2. The Heart Aroused, David Whyte
3. The Corporate Mystic, by authors I can't remember and my books are all
packed
4. The Inner Child of the Past (same problem, the book is packed)
5. Love is a Choice (same problem)
6. Love is Letting Go of Fear, Jampolsky
7. A Course in Miracles, (I forget the author(s), but it is more of a text
book)
8. The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
There are others I've read over the last year that have really helped, but
they don't come to mind. I'm going to post a book list on my homepage with
a brief summary of each book. That'll take a while I'm sure. . .
--Benjamin B. Compton bcompton@enol.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>