Acronyms for Awareness, Part II: Anger

I created my own acronym for this article, believe it or not, just as I was writing it. A-N-G-E-R stands for: Again Not Gaining an Evolved Resolution. That makes perfect sense to me!

~ A man is about as big as the things that make him angry. ~ Teddy Roosevelt

Another offshoot of fear is the fact that fear is just “anger out loud.” When we are angry about anything, it’s because that anger is based on fear of the results of whatever it is we are angry about. If we are angry at our kids for misbehaving, for example, it’s because we fear possibly several different things: we fear they will be “naughty” all day (or maybe even the rest of their childhood). We may fear that they will never listen to us and may grow up to be “troubled adults.” We may fear that we aren’t patient or calm enough to deal with their “bad behavior” that day, or any day for that matter. We fear that we have too much going on in our own lives at that moment to slow down, sit down, take deep breaths and talk quietly to our children to find out why they seem to be acting out all this “bad behavior.”

Another “anger-is-fear-out-loud” example would be: when we are angry with our spouse, it may be because of those dreaded expectations we put on them. We fear they won’t do what we want them to do or be what we want them to be so we get disappointed, which causes us to see our partner as a failure because they couldn’t live up to our expectations or we feel we are a failure ourselves for even expecting anything of our partners.

We may be often angry with ourselves for not living up to our own expectations. We may set the bar way too high to even try to strive towards our perfectionistic view of ourselves. We may have been taught that we were not valuable or worthy of love and praise and respect so we carry a chain around our necks attached to a huge pile of baggage behind us, believing we have to be perfect in the eyes of the world so that we can learn to feel valuable and worthy of being noticed. We fear others will always be superior to us, that the harder we strive, the more we will get noticed. The more we are noticed, the more the fear lingers deep inside, causing us to feel that if we make one tiny mistake, just one small error, we will be condemned and ridiculed and forever haunted by our inferiority. We fear never being forgiven. We fear ete
al sco
and bitte
ess and hatred through the eyes of those who look upon us. All that anger and all that frustration. All in vain.

I am hoping this article has helped.Keep reading to find out more about my next topic: Denial