I need help understanding the anger aspect of healing.

I am a few weeks into healing my TMS and have excellent results by dealing with some of the issues of my ever so traumatic childhood and some tension causing situations from the last few years so I am definitely on board!

I started the SEV but haven't used it every day. I've read HBP and Unlearn your Pain. I read Alan Gordon's new program here and listened to the audio clips. One of them concerns a father upset over a crying 3 month old and he is lead to become very violent toward his mother (in the past and in the mind, of course). My non violent nature couldn't handle that. Then day 1 of Dr Shubiner's workbook had a similar script in print for two patients. That's as far as I have read.

I can be angry at my mother - still having trouble being angry with my father - and my ex-husband, but I can't fathom wanting to hurt them. When I release the hurt on paper and tear it up or burn it, I am finished with it. I am by nature a nurturer and relatively non violent. Am I missing something not being mad enough to hurt people?

 

I don't recall any TMS healer saying we should be mad enough to hurt anyone.

You're doing fine by feeling your anger but not wanting to hurt anyone.
To me, the main thing is to see if you can develop a new perspective on those causing you to be angry,
to put yourself in their shoes to better understand why they anger you, and that can lead to forgiveness.
They probably have their own TMS repressed emotions and are taking them out on you. It's unfair
but how most people are.

Forgiveness has to conquer anger.

 

Thank you, Walt, for your quick response. First I want to say that I like Alan Gordon's TMS Recovery Program and find his insight wonderful and his voice very soothing. It was a session with a man named Dustin in section 3.5.2 under anger that I found disturbing. Maybe because as mother of five, I'd hate to have any of my children feel like that towards me. In Dr Schubiner's book the interviews are at the beginning of the workbook section.

When I read any book whether, it's spiritual or physical or mental healing or exercise, etc, I choose the parts that apply to me. I think that's how I will get past this. There's too much to gain from both authors to not continue using their wonderful knowledge to help with my recovery.

BTW, my parents and ex are all deceased so they can't hurt me anymore. My new found knowledge that I can say "I know what's going on and it isn't going to happen" to my mind has been beneficial beyond belief.

 

Hi jlm,
I remember having a similar experience that you described. And then this weird thing happened - I guess from all the journalling and digging down, I found that incredibly angry place. A child's anger really, a temper tantrum. I was floored to see this on paper because like you, I'm a gentle person not quick to anger at all. But when I started allowing myself - all these different parts of me - to have their say - I found a cesspool of anger. Lots of anger about things I couldn't control, like my family dying - but then anger that was being repressed in my current life. Now I accept that I have this part of me... one that rarely gets expressed but I can feel the need to journal when a certain kind of tension comes into my body. Writing it out in all its bloody forms actually does relieve the tension and I feel much more loving once I admitted and acknowledged it was there. TMS healing has taught me that I'm not as nice as I always thought myself to me. Well I'm nice and that is what people will see...but the underbelly of acceptance of me as a not nice, or judgmental or critical person AT TIMES is the key for my healing. It's hard to be a Saint. ha-ha-ha-ha

 

Sometimes, to appease that deeply angry part of myself, I choose to imagine extreme violence against the person I feel has done me wrong. I don't do this often because I believe it is energetically akin to actual harming someone. Still, sometimes nothing else will do. Otherwise, I stay angry and that doesn't help either of us.

Maybe staying in the present would help. One way to do this suggests noticing when you are not present, then focusing and letting any feelings in your body flow freely for a few seconds. Apparently, they will naturally dissipate when accepted and allowed. Worth a try.

 

nowtimecoach, I am not a particularly gentle person. I am known as the person to ask if you want the truth because I will tell it like it is. I raised my children and my dogs with a firm but loving hand. But I am non violent. Watching my father beat my mother was apparently a lifetime of violence for me. I hope to reach a point where I will be angry with my father, but I don't want to reach a point where I want to kill him. I will continue with the SEP, do Dr S's workbook, read Alan Gordon's new program again and listen to all the clips except the one that bothers me because I know I have TMS/MBS and this is my avenue to healing. My doctor says a spot in my foot is nerve damage and nothing can be done. I wonder who I want to kick?? My body will tell me when it's time. My back and neck are so much better - my foot will be, too.

 

Hmmm, I posted the last reply last night and it didn't show up. Luckily, I found most of it in 'more options'.

njoy, I'm pleased that works for you and you, but for me I will continue writing an angry letter to the person who needs to hear from me even if she/he is deceased. Then I will crumple it and shred it - though in the case of my ex-husband, that wasn't enough. I had to burn his. Who do I want to kick?? My father. This one will be tough going because I was a Daddy's girl. I'll check back in after I've written to him.

 

Nothing good can come off the idea of being mad enough to hurt someone or just hurting someone. You're on the right track.

 

toddchaney, I think that it's very possible to be mad enough to hurt someone who has hurt you. The child part of the brain wants to react and to deny that would just repress the emotions and add to our pain. The adult part can keep us from acting on the desire at our current ages, but I'm dealing with the emotions of a 7 year old child here. She will be allowed to kick someone if she needs to. I could never fathom being mad enough to want to kill someone - it's not part of my make up, then or now.

 

Jim, your anger at your father is certainly understandable.
Writing to him about it and burning the letter could help, but you just have to forgive him.
Maybe try to understand what made him beat your mother. Maybe he was just "sick" mentally.

In some primitive societies, people made doll images of people they feared or hated and
stuck pins in them. Maybe try that?

The main thing is, no matter how hard or long you keep being angry at your father,
you won't heal until you forgive him and let it go.

Now you know a main cause of your anger, your subconscious knows it, and it's waiting for
you to get go of it. I know it's not easy to forgive, and once I did in my cases, it was even harder to forget.
But we have to do both, forgive and then forget.

If you don't do both, your mean father wins. You want to be the one who wins.

 

Walt, I totally understand what you are saying and had no trouble doing what needed to be done, including forgiving, with my mother and my ex-husband. But the child part of me says you can't be mad at your daddy because you were daddy's girl. I'm ready now. I can hardly wait until tonight or tomorrow night when things quiet down so I can have at it. Now I'm off to see my massage therapist who has inadvertently turned into my therapist. Some of the techniques he uses release emotions stored in the muscles. It's been a trip, though not so much so in the last few weeks.

I am not currently mad at my father or letting this particular issue hurt my body. I will be mad when I give myself permission to be.

 

Jim, your posts are a hoot. Best of luck with all this. I think you going to do fine because you have that same honest streak with yourself. Sometimes I think that's all that matters.

 

Yesterday I ordered the Presence Process book. When reading Amazon's preview. I discovered Michael Brown's take that anger and aggression are separate entities. Of course, they are, but I had never thought of it that way. I can be angry without being aggressive so now I am ready to go forward. Anger is definitely part of my make up, but aggression isn't.

njoy, I don't know why you'd say that, but I'd rather make you smile than cry.
Judy

 

Jim, you're doing great. About anger and your father, it helped me a lot to consider what made him drink.
He had a lot on his plate during the 1930s Great Depression, working when he could find it, being a husband and
father to my older brother and sister and me, trying to keep up with the bills and rent. I've no doubt his back ache
came from TMS. He came from a big, poor family that gave him inherited TMS.

If we can put ourselves in others' shoes we can usually find it easy to forgive.

 

Well, Judy, I find you bright and funny and honest and hell bent on healing. Good for you! Like many who hang out on this forum, I wish you lived in my town.