How to deal with Anger

Hello,

I have a lot of anger regarding insurance claims I had over a year ago due to my inability to work. I had/have chronic hand/forearm/shin pain. I have so much anger directed at how the insurance companies treated me and I don't know how to deal with it (case denied). The insurance agents lied and went out of their way to distort all information possible to invalidate me and my situation. The terrible feelings that arise from these insurance companies is actually on par or even worse than the emotions related to chronic pain! I need to deal with these emotions, any recommendations?

Thanks

 

People lie all of the time. Hearing about people lying never bothers me... "Oh... that's just the way it is." (stoically)
People lying to ME? About Me? Implying the version of the story I am telling is wrong ? (meaning I am the liar)..RAGE!

Get it on paper. The exact and horrible nature of their actions. Then...
WHY does anger me? What does that affect? How has that Lying harmed me (financially, personally, messed up opportunities,etc).

Usually when we are angry we get in a sort of negative feedback loop. The person continues to wrong us and we continue to stay angry. The only way to break the loop is to realize it is a loop and really never does much in the real world except give us TMS. Outlining what that really does inside of us can show us a glimpse of that ID that Sarno says is part of the cause of our tension and pain.

For me, when people lie and get away with it, and I answer those questions, it is usually something like "If people can lie with impunity to me, I am vulnerable... I have no way to protect myself and THAT scares me."....or "I must be an ineffective d-bag because people think they can do whatever they want to me".... it's actually feeling like an ineffective d-bag that causes my TMS

all of us are a little different. THEN, the next time you catch yourself paying attention to any TMS symptoms, take your attention THERE...immediately and with force.... That will recondition your brain and tell it you know what it is doing, and the symptoms will stop. Period. They will no longer be serving their purpose as a distraction.

 

Hydrlysis, I have two very different recommendations for you. One is based on Sarno's work and the other is based on modern pain science research.

I was an ardent follower of Sarno for about a quarter of a century starting with his publication of Healing Back Pain in 1991. Within six weeks of studying that book and applying what Sarno said about pain as a distraction from repressed anger, I ended more than two decades of chronic low back pain and it never returned. I had equally good success with subsequent forms of what Sarno called the symptom imperative. Without intending to take away from anything Baseball65 said, since he too has had great success in applying what Sarno taught, I want to refer to something Sarno said in a question-and-answer section of The Mindbody Prescription. One of the questions he answered was: "I know I'm angry. I can feel it. In fact, I often show it. Why do I still have pain?" Sarno responded:

"Because the anger you know about and express is not the anger causing your pain. TMS is a response to anger-rage generated in the unconscious (in which case you are not aware of it), or conscious anger suppressed. TMS is not a response to conscious anger felt or expressed. . . . Bear in mind, we repress anger that violates our image of ourselves." (I added the emphasis.)
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Sarno gave the example of having the self-image of being a "nice guy." To expand on this, a nice guy who gets terrible service at a restaurant might be unconsciously angry at the waiter but repress it and be totally unaware of the anger. Then he wonders why the meal gave him heartburn. (Heartburn is a TMS equivalent from which Sarno himself suffered.) Personally, my self-image does not include being a nice guy. I would know I am angry about the terrible service. I might choose to express the anger or choose to let it go, e.g., because I notice the waiter is overworked and trying hard or because I fear that if I complain he will spit in my next course before he brings it from the kitchen. But since I do not repress my anger about the terrible service, I am not going to get heartburn.

Sarno ended his answer as follows:

"Finally, anger you are aware of may be what is known as displaced anger. That is, you bcome come overtly angry at something relatively unimportant, like traffic tie-up or poor service in a restaurant, instead of at your spouse or a parent, because the latter is simply not allowed by your psyche. This is very common among my patients."
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That was me. My psyche did not allow me to get consciously angry at people I was close to. I would get angry but repress it. The key to me overcoming my more than two decades of chronic low back pain was to become aware of when I was angry at my spouse and why. It is very common for people to have psyches that regard anger at people they are close to as taboo to express, so they repress their anger. You might ask yourself, Hydrlysis, whether your unrelenting anger at how the insurance companies treated you is displaced anger and you often are unconsciously angry at someone you are close to?

If your answer after careful reflection and true effort to uncover the unconscious anger is no, I turn to my modern pain science answer about what to do regarding your unrelenting anger at the insurance companies. This is not the place to go into detail about what this research adds to Sarno's approach (and actually proves Sarno presciently correct in important respects). Instead, I will just say that Dr. David Hanscom is fully into this research and refer you to what he days about how to stop your anger-induced chronic pain. It is in a subform on this website at

https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/forgiveness-is-a-learned-skill–and-a-power-move.22570/

To put that in a nutshell: You need to, and can, choose to stop letting the bastard insurance companies ruin you life, which is what they are doing. Stop giving them that power.

 

Thank you so much for the replies! It really means a lot to me. It is hard to see past the anger, so the perspective and advice is awesome. I'll make sure to journal about it tonight and try to forgive.

 

Excellent suggestions by Baseball65 and Duggit.

Actually I read Healing Back Pain in March 1993. It was and still is such a great book on the topic.

My sources of anger were due to lack of good communication with my wife and not setting limits to my parents excessive demands.

What I did not realize was how much anger and rage these two sources of tension where creating inside of me.

So once I recovered from chronic pain and disability, I began addressing those two issues and no longer suffered any pain.

I did have a traumatic childhood. So I would be a good candidate for a massive amount of repressed anger. However, once I resolved the issues with my wife and parents I did not experience TMS. So it does not always have to be anger and rage that we are not aware of.

 

So I started to journal about this last night, and ended up expressing anger at something else entirely..... Oh the brain. I'll back at it again, maybe this time I'll actually station topic.