www.angertreatment.com.au dissolving anger using 'Transmuting Anger' double CD set by Ron Farmer Ph.D
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RON'S STORY
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha
As a child I learned that any hint of anger on my part would bring the condemnation of my parents. So I grew up with my anger hidden from myself and from others. The end result was that, as a young university lecturer, I was well-mannered and pleasant to the world, rationally deadly with any academic opponents, and coldly callous with my wife and children. Yet I truly believed at the time that I was kind, loving and fair. Certainly never angry.It was not until I had my nervous breakdown (or, rather, ‘breakthrough’) at age 33 that I had the first inkling of things not being the way they seemed. One of the most horrific symptoms of my nervous collapse was the appearance of intrusive split-second images of myself hurting my wife and children. These vivid pictures terrified me. To regain some control over my mind I repeatedly used the behaviour therapy techniques of ‘Thought Stopping’ to arrest the disturbing thoughts (‘What if I really am a violent person?’) that followed the horror-flash. I would say “Stop! Stop!” over and over, silently or aloud, forcefully and with real determination, until the thought-field faded. Then I would immediately replace it with a pre-determined pleasant imaginary scene, like walking on the beach. Even up to 15 years later any reminder of the intrusive image could still, occasionally, surprisingly, send a chill of fear into my heart.
The urge to understand these intrusive images and to resolve the multiple fears and phobias from my nervous breakdown led me to experiment with what I felt to be assertiveness. What I failed to understand at the time was that assertive behaviour could easily slide into being pushy, selfish, power-drunk and angry. In just a few months my new-found outspokenness mutated into something disturbingly powerful – I had released an angry tiger from it’s cage.
In hindsight I can say with some remorse that I enjoyed the feeling of power set free by this uninhibited expression of anger. For the first time in my life I felt quite fearless, but I was also mean and vicious with this new-found stridency. I shouted insults at an elderly woman who was nagging her frail husband for moving too slow. I verbally abused a man who jumped the queue in his car and trailer at a local rubbish dump. I terrified a group of drunken teenagers into being silent on an overnight train-trip from Sydney to Lismore. It was righteous wrath in full flight.
This releasing of pent-up anger was in accord with the emerging experiential psychology ideas of the 1970’s, which favoured the full expression of all emotions. If my children upset me I would shout angrily at them; if traffic was slow I would lean on the horn. I slammed doors, threw things, made threats and broke furniture.
It all seemed good and healthy to me, so I believed I was on the right track. Little did I realise how ignorant I remained, and what a disturbing effect I was having upon the tender psyches of my three young children.
Then one early evening in a little farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere, something happened that was to change the course of my life, my relationships and the way in which I practised psychotherapy. I won’t put down the story here as it is recounted in full on the Transmuting Anger CDs. Suffice to say that my youngest daughter Melanie, aged 3 at the time, did something extraordinary which shattered all of my beliefs about anger.
It was as if God spoke to me through the lisping voice of a little child. Overnight I realised that anger was destructive and that Western psychology, psychiatry and even the Christian religion had got the story wrong. Wrath could never be righteous and there was no such thing as an angry God. This profound realisation set in motion a quest to discover all that I could about this confusing emotion so that I could harness its power for peaceful intent.
The journey continues today but what I have uncovered is already enough to pass on to anyone whose life is blighted by arguments, anger, bitterness, annoyance and resentment
