Breaking The Addiction To Anger And Resentments

Breaking The Addiction To Anger And Resentments

By Bart Sharp

Using anger or resentments to adrenalize your life is very common in this society.  However adrenal pumping can be done with a variety of emotions and other activities.  Worry, stress, danger seeking, anxiety, insecurity, conflict, guilt and more all can take us to the adrenal driven unconsciousness.

I was visiting my Uncle Jay and Aunt Wilma a few years ago who live a simple farming life in the post oak country side on North Central Texas.  I had not visited in several months and they had always been a big part of my life as a kid and young adult.  Their children were my play companions much of my younger life.

I had planned to spend the afternoon with my farming kinfolks and we settled down to a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.  The sharing began in a lively way as Uncle Jay and Aunt Wilma told of his encounters with the local raccoons and coyotes, the crops, status of his children, the weather and the fortunes of the Dallas Cowboys.  I related the news of my life.  After two hours we had covered all the topics of interests that we had in common.

The pace of discussion had slowed.  I was beginning to search for things to say.  In fact I was finding a certain level of lethargy had set in.  The pace of simple farm life was overtaking the day and I was beginning to become sleepy.  Everyone was falling into a bit of conversational slumber.

Then Uncle Jay changed the direction of talk to the black sheep of the family, Uncle Bob.  The suppose ably no good salesmen that never quite fit into the family.  The sometimes charismatic and often mischievous brother that always seemed to take advantage of other family members in a variety of ways.  In addition to having a long list of other character defects according to Uncle Jay.  Uncle Jay abounded into the stories becoming more riled with each one.  It soon became a rampage as Uncle Jay and then Aunt Wilma extended into incidents of other family members beyond Uncle Bob that they had judged as less credible.

Within a matter of minutes the sedate farm life conversation became livelier.  I found myself pulled into the discussion as a better listener as I entered the world of common angers that my relatives were holding.  I was suddenly more alert and in the heat of what was going on.

Stepping back from the conversation it was easy to see how my family used anger through resentments as a way to stimulate themselves.  They lived lives dominated by routines of the farm.  Going into the cycles of resentments broke them out of the boredom.  Their adrenal glands were stimulated and they unconsciously were guided into the memories of where they judged something as wrong.  Sadly it was not used as a means to explore and resolve the issues only to recreate the past as a way to elevate their energy level.

Using anger or resentments to adrenalize your life is very common in this society.  However adrenal pumping can be done with a variety of emotions and other activities.  Worry, stress, danger seeking, anxiety, insecurity, conflict, guilt and more all can take us to the adrenal driven unconsciousness.

It is often a subtle choice we make to take us into a state of something like anger.  Oddly excitement has much of the same neurological processes as anger.  Excitement is a positive generative energizer as opposite to the degenerative perspective of resentments or anger.  What is a distinct different between is anger often has a judgment involved where as excitement does not.

If you are creating your life through patterns by being charged by your adrenal glands as an unconscious way to move yourself through day-today living you are doing a number of detrimental things to your body and awareness:
You are living on an artificially charged energy that eventually drains you or requires you to revive it with more adrenal provoking activities or substances.
You are charging yourself up with negativity but not releasing it.
You are recreating old patterns and not growing into a new awareness.
It all creates a feeling of being stuck, emotional constipation and we feel the misery of the pattern as it repetition steadily works against us.

The problem with misery, resentments and anger is that people have been taught to rally around them.  People unknowingly fall into the behavior time and again.  Instead, we can decide not to play, to detach from the pattern.  Then we can begin the process of a letting this negativity go.  It is the beginning of living a spontaneous, creative life instead of a repetitive negative existence.