By Bart Sharp

One of the greatest sources of addiction, illness and depression is anger.  The conflicts with parents we have at an early age that are left unresolved are often the source of our ‘dis ease’.  The relationship often has love with a lie attached wherein the reoccurring suffering began.

Seamus was the oldest of four children and was seen as the favored child of his father.  As the oldest son he enjoyed a particular closeness to his father and often trailed his dad around their farm.  The relationship between father and son was for most part very close.  However there were times that the father would become very demeaning with Seamus for no apparent reason saying things such as, “I’m tired of looking at you, get out of here.”

The world of the six-year old boy would be devastated.  There was no consolation for the unexpected rejection from his father.

For the father he would become overwhelmed with the responsibility of providing and managing a family.  Times were tough and he felt the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.    As much as the father tried to be a positive leader he would react in negative aggressive ways to his children.  Much like the ways his own father treated him.  Seamus’ father swore he would never treat his children in that manner but found himself doing the things he had hated in his father.

For Seamus the shaming from his father at first made him feel desperately low.  The young boy would push his feelings aside continue in his normal routines.  In time Seamus stopped reacting in a suppressed passive tone but would express his negative feelings with his siblings.  He began to bully his younger brother and sisters.

Through the years an ever changing relationship of love and hate type of relationship developed between Seamus and his father.  At times they were very close but there were always incidents of conflict between the two usually resulting in verbal intimidation and physical punishment.  Seamus seemed to always create incidents to draw the trouble to him as if he wanted the conflict.

As an adult Seamus married.  He and his wife fought like he did with his dad.  It appeared that the couple could always find a new topic to disagree about or recreate an issue that they had not resolved.  Instead of seeking help from an outside source to find peace Seamus chose to numb his pain through drugs and/or alcohol.  It only made his problems worse.

The real addiction in Seamus’ life was anger.  He unconsciously either created conflicts with those he loved the most or found reasons to confront co-workers, friends or sometimes strangers.  In each incident Seamus found a justification of why to confront the person usually with the point of view that he was right and they were wrong.

Seamus would say that he did not like being angry.  Much like the conflicts he had with his father, he seemed to be a magnet for conflict.   A few times became physically violent.  He hated those fights.  However he continued to find himself pulled back in the fray once again.  At age fifty Seamus’ anger resonated in him almost all of the time, if he was not in a direct conflict Seamus was resentful of others in his life.  Having the fights never resolved the conflict so that he could permanently put those memories away.   The fights seemed to recreate a greater struggle in himself.

The source of Seamus pain was not with his wife, family or co-workers but back when he was a child.  It is the hurt caused from his father who belittled and shamed him with physical punishment and harsh criticism.  Then the father showed his son love by doing things together.  It was a conflictual message that anger and punishment were a part of love.  Seamus took this message and demonstrated it in his adult life with those he loved. However it did not bring him happiness.

As much as he tried Seamus could not break his cycle of anger.  It was the shame he experience from his father that was the original source of his anger.  The anger was only a reaction to his feelings of rejection from the person he wanted to please the most.

Since Seamus could not directly express his anger towards his father he created a pattern to express his aggression onto others.  He built years of rationales or judgments of ways he could be triggered into anger.  Life for Seamus had become a painful ongoing re-creation of his past angst to unconsciously dominate his life.

For Seamus the most beneficial therapy may be an invitation to that child part of himself to feel those feelings again and grieving his rejections.  Doing Access Energy work could be beneficial in that it can help Seamus release some of the repetitive patterns stuck in his body, cellular memories. It would be a process of identifying the stories of being shamed and angry, then feeling those experiences in his body.  Once the body memories have been identified the energetic releases of Access can create a permanent release of the painful memories.  The clearings would benefit Seamus in that he would not be triggered to react in anger.  Through multiple sessions Seamus would not be carrying the load of negative unresolved emotions and he could feel more freedom to experience life in a more joyful way.

The longer we hold onto anger and shame it will eventually create some kind of illness within us (physical and/or emotional).  If it is suppressed it is often held in places like our colon, intestines, kidneys, solar plexus and more.  The “dis ease” of these unresolved emotions is often the source of stress in our body parts that create disease in our body.

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.