Hurting and Anger

Why is anger such a hard thing to deal with? One would think at my age, I would have a handle on how to deal with anger but I haven't. How do other people deal with it? I see people who swallow it and move ahead. Other people start habits that are detrimental to their health such as drinking or smoking. I lash out with words or cry, sometimes both.

Life isn't always fair but when one knows that they have been treated badly intentionally, what can one do?

One would think that I would have worked out a way to deal with this by now. I wish that I could say that I dive into a book to get lost in the words or smash glass bottles in my garage but when one is hurting from games that others are playing, what can one really do?

My son has been angry for 8 years and I can completely relate to his anger. When someone tells him to "cool it", they don't feel his anger. They don't know how the whole inside of him is hurting because of the unfairness of it all.

I have to admit that my latest hurt has only lasted four months but I can't seem to stop being angry at the person who inflicted this.

Looking at what my son has had to go through from my new perspective, I can see why he can't let go of any of his anger. I am having trouble letting go of mine.

Do people know when they are causing this much hurt and do they do this on purpose? From here I would say the answer to this is both yes and no. As in my son's case, they knew what they were doing; they just needed to throw their weight around… Hey, that is just what my thing is about too. This man decided to play games with me; he didn't care how I was feeling.

Over the course of the years people have hurt my feelings and it has taken me a while to get over the hurt. Most of the time I go from hurting to hating. Even today I have a hurt that was done a long time ago and although this person thinks we are friends, I can't be his friend. Maybe they don't mean to hurt us. Maybe they think that if they do it quickly, we will get over it faster? I have heard that one and it doesn't hurt any less.

The hurt that I am experiencing today is due to the fact that I was trying to handle a problem and I got stonewalled. That isn't a problem. I continued to work on this and the person that was creating this problem continued to tell me that it couldn't be done but after months of trying to work this out myself, I ask my husband to deal with this and it gets handled that day. That is the hurt! Why couldn't this have been done months ago when I was trying to work this out? Why did it take a man to deal with it? Why as a woman, I wasn't good enough to work this out? That hurts so much and it is just ego but it still hurts.

When my son's stuff gets settled and it will, what will it take to find out all the things that the system did wrong and clear this man of something he never did? How long will he hurt? Will this… no,it will be a part of his life for the rest of his life. He will feel this anger and hurt for the rest of his natural life. I never knew how to get rid of anger so how could I teach him.

I know they have classes on anger management. They must have ways to get this out of one's life so it doesn't impinge on all the rest of it but from here, I haven't figured out how to do this. My usual method is to distance myself from what caused the upset.

Let's look at the other side of anger. I know that I have angered others. How have they dealt with it? I guess some have tried to hurt me back in one way or another. Some have distanced themselves from me. Some try to worm their way back and some just put on a good front when we have to interact.

Have you heard about forgiving them? I have heard of this. What does it mean to forgive someone who has hurt you so much that you feel like you will never be the same? Can you forgive someone who has changed the whole course of your life to something that you never thought it would be? How does this work? I say, "I forgive you" and that makes everything better? Then why doesn't that heavy hurting place in my body stop hurting? Where can I put that? Is it possible to make it get smaller so that one doesn't notice it all the time?

I guess I have a lot to learn yet. Maybe I will live to be 80 because I seem to be a slow learner.