07.08.08
Posted in Living With Psychology at 1:25 am by
A young man, who had suffered with trauma following a road traffic accident came for treatment. One of the unusual experiences that his wife described related to his behaviour in sleep. She had noticed that if she was to touch him, even inadvertently when he was sleeping, he would lash out with anger. On waking up he would not remember what happened during sleep. When the relevant issues were addressed, his wife reported a noticeable change in his behaviour.
Another young man was having a difficult time with his girlfriend. They would have rows on trivial matters. They tried to resolve the matter many times, but it did not work. As he was undergoing treatment for his anger with me, we addressed his suppressed anger with his mother. The rows stopped. The relationship with the girlfriend improved.
If a child shows strange or cruel behaviour to animals or younger children, it warrants concern. It is a sign of repressed anger. If not addressed, the child will grow up to be a problem adult in the community.
A middle aged professional once came for treatment for an excessive sexual drive. His sexual activities and fantasies were alarmingly aggressive. From the world’s viewpoint, he was successful in many ways. He was an unhappy individual on his own. Dealing and addressing his anger issues helped him immensely and his behaviour changed to his own and others’satisfaction.
Anger can manifest itself in many forms. A milder variety of it is called ‘annoyance’. If it is intense and is not expressed, it is termed ‘resentment’. When very intense and is translated or acted out in behaviour, it is termed as ‘rage’. People can get carried away in the semantics of how to describe anger. The bottom line is that when anger is suppressed,the person develops low threshold for feeling angry and may either continue to hold back or act out suddenly and explosively to cause damage to property, relationships or to life.
Someone carrying low threshold of anger will have a ’short fuse’. This is a learnt behaviour. No one is born with a ’short-temper’ or a ’short fuse’ or an aggressive or hostile temperament. These words describe various levels of learnt responses to everyday situations in life. The angry responses are learnt from the environment in which a person was brought up. The more suppressive the environment in which they lived, the more anger a person will carry.
On the softer side, bullying and harassment in the work place are signs of repressed anger. The other name given to it is ‘work stress’. When an employee is harassed, in my observation, both the perpetrator and the victim are angry people even before the event. Violence in the marital relationships is due to repressed anger too.
A few years ago, in the Unites States, a young man had killed many students and teachers in school. The academics wondered what had gone wrong with the boy, who seemed to have a normal upbringing. He came from a background in which he did not have any opportunity to release his anger in a constructive manner. The boy also killed himself in the incident. His repressed anger resulted in the damage to many families, including his own.
In Dunblane, in the UK, a physical education teacher did the same. He lived alone. No one knew much about him till he killed many students. He had no record of any major problems. The reason was that he continued to carry the anger in himself till he exploded. It caused an immense damage to the community.
These are some but not all the signs of suppressed anger. Anger is best dealt with by expression on a regular basis.
Pradeep K Chadha is a psychiatrist who specialises in helping patients with meditation and imagery using little or no medication. He is the author of The Stress Barrier-Nature’s Way To Overcoming Stress published by Blackhall Publishing, Dublin. He is based in Dublin, Ireland.His website address is : http://www.drpkchadha.com
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06.20.08
Posted in Living With Psychology at 12:59 am by
No matter who you are or how long you have been a Christian, you will still have times when you get hurt and offended. As a Christian, the goal is to learn how to deal with hurts properly. Learning to respond instead of reacting is the key. If you have been hurt in the same way before, then it will be easier to take on the offense and react. The reaction will be based on a combination of the present hurt and the past hurts as well. If you have learned to forgive when hurtful things happen instead of being offended, you will be able to respond correctly. Forgiveness therefore, must become a way of life in order to be able to respond in a Christ-like manner no matter what the situation is.
The problem is that your soul has a filing cabinet where past hurts and offenses are stored that have not been dealt with properly. This is why when someone does something that hurts you; you will suddenly remember how many times they have done the same thing before.
The only way to be free from past hurts is to forgive. Ask the Lord to help you forgive. Forgiveness is releasing the person who hurt you, and releasing your right to hold the offense against them any longer. Forgiveness is not saying that what they did was not wrong; forgiveness is releasing them to God. You will not be free from the pain caused by the offense until you release the offender. Once you forgive them, your filing cabinet will be cleaned out and you can begin to deal with hurts on a daily basis instead of letting things pile up.
“Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Eph 4:32
Forgiveness is releasing our right to demand payment for sins against us by surrendering to God and letting Him be the judge and jury.
When someone has sinned against us and we are hurt, the automatic response is to be offended. If we allow ourselves to be offended, then we build a prison and hold the person in this prison until they pay what they owe. This is unforgiveness. If we stay offended, we will turn next and betray the one who offended us. In Mathew 24:10-12, Jesus warns us of the progression of being offended:
- Offended
- Betrayal
- Hatred
- False prophet (speaking against the person who hurt you)
- Love toward the person waxes cold
Forgive each other as God has forgiven you. (Eph. 4:32)
We must forgive 70 x 7meaning forgive again, and again, and again….
The moment we feel frustration or anger, we need to confess it immediately so it does not get lodged in our hearts.
Sometimes, people think they have forgiven; and they may have even prayed a prayer of forgiveness, but it still did not happen in their heart. We often do not really know if we have truly forgiven because the resentment has been buried for a long time.
Resentments get buried in the heart several ways:
- when we are small children and do not know how to forgive
- when we do not recognize our anger (we learn to turn off emotions and just cope)
- when we refuse to forgive
To discover buried resentments in your own heart:
- Start by asking the Lord to help you remember a time you were hurt and instead of dealing with it, you stuffed it.
-When you think of that person or persons, does your heart leap up in love toward them?
-Do you want fellowship with them?
-Do you rehearse speeches you want to say to them if you have the opportunity?
-Do you want to get even?
Are you still angry?
The Bible says to be angry and sin not. Anger is usually suppressed. To forgive someone, you must let the anger come to the surface and live long enough to feel it (this is how you own it). If you have been hurt but fail to own the anger, you have only forgiven on the surface. The anger keeps the pain buried, and therefore forgiveness is not completed.
- You do not necessarily need to feel like forgiving.
- We choose to forgive out of obedience to the Lord.
- We ask the Lord for His power to enable us to forgive.
Are there any signs in your life that indicate that you may be harboring unforgiveness toward someone?
Go to livingwatersministry.com for the rest of the article and more on forgiveness.
For daily devotional
http://www.livingwatersministry.com.html
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