I have a lot of anger

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At my therapy session, I expressed a lot of bitterness and anger. I've long felt a great sense of injury to myself and I wonder when I'll finally get over it.

Sometimes I feel so much like burning inside, this kinda calm, bitter feeling, that I feel exposed to the world if I let myself interact with it, so I pull myself deeper inside myself, away from the portholes that are my skin, looking out at the world surreptitiously through my peepholes.

probably never, maybe sometime- it's alright to be angry though, the world is a crazy place.

Anger usually results from a conflict between what we expect and reality. If we get better at expecting reality, we can experience less anger. However, this usually results in an increase in cynicism.

Anger can be useful, especially if we need motivation to face a situation that needs correcting.

Anger can be toxic if it is held on to as it turns into bitterness and resentment that can fester and grow to consume a life and manacle you to that which is best left behind.

Anger helped me beat depression, but what will help me beat anger?

The first problem is that NTs don't understand that there is a difference between anger and violence.

Properly focused anger can be a valuable tool in the struggle that we have been left with.

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but depression is just a form of anger. Or sometimes a symptom of anger. Google it, and you'll see

article on Happy Living website, just for the quick example

Maybe you don't exercise enough. If all else fails you can go play the 1812 overture as you blow sh!t up in the middle of an empty field.

Anger as a symptom of depression or a cause of depression? If depression is suppressed anger, and anger is suppressed purposefulness, then I have a reason both to live and to free myself from suppression in a purposeful manner!

re: Google GIGO #justsaying

Guess I have to reply to this. Speaking from extensive personal experience, it is possible to transform anger into compassion, but you have to be very careful or you can get sick. This actually happened to me. The way to work with anger is first, of course, to realize one is angry, as it is possible to be very angry and not realize it, so anyone who realizes he is angry is on the right track. The next step is to understand that other people have no more control over what they are doing then you yourself have over being angry. This is very hard to understand, but when you do begin to understand it it will change your responses in such a way that to not act out the anger logically follows, which is the nest step. Where it can go wrong, however, and a person can get sick, which actually happened to me, is when you stuff the anger and do not feel it. It is important to feel whatever you feel, but if you have a logical reason to not act on it, then it makes sense not to act on it, but you still need to feel it if this is what you are feeling.

A note regarding social injustice--one often hears the argument that anger fuels social change. Imo this makes no sense, as if a person is not angry he is able to think much more clearly and can effect social change much more rapidly.

I have also observed that anger is a common screen for not feeling other emotions, mainly sorrow. Feeling sorrow is not the same as being depressed. Sorrow is a cleansing emotion; however generally speaking it is next to impossible to feel it, as there is a fear that one will be engulfed (and imo, the great flood myths of humanity touch on this subject). Therefore I advocate the controlled conscious feeling of sorrow---such as for one minute or maybe two minutes a day---this would be very brave... Sometimes in the morning I wake up feeling sad and then turn away from that into immediate activity, so to simply feel it when it comes up, is the aim.

In terms of transforming anger into the great compassion,though I have not really accomplished this yet, I am starting to have a glimmer of understanding about how it works. One has to give up some part of ones inner dynamic in order to do it. By inner dynamic I mean how a person sees the world, ones world view and self view, which is interconnected with and fueling all sorts of thoughts and emotions. If there are wrong ideas about this, then one has to let go of these ideas.. But these ideas may be serving as a buffer, so keeping oneself feeling safe.Therefore one may have to give up a part of oneself, such as an ideal, but only a little bit at a time, and only if one is prepared.. If unconscious sorrow is filling a person up, this creates inner pressure. We release water when we cry. We all know that after crying a person feels much better. However it is not always possible to cry. There are these tears which can well up and come out in a flood, but there are also inner tears. The key is to tap these inner tears and transform them into mercy for oneself and for ones brother.

I know what you mean, littlebee. I'm angry about not getting coverage for sex reassignment surgery because of the backward state full of redneck hicks I live in and the company I work for. I want to try moving and relocating or changing companies, but I'm starting to believe that I will never be able to move to a state that would require coverage of it, neither will any company that covers it ever hire me.

I just have to accept the universe never wants me to have that surgery. And that's what I must convert anger to sorrow about.

Beneficii, it took me a while to begin to understand how to respond to this,and I am not sure I even really know. I do not think it is possible to convert anger into sorrow. I think if one is angry, then first one has to simply feel it.This kind of means apart from thinking about the context. Simply feeling it is what releases the anger..In terms of transforming anger, it is more about harnessing,so, yes, as you say, converting, but the context applied would not be the same context, such as this person is harming me because he is an a**hole, but rather something more to the effect--this person is harming me because he is ignorant and also because he himself has been harmed. Two different contexts.

However, sorrow seems different, as it is the complete cleansing emotion. That is why it is so hard to grieve, as one is giving up an ideal that something one wants to be true is true, such as this or that person or my cat is still alive.And also it should be noted that this cat or person can represent something to oneself that one has never given up but maybe should have, so their can layers of sorrow about losing this or that that have never been fully felt.. But sorrow brings you into present time. And I think sorrow can only be experienced in present time. Thought cannot connect to it, but it can be experienced in conjunction with and even because of a general context...such as all sentient creatures are suffering.But one would have to know what suffering is, so it realtes back to ones own context.

I am kind of unclear about where I am going with this, but it has something to do with what you wrote.

This subject seems so simple, but it may be kind of complex. I am also wondering if it is possible to feel sorrow at the same time one is feeling the great compassion, in that in the school of Buddhism I studied there are two kinds of compassion. conventional compassion (which is of course contextual) and non-conventional compassion which is, oddly, non contextual in that it takes places in conjunction with contextual understanding but is outside of it, so is not triggered by a specific circumstance, so when Tibetan Buddhist talk about transforming wrath in compassion, they are meaning generating the great compassion which is more in the area of a substance than than is conventional compassion which is more a feeling of sympathy. And then there is the mind of compassion. So I will have to investigate about this.

In any case, imo, to feel sorrow is to be in the present as thought about this or that, anything, just as anger, is generally, according to my experience, a screen or cover for feeling sorrow. Feeling sorrow is a business that really fully takes one up, meaning fully engages one in the process, which is why I suggest to feel it for one minute a day. That would be a lot. I do not think it is necessary for a person who is feeling it to think about or even know what it is about. That would be a distraction from actually feeling it. The deep inner heart of the child within oneself simply knows.

Er ... come again?

I find this sort of discussion fascinating, because I never experience anger. Irritation (often irrational), yes, and sometimes extreme irritation, but it never seems to reach that 'flash point' at which it becomes anger. I have no idea why, perhaps I tend to rationalise it away.

Actually, I tell a lie. I have experienced the 'red mist' (and if you've experienced it, you'll understand exactly why it's called that) that suddenly descends when your instincts take over, and you become simultaneously utterly calm and yet seething with pure concentrated 100 per cent hatred boiling through your veins, and your entire body is like a coiled spring, prepared, from top to tail, to pounce and -- I do not mean this figuratively or exaggeratedly -- ready to kill with your bare hands.

It's only happened to me once, so I sort of look back on it as a curiosity, and wonder whether it will ever happen again. (Truth be told, I quite enjoyed it: The obvious transformation that came over me (I didn't say a word) frightened the other guy s**tless, and he stopped being threatening, sort of 'wobbled' for a moment as panic set in, and then turned tail and fled!)

Not sure I buy this business about depression being anger turned inward though. It sounds superficially attractive, but is there any kind of scientific reasoning behind it, or is it just one of those pop-psychology memes?