Never Get Angry Again

by David J. Lieberman

  The quality of our lives is directly proportional to the amount of responsibility we willingly accept for what we can control. Living responsibly means that you maximize that control. In every instant, you have a say in what happens. You make a choice. In magical moments, you stop repeating the futile mantra of “How did I get here?” or “I can’t help myself,” and instead open yourself up to a new possibility: “What is within my control right now that will help me to value who I am? To remind myself that I am a person of dignity and worthy of self-respect.”

  RETHREADING THE GIFT OF ACCEPTANCE

  Total acceptance includes the acknowledgment that some of life’s most painful ordeals are beyond our understanding, much less our comprehension. Once we come to this place of acceptance, the ego will no longer force its own destructive narrative. The ego demands to know why. If we accept or, better still, embrace, the unknown—that although we cannot fathom why, we know that the why is geared toward the soul’s ultimate good—then we are free. If we allow our ego to get the better of us, then it will take over our worldview, highjacking our values and distorting our beliefs in a futile attempt to forge a known out of an unknown.

  It is normal and natural—as well as healing and healthy—to mine our experiences for meaning, to try to gain insight and understanding. Yet, to whatever degree we fall short, we cannot fabricate a reason, because that reason is false, and this falsehood puts a stranglehold on the entirety of our lives. Then what passes for living one’s life is really a response to trauma. Let’s look at the psychology involved.

  Statistically speaking, a woman who is highly promiscuous and engaged in rampant, casual sex or prostitution was most likely sexually abused, in some fashion, as a girl or young adult—more than 85 percent of prostitutes have been sexually abused in childhood. To reconcile and make sense of what happened to her, this woman is forced, albeit subconsciously, to reduce the significance of the event. By diluting the value and sanctity of sexual relations, her willful promiscuity makes what happened to her feel less painful. Simply put, the value of what was harmed, or taken from her, has been reduced. (Though futile, the ego also attempts to dilute associated feelings of vulnerability and helplessness by experiencing the re-expression of the trauma again and again, but with her in charge each time.)

  Devaluing intimacy to the point of insignificance reinforces her attitude that it does not matter; or perhaps she will conclude the she doesn’t matter, in which case it also makes sense. What’s the harm in damaging someone who is worthless? If this is her conclusion then a host of self-destructive behaviors will quickly follow suit to reinforce that she is indeed nothing, and not worth investing in, caring for, or protecting. Certainly all is well and just in the world if a worthless person is abused. Where’s the harm in that? Throwing garbage into a garbage can makes sense. Of course, courtesy of misplaced shame, she may conclude that she is to blame, in which case she did this to herself. The ego can live with that. (Parenthetically, this is not unlike the warped solace one may take upon learning that an accident victim contributed to his fate. He was drinking; he was an abusive person. This makes sense to us. He was not an innocent random casualty of an undeserved fate. He had it coming.) The soul recognizes absolute justice lies beyond the veil of the finite, but the ego insists on drawing connections and concocting conclusions to explain the unexplainable—and to remove a stain of shame that doesn’t exist.

  There is not always a why that we can understand from our limited perspective. Once we are willing to accept this, we no longer live in a personality created with the singular objective of making sense of that which is unknowable. We move toward freedom. We move toward life.

  14

  It’s Not Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood

  Even when we strive every which way—to be good and to do good—we can find a hole in our self-esteem thanks to childhood. Before we begin laying blame, it’s important to recall that even a child whose parents do everything right (theoretically) will still transition to adulthood with imperfect self-esteem. A person’s self-esteem may have been injured by academic issues, social factors, or health problems; but in and of themselves, none of these are more detrimental than growing up in a house with a parent who suffers from low self-esteem—and not necessarily because of overt abuse.

  Children who are raised in a loving and nurturing environment can also suffer emotionally if a parent becomes unusually overprotective. This instills a climate of fear and dread into every aspect of life that is unknown or unpredictable, and causes children to be overly self-conscious and anxious—and fear, we know, is the precursor to anger. Such children typically develop into adults who are sensitive to rejection, emotionally fragile, and who lack confidence. While well-intentioned, overprotective behavior is indicative of the parent’s own lack of self-esteem, with any one or more of the following motivations and manifestations: The parent a) cannot bear for his child to be afraid or hurt (a projection of his own fears and insecurities); b) is fearful that the child will not love him or will become angry with him if discipline is used; c) wants the child to be his friend and is uncomfortable exerting appropriate and responsible authority; and/or d) desires that the child be forever dependent on the parent so he can fill his own emotional holes by feeling useful and/or maintaining control over the child’s life.1

  The above notwithstanding, a pronounced impact to an adult’s self-esteem is often owed to his suffering from lack of properly expressed love or experiencing intense turmoil at an early age. For egocentric beings (children), it is easy to ascribe a failure within themselves as the reason behind a parent’s behavior. What seven-year-old child is going to say to himself, Wow, Dad just lost that big account at work, so he’s letting off a little steam and taking it out on me. But that’s okay; I know it’s got nothing to do with me. He’s just having a hard day. A parent becomes angry with the child, and so the child naturally concludes that there is a flaw within himself. Enter, shame. He translates his parent’s anger into, “I am unworthy of his love,” which soon becomes, “I am not worthy of being loved.” Now, if a child can form these conclusions—as many do—with loving parents, imagine how easy it is for the child to draw the conclusion that he is unlovable or bad when he is being raised by abusive parents.

  If we did not receive love from our parents as children, or felt that our lives were out of control due to trauma or domestic volatility, we may needlessly spend the rest of our lives thirsting for love and acceptance. Everything we do is intended to bring us to that end; but there is no end because you cannot fix what is not broken. We are already whole. We have always been whole.

  The love that parents give children is determined by their own limitations, not those of the children. It never occurs to us as children that maybe it has nothing to do with us. If a mother is capable of love, she will be loving to all of her children, even one who turns out to be a murderer. But if she lacks the ability to love, then even an innocent well-mannered child will be subject to her hostility, because she is incapable of giving. As adults, we can still find it difficult to appreciate that our self-worth is not contingent on our parents’ acceptance of us. Recall that the ego concocted the equation: How someone treats me is a reflection of my self-worth. This is not so. We are not less because someone can’t love us.

  If we saw a person in a wheelchair, we wouldn’t get mad at him because he can’t get up and walk. Somebody who is emotionally handicapped is equally challenged. Does it make sense to resent a parent for not being able to give us something that he or she doesn’t have? Do we want to hold on to anger because our mother or father was, and still may be, incapable of loving us? People give love. If they don’t have it, then they can’t give it, regardless of how desperately their soul yearns to love their own child. As we discussed in Chapter 4, how someone treats us—even if it’s our parents—provides a window into their own feelings of self-worth or lack thereof, but it reveals nothing of our self-worth. The question we want to ask ourselves is, “W
hat kind of person would I be today, if I were treated differently as a child?” Whoever that person is, is who you really are.

  DOUBLE WHAMMY

  Relationship issues with our parents often affect our relationship with God for two interlacing reasons. One, a poor—let’s call it complicated—relationship with a parent (or parents) often injures the child’s self-esteem, in which case he will have difficulty feeling and accepting God’s love for him; inevitably, the choices he makes will further entangle the ego and continue to squeeze God out of his life. Second, a parent is the first authority figure in a child’s life, so a child who was mistreated by a parent (or by anyone in authority) may have difficulty accepting, let alone trusting, the ultimate authority of God.

  The Ten Commandments are divided into two categories: The first five contain the man-to-God commandments, and the second five, the man-to-man commandments. Revealingly, the fifth commandment to honor our parents is on the man-to-God side of the tablets. This is because we don’t find it easy to love, and to feel loved by, the Creator of the universe while holding on to anger toward our parents. On many levels, the relationship between child and parent symbolizes and, often determines, our relationship with God. By honoring our parents (or at least not hating, and acknowledging that they have their own “baggage” and are suffering themselves) we cultivate an appreciation for, and an understanding of, how much our parents love us (or perhaps long to), despite their limitations. This awareness then enhances our relationship with God because it helps us to recognize that there are no limitations to God’s total and unconditional love for us.

  An emotionally healthy person will not have considerable unresolved anger toward a parent. It is highly improbable that anyone can enjoy positive, let alone deep and meaningful, relationships while this anger exists. Anyone who feels anger toward a parent must make it a priority to move past it—or, better, to reframe the negative feelings into more accurate and positive feelings.

  REFRAMING THE PAST

  A shift in perspective now allows us to undo our perception of the past by reframing it—and permanently alter how we see ourselves and our world. Recall that context gives rise to meaning, so by reframing the past and putting it into a different context, we change what it means—instantly and automatically. Let’s take a banal example from everyday life. How often does a book’s ending make or break the book? Do we find it less enjoyable because of a silly ending? Sort of. We read it and enjoy it, but the ending changes the enjoyment of what we have just read. And, too, an exciting twist at the end shines a new light on the entire story—we replay in our minds the scenes we thought meant one thing, but ahh, now we see something else entirely. Everything changes.

  It’s difficult for us to grasp the concept that reality is not linear and that a shift in perspective can create retroactive changes in our attitude, feelings, and thoughts. But let’s imagine an elderly woman who, after believing that she was happily married for sixty years, is told on her deathbed that her recently departed husband never loved her—that her parents had paid him $10 million to marry her, and, on top of that, he had a secret life with another wife in a different city. Can we say that she was happy her entire life and that only her last thirty seconds were difficult? Did the birthday celebrations, anniversaries, walks, conversations, laughter, and memories of beautiful vacations disappear? No. They are there in her memory, but they’ve changed. Her past is now different. If, after she heard this revelation, someone were to ask this woman, “How was your life?” what would she answer? Would she easily say, “Wonderful”? More likely, she would say, “Awful, sad, and heartbreaking.” The characters and the events are still fixed in time, but we can glimpse how the “now” has an impact on what came before it.

  That’s not to say we should try to convince ourselves that our past carries no meaning. Instead, we should simply allow for the possibility that the meaning we assigned to events might not be true, and that how we feel about ourselves based on a damaged relationship or trauma is an inaccurately formed conclusion. We don’t have to hate ourselves because someone else hates us. We don’t have to harm ourselves because some else harmed us. We are not unlovable because someone is incapable of loving us.

  A RETURN ON OUR INVESTMENT

  Research shows that forgiveness not only restores positive feelings toward the offender, but also, “may spill over beyond the relationship with the offender, promoting generalized prosocial orientation.”2 In other words, when we forgive someone who has hurt us, all of our relationships seem to benefit. The opposite is also true. Unresolved anger from a soured relationship will seep into our other relationships.

  This is a function of human design, whereby we hold on to painful experiences (physical, as well as psychological), in order to learn from those experiences and to avoid repeating them. Until we acknowledge them, they remain part of us. Think of the events in your life that you refuse to release, and contrast them with those you have accepted. The brain develops specific pathways to alert you to a potential threat, and the wiring remains in effect until you process out the emotion.3 The more we ruminate and re-energize the wrongs, the stronger the neural pathways become, and we wire ourselves to become angry and resentful people—to everyone. When we hold on to anger, we are the ones who suffer—emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Biofeedback shows an instant increase in stress when a person has anger-producing thoughts or recalls memories of insult or resentment. Correspondingly, feelings of forgiveness instantly lower stress levels, producing a host of chemical and neuromuscular changes in the person.

  The physical and emotional benefits of forgiveness are well documented. Forgiveness is directly correlated to a person experiencing less anxiety, stress, and hostility, as well as fewer symptoms of depression, and less risk of alcohol and substance abuse.4 Other research finds forgiveness to be positively associated with five measures of health: physical symptoms, medications used, sleep quality, fatigue, and somatic conditions.5

  GIVING AND LOVING

  When a person gives, he loves the person he gives to even more—and so he plants love, and it grows. A child primarily receives and a parent typically gives—which person usually loves the other more? Some children can’t wait to get out of the house, while the parent remains forever concerned with the child’s well-being. Every positive emotion stems from giving and flows outward from us to others, whereas every negative emotion revolves around our taking from others.

  Studies prove that we are inclined to dislike others more after we do them harm because we are unconsciously driven to distance ourselves emotionally in an attempt to reduce the cognitive dissonance. The internal conflict we create is, Why did I do this to this person? The justification must then become, It must be because I really don’t like him and/or he deserves it! Otherwise, we are forced to consider the possibility that perhaps we are not such good people or act unfairly and unjustly. This principle works in reverse, too. We like people more after doing something nice for them. If we do someone a favor, for example, we’re likely to have positive feelings toward that person. An excerpt from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography:

  My first promotion was my being chosen, in 1736, clerk of the General Assembly. The choice was made that year without opposition; but the year following, when I was again propos’d (the choice, like that of the members, being annual), a new member made a long speech against me, in order to favour some other candidate. I was, however, chosen, which was the more agreeable to me, as, besides the pay for the immediate service as clerk, the place gave me a better opportunity of keeping up an interest among the members, which secur’d to me the business of printing the votes, laws, paper money, and other occasional jobs for the public, that, on the whole, were very profitable.

  I therefore did not like the opposition of this new member, who was a gentleman of fortune and education, with talents that were likely to give him, in time, great influence in the House, which, indeed, afterwards happened. I did not, however, aim at gaining h
is favour by paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” And it shows how much more profitable it is prudently to … return, and continue inimical proceedings.6

  In Chapter 23, we explore a fascinating phenomenon called facial feedback hypothesis, which states that an incongruous expression or behavior forces the subconscious to recalibrate our feelings and beliefs, in order to reconcile itself. Not only is this effective in the moment, but it also helps mitigate our hostility or disdain toward another person. This is particularly effective to use with people closest to us, whom we might behave passive-aggressively toward. It’s a powerful way to uproot our latent anger.

  Regardless of the relationship status, even if we want nothing to do with this person, we will still find it highly useful to forgive, because forgiveness allows us to let go of the past and ease our lives forward. Even if the person is no longer alive, we can best melt away our resentment by doing something in this person’s memory—give to a charity, perform an act of kindness, plant a tree, bring flowers to the grave. We need to do something, anything, to reinforce our desire to let go and to move on.