How to Drop Anger

In my work in personal growth classes and as an intuitive consultant, I often come across people who ask me how to get rid of anger. What I say is that you will only change when you recognize 1) What anger is costing you and 2) What the "Prize" is for hanging onto it.

What is it costing you? Nelson Mandela once said "Resentment is like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die". But even though we may know our collection of stored resentment may be killing us, we still hang onto our outrage. How can that be?

As my good friend Ross Quinn says, we don't do these things to ourselves because we are stupid. We do them because they make sense to us, at some level. As painful as stored anger can be, there is a reason you are hanging onto it. It may be a big part of your identity. It may bring you attention, it may allow you to control certain conversations (and if that makes anyone here mad and are tempted to say "but you can't understand my pain ..." ... then you are busted, my dear). In your heart somewhere you may have magical thinking happening ("If I stay mad, that will hurt the perpetrator"). You could be stuck on "Why". Caroline Myss says people don't really want to forgive, what they want is the perpetrator to grovel at their feet (preferably in public) begging for forgiveness while they sit back and say "I'll think about it" ... C'mon admit it, we've all wanted that from someone, and in our hearts all know how silly and impossible it is. Any one of these reasons may apply to you, and none may. But somewhere inside the prize is hiding, and you need to recognize and relinquish its hold on you if you don't want to be a victim of it for the rest of your life.

My personal experience ... as a bullied kid, I found it very hard to forgive the teachers and the bullies until I recognized that while they were long gone out of my life, clinging to my resentment was kind of like dragging them along with me everywhere I went! Energetically, that is exactly what we're doing - our solar plexus is plugged back into the past, and into our abusers. It's as though we make a decision to carry on their dirty work for them. We become our own abusers! If you want to stop it ... then let it go. Take your solar plexus back. It's as easy as making the decision. I don't think about or talk about the abuse I went through, except to show how I've overcome it. When it comes up as an issue or reaction for me, I remind myself that's over now. I won't give my abusers one more second of my time or one droplet of energy that they don't deserve! Getting well was the best revenge. I will leave the justice part to God. Karma always takes care of itself in the long run.

Brandi