Episode #271 - Anger Addiction

Have you ever thought of anger as an addiction?  It is a terrible vice that can destroy your life and others.  And we who suffer with mental illness have deep tendencies to find our way into this addiction very easily.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode #271 – Anger, Hostility, Frustration, Irritation.  Have you ever felt any of these emotions?  If you have had depression or anxiety for any length of time, I can almost certain say that you likely have experienced them in droves.  But why, why do we fall into the patterns of irritation, frustration and anger?  Why do we get agitated and irritated when we are depressed?  The fact is that many individuals know when they are depressed by these very emotions.  I didn’t understand the reason until I met someone who used it in a unique way I was able to see it first hand.  

This wonderful woman that I knew had deep seated emotional issues stemming from her childhood that caused moderate depression on a regular basis.  She hated the lack of energy that depression caused but she wouldn’t admit that she had depressed.  However, the signs were obvious and we discussed it a time or two but to little avail.  She would not be convinced.  What I learned from her changed my perspective about anger, irritation, frustration and hostility.  Every morning this wonderful woman would turn on the radio and listen to the talk radio of injustice.  You know the kind.  The program that makes you feel like the world owes you something that the world has created injustices, to which you must be repaid.  She would do this everyday and then her day would get started when she was sufficiently agitated.  She would listen, get angry at the injustice and use the energy of anger to get her through the day.  You see she was using these emotions as coping mechanisms.  I know that seems strange and a little wonky.  Why use anger?  While anger and frustration have very little good to them, one thing does stand out.  If you get angry enough, your energy will increase and you will feel motivated at least in a contentious way.  When you can’t find energy any other way, many individuals turn to anger and feelings of injustice to keep them motivated.

So this wonderful woman listened to talk radio, the kind that focuses on the injustices of life and particularly politics.  While she did not see it, she was using this program to get her energized for her day.  She hated the feelings of depression but could live with being a little hostile and combative.  Many individuals follow this same routine when they find themselves within the confines of a lack of desire or energy to accomplish anything in their life.  I myself have used this method at times to get things done that I needed to accomplish.  The problem we find with this type of coping mechanism is that it has dire effects upon those around you.

I don’t doubt that we all understand that life isn’t fair.  That injustices exist we can’t fix.  However, hearing about them over and over again in the sense of anger does not provide for a very good relationship.  When we use the anger coping method we tend to lose a great deal of our good relationships and drift to the poor ones.  We tend to fall in with people of the same persuasion who also feel these injustices.  Now don’t get me wrong.  Not everyone who uses anger as a method of inspiration has mental illness.  We naturally desire justice and fairness.  It is one of the many virtues of the light of Christ in our lives and we should strive for such things.  But when the emotion of anger overtakes our life and become a part of us and who we are, we have gone too far into the weeds and in an instant we can turn from wheat ready to harvest to a tare ready to be pulled and burned.  Yes anger and hostility have that effect upon our lives and the lives of others.  The descend into a pattern of anger is actually a very slippery slope for those with mental illness.  And it is devastating to their illness and their outward relationships and their inward relationship with themselves.  You see angry people are often angry at themselves and depression doesn’t improve this emotion.  It compounds it.

No doubt some of you now realize what you have been doing all your life to cope with depression and anxiety.  But how do you avoid this easy to find coping mechanism.  How do you redirect your life so that anger, injustice and hostility are not your companions?  The answer to this coping mechanism is not easy.  The first part is the easy part and then it only gets more complicated from recognition.  Anger is not an easy emotion to erase and when you have made it a habit it can’t be just removed one day.  Habitual anger brought about by serious mental illness is a terrible vice in ones life that is as addictive as any illegal substance could be.  Once you recognize the anger, the real struggle begins.  First you are going to need to reduce exposure to those things instigating your anger.  You are likely using something in your life to create this anger energy.  What are those things?  Talk radio, news, friends, family, gossip groups, whatever the origin you will need to reduce the inputs and that can be very difficult.  Most of the time you will not be able to just quit watching or listening to them.  That is the addiction.  Almost everyone who tries to quit “cold turkey” as it were, fails and returns to the habit.  The reason is simple.  Your energy will fall through the floor.  So you will need to do two things at once.  Reduce your listening time to the injustices of life and replace them with good sources of information.  This is not going to be easy and you are likely to fail a couple of times.  You need to reduce your anger energy in small bursts.  The key to success is failure, meaning consistent small progress.  If you are able to reduce your time listening by 20% consider that a win.  Don’t fixate on the other 80%.  If you do then you are likely to return to old patterns.  As you reduce the anger instigating factors you will need to find something to replace that time.  I wish I could tell you exactly what to do here but the answer depends upon you.  If I told you to replace the anger instigation with music, you could do well and choose music that works for you but you could also choose music that incites anger and violence such as hard, loud music with anger inducing lyrics.  You need to find things that interest you and motivate you in different ways.  This will be terribly difficult with depression, where you don’t really feel like doing anything.  So the hard part will be replacing the anger energy.  One of the keys to this is to understand that you will not have the same type of energy and you will have at times feelings of depression that will drive you back to the injustices.  Again the key to success is to keep trying.

You could learn a new skill.  Learn to paint.  Take up some form of interesting exercise.  What I mean by this is if I tried to take up running as a new hobby.  I wouldn’t last long.  I don’t find it interesting or particularly enjoyable.  However, tennis might interest me as my mind is focus on other things while I exercise.  The key to replacing anger is to find things that interest you that do not deal with the injustices of life.  Once you have begun the process of replacement, you should consider the process a lifetime event.  Addiction to anger is like an addiction to alcohol, you are always in recovery.  If you allow yourself to slip for a moment and simply revert back to your old ways for a few days, you are likely to find that you have lost more than a few days in progress of your addiction.

You need to see anger as an addiction to the emotion and the chemistry.  The emotion causes chemistry that rewards you with energy.  You are addicted to a particular type of chemistry running in your body and it takes significant time to get that chemistry to change.  The particular drug of energy is very addictive in its nature.  If you can summon energy any time you want by just getting angry about something, then you have found a very addictive substance.  If you treat it more as an addiction rather than a coping mechanism you will find that working with it will be must easier.  Now I know that no one likes that idea of addiction or having one but admitting that an addiction to injustice and anger is a terrible vice is a very good start.

Why is anger such a problem?  It drives out the spirit of the Lord and what spirit you might be able to feel.

One of the main reasons the Savior warned against contention is this particular type of addiction where we can be consistently angry at the world.  The most difficult outcome of the addiction is the loss of the spirit of the Lord.  When we give into anger, hostility, frustration we give ourselves over to Lucifer.  He has far greater access to our lives when we are angry and he can inspire us to do things we would not otherwise do.  When we become addicted to anger we gives ourselves over to him on a more consistent basis.   This doesn’t necessarily means that he controls us but he can influence us to a much greater degree.  Anger addiction is one of the most common forms of apostacy within the church that is not necessarily considered personal apostacy.  But think about what it does.  It alienates you from family and friends.  It drives contention into your life on a consistent basis.  It removes the spirit of the Lord. You feel less and less happiness and peace as you give into its control.  Think about the times that you are anger inspired.  Do you think about doing good things and helping other people?  Generally no.  Resolve the injustice maybe.  But for the most part, news sources, talk radio, music, media and friends are not going to give you a problem to resolve.  They just want to hand you an axe to grind.  They need you coming back for more.  If a problem can be solved then it doesn’t serve their purpose, that is why there are so many talk shows about politics and sports.  There is no answer or real solution that can be implemented but they can get you angry about it and keep you coming back for more.

So the question is really where are you in your anger addiction?  Do you have an addiction?  Do you seek out sources of injustice to grind your axe all day long?  Do you seek anger or injustice to motivate you to work and to play and to participate?  And then you need to ask much deeper more personal questions.  How is this anger affecting my life and those around me?  Where is my relationship with the Savior?  How often do I receive revelation?  Are those around me consistently walking on egg shells as it were, tiptoeing around me so that my anger energy doesn’t suddenly burst upon them?  This is actually a good question for almost everyone.  How often do I find myself in the angry world of injustice?  How often do I think through anger’s emotions?  How often am I kind, considerate, loving, believing and nurturing to others?  The answer’s will be yours but I hope that you will consider my plea to avoid this anger energy that is destroying your spiritual life.  Yes, the road is difficult without it but in the end the road back will be far more difficult if you are addicted to its behaviors.  This includes the other side of the veil.  When we are addicted, because these addictions train our spiritual nature, the addictions travel with us into the afterlife where we will need to unlearn them without a body.  And from what I hear, it is far more difficult there than here.

Now a final caution.  People don’t expect others to make significant changes in their lives and when you do your friends are going to change.  If you are addicted to anger then your friends will likely be other anger addicts and making significant changes will cause those friends to leave and eventually others to come but that takes time.  It takes more time for others to accept our changes than it does for us to make those changes in our lives.  So we must be patient with others as we make significant changes so that they can accept the new direction in our lives.  I hope that in the end, you will see anger for what it really is a counterfeit to true energy and happiness.  I know that controlling our anger addiction will improve our lives in many ways and the lives of others.  Until next week.  Do you part so that the Lord can do his.