A Short Story about Anger

 Anger! The rapid heart beat, the increased blood pressure, the tensed muscles, and a flooded reactive response created by the overly dramatic amygdala system in your brain! Anger use to be my go to response to EVERYTHING, but anger is an emotion that I don't feel a lot of anymore. That was not always the case. I grew up in a home where anger was quite often the only emotion ever on display. As I've observed my life and those around me, I discovered that this must be due to learned behaviors which then create behavioral patterns. How is one to break these cycles when there has been no one to properly demonstrate a way to process through emotions intelligently? We pretty much are left to figure these things out on our own, left to our own devices and surroundings to help us navigate emotional intellect. 

When I got married in 2004, I discovered, well actually, my husband came to me and disclosed that he had a problem with porn. To the majority of the world this conversation might sound absurd, but both my husband and I had grown up in an orthodox setting as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which most of the world refers to as Mormons. My husband viewing porn was unacceptable. It was a form of cheating. 'But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart' (Matthew 5:28). Although my thoughts on this now differ greatly, I was a product of what I had been taught, and this confession of his was soul crushing! I was distraught and really didn't know how to handle what he was telling me. We had just gotten married, how could he be needing to watch porn already? We were having sex all the time! Was I not pretty enough? Skinny enough? Were my boobs not big enough? Was I too short? Too tall? Too pale? Too athletic? Too fat? Was I not sexy enough? Should I be immodest? But the church says to be modest! The thought of being bad AT sex never crossed my mind, because we were both virgins when we met. So what would he have to compare me with? I was a wreck and blamed myself for not being -- enough. 

My husband was seen as an upstanding member of the church. He held high positions and was revered as a faithful follower. I on the other hand, not so much. I held meaningless callings and always felt like people saw me as lucky to be S's wife. How did someone like me end up with someone like him. He was smart and successful both at church and in his career. He was charismatic and charming. He was a natural leader and a great conversationalist. The perfect Mormon, the perfect son, the perfect missionary, the perfect student, employee and eventually boss, soon to be the perfect dad, and so he definitely needed to be portrayed as the perfect husband as well. I couldn't tell anyone about his problems, because if they knew, we'd be looked at as imperfect, broken, damaged, unrighteous. My pride would be hurt. I'd be humiliated. I'd be a cliche. We could get through this. We just needed to be more religious. Pray harder. Read scriptures more. Attend the temple more. We needed to be closer to God. We needed to see a therapist. A religious therapist, a sexual therapist, a relationship therapist, I didn't care what kind of therapist, just someone to fix this. The pain of him turning to porn and the facade I put on to keep his weaknesses a secret were breaking me. A lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets. This was something that more accurately described my life than anything else. I wrestled with how to balance the two while remaining a faithful follower of the Mormon church. 

I was angry, a lot! My hurt showed in anger. My pain showed in anger. My confusion showed in anger. My distrust showed in anger. Anger was the emotion that I always turned to. My dad, my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts had all shown me that this was how you dealt with hard things. You turned to anger. I'd find out that he'd been looking at porn right before we were going to a family dinner, or a friends to hangout, or some other social event for work or church or etc, and at all those events, I'd be angry at. I wanted to disappear. I was detached and distant. Cold to people. I was the bitchy wife, the angry wife, the emotional wife. I didn't want to be that wife but it was so hard to pretend to be happy, it was so hard to pretend to NOT to be hurt. 

I remember S always telling me and getting frustrated with me for being angry. He'd tell me and remind me ALL of the time of what an angry person I was. I hated it! I didn't want to be angry. He made me angry. His actions made me angry. It was him. He did this to me. He made me this way! 

Being the stubborn person that I am, I decided I would figure out a way to NOT be angry. The first movie I watched talked about our perceptions. They spoke about our abilities to create our realities. They talked about the mind and how it emotionally responds to events, people, places, things. This was the first time that it occurred to me that S didn't make me angry, I chose to be angry. S didn't do this to me, I chose to let his actions affect me in a way that did this to me. I realized for the first time, that I have a choice in everything, EVERY SINGLE THING and that I, not him, was responsible for how I was reacting. This pursuit of understanding and controlling my emotions has lead me down a path that has created a very intellectually fulfilling life.

I started a journal. At the end of each day I would open my journal and write down all the things I was mad about. I'd write out every scenario that invoked a reaction of anger, whether the anger stopped with just the thoughts in my head or whether it materialized into something more i.e., a verbal altercation, etc. I wrote it all out and then I wrote out how I responded to it. Did I blow up? Did I go quiet, silent treatment? Did I throw a tantrum? What did I do? After writing that out, I then took the time to look over how my mind and body were responding to each of those scenarios, I would reminisce about how I was feeling during those responses, what thoughts was I having, and then last of all, I'd write out how I COULD have responded to these situations that didn't include a straight to anger response. I wrote out how I could have thought through the reaction differently and the steps it would take to do that. I became a problem solver for my own thoughts. Here was my natural response, but how COULD I have reacted differently had I not wanted this to escalate to anger. I did this for a year, every night, and I started to notice a change. My brain started to weigh out options to emotional responses rather than automatically skip straight to anger. I found myself being less reactionary and more thoughtful. I discovered that I was quite analytical and that I did not need to be governed by emotions. Discovering this about myself gave me the tools that helped me through a 17 year relationship with someone who had an uncontrollable appetite for sex. 

I'm not here saying that I never react emotionally to situations. I can still get very passionate about particular things, but my brain has gone to more of an analytical and heterodox approach in gaining an understanding of people and the world around me, and to less of reactionary approach that is heavily influenced by feelings. 

I find that I enjoy life much more this way. I find that reason and logic have become a very important part of how I think through everyday life occurrences No, I am not perfect at it, but I'm trying to be better. I've learned so much more over the years about our emotions and human behavior. Is anger something to avoid? Is it an emotion that we should feel badly about when we experience it? No! Anger is an important emotion to have, to feel. It can tell us so many things about what we are experiencing, but what we do with that anger is more important. Do we allow ourselves to react in moments of anger? I would suggest that you sit with anger when you feel it and try to discover what it is telling you. Don't make choices out of anger, don't speak out of anger, don't react out of anger, but do FEEL the anger and let it speak to you, let it tell you why you are feeling the way that you do, and then decide if anger is the right emotion to be feeling for what you're encountering.