| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Health, Mind & Body |
| Author: | Dianne Lancaster |
I enjoyed this book. Because it talked so much about anger I often had to put it down because it left me with some unease inside. I'm often sensitive to things in that way. I know it's weird but I guess I am just sensitive.
Anyway, I still won't say that the Indigo Child exists, or doesn't exist. This book does not try to prove to the reader or validate their existence. It is based on their existence and talks about how parents and indigo children can improve their situation and manage the often explosive and very destructive rage that many of them have pent up inside.
When I read this, I found that rather than reading it for how to help these children, often the author was writing to us, the adult, and showing us what kind of patterns have led to our frustrations, anger, sadness, sometimes rage in our life. It was a very good eye opener and I am grateful to Sheila for sending it to me.
If you ever find yourself "crying over everything", or feeling uncontrollable rage, or anger that is not suited to a certain situation (eg. exploding and totally losing it when a child drops and breaks a plate... again), feeling tense for unknown reasons more often than you should be... or just ... supressing your anger because you were taught it isn't good to get angry (isn't that what we were all taught?) then this book is for you.
I think that for me the takeaway from this book is this:
Anger is an important emotion that is used to create a change in a situation or environment when our needs are not being met and we cannot change the situation through love, for whatever reason. At these times it is important to express the anger, to invoke the change and get our needs met.
Unmet needs lead to anger, and unexpressed anger builds up inside, which will turn into rage and sadness. These can lead to emotional dysfunction and downward spirals that entrench themselves in our neural net which causes them to perpetuate, leading us down the path of continued anger and rage.
Anger is short-lived and non-enduring. It is meant to dissipate as soon as it is expressed. Love, on the other hand is enduring and long lasting and as soon as our anger is expressed, if our needs are discussed and met, we return to love. But if we hold back that anger, it really messes us up.
214 pages of reading (with references, etc. beyond that), I would recommend giving it a try to expand your understanding of self, and try to improve your own self-love.
Oh, one more thing they talk about! If you always sacrifice yourself and your needs for others (including children), your needs are not getting met and your self-love decreases. When this happens your unmet needs lead to anger, and it becomes impossible to give love to those who need it (children especially). Therefore, if you wish to raise them with love, you MUST attend to your needs as well and discard the old belief of "parents must sacrifice themselves completely for their children". If your children happen to be Indigos, they will disrespect you and end up hating you for not loving yourself, and giving yourself respect, and time accordingly. That is profound.
I love you!
Cam
i heard about it .may be i will read it in my easter holidays.. thanks for sharing ..lwish you some stars in yourheart ciao andrea
ReplyDeleteBoy, having gone through and studied cognitive therapy, now I'm confused! I try to keep my mind open, so I will have to think about this one. Until I finish checking that out, here is what I was taught, anyway.
ReplyDeleteUp until now, I have believed that anger was a secondary emotion. You go to it when the primary emotion, say, grief, hurt, abandonment, when those primary emotions are ignored because they are painful. We are thus in denial. Anger gives some outlet at these times. But we cannot stay angry forever. So, when the primary emotion is identified and accepted, the trigger for anger disappears.
The primary emotion can be in either the conscious or subconscious mind. This is why anger is the second stage of grieving. Denial, anger, negotiation, sadness, acceptance. We are angry because we are not ready to accept the primary emotion of sadness about our loss.
But even without the original trigger present, anger is one emotion that refires on its own, that continues, and takes longer to cease. This is all due to our physiological activity in anger. Anger is a primary element of the "fight" part of our primitive brain's "fight or flight" response, that we all have to perceived danger. It is the secondary emotion to fear, in this case.
Both "flight" and "fight" trigger huge adrenalin release. Adrenalin also can become addictive, just as endorphins do, the "runners' high." People can become addicted to runners high with excessive exercise. I was once one of them. The behavioural label for that condition is "anorexia atheletica" I ate a ton, but was chasing the endorphins so hard, that I kept dropping weight, way lower that it was healthy to be.
Anger can be similar. Some go to anger in a subconscious and regular manner, so as to experience the adrenaline rush. Anger will "refire" in some people, as long as they crave that natural "rush".
This refiring or subconscious craving for anger is a big part of the basis for anger management therapy.
Anger was a necessary life saving emotional response to fear in the primitive world. We no longer face most of those threats. But we can't tell our primitive brains that, they work just the same as the ones that humans had when we were hunters and gatherers, even before we had language.
So what to do? Take control with our rational brains, the seat of logic and reason, our frontal lobes. With training and practice, we can realize that we have the ability to choose whether we go to an emotion. We are more self aware of our feelings, we can understand what is triggering us, and choose not to go to anger, as the substitute for another emotion that we cannot yet deal with. We abandon anger and start dealing with the primary emotion that is disturbing us.
Why choose to not stay in anger? Because, unless one is in a legitimate fight or flight response, it causes more emotional damage than any purpose it could serve. The longer we are angry, the longer we are kept from understanding and resolving the primary emotion that is disturbing us. Going regularily to, or refiring in anger, may make us a threat to the well being of others, the anger management issue.
Long term, refired and unresolved states of anger are harmful and potentially life threatening to us. Those with constant anger issues are much more prone to death by stroke. And any emotion that keeps us is in a purely primitive state of mind, it prevents us from integrating our rational and emotional selves. Getting to our "wise mind". Getting to that place where we are most calm, most happy, and the best that we can be, both emotionally and intellectually, the both integrated and working together. Without just one or the other running the show that is our life.
I hope you don't mind, I posted a link to your review on my page, it really got me thinking, so I'm sharing it with others...
ReplyDeleteBrian - Thank you for writing and visiting. I see similarities and divergences in your training compared to what the author is saying in this book. And I find THAT fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI also find it interesting how this author says that anger is a very important emotion that we invoke to evoke change to a situation that is not meeting our needs when love was not enough to meet our needs. And yet your training tells us to take control of our brains and choose not to go there (which, according to this author) might lead to repression of the anger, which builds into sadness and rage.
I can't say whether this book is more or less "right". I guess the best thing to do would be to talk to people and families struggling with repressed anger/rage/sadness and see if working on things this way makes a difference, and how much of a difference over all.
Thank you very very much for your writing.
Cam
I fully agree that to surpress anger rather than let it run it's course is the foolish move. Repression is always the worst choice.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, and without seeming to split hairs here, I'm advocating indentifying the source emotion that anger is secondary to, that anger is being triggered by. As quickly as possible.
Resolve and accept that emotion, work through it, do not deny it or surpress it either. Same bad outcome if you do.
Get out of the secondary, and potentially damaging emotion, anger, as quickly as possible, so that the understanding and acceptance of what is really going on, can start. I hope that clarifies that which I somewhat ineptly was trying to say.
I understand perfectly. Thanks. I was raised to "turn the other cheek", and rise above anger and not to let anger take hold for it is not a good emotion to share, rather one that damages both parties. But the author takes anger to a completely different dimension (for me) when she says that anger is something we NEED in our life, and must utilize when our needs are not being met. That's a thought that nobody in my entire life EVER told me. Even the psychology 101 I took in university before I moved into the harder sciences didn't really look at it that way. And it is fascinating especially because it gives me the power now to not feel ashamed when I am angry, and not to repress my anger for fear of hurting someone, but to actually "think in the gap" and use the anger to "get back to love".
ReplyDeleteAnd it's true what she says about anger expressed evaporates very quickly, to be replaced by love. Unless there is a LOT of repressed anger stored up within, as most of us probably have because we have been told, not by books and psychologists, but by the people we trust: our parents, our family, our friends, NOT to express it, but to find a way to "override" it.
Thanks again.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about psychology or psychotherapy so everything I say is nothing more than gobbledeegook from a confused, and "lightened" mind.
There is no shame in being angry. Nothing bad happens unless you hang on to it, use it to avoid going to the source emotion, ie, emotional abandonment, when a love affair ends as the choice of the other, not you.
ReplyDeleteAs quickly as you get to the source emotion, the better off you will be, the sooner you will heal. Anger that we hold on to, unless we are in a physically threatening situation, is always a prolonged avoidance of resolving the primary emotional issue, in my opinion.
Short version...the author gives anger the status of a primary emotion. I say that it is always secondary, always reactive, to a primary emotion. It gets the body ready to defend itself, in the primitive brain. It's a physiological defense mechanism, that is it. Our primitive answer to fear, the primary emotion.
So lose the anger and resolve the source emotional issue ASAP. Otherwise, anger stalls resolution, becomes part of the problem, not part of the solution. There is no guilt in this process, even collaterally.
Brian - Excellent point. Thank you. Now a question for you... Let's say someone comes to you with "anger issues" for themselves, or a child, or spouse, or partner, whatever. What REAL LIFE EXERCISES would you suggest they try in order to work through this anger and get back to love?
ReplyDeleteThis is important because all of the psychobabble in the world usually means nothing to 99% of the people out there. We need reality, not "work through the anger, and ...." I'm not saying you are wrong or challenging anything here, but because it seems like you know a lot about this topic, I would love for you to share what you have learned, in ways that the "lay person", can apply to their life.
A crazy example...
Every time you feel "ticked off" about something small, take our your Bill the Cat Stuffed toy and kiss his pink nose 100 times. The effect of kissing pink will release a chemical in the brain that will cause the lips to turn up in a smile, which will, in turn activate the tear ducts to tear, causing the kisser to laugh and cry at the same time. When we laugh and cry, our system goes into overload and the peptides bonded to the anger receptors in the brain are released into the system, and excreted through urine.
Just a crazy, nonsensical example, but you know what I mean?
To be able to take the knowledge and apply it in ways that will show tangible results is what most people really need.
It's just like my "prove Cam wrong" test when I talk about EFAs and carbohydrates. It doesn't matter how much I talk about the science, people are so indoctrinated with the wrong beliefs, the wrong understandings on carbs and natural fats that they simply CANNOT believe it. So I force it upon them by challenging them to physically do something that proves me wrong. And if I am wrong, I will gladly have them come back to me and call me a total asshole for ruining their day by getting them to do something so obviously stupid that..... But you know what? I have NEVER been wrong with this. And I know that. So... when I can get people to the point that they want to prove me wrong, I know I'm almost there, I'm almost at the point where I can help them to rewire their brains by giving them tangible evidence to prove to them internally that what they think is correct, is really not.
And then the paradigm shifts. Often explosively.
If you can do this with your knowledge, then believe me, you will have a gift that will help a HUGE amount of people in this world because it seems like as we get busier and busier, we also get angrier and angrier. Information overload thanks to the onslaught of the internet and instantaneous, virtually free bandwidth has put us in a difficult to cope with situation. And it shows.
Unresolved issue = need unmet, which according to this author leads to anger. Add the "old" and you have anger that has been suppressed and not dealt with because the issue is still there, has not been met for some time, and therefore has built itself into the "anger reservoir".
ReplyDeleteAbby, I think that your last paragraph is where the author of this book and you diverge. She does say it is necessary to express it in order to avoid keeping it pent up. Often, though, what she does say is that people mistake rage for anger, and call what they are feeling anger, when it is really rage. For example, if you and I are to meet at 8pm sharp for a concert but you don't show up until 8.30 and I've been standing outside holding the tickets waiting for you, yes, I am going to be angry. But it's proportional. And if I can express to you at that point that I am bothered by you being late and not even letting me know, you can apologize, I can accept the apology, and move back to love. The anger has done it's job: my need was for you to be on time. You did not meet that need like you promised you would. I expressed it, you took ownership of it, I accepted that. We moved on. That works for me.
Wow. I just popped in to check in before bed and got all this education...I may not sleep tonight. ;)
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the 'Indigo Child' part of your title I was thinking something completely different than what you're talking about - what I know of Indigo children is they are supposedly the "enlightened ones" sent here to raise the consciousness of humanity.
Personally, I never saw the point of holding on to anger like a lot of people I know. I don't lay in bed at night plotting/scheming/scamming. If I have issues about something whoever is involved is definitely going to know about it and then it's over.
We can't change people/situations - all we can do is change how we feel about it.
Having said all that I am taking myself to dreamland.
Good night, philosophers.
Unfortunately, Robin, too many of us have been trained from early childhood not to "lash out". And that has translated often into "holding our tongue", which can then be translated into "don't say anything that might hurt their feelings", which then can lead to, "I should just bite my tongue." And over and over and over that wires the neural net into eventually believing you shouldn't express your anger, and then according to the author, THAT leads to rage (what we might consider as disproportional anger, or more deeply damaging "stuff" that we all know about).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm learning a lot here too and really appreciate David and Dharma explaining what they think.
Thanks for visiting and sleep well!
I love you!
“My need was for you to be on time. You did not meet that need like you promised you would."
ReplyDeleteThis was your want, your desire, not a need. Needs are the basic requirements for survival.
So, you have gotten yourself all amped up, waiting for me. You have spent 1/2 hour of your time having angry conversations with me in your head. Your blood pressure is even starting to slightly rise, bringing a flush to your face.
I approach, and rather than being thrilled to see me, you allow your anger to come forth. You vent your displeasure, which by this point is considerable, as you have worked yourself up for the last 1/2 hour. I would expect you to voice your disapproval, or explain how my showing up late affected you. You have every right to express your feelings, however, anger usually involves raised voices, comes from a position of one-over, usually has the form or sense of violence.
I let you verbally process, the waves of your anger washing over the both of us. I hand
you the receipt from AAA for the tire change. I apologize for leaving my cell phone in the charger; for my having forgotten it at work because I was rushing to meet you, aglow with anticipation of our evening together.
I realize that your thought process condemned me for lack of character...my being late something I was doing to you, rather than something that I could not avoid. Rather than worrying why I was late, you were angry with me.
I look but I don’t see the me, the person you love and adore, in your eyes. I see the me that you have materialized with this negative thinking. There is no repairing the evening. I leave you and go home. You are no longer the person with whom I want to spend my evening.
What has anger accomplished?
Wow...
ReplyDeletedoes that sound familiar!
All too.
And much too much to think about tonight.
Maybe tomorrow.
Well, considering that this is the fifth time that you have not kept your promise to meet me at the pre-arranged time, it isn't surprising that I haven't been able to just smile and say, "that's OK". When you are late, there is always a reason, always something that came up that prevented you from meeting me at the time you promised you would meet me. And generally I've just said, over and over "that's OK, no problem. I understand." But although the first time it really was no problem. The second time it was no problem. The third time I felt that twinge "it happened again", but I just said itwas no problem and put it out of my mind. Then the fourth time it happened once again, I did my best to just internalize MY disappointment at it being again.... but my disappointment was there, compartmentalized, and not expressed.
ReplyDeleteSo the fifth time....
My need in this case is that I can trust you to keep your word to me. I do not believe that trust and integrity are wants. I believe they are needs. WE NEED TO KNOW we can trust and rely upon people to do what they say they will do, whenever they promise it to us. Sure, there are disappointments, but broken promises over and over derail the trust and belief system that people build up between one another.
ReplyDeleteThis was a deeper issue than wanting you to meet me at 8, this was my need for you to keep your promise with me, which you consistently have not done.
Well, in that case, expecting me to be on time, is like going to bed and expecting the sun NOT to rise, simply because you wish it to be so. If this is really the fifth time, we, as partners, should have come up with a different way of dealing with my time issue, rather than just expecting me to do a 180 and be totally different from whom I usually am.
ReplyDeleteYou might have guessed...I am time challenged. I always have been. It stems from trying to accomplish too much in too little time. I don't leave the necessary gaps in the time schedule for actual travel time, etc...I also hyper focus and "lose time" when I am working.
This is something Greg and I have had to work with, because it is not the hill he wants to die on, but he also would like to catch the first act if we are going to a play. So, we creatively come up with a plan that does not hinge on my controlling time. For example, he may arrange to come pick me up, rather than expecting me to act completely out of character, and be on time. He also does not look at it as something I am doing to him, or view it as an example of how I am not meeting his needs, because my being time challenged has nothing to do with him or my lack of love for him other than he is waiting at the end of my continual struggle with the confines of time.
And, bottom line, I work at it, but it is an imperfect behavior of mine. Most of the time I get really close to being on time....sometimes I screw up.
But because we are always so busy with two careers, and looking after our seven kids (three of whom are "gifted" but driving us nuts because they keep smashing things in the house and kicking holes in the walls) plus my mother is ill and in the hospital which is adding even more stress, and for some reason we can't find your favourite brand of bacon which puts you in a foul mood in the mornings because we have to substitute it for those tasteless turkey strips, it's no wonder that rather than create the time we really need to do (a quadrant 2 activity, as Dr. Stephen Covey would call it), we take the "easy route" and agree that we'll talk about it another time.
ReplyDeleteBut of course "another time" doesn't come because we only have 24 hours in a day and are currently overworked at our work (someone quit and we had to take their workload as well). And add into that all of the damn activities we have to take our kids to (they have more complex schedules that we do in our businesses and their daily planners are even more filled with appointments than ours are!) we are run ragged just trying to keep up.
I know you are time challenged, and in the beginning it was really endearing; "one of your cute things" that always made me giggle when I thought about waiting to meet you for a date. But just with everything we have on our plate these days, including the recession, our housing dumping in value, and our taxes going up so that we have to budget down to the very penny just to keep afloat (knock on wood that the 1983 minivan we bought used doesn't fall apart on us again in the middle of carpooling the soccer team during our week), it's just soooo hard to actually MAKE the time to come up with a different way of dealing with "our time issue".
So, now that this angry outburst has finally let you see how deeply I really am affected by it, do you think we could both choose some things to stop doing so that we can open up a bit of time and get together, then work out a plan to make this work? Because I really hate getting angry, I feel like shit after, and I know you do too.
And besides, I love you!
Well, I realize that our lives have become somewhat unmanageable, with all the kids schedules, however it has afforded me with time to be busy “doing” rather than “being” because I am having such a hard time with your anger. I used to think that love would solve all things, but the complexities that we are facing with your mothers health problems and the economy, are making you distant and angry, and when that anger is turned on me, I question whether the phrase “love bares all things” is actually true.
ReplyDeleteI know that it has been seven kids and complete decades, but I need that position of being the cute one that would makes you giggle. It gives me the space from which I can then handle all the rest of the issues we face. I cannot bear the idea that I have become another one of the problems that you have to deal with, simply because I continue to be time challenged. I used to be the oasis from which you gathered strength to handle the world, and I don’t know how or when exactly that ceased, but add anger into the mix, and I completely lose my footing. I am not exactly sure how to recreate the magic, but I am thankful that you are open to trying to work out a plan. I can’t bear to be the object of your anger any longer, because, despite it all, I love you!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz *snort* huh? wha? What time zzzit? 2.45am? Oh... sorry. fell asleep..... Been a long day...... mmmmmhppppphhhhh....zzzzzzzz gotta get Billy's ballet slipper's t'morro. His teacher says the steeltoed steel shank boots he was using for lumberjack camp won't do.... t'morro... n'uthr day... .mmmm zzzzzzz *snoooooorrreeeee*
ReplyDeleteI must read this...for Matt (my almost 16 year old) and myself.
ReplyDeleteI am going to go hunt for it now on my book site.....I have 10 minutes before work. :)
Got it. Should be here by the 1st of April.
ReplyDeleteHave a wonderful day!
Linda, you probably already read it and it's probably already in your very own personal bookstore called "Lindalicious' Literary Lunch: Food for thought". I love you!
ReplyDelete