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Anger concerning alcohol
Hello New Friends,
I find myself very preoccupied with the subjects of anger and alcohol.
Anger, being the emotion I am finally learning to deal with in my therapist training and therapy sessions.
Alcohol, being the subject of my intense grudge against my mother having downed a bottle of wine a night for the past 17 years and still in denial over it.
Firstly, I originally found buddhism wonderfully calming and happily neutralised my anger. Then I realised through therapy I should have been acknowledging it and dealing with it not diluting it. Did I misinterpret Buddhism's take on anger or is it really this directly opposed to the world of talking therapies and 'getting it all out'?
Secondly, I am repulsed by alcohol now (a mixture of giving up to live a buddhist and ethical lifestyle, to be true to myself and to not be like my mother I guess). I find it very hard - now that I've seen the extent to which this drug impermeates our lives in the West (and I live in the UK which has always had a very warped idea of alcohol as just being 'OK'), to accept it. It's like I've woken up to a country who, by way of business and leisure, meeting acquaintances and attending any event anywhere, is constantly inebriated or at least under the influence.
The world seems a scarier, more sinister place.
If everyone was walking around smoking marijuana or something there would be uproar!
Your thoughts will be much appreciated by my confused and militarist soul!
Love,
Sara
I find myself very preoccupied with the subjects of anger and alcohol.
Anger, being the emotion I am finally learning to deal with in my therapist training and therapy sessions.
Alcohol, being the subject of my intense grudge against my mother having downed a bottle of wine a night for the past 17 years and still in denial over it.
Firstly, I originally found buddhism wonderfully calming and happily neutralised my anger. Then I realised through therapy I should have been acknowledging it and dealing with it not diluting it. Did I misinterpret Buddhism's take on anger or is it really this directly opposed to the world of talking therapies and 'getting it all out'?
Secondly, I am repulsed by alcohol now (a mixture of giving up to live a buddhist and ethical lifestyle, to be true to myself and to not be like my mother I guess). I find it very hard - now that I've seen the extent to which this drug impermeates our lives in the West (and I live in the UK which has always had a very warped idea of alcohol as just being 'OK'), to accept it. It's like I've woken up to a country who, by way of business and leisure, meeting acquaintances and attending any event anywhere, is constantly inebriated or at least under the influence.
The world seems a scarier, more sinister place.
If everyone was walking around smoking marijuana or something there would be uproar!
Your thoughts will be much appreciated by my confused and militarist soul!
Love,
Sara
0
Comments
It might be better to separate the grudge you have against your Mom from the feelings you have about the use of alcohol by others. Would you rather rest in calmness or let it all hang out?
grackle
Like its often said, sometimes the best first step towards solving a problem is realising that is exists and how it effects you. Therapy does this pretty well, in the way that a therapist or counseller will probe or ask open questions so you can hear your own answer and how normal or out of the ordinary it actually is. In other words therapy can be a really good way of uncovering any skewed perspectives a person may have and give you another chance to deal with them properly.
The point where I think Buddhism may disagree with general therapy is if a counseller/therapist doesn't discourage identification with the problem. Where as in Buddhist thought, detached observation of a problem is encouraged.
A good way of thinking about it that I heard from somewhere is: When you start learning a new skill or a musical instrument. Initially, it's all very complicated and a bit of a mystery, but with experience, you slowly learn how it works from taking it to pieces and looking at its nature, peice by piece. The mystery disappears as does its unpredictability and unknowability. Its no longer a surprise, and you have gained control and understanding over it.
Much like that, meditation on your emotions lets you know what they do to your senses individually and severally. Rather than feeling emotions as a huge wave that slams you and then washes you back, it becomes something that makes your thoughts go a certain direction, your chest feel heavy or empty, your muscles tighten.
In my experience meditation turns emotion into what it actually is, a spike or a blip on the screen, at least relative to before meditation when the blip or spike hits you and you carry on going with it because it moves you with its persieved total force.
Sorry if that seems abit un-focused, I'm not too great at this. And of course, I and still at the very start of the beginning of my learning about Buddhism, so take my thoughts here with a pinch of salt.
Best wishes!
They should eventually, with enlightenment be transcended, but emotions are part and parcel of 'who' you are now.
Let us not get into the complex discussion of Self and not-Self.... You are a human being, and as such, are subject to the daily patterns of feelings and emotions, as you should be.....
However, a good way of dissipating anger, is to vow to channel it in the right direction. Use it. Use its energy and power to propel you into doing something constructive.
You cannot change your mother, who she is, what she does and how she decides to live her life.
You can only demonstrate through example, and wisely-spoken words (as opposed to words fuelled by your anger).
Release your anger against her, and focus instead, on cultivating Compassion and Unconditional Love. This means 'Acceptance' as opposed to 'Tolerance'.
Metta meditation is wonderful for this.....
Now, what are you going to do with that Anger?
Alcohol has come out of the woodwork for me as something that's made me angry for a long time and I've repressed it and numbed a lot in my body as a result. I can't separate it from my feelings towards my mothers drinking because it's her drinking that has made me the way I am and contributed to prior experience of a bipolar episode, depression, acute anxiety, panic attacks and the like. I link this directly to her drinking. I may not with time but I can only be honest about how I feel right now. The way she drinks and the family just swallow down their resentment about it is a smaller scale version of how society tolerates this 'need' to be inebriated and bolsters it. Too much money is made by it, why would anyone want people to stop drinking! Therefore, Grackle, I cannot see what good would come of me separating the two... Sorry if I have taken your post too directly.
I appreciate it's acceptance I need to 'work on' if that's the right way of putting it, rather than tolerance. Good point thanks Federica.
Kikujiro/ Adam
I have woken up with this anger most days for the past 6 months. I really can't wait for it to deaden down a bit. I'm using the cushion-bashing thing and I joined Adult Children of Alcoholics where I found lots of similar, validating, accounts of the terrible guilt, feelings of over-responsibility and over-seriousness I often have to get to grips with.
Love,
Sara
I share your utter dislike of alcohol, as it played a role in certain nasty events in my childhood. My antipathy towards it (and towards the pressure we are put under to consume) it is deeper than most people who know me would guess.
Regarding anger, in Buddhist meditation, as Fede wrote, it's not about pushing it down or diluting it - it's about seeing it for what it is and 'releasing' it and that is a noticeably different approach. Anger becomes something by which we define ourselves, so it's a thread of 'us', if you follow what I'm saying. It's part of the on-going story of who we are and gets embedded.
It's very liberating to see, within meditation, that you don't have to carry it around with you. We involuntarily choose to hold onto it but it's like grasping a burning coal - it consumes us as well.
Dropping it isn't a 'conscious' decision kind of thing, just like holding it - it comes from a deeper source.
Agree with you 100% on all this, the stuff is actually poison. I've never been fond of it but as I progressed in meditation, I discovered that even one glass or less would stay in my body for up to 48 hours. My body felt polluted and my meditation was lousy. Imagine, drinking just one glass of wine each day - well within government guidelines - and you'd never clear it out of your body.
As a bloke in his forties, I still find myself pressured by the people around me to "not be such a miserable b*stard, and just have one glass".
Try explaining that indulging their little request will effectively hand over my body/mind for 48 hours of pollution.
It's not easy.
Namaste
Kris
One of the things that you may find happening - as it has done with so many of my old clients who had addictive problems with alcohol - is that the energy of anger can be transformed into creative action.
Energy used in emotion is energy and, just like electrictity for example, or a waterfall, can destroy or empower.
The trick is to let this alchemy operate. George Herbert has some great poetry on the subject.
Not sure about the UK, but I can recommend the 12 step group ACoA... Adult Children of Alchoholics. They are a spin-off of the Alcoholics Anonymous program, and will help you come to terms with all your issues regarding alcohol, family and all the dysfunction that arises out of that.
Peace,
Les
Yes, Les, I did join their forum the other night and read a lot of posts that resonated within me. I was able to share my story which has taken me 15 years and I still feel guilty about doing it!
I just feel that my training and therapy has brought up anger (that in itself is an emotion that's always terrified me) and now I'm left holding a burning piece of coal and not knowing what to do with it.
It's great identifying anger... Quite the fashion nowadays
On a side note: as you are training in psychosynthesis, you may or may not know that the Alice Bailey material asserts that material was channelled to Roberto Assagioli from Master D.K. Esotericists go even further and assign a vital role to his work.
Have a great day and will let you know of any interesting findings!
Ok I give in. Having searched on Google and Amazon... Where do I find a good article or book on this?
Sorry to be a pain!
Sara
You say you have anger at alcohol. Alcohol has no will of its own; it's simply a thing. Like cars, guns, rope, and rock, it just exists. Different people use it in different ways; some of them fantastic, some of them terrible.
Alcohol also represents an opportunity. Maybe someone who is alcoholic could have had a perfectly decent life had alcohol never been available to them. Or, maybe they would've found a different thing to use poorly. Is the answer to make sure they couldn't have ever gotten it? Just regulate it? Or remove all restrictions and let the cards fall where they may?
Who knows? :-/ I'm swayed by many arguments on the subject in turn and end up nowhere.
Anger, grief, and sadness are all related in my mind. They're intense emotions that don't ever go away on their own. As you said, they must be confronted. And, they must be confronted for what they are: emotions based on the past. What has happened is gone, cannot be changed, and is what it is. Have the emotion and confront it, but don't constantly carry it forward to your present.
I've mulled over regrets, and I always come back to the same conclusion: I have wishes about what could have been done, but I did the best I could then, in the past. All anyone can do is live in the present, and you can do it with anger and grief or try to let go and leave it behind.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I keep trying to improve.
Well, what I mean is that the whole subject of alcohol makes me cross, not the substance itself.
Occasionally I ask to taste wine if a friend's drinking it (I used to be a bit of a connoisseur and, well, lived in France lol) but nowadays, the taste is always of vinegar and what it symbolises sends me into a panic. It's a very powerful rejection.
The problem is not in the past though. For the past 6 months I've been staying with my parents while I set-up home again in the UK (and more pertinently, look for work) and despite the tears and tantrums from my mother, the empty promises and attempts to make me feel neutral about it the facts haven't changed since childhood: She still drinks more units in a night than are recommended for a reasonable adult in a week. It's awful.
Tonight she's all cheery and being lovely and all I can hear is a bottle of gin talking at me. I don't even want to look at her. Everytime I feel close, the bottle gets in the way again and I want to run off. Like I did when I was 16.
It will take a while for this anger to pass. I never had anger before, I anaesthetised myself against it. Feeling anger is scary for me let alone the reasons behind it!
I first learned about Assagioli's connection with Alice Bailey from a client who was an esotericist. It was many years ago. I had just completed some psychosynthesis training and was telling her about it. This led me to attempt reading Alice Bailey's Master D.K. material - not easy!
There is spme stuff about this on the Net. This is a general article:
http://www.almankoff.com/psyn.shtml
From the home page, you can navigate to a few of R.A.'s essays on the subject.
Many modern psychotherapy schools tend to reject or conceal the 'inspiration' that set their founders on the path to their theoretical models. The fact that R.A. was part of the esoteric movement explains a whole lot about the driving spirit of the model. For me, it helped to fill in the gaps that I felt had been left when I qualified in T.A. and Gestalt.
Palzang
My sense of it is the Buddhist path is about developing understanding (wisdom) and skilful means.
As a mere example, if a person is angry at their mother for things she has done to them or not done for them in their life, the Buddhist way is to investigate the causes & conditions that lead to their mothers state of being. From this, compassionate understanding & forgiveness ideally arise.
Conversely, if a person has the mental faculties to critically discern the shortcomings of their mother, then their mother has probably does some positive things for them which warrants some gratitude or acknowledgement.
Regarding skilful means, if we are in an important relationship, then skilful means is to communicate any form of disharmony or problem arising in that relationship. For example, in a job. If a fellow worker is doing something to cause anger or frustration, which is likely to cause a problem to the corporate goal, that matter should be communicated clearly.
The same in a marriage or to our children.
In short, Buddha suggested we remove anger. However, the method is via understanding & skilful means rather than through suppression or through ignoring the matter. Often, the issues that potentially promote anger are important.
To express anger emotionally in everyday life, that is not the Buddhist way. Therapy will be different, in that there will naturally be a time when anger will arise. This catharsis ideally is an opportunity for developing understanding & skilful means.
Kind regards
DDhatu
In my view, Western society has indeed often become habituated to requiring alcohol for happiness. Finding happiness without requiring stimulants is a blessing.
Palzang
The world seems a scarier, more sinister place.
If everyone was walking around smoking marijuana or something there would be uproar!
Your thoughts will be much appreciated by my confused and militarist soul!
Love,
Sara
Hi Sara,
Alcohol does indeed play a very big part in the lives of many people here in the UK , and in fact, around the capital city, people often walk around smoking cannabis -one can even smell skunk on the breeze sometimes!
I don't think it makes the world a scarier or more sinister place though. We can't change the world, but if we can relax a little in our perception of others, meditate and follow the Buddhist teachings, we can begin to change ourselves.
Kind wishes to you,
Dazzle
For me that was my way of showing that although anger can be felt to burn us up inside, it also lights the way. One person's fire is anothers lantern I suppose.
In this way I can appreciate that recognising anger can lead to compassion. I was caught up in a faux buddhist understanding that anger should be suppressed and therefore that's why I was 'blinded' to compassion.
Alcohol is indeed a depressant. However, I once spent a night sleeping in a Karen village in Thailand. I was loving the whole no make-up, everyone being 'natural' thing. I always had a childlike love of things I saw as 'pure'. When they got themselves settled on their mats at night and lay down smoking opium though (so they didn't fall over under the influence) I had a shock to the system. That night I realised that every society develops ways of leaving one's own head and escaping our demons/ stress. They did it partly for the cold but still.
I guess it's human nature to be a bit escapist, or is it 'other worldly'?
PS - Thanks Simon - will read now
PPS - For 'skunk on the breeze' you could also do a lot worse than Devon. Reminds me a bit of that Ab Fab line: 'The air alone is 50% proof!' lol