Book Summary

Recovery from Anger Addiction

Looking back at my dozens of recovery books, I see that this analysis was hidden in plain sight. There was just never an author who applied the standard grieving methods solely to anger, like has been done to codependence, or relationship addiction, or other flavors of sex addiction. Thus the recovery of all of my addictions must be taken as a whole in my story, which I think is fairly typical. To start my recovery from anger, I had to complete my recovery from each of the other addictions, because the problems of those were problems that contributed to my anger. If I just set out to recover from anger by this method first, I would have to do the same work that those addictions would require, so I would get the same benefits at the risk of overlooking or slighting one or more recoveries. Anger recovery was logically and necessarily the last stage. I said at the top of this page that recovery from anger addiction is simple, and it is. But as you can see, it is not easy. It demands that you come to terms with emotions, both harmful ones and normal ones, accept them, and embrace them as a most precious part of your humanity. If you cannot do this, your recovery is doomed—for any addiction.  As is said in recovery slang, you have to conquer your demons, or they will bite you in the ass. Recovery from anger, as from any addiction, requires an emotional approach. As they say in AA, “My best thinking got me here [alcoholic in these meeting rooms].” Along the way in this personal odyssey in which I develop the theory of anger addiction recovery, I examine how and why I believe conventional cognitive behavior therapy methods and anger management classes (cognitive behavior types and abreaction pillow beating) did not work for me. I theorize, for me, that the root causes of my anger could not be touched by rational means, because my pain was started long before I became rational at about a normal 6 to 8 years old, and before I was able to verbalize at a mature level, which was even younger in childhood. I quote John Bradshaw’s Homecoming, ⁴ Charles Whitfield, ⁵ Alice Miller (13 books), and others in support of this conjecture, and I think I make that point well. I also describe my emotions as being far faster than my rational mind to be able to start a measured rational approach for “better thinking” to calm or lessen anger, and besides the anger impulse was far more primal, even to the point of it merging into an acute stress response, or hyper arousal response (fight, flight, freeze or fawn). In other words, my pre-rational survival instinct trumped the attempts to rationally deal with anger. I do not reject cognitive behavior methods for adult problems that are not so ingrained as childhood ones, but I do believe that inner child work, which is what I did as Bradshaw describes in Homecoming, and others such as Whitfield refer to also,  is the key to healing toxic anger. And I marvel at the efficacy of such treatment, as Bradshaw did in healing similar childhood rooted problems in that book. He mentions anger prominently, but in my denial I missed it. This book focuses on anger. I also reference several others books as holding the opinion of the necessity of deep emotional work (grieving) , particularly quotes from Alice Miller’s body of work in 13 books, and Charles Whitfield, Cathryn Taylor, Pia Melody, Janet Woititz, Claudia Black, Tian Dayton, and Judith Viorst. I also give a summary of my disappointing results of two weekend sessions of pillow beating, and ask theoretical questions by way of trying to understand why it did not work for me, and then give my personal opinions. These are supported by research into these methods from the professional literature. Throughout my story I examine three ongoing themes. First, anger is as an addiction that leads to bad behavior; it is not solely bad behavior. In this, I point out it is more beneficial to be an ill person trying to get well, than to picture yourself a bad person trying to be better. And there is recovery from it, like any addiction. Second, is the theme of my denial, which held me captive as I embraced my anger. It felt too good to be angry, because it gave me apparent power and control. I could not give it up. Such denial is a feature of any addiction. A third theme throughout is my mistake that shame work would cure my anger. Losses and pain were the direct causes, and healing shame did not lessen them. When I finally looked at anger as an addiction and got over these two impasses, I did get well. But I needed the preceding shame work to support the pain work. My hope is that these three factors, uncovered and laid bare, will be helpful to others. I do not directly advocate the formation of a 12 Step program for anger, but I describe 12 Step programs (A. A. and CoDA) for me. They are given as an example of the type of attitude my method of pain grieving requires. It could be inferred that such a fellowship might be useful. But the paramount need is a “sympathetic advocate,” as Alice Miller says. The many 12 Step fellowships do provide this, as does a good conventional therapist.

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