Days of healing, Days of Joy..............a Hazelden book

"The truth shall make you free"...............................................John 8:32

Some of us have been so angry for so long that we don't even know we're angry anymore. Much like the effect of prolonged hunger - over time, the perception of hungriness changes to a more generalized perception of sickness. We tend to blot out what doesn't get acknowledged or resolved. Or we translate it into something else.

Because good children didn't act out anger (or so we thought) we learned very early to turn anger into hurt. And there it may well have stayed for many years, mislabeled and unrecognized. As recovering adults, we are becoming aware that a hard core of anger is under all those layers of hurt feelings. We see now that it has come out sideways for years, bruising the people we love and damaging our relationships.

Thank God we're finally able to name the problem. Naming it is the first step to doing something about it.
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I will strive to see the truth, no matter how disagreeable, and name it what it is.

How true this is. When I entered therapy in my 20's, I was hurt due to my childhood, but I had no idea I was angry -- and WOW did the therapist find a lot of anger!!!

It took loads of therapy to get rid of all the anger I had mislabeled as "hurt." And during the time it took to get rid of it, I wasn't very pleasant to live with.

I'm sure this happens with many of us - mislabeling anger as hurt particularly if we've grown up in alcoholic homes.