zenjones

And today is, once again, non-manifestation of anger day. For most of p.p. I didn’t have too much anger. But I can feel it more often now. And I think it has to do with the dread of a new situation—a new living situation, a new city to get used to, a new job, new people. This morning I found myself wishing I could just curl up and stay in Healdsburg.

So I notice the spiky-ness. It seems I become aware of it in time to prevent myself from “manifesting” it about 20% of the time. Which seems like a lot, considering most of my life I believed my anger, I believed that that person was the cause of my anger, and if they’d just get it together to act right, I wouldn’t be angry.

I can’t believe how deeply conditioned I am to this. I remember my parents screaming at us, “You make me so mad!” And my little brother—at age two—getting spanked for bad table manners, because the bad table manners made my father so mad! I have tried to discuss this with my brother, now that he has children of his own, but he agrees with my father. After a particularly stomach-turning meal with lots of yelling and threatening, I tried to explain that that kind of behavior has all kinds of negative ramifications, including, possibly, my own anorexia as a young adult, his 12-year-old daughter’s anorexia, my father’s congestive heart failure, my brother’s own astronomical blood pressure and severe gout. But my brother comes back with, “If they would just do what I said, I wouldn’t get mad.” And my brother is a smart, sweet man who loves his children very much.

So I will try to increase my “catches” to 30%, and for the rest, I’ll keep a card in my pocket and one in my wallet, asking “What do you feel angry about right now?” That includes all the other anger feelings like irritation and annoyance.