DEALING WITH ANGER
USING
THE TWELVE STEPS
The First Step can help us immeasurably to recognize and express our anger. By simply admitting we are powerless to control what, when, and where we feel angry, we deepen our awareness of the very nature of feelings. We have no more control over any feeling --mad, sad, glad,--than we do over thoughts that pop in and out of our minds. We admit to the unmanageability we feel when angry. This is the First Step, the beginning of awareness of our anger.
After admitting to powerlessness and unmanageability due to our anger, we can come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can lead us to a healthy expression of our feelings, to sanity, to wholeness; Step Two.
In the Third Step, we do not so much turn over our feelings over to the God of our understanding but the attempts to control them by denying them, by manipulating others or by blaming. God wants us to have our feelings, to experience them fully; even anger.
The Fourth Step can help us inventory how, in the past, we dealt with our feelings of anger. We can discuss this with another and admit to him/her "the exact nature of our wrongs", the Fifth Step. When we come to the Sixth and Seventh Steps, it's important we understand that anger is not a character defect; anger is a normal, human feeling. What we do or don't do with that feeling can reveal a character defect, but it is not wrong to feel angry. Denial of anger, blaming, resentments, and manipulating others are character defects that result from not dealing with our anger in a healthy way. We are willing to have God remove these defects and we humbly ask Him to do so. We are not asking God to take our feelings, and this includes anger, out of our hearts. By now, we can return to people in our past, Steps Eight and Nine, and make amends, with feeling, for not listening to their feelings or responding honestly to them with our own.
The Tenth Step asks us to continue an inventory. This can simply entail a periodic spot check on how we feel. Asking ourselves, "How do I feel, right now?" can help us to become more aware of how subtly our feelings connect us to others and our environment. Through prayer and meditation suggested in the Eleventh Step, we seek guidance from others and our Higher Power on how to best deal with anger. As we become more aware of our own feelings, we experience a more heightened sense of life. Anger helps us to see what we like or don't like. And just as sobriety is the message we carry to others, the Twelve Step, so too, expressing our feelings also carries a message.