Question by Annie: Why does AA tell me to not be angry?
I had to attend AA meetings after getting caught drinking underage. AA members frequently bring up the topic of anger and discuss how much anger they have and how they need to stop being so angry. They say anger is a destructive emotion that you should always get rid of.
This is vastly different from what my therapist says I should be thinking. I have “nice girl syndrome” meaning I spent years being a complete doormat and letting people walk all over me. I was in abusive relationships. My boyfriend would cheat. I would confront him and he would turn it all around. I was so worried about what people thought about me that I would sacrifice my self-respect in order to have a good reputation.
I never had any anger at other people. I thought everything was my fault. I had excessive guilt. I would constantly beat myself down for all my mistakes.
My therapist says it is good that I am finally starting to have some anger. So why do people in AA tell me it is so bad that I have anger
now?
This is because now that I am angry at the people that abused me, I no longer answer their calls. Now, the cycle will end. I don’t let my anger get out of control. I put it into constructive things like doing well in school. Here are some things I am angry about.
-The man that raped me when I was 18
-My bf that constantly cheated on me and then turned it around on me everytime I contronted me.
-The man that took me on a date then put his hand up my skirt.
-My former guy friends that would always turn the conversation to sexual nature. My therapist helpe me become angry at them so I no longer talk to them.
-My boyfriend that started a vicious rumor about me when I dumped him.
I like feeling angry. I now understand that I can let go of the guilt and I know the warning signs of abusive men. I now stand up for myself. I love life!
Why do AAers say my anger is bad? They say it is going to make me drink.
My therapist says I woul underage drink because I was a doormat
that would do anything to make people like me. She said I coudn’t say “no.” I hate drinking! It makes me feel like my old doormat self.
When my “friends” ask me to drink I say NO.
I love life!
Why do people in AA try to bring me down?
I am trying to be a strong woman.
Best answer:
Answer by Guru
lol its becuz they dont want all that anger to explode on sum1s face!it could build up and you could unfortunatley lash out,weither you know it or not.thats why they want you to exert it slowely.they know what their doing,even if its upsetting, wich it is.
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January 8, 2011
I’ve never been to an AA meeting so i can’t help you there but i must say congratulations on becoming a strong person despite everything thats happened to you
When you have reason to get angry, do so. Express your anger, tell off the person who you are angry at. AA is telling you not to STAY angry. It eats at your soul and harms no one but yourself. Once you have expressed your anger, let it go.
That doesn’t mean you need to continue to be friends with someone who has wronged you. It doesn’t mean you need to continue to let someone abuse you. It means let go of the anger, don’t let it eat at you because it will harm you if you do this.
AA is one program and it works but not for everyone. I’d listen to your therapist, she knows you and your story and your history and has the skills to deal with it better than AA. The best results come from combining all the best parts of these programs and making it work for you and remember not to feel bad just because you’re not fitting into their formula.
It seems to me that your therapist wants you to know that “feeling” angry is okay, and being assertive enough to speak your mind is also okay.
What the people in AA are talking about is “raging” and “uncontrollable anger” issues. You can display disappointment, dissatisfaction and the fact that you are angry about a situation without being out of control. When you are AA they are dealing with a wide variety of people and have to cover all the bases, if they are discussing a topic that doesn’t apply to you, take it with a grain of salt. They just want to get a point acrossed to those people who “rage” or get out of control with their anger, especially when they drink. Alcohol magnifies anger in some people causing them to become physically abusive, they want to make sure that those people realize the problem it causes for them to convince them that because they can not control their anger while drinking, they should not drink at all.
Hope this helps.
They tell you it is bad because it says in the 12& 12 that feeling anger, even justified anger, means that something is wrong with you. I forget what step that’s in. Probably step six. Anyway, for lots of AAs, if it’s in the literature, it must be true, no matter how ridiculous it is (this is why AA is sometimes accused of being a cult).
When I was in AA, I had a rule. In the event of a disagreement between my therapist and AA, I listened to my therapist. After a few years of this, I realized that AA was wrong on too many things to be helpful and stopped going.
A.A. is not at all what it seems to be. It is a cult that grew out of a bizarre pro-fascist quasi-Christian cult called at various times “First Century Christian Fellowship,” “Oxford Group,” and “Moral Re-Armament.” The attack on normal human emotion, which anger most certainly is, is central to cult indoctrination whether it is the Moonies, the Peoples Temple, Scientology or any of the Step groups like A.A.
A former A.A. member wrote a piece on how A.A. fits cult expert Steve Hassan’s “B.I.T.E.” model for determining if a group is a cult. One of the central parts of the model is “Emotional Control.” The url is in the “sources” section below.
One of the reasons why people have difficult in their life, including drinking to excess, is because they are out of touch with how and why they feel what they feel. A.A. works to worsen this disconnection with what is going on with oneself.
Urging people to “turn over” their anger to God (as if, for those who believe in God weren’t given anger and all human emotions, along with their will and life, by God as precious gifts) means nothing more than “repress your anger.”
A.A. members are generally very sincere in their belief that allowing oneself to experience their own anger leads to the grave. This is not only because quite often their self- and other-destructive drinking is a direct result from anger they never allowed themselves to feel (e.g. perhaps child abuse) and in “the program” they learn to suppress it so it only comes out in explosive rage or in “passive aggressive” behavior.
One of the key figures in the “recovery movement,” where no one _ever_ gets well and can leave, is Lois Wilson, wife of A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson and the founder of Al-Anon. In her story she tells of being angry at Bill. Why she was angry I don’t remember but she had plenty of reason. He never worked and was a womanizer were only starters. Anyway, she reported that she couldn’t understand why she was so angry. She wrote that her parents use to lock her in a closet when she would get angry so, as she wrote it, she had been taught better than to be angry. I’m sure your therapist would agree that children don’t learn the value and the good use of their anger from that type of experience. And as you’ve seen from the people in A.A., they don’t learn to teach the same to others.
You are lucky to have a therapist who apparently knows what she is doing. Quite often, therapists are what those in the Step groups call “two-hatters”, which essentially means that they use their position to work the 12th Step, to recruit new members into the Step groups.
Check out the urls below. They will give links to a lot of reading, especially the online library.