Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions (21 page)

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Authors: June Hunt

BOOK: Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions
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10
SELF-INFLICTED FLAMES
How Guilt and Shame Ignite Harmful Anger
“Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires”
(JAMES 1:19-20 NLT).

 

DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE who struggles with any of these burning questions?
Why do I feel so angry at times?
Why do I lash out at others over little things?
What can I do before my anger does lasting damage?
If you, at times, are the questioner, consider this: In the best-case scenario, finding an answer is a simple matter of analyzing cause and effect. You retrace your steps in a nice, straight line back to the spark that ignited your anger, then you set about addressing the root cause.
The same can be true when you try to uncover the deep-seated source of your anger. The answer isn’t always obvious. This chapter is devoted to exploring one possibility especially easy to overlook. It goes like this:
If your anger has ever erupted in disproportionate hostility toward another person, it may be the intended victim of your anger was really
yourself
.
Typically, anger toward yourself comes from personal failure, personal disappointment, or being taken advantage of—all with painful consequences. These include living in a way that’s far from God’s ideal and your own.
Whatever the cause, anger at yourself can easily detonate like a bomb and damage those around you.
Collateral Damage
When I met Lily, she was on top of the world. A vivacious woman in her late twenties, she was hired as a full-time member of the youth ministry team at a growing, dynamic church.
She talked a mile a minute about her new position, bursting with ideas and energy. It was obvious she cared deeply about young people and the problems they face in our permissive culture.
Neither of us could have guessed, when we spoke again a few months later, that she would have fallen from the top of the world to the bottom of the barrel.
“I quit my job,” she told me abruptly, fighting back tears. Her spirited enthusiasm was gone, replaced by a defeated demeanor. “I let everyone down, and I haven’t got a clue how to fix it.”
Lily’s pain was palpable, and my heart went out to her.
“Well, first things first,” I said, gently. “Do you agree with me there is no such thing as a hopeless situation when we trust in God?” I reminded her of what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:31: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
After thinking for a moment, she said, “Yes, I believe that.”
“Good,” I said. “Now tell me what happened that has caused you so much distress?”
She took a deep breath and plunged into her story.
“I have a lot of anger inside that gets out of control sometimes,” she confessed. “I’ve always thought people who criticized my temper were just too touchy and thin-skinned. But I can’t run from it anymore. Now I
know
I have a problem.”
Not long after she started working at the church, a troubling pattern began to emerge in Lily’s relationship with some of the young people in the group.
She took a few especially troubled ones under her wing and made it her mission to guide and disciple them. Perhaps because of this investment, she began to take it personally anytime they broke the group’s rules. Naturally, it was part of her job to be sure the teens adhered to expected standards while at church.
The problem lay in how angry she became when one of “her kids” failed to live up to those expectations. On several occasions, she publicly yelled at them in a rage.
“I convinced myself tough love was the way to get through to them… to save them from themselves,” Lily said. “I thought I was doing them a favor in the long run.”
She was forced to change her mind after a traumatic incident during the youth group’s weeklong summer camp. One night, after lights out, she caught three girls drinking from a whiskey bottle one of them had smuggled from home in a suitcase.
“When I think about that night, I can’t explain why I got so mad,” Lily admitted. “Something inside me just snapped.”
Enraged, Lily berated the girls. And then the unthinkable happened. She grabbed the bottle of alcohol and hurled it against the wall. A shard of glass rebounded and struck her in the head, leaving a gash on her scalp that bled profusely.
The terrified teenagers ran for help, and soon the entire cabin, counselors, and staff turned out to see what had happened.
“I thank God I was the one who got hurt and not one of them,” she said. “I feel like some kind of monster. I know I looked like one, too, standing there with blood pouring down my face.
“Even though they shouldn’t have been drinking, my reaction was over the top. How could I get so angry with them?”
“Perhaps they weren’t the reason for your anger at all,” I suggested. “Maybe they were only standing in for the
real
target of your disappointment and outrage.”
“What target?” she asked skeptically.
“Well, is there something in the kids’ behavior that reminds you of someone else? Yourself, perhaps?” I was only probing, but apparently I had struck a nerve.
Lily began to cry in earnest. When she regained her composure enough to speak, the rest of the story emerged.
“I was a pretty wild teenager,” she said. “I know a lot of kids go through a rebellious phase, but I was worse than most.”
Lily had a long list of offenses from her high school years she could pin on herself: experimentation with drugs and alcohol, promiscuous sex, and flagrant disobedience toward her parents. One incident stood out above the rest and haunted her mercilessly.
On her eighteenth birthday, Lily’s friends threw her a party when she was supposed to be at soccer practice. Their “gift” to her was a six-pack of beer and a few bottles of tequila pilfered from parents’ liquor cabinets. By dinnertime, Lily was in a drunken stupor and she staggered home.
What happened next became a nuclear explosion of pain and self-loathing that still burned through every fiber of Lily’s being. When she stumbled through the front door of her house, everything was quiet. It appeared no one was home. She felt immediate relief to be able to sneak upstairs to her room unnoticed. Until—
“Surprise! Happy birthday!”
“Suddenly, the house was full of happy, laughing people all looking at me,” Lily recalled. “My grandparents and aunts and uncles were there. Church people. My
pastor
.
“I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when she realized the state I was in. I reeked of booze, my eyes were bloodshot, and every word that came out of my mouth was slurred.
“All the lies I’d been telling them—and myself—were on vivid display.
“I blurted out a terrible obscenity and tried to run up the stairs, but had to be carried instead. There was nowhere left to hide after that.”
Thankfully, the humiliation that night became a turning point in Lily’s life—evidence of God’s capacity to transform any defeat into victory.
Lily abandoned the rebellious, self-destructive path she had started down and devoted herself instead to a life of service to God. Her family forgave her and helped her form new values and habits.
There was just one problem. Through it all, Lily never forgave
herself
. Years later, her anger still burned at her unwise choices and actions. And her anger was hot enough to scorch anyone who got in its path.
The misbehaving teenagers in Lily’s youth group became unwitting “mirrors” who had reflected Lily’s own troubled past and fanned the flames of her longtime anger at herself.
Arson Investigation 101
Here’s the lesson in Lily’s story: Unresolved rage directed at yourself is like a pressure cooker without a relief valve—as the underlying source continues to add heat, the pent-up force continues to build until it explodes.
Even after the explosion, superhot anger spills into chronic depression, self-sabotage, broken relationships, or inexplicable anger toward others that blows scorching steam at the slightest provocation.
When these things happen, there are two questions you need to ask that will lead to help and healing: Why am I so mad at myself? And, why can’t I forgive myself? Here are four flammable possibilities:
1. Good-Guilt Gary and Shame-Filled Shannon
Justifiable guilt is a
good
thing. Yes, that’s right—there is such a thing as “good guilt.” It is that shrill alarm that blares in your conscience and warns when you’ve strayed off course.
In fact, admitting you are guilty of sin and in need of God’s forgiveness is the first step you must take to receive the salvation He offers through faith in Christ.
Think about it: No one seeks a pardon for a crime he doesn’t believe he committed. In order to be free of guilt before God, you must first take full responsibility for what you did wrong. As the apostle John wrote: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
What happens when you get stuck somewhere between confessing your sins and receiving the freedom of God’s forgiveness?
That’s what happens to Shame-Filled Shannon. What if she can’t take the next step and let go of her guilt, leaving it in God’s hands where it belongs? The answer is that her healthy guilt will become distorted into something God never intended His children to feel: shame
.
The difference between Good-Guilt Gary and Shame-Filled Shannon is enormous. Consider these contrasting statements:
You can easily see that proper feelings of guilt open the door for repentance, restoration, and right living.
Shame, on the other hand, leads only to more shame—with no way out—and leaves you with a lifetime of considering yourself a terrible person.
Shame isolates you in a circle of fiery self-loathing thoughts—like an eternal flame burning continuously in your mind—over and over and over again.
Here’s the problem: Eventually shame makes you angry at yourself for failing so miserably to be worthy of God’s love. In fact, shame and anger go hand in hand, beginning in earliest childhood.
Shame creates this cycle of anger whether we receive it from someone else—a teacher, parent, spouse, or boss—or mercilessly heap it on ourselves. Most important of all, anger you direct inward rarely stays there—it usually fights its way into the open.
Lily learned these things the hard way. In letting her guilt turn to shame, she lit the fuse on a volatile bomb of anger aimed at herself, and it inadvertently spewed on innocent bystanders when it finally exploded.
The apostle John said, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
1
If shame is the source of your anger, own up to your guilt, agree with God that you are forgiven, and then…let it go!

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