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Anger
Awareness Workshop
delivered by Pauline Flaws
This workshop was designed by
Pauline to help with a problem that is common amongst survivors of
sexual abuse. Survivors often have difficulty in feeling emotions, they
'numb' out to cope with the trauma they endured. Those whose abuse began
at a very early age may have had no opportunity to identify appropriate
emotions, later as adults various uncomfortable 'feelings' may trouble
the survivor who is unaware that it is anger they are feeling.
The workshop was for SAS
group members and aimed to tackle the symptoms survivors experience that
maybe caused by unidentified anger. Pauline provided handouts and her
presentation used power point slides. She gave us the following list to
commence our thinking about anger issues.
What are the
signs that your body gives you when you are angry?
Does your heart
pound?
Do you feel hot and
flushed?
Sweaty?
Tension in your jaw
or shoulders?
Do you feel like
grabbing something or hitting out?
Do you feel
powerful?
Frightened?
Do you feel like
stamping on something or someone?
Are your fists
clenched?
Do you feel like
physically breaking out?
Do you feel like
emotionally breaking in?
Need your own space?
Rush of adrenaline?
Pauline continued
the workshop with well presented material on the subject.
| The
following samples from her power point presentation help us to
consider the emotion of anger. |
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What
is Anger?
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Anger is a
natural feeling
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You have a right
to feel angry and stay angry, what happened was not
acceptable.
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Anger is the most
logical and appropriate response to abuse and injustice.
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Anger is a
feeling just like any other feeling.
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Anger can be
frightening and destructive around and within us.
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Because it is a
frightening and dangerous emotion it is often displaced or
ignored by ourselves or others around us.
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Unrecognised
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Pauline included a great deal more
material and information. The handouts are available for group members
who were unable to attend the workshop. Please contact us if you would
like access to the material.
Group members found the Anger Awareness Workshop thought provoking and
much discussion followed. Since the workshop there have been two further
meetings with Pauline present as survivors seek to look at their own
anger awareness and coping strategies. Comments from group members are
added below, please email your comments if you wish them to be included.
| Thinking about it I can see now that I often overeact to an
incident simply because I was harbouring anger about something
else before the incident happened. |
| Pauline explained the difference between
aggression, anger and hostility and I've realised that I can
come across as being quite hostile when I have unidentified
anger inside me. I think hostility is expressed to protect
myself from the anger. |
| I've realised that when I've been
clenching my teeth together that that is a sign that something
is going on inside me, and that it's more than likely that I'm
actually angry about something. So instead of just getting
annoyed with myself 'cos I'm clenching my teeth and just giving
myself jaw ache and a headache I have to look inside and think
about what's going on emotionally and try and deal with that
rather than making it worse by getting annoyed with myself.
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| I hadn't realised that the physical symptoms
I have been trying to deal with as severe anxiety may be some
anger too. This has changed the way I am trying to deal with the
symptoms. I am beginning to consider the possibility that I have
anger inside I had not previously recognised. |
| Self harm has been an issue for
me for a long time. I knew I felt angry somewhere but the
workshop has clarified things a bit in my head. |
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Several weeks ago
I went to a talk on ‘anger awareness’ held by SAS. I didn’t
think it much applied to me but I thought I’d go since I had the
time off work and it could be interesting.
It was quite fast and heavy going, lots of information in a very
short time.
I came away thinking I probably wouldn’t use the info, but that
night I got very drunk and when I woke up in the morning I
thought, this is just what the course had described. I had been
using alcohol to hide my anger.
I then thought about how much I drank and all the other things I
had done in the past that could be described as angry.
Self-harm, knocking holes in walls etc. Strangely I had never
thought of them as angry actions. Angry at myself yes, but that
didn’t count.
So I decided on a new course of action, I poured all my drink
down the sink and started a diary, each day noting what had
stressed me out and then writing all the things I could do to
express those feelings or to avoid them. I found myself going
on 2 hour long walks and searching out people to speak to. I
started using my punch bag again and listening to all my old
heavy metal albums.
It worked to some degree, I didn’t drink for two weeks. I
probably got fitter too, but there were problems. I didn’t want
to walk when it was tipping down with rain, so I went swimming
instead, that worked but only when the pool was open. I became
exhausted, mentally and physically too.
In the diary I found I was just repeating myself.
Worst after a couple of days of being sober my flashbacks from
the past returned so I had them to deal with too.
In the end I hit the bottle again. It took a week or two of
trying not to drink and then binging before I got back basically
to where I started.
It has been an interesting experience, I don’t think all of what
I felt was anger, I think anxiety was mixed in there too. It was
a good experience, hard work, but good. Keeping the diary of
triggers and how to deal with them was useful, but sometimes
just getting out of bed stressed me out and what’s the trigger
there?
And so to summary
not a success as such but interesting and useful. |
| The workshop was great, now I know I am going to come to all
the meetings. |
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