I'm not sure if this is the right spot in the forum to post this but... since this is section is about negative thoughts and most people would agree anger is a "negative" emotion — here is where I'm plunking it.
I know part of depression can be "grumpiness" but I've got it in spades and have for quite a while. Yes, life has handed me some really rotten situations and worse people over the past few years and some of my actions and reactions made those situations even worse. Yes, I grew up in a dysfunctional family (very) and I've had depression nearly all of my life. I've also studied Eastern philosophies, stress reduction, and all sorts of things that have helped and have changed how I look at things.
I've been very introspective lately, mainly that comes from being very depressed and trying to do some things to climb out of the pit. I have varying success. I've realized this before but today it hit like a ton of bricks as my brain was replaying something that happened recently at work that I will have to deal with tomorrow... I realized how angry I was at the situation, my boss, the annoying bureaucrat, yada yada. All of that thinking — all in anger — lead me to some other memories of the last year of things that just made me ANGRY. More yada yada.
And what I know for sure is that I'm carrying all of this ANGER around with me all of the time. My guess is I could get rid of the anger and I'd still be depressed, but with the anger the depression is just all the worse.
I know that holding onto this stuff has no value. All of these things are is in the past (except for the part about my work). These anger producing things really have very little to no bearing on my life right now (although some of it is why I'm in a lousy situation at the moment). Honestly, I don't know if I'm really all that angry at the past things or just have so much generalized rage pent up inside that it is easy to pick things out that I think I'm angry about.
I don't want to manage my anger. In fact, I think most people would be extremely surprised to know I have all of this stuff pent up. My anger doesn't need management; it simply needs to be released. It needs to go away. It is emotion hurled at non-existent things and since it has to hit something, it just ends up hitting me.
So, to the question: Is there anything on this site, or any reading that can be recommended about dealing with deep-seated anger and letting go of it?
