The Angry Book

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Beginnings In this section I want to describe some general considerations as well as some of the beginnings or origins of angry troubles. After a discussion with a guy I know whose sister drove the tour bus while Hedwig and the Angry Inch was touring from Winnipeg to Montréal, I've earned some serious respect for Mitchell and Trask. It takes some guts to believe that your story is important and that people would not only benefit from hearing it, but that they need to hear it. This hard, no compromise attitude towards the artistic integrity of the play exists in Hedwig's character and nearly destroys her as she drives away those who care about her most in her maniacal pursuit for recognition and justice. But it goes a bit deeper than that. The "You, Kant, Always Get What You Want" joke doesn't have it's second half ("but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you Nietzsche")

denying. Since she herself uses guilt as a weapon, she is not about to use it on herself. Besides, the idea of hostility would destroy her image of perfect and ever-devoted motherhood. But even in her protest she is still consistently manipulative and hostile and still attempting to engender guilt. "Your mother who only lives for you" is an extremely hostile statement. In effect it says, "I give my life for you, therefore you owe me yours. Nothing you do for me is enough. You are in debt to me and can never pay off that debt. Remember, your own life is not your sole responsibility. You have to worry about mine also." Freezing it is the total perversion. It combines the perversions I've already described with its own peculiar refinements. We can say that if there was an accurate w a y (and there isn't) to measure the degree of perverting anger, we would then know the degree of freezing it. T h e various preversions are not mutually exclusive. W e — a l l of us—combine putting it off, and putting it down, and so on. Some of us use one perversion more than another. Those of us with great angry problems will undoubtedly make much use of all the perversions. Our healthier confreres will pervert anger to a lesser degree. The particular combination of perversions (or the particular perversion we use most) will depend on our total personal histories and character structures. Of course, consciousness and unconsciousness regarding our difficulties with anger and our perverting of anger will also be Hedwig and the Angry Inch have a comparable dramatic existence where, for the players at least, the distinction between the real world and the performed world cannot always be perceived. It takes real commitment to the story, or the song and the spirit of the art to take it on and integrate it into your real life. I don't know if I would recommend such a life style, but I know enough to say that when the play or the story has as much power in the lives of its storytellers are performers as it had over Shakespeare and Hedwig, then the choice is not always optional. Response to a seemingly passive parent's unconscious aggressive needs can be subtle or blatant, minor or major. We have all seen mothers who visit someone's house—perhaps yours—and let a small child slowly but surely destroy whatever is in his reach with no effort to control him or with an effort so puny as to effect an endorsement of what he is doing. Unfortunately, not all cases are this trivial (however annoying). There are boys who will commit multiple antisocial aggressive acts (who have the most "peace-loving parents in the world"). As the chief psychiatrist of the Women's House of Detention, Department of Correction of New York City, I saw a considerable number of "sexual acter-outers " Occasionally a girl would come from a home where sex couldn't have been handled on a more Victorian level. Of course parents with enormous sexual repressions often also have strong unconscious needs to break out and to act out something, which children sometimes "do for them." For some people sexual acting-out or promiscuity and prostitution are intimately linked to aggressive needs and are a way of fighting authority. The authority in such cases may seem to be law or society or the Establishment, but the aggression may actually be displaced from the tyrannical, repressive, overrestrictive, constrictive, over- Women’s Anger Management Workbook: A Mindful Guide to De-Escalate Explosive Emotions & Overcome Negative ThinkingHaving just seen this live onstage this weekend (a genuine cabaret-style experience at the Alley Theater in Louisville) several years after seeing the film version -- which to me is the best movie musical to have been made in the past decade -- I was anxious to read the text and lyrics. What's remarkable to me about it, apart from how funny it is, is how effectively Mitchell and Trask capture the essence of a life in so few words.

His old feud with George Warleggan still flares – as does the illicit love between Morwenna and Drake, Demelza's brother. Such sleep serves as a self-imposed general anesthesia. W h e n people suffering from insomnia or oversleeping are finally put in touch with their anger, the beneficial results can be very dramatic and gratifying to behold. It sometimes takes considerable time for them to know that they are angry, to accept their anger, and to express it and live it through with feeling. But w h e n they do, the relief that follows is dramatic indeed. I remember a woman I saw in treatment w h o spent at least ten years sleeping about two hours a night. This in itself had a terribly debilitating and depressing effect. She said that the worst part of her not sleeping was that terrible thoughts popped into her head as she lay in bed. For a long time she refused to describe these thoughts and could not even entertain the idea that feelings associated with these thoughts were keeping her awake. After we had established a close and trusting relationship and she was certain that I would not "judge her harshly," she revealed the thoughts of her sleepless nights. They involved visual fantasies of terrible things happening to her mother and sister. As treatment progressed, she realized that she had a severe problem with anger and especially anger toward loved ones. Alter a while she became aware of ancient (stemming from Mindfulness for Anger Management: Transformative Skills for Overcoming Anger and Managing Powerful Emotions Introduction This book is about a basic human emotion— anger. Too often anger is not seen as basic or human. Anger is easily the most maligned and perverted of feelings and responses. Although there is an enormous range of "angry problems," nearly all people have some difficulty handling anger. The price paid for the distortion of a basic emotion is incalculable. Poor mental health, poor physical health, damage to relationships—especially to parent-child relationships—and even that most malignant of human diseases—war—are the wages of distorted anger. Therefore it behooves us to understand and to work through our feelings about anger. As you read, you will see that insight into these feelings can free and make available many other feelings, talents, and potentials. A healthier angry outlook must lead to greater health, to improved parentchild relating, to a fuller life, and to success and happiness. Indeed, it can even be lifesaving. T. I. R.

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putters. The on-putter in fact is one of the most flagrant destroyers of human relationships. He is dishonestly and inappropriately "nice" at the wrong times, and he is consistently and inappropriately angry nearly all the rest of the time —inevitably putting a great strain on all his relationships, often to the point of utter destruction. Recognition of these "perverting methods' can be very helpful in cutting down "twisting" or the production of "poisons/' which I will discuss in the next section.