Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

Some people explode with anger because they discover they can control others by doing this. “If you don’t do what I want, I will make you very uncomfortable by blowing up. You might control someone today with your anger, but tomorrow that person might no longer put up with your behavior or might not even be around to control. This is the behavior of a furious wife, 30, who smashed a laptop over her husband’s head ‘because he looked at another woman on an American Airlines flight’

According to dailymail.uk, Tiffany McLemore, 30, launched the merciless attack after accusing her husband of ‘looking at another woman’ on a plane preparing to depart from Miami to Los Angeles on Sunday. Flight attendants asked the husband to move to another seat away from her. As he walked down the aisle she chased him and slammed a laptop over his head

The crew threatened to have McLemore arrested so she stormed off the plane. Police were unable to locate her in the airport and her whereabouts are unknown

The husband said he did not want to press charges and took a later flight home. The couple, who live in Los Angeles, appear to have two children together

https://videopress.com/v/p1XbBmHG

In footage filmed by fellow passengers that went viral on social media

Controlling anger issues

The truth is that someone else may well have done something wrong, and our feeling of anger may well be his fault. But our blowing our stack is not his fault. It’s our own fault. We are not like animals, which, when provoked, have no choice but to react violently. When we feel angry, we have a choice to act either rationally or irrationally.

Forgiveness expert Dr. Fred Luskin says that anger and unforgiveness quite often stem from the breaking of our “unforceable rules” For example, my mother should have loved me, or my husband must be faithful, or my friend should never lie to me. If you make a rule like that and it is broken, you may go wild with anger. Now all of these “rules” are good and desirable, but you cannot ensure that they will play out in life. You may try to manipulate others into keeping these rules, but ultimately, you are setting yourself up for failure. People are free to choose their actions, and sometimes they choose wrongly. So, you need to change your rules into desires. I hope my husband will be faithful and my friend will not lie to me. It would have been nice if my mother had loved me, but although she didn’t live up to my desires, I will survive. And I won’t ruin my peace because she didn’t come through as I would have liked

Anger (the sin) and unforgiveness are related to pride. In essence, it is saying, “How dare you make me feel bad!” or “How dare life give me this trouble!” Pride is considered the root or beginning of all sin. I often encourage people with an anger problem to pray daily for humility.

One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy: to endure injustices patiently. That is a key element in living a spiritual life that many Christians forget. Sure, we try to get justice, but anyone

Any who has lived a while in this world knows that you can’t always get it. Sometimes we just have to live with an injustice, and if we bear it patiently, we gain a great deal of grace. A cousin of this spiritual work of mercy is to forgive all injuries. If we can make habits of this and of bearing injustices patiently, we will be well on our way to real holiness.

The most basic way to know that we have forgiven others is to pray for them, for their good and especially for their salvation. St. Elizabeth of Hungary once prayed to God to give great graces to those who had injured her the most. After this prayer Jesus said to her, “My dear daughter, never in your life did you make a prayer more pleasing to me than the one you have just said for your enemies; on account of this prayer I forgive not only all your sins but even all temporal punishments due to them.”

Heal Painful Memories

Sometimes people get stuck when they try to get over their anger or to forgive. They can’t seem to erase the terrible memory. A key way to deal with this is called healing of memories.

Dennis and Matthew Linn have studied the whole process of healing memories, and they suggest that there are five stages in healing a memory, similar to the five stages of facing death outlined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

1. Denial: The person refuses to admit he was hurt.

2. Anger: The person blames others for hurting him.

3. Bargaining: The person puts conditions on his willingness to forgive.

In other words, he decides what it would take for him to forgive. Although these conditions are usually unlikely to be met, the offended person at least allows that forgiveness might be possible.

 4. Depression: The person is down on himself for allowing this hurt to paralyze him.

5. Acceptance: The person seeks to grow from this hurt.

Calm Marital Anger

Having worked with a good number of married couples, I have discovered that anger is a strong force for dividing husband and wife. Each spouse needs to know how to keep calm and to help the other keep calm as well.

A Wife’s Healthy Anger

Is there a way for a woman to get angry at her husband without harshness, without setting her heart against him? Is there a way of getting angry that will charm him and win him over rather than depress him? Absolutely. It’s called “childlike anger” in Helen Andelin’s best-seller, Fascinating Womanhood. I would call it playful anger.

click here for free download of Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin

Here’s how it works: she gets “adorably angry,” as does a young child. She threatens never to speak to him again, and as she walks away, she looks back to see if he is taking her seriously. This childlike exaggeration makes the man want to laugh. It makes him feel stronger, sensible, like a real man. This sauciness of a child, says Andelin, is most attractive to a man and is far better than the meanness of a bitter woman (or resentful silence).

Here are some of the rules Andelin gives: Eliminate all bitterness, resentment, sarcasm, hate, and ugliness.  Use only adjectives that will uphold his masculinity, such as big, tough, lug, brute, hard-headed, stiff-necked, or hairy beast. Never use imp, nerd, wimp, little, creep, or jerk. . Exaggerate. For example, “What’s a big brute like you doing picking on a poor, defenseless woman like me?” Or make an exaggerated threat such as “I’ll never speak to you again!”

One woman Andelin describes had had a miserable marriage for eight years. She started being more positive and loving as taught in Fascinating Womanhood, and things improved.

One day her husband was telling a young marriage-minded bachelor he should think twice before marrying. “Look at all the headaches a wife can bring.”

He kept going on and on, knowing that his wife was very much within earshot.

Finally the wife had had enough. She decided to try playful anger.

She turned to her husband, stomped her foot, and said, “You big hairy beast! I’m never going to like you again, ever!”

 As she left the room, she looked back with a faint smile. Her husband was grinning from ear to ear as he said to the young man, “Did you hear what she called me?” When she got to her bedroom, she wondered, “Great, but what now?”

He had never once apologized in eight years. But just minutes later he came in and said, “I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Will you forgive me?” She wrote “I’d have forgiven him anything at that moment.”

Two months later he gave her a birthday card — his first ever. It had a cute little hairy beast on the front, and on the inside he had written, “Happy Birthday! Lovingly, Your Hairy Beast.”

 Another woman read Adeline’s book and had been planning to put this playful anger into effect. She would practice in front of a mirror, trying to keep a straight face. Finally, the big moment arrived. Her husband came down to breakfast one

He began to smile and they both had a good laugh. They avoided a nasty day.

Calming an Angry Wife

 Now, when a husband has an angry wife, whether she expresses childlike anger or explosive anger, what can he do? One thing he shouldn’t do is lose his own cool. If she expresses childlike anger, he can smile back at her, but he should be sure to tell her, “I’m sorry I made you angry. Will you forgive me?” as the man in the earlier example did. Simple enough.

If she expresses explosive anger, he should listen carefully until she is finished. Then, once he knows why she is angry, he can offer to discuss the matter.

 He could say, “Tell me what I did wrong, and I will try to improve.”

That’s often a winner. When a woman is upset, angry or not, she often wants to talk about it. He needs to listen.

Calming an Angry Husband.

 St. Monica had a husband with a wild temper. When he got angry, she would say nothing. She would go about her business saying very little and wait until he had calmed down to speak to him. She had plenty to complain about too, since her husband was a womanizer, as were most of the husbands in Tagaste (Northern Africa) at the time. Many of her friends suffered bruises from their husbands, but Monica didn’t, because she knew when to be quiet and when to speak. Best of all, she was able to facilitate the conversion of her pagan husband and his difficult mother. Was she a doormat? No way. She knew what was important to her — her relationship with God — and she was not going to allow anything to interfere with that, even her exasperating husband. It seems that silence or speaking very little — not defending oneself and not losing one’s temper — is the best way to calm an angry husband. It is hard to have a rational conversation with a man who is in a rage. “Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God” (James 1:19–20). This is not the silent treatment. It is waiting out the storm, not punishing. Once a husband gets a lot of his anger out, his wife might say, “As I read you, you’re upset because of [whatever it is], right?”

And then she can try to have a rational discussion. She can ask him if he would be willing to tell her more and tell him that she really wants to understand. And, if he tells her more, she can offer him some help in the matter. It’s all about putting aside her anger at the way he’s behaving and getting to the sore point and healing it. St. Paul of the Cross wrote, “When you feel the assaults of passion and anger, then is the time to be silent, as Jesus was silent in the midst of His ignominies and sufferings.” Maintaining silence when one is angry is a good idea for both husbands and wives, but especially for wives.

Article is culled from Rev. T. G. Morrow’s book (Overcoming Sinful Anger How to Master Your Emotions and Bring Peace to Your Life)