Wisdom Of The Rooms - 2021

[bluidkiti]

April 12

Quote of the Week

"The people who are the angriest are the people who are the most afraid."

It took me a long time to make the connection between my anger and my fear. For years, I drowned my fear in alcohol and lived quite detached from my feelings. Any extended periods of abstinence usually left me feeling agitated, edgy, longing for, and needing a drink. I craved the instant calm and temporary sense of ease that my addiction provided me.

When I entered the program, I was unprepared for the shock of emotions that grabbed me and tried to pull me apart. Chief among these were my feelings of dread and fear, which manifested initially as anger, and then as rage. After I completed my Fourth Step fear inventory, I began to understand that the reason I was so angry was because I was full of a lifetime of unacknowledged fear.

One of the gifts of my recovery is that now I am quick to trace any discomfort, agitation, or anger back to a specific fear. If I am complaining about a line being too long or someone driving too slowly, or if I’m angry at my boss or spouse, I stop and ask myself what is making me afraid. When the answer comes, as it always does, I use the tools I have developed in the program to deal with it. Today, I have empathy for people who are angry because I know they are just people who are in fear of something.