Anger Management in My Dreams

What an interesting dream. Some people think dreams are meaningless, but I agree with you that they reflect our subconscious and prepare us for real life situations. They are a good "training ground" if you ask me.

Good for you for ha doing all of that so well! If you can remain calm in your mind it shows what you can do in the real world.

Hi Leo,
You can succeed in standing your ground as you did with the cigarettes because the cigarettes were the issue. But in the anger dream I think you were too passive, just my opinion of course.

Anger indicates that there are issues of injustice leveled against you and/or violations. Healthy people get angry for a legitimate reason. You need to address the issues that give rise to the anger, otherwise you can't overcome it once and for all. If you try and address the emotion then you have to use will power and that takes a lot of effort and is not a real solution.

To me both dreams indicate that there are toxic people in your life that seek to manipulate and control you. Being nice and agreeable won't work because they are either out to manipulate and control you or hurt you and in any case they would be wanting to get pleasure from your suffering.

We can be adversely influenced in sleep. What is done is that someone poses a threat to arouse you enough to enter into light sleep or even deep lethagy and not real sleep. Then mental suggestions are made in the mind (a common platform through which we all interconnect and interrelate). To do that the person has to be closely related to you. Without relationship there is no possibility to use ESP/ mental suggestion. They may be a relative, friend, work associate, neighbor etc., but they have to have access to you to pose a threat. So either a key is acquired or it is someone to whom you would open your door. The threat is never carried out.It is only done to cause enough fear to arouse you to lighter, quasi-sleep.

I did a cartoon of your anger dream here https://kyrani99.files.wordpress.com/20 ... dream1.png and you will see that there are a lot of suggestions made that are really general suggestions. So the dream content doesn't seem threatening so that it doesn't disturb you but it is used to make mental suggestions to you. They can be later used against you because if you accept them (and you would if you think about the dream where they were first made) then they can be used with a new meaning presented to you mentally but in image form so it is hard to bring to full consciousness. Be very wary of general suggestions. Also words are often hashed. I gave some examples at the end.

When I had dreams that indicated someone trying to manipulate me I did what I call a dream reversal. I did one for you here: https://kyrani99.files.wordpress.com/20 ... versal.png In the dream reversal you see the villain in a bad position. And this is not trivial. This is a directive to the Universe, so if they continue to hassle you they become affected.

Dear Kyranni,

I feel honored that you did a Cartoon of my Dream. It was all quite true to the Dream… well, except that the ‘Committee Chairman Lady’ spoke only of a “condiments” table, and all of the describing about the ‘ketchup and mustard and stuff’ was just my narrative explanation that I gave in case I spelled ‘condiments’ wrong or if any of our young readers didn’t know what a condiments table was. But, the Cartoon was great.

Now of course that brings us to the Philosophy of Anger Management. I believe that Civility and Politeness can be brought up to the highest levels where an accomplished and well socialized Person can show no anger at all. It doesn’t help that the English Language uses the Word “anger” to mean both the Emotion and the Behavior. But, really, the Behavior is what people See, and our emotions we can keep to ourselves. So most of Anger Management is indeed Behavioral and a large focus should be on Impulse Control.

And in the case of Emotions, well, to use the kind of thinking that comes to one who is familiar with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, it is not some Absolutely Fixed Thing that we should all have some Necessary Emotional Reactions as certain common enough events occur in our lives. Over time and with a lot of practice, one can learn to React Intellectually and NOT Emotionally to events – sort of like Life is a Game and we must try to make the Best Moves, and not just get washed back and forth by the flood of our emotions. For instance, at the highest level in the Martial Arts the practitioners no longer admit to being swayed emotionally, and they resolve to both Fight and Live in a state of utter dispassion. Likewise, Great Statesman stay above the Emotions and deal with Everything and Everybody in such a manner at to Advance the Good of the State. Even ordinary Con-men, and most really ‘good’ Salesmen, ride high above any ‘real’ feelings and emotions, while projecting The Best of All Possible Personas for getting whatever it is they are after (they are like the Great Statesmen, except they do for themselves what the Statesmen do for their Peoples).

So, from my point of view, well, anybody who behaves angrily or too plainly shows negative emotions, which are mostly hateful emotions, well, it all just seems immature and almost childish to me. Adults should never behave that way.

Yes, Yes, Yes, I always hear arguments about how important our Pride and Dignity are and that we must Defend Ourselves and Stand Up and Shake Our Fists in the Face of the World, etc. But what good does it do? Hate just makes the Haters feel that Warm Rush of some kind of Hater’s Hype – The Drama!... the Adrenaline!... some kind of Endorphin Buzz… or we wouldn’t hear so much about ‘Protecting our Pride and Dignity’. But when All is Added Up at the End of the Day, Anger only Subtracts from it All, and expressing negative emotions only kind of Dims Down the Lights of the General Happiness… kind of making the Collective Skin of Humanity Itch.

So, really, I suppose we just disagree.

Definitely we disagree.
I see anger as healthy and some anger is healthy to express sometimes. However it was not always that I thought like that. I am Greek Australian. My parents were Greek and showed me a Greek environment where emotion was a normal part of the scene but I was born in Australia where the view you express, known here as the Anglo-Saxon view, was the norm, though I don't know that this is true today.

While holidaying in Greece I witnessed an interesting scene. I was having coffee with some new Greek friends, in the heart of Athens, Constitution Square. Suddenly two cars collided; one ran into the back of the other. The two drivers got out and screamed abuse at one another for about 5 mins., both pointing and angrily yelling at the same time, while a crowd gathered around and people cheered them on. Then, when they had fizzled out, the two got back into their cars and continued on.

I made some remark about "they shouldn't get angry". My friends looked at me as if I had just fallen out of the sky. "What!" they exclaimed. "It is healthy that they confront one another and get it off their chest".

Sure in recent times Greece has been brutalized "economically" so that has caused a lot of people heartache and disease, but in the 1970s when I was in Greece, diabetes and heart problems were near unheard of, strokes were also reasonably rare as was also cancer. Diabetes type 2, some forms of heart disease and aggressive cancer all have anger elements but they are unexpressed or unresolved anger! So the issue of anger is a serious one and not amount of window dressing, to look the part, is going to be anything more than a patch.

Now while we disagree, you also missed my point.
All of the emotions are the bodily reactivity, which arises due to thoughts that point to some sort of issue. And the "feeling" that comes after the emotion is cognitive; the appraisal of the bodily reactivity. It is useless to try to contain the bodily reactivity such that the behavior is not evident to others. In fact those who, deliberately create violations or issues of injustice, don't need to see the external display to know that the person they abuse is angered. Owing to relationship the emotion, especially fear and anger, can be "felt".

Only by resolving the issue is the emotion diffused. So anger management, except in the immediate and limited circumstances, is really not a valid approach. If you don't deal with the underlying issues that cause anger, you will always be burdened with anger. And showing it or not is only a cultural thing and has nil to do with maturity. That is as good as saying we are really only meat robots, which psychiatry is trying to say with their biological model.. the stance that says it is all just physical..

You bring up the issue of martial arts.I have trained in Aikido and reached a reasonably high level. Martial arts are used, in a social context, in self defense .So if a person is threatened and the threat is aimed to be carried out, then the person has the right to defend themselves. This is also true in the case of a violation. One has the right to defend one's body. So this is a solution to fear and anger. In martial arts we learn to behave in a manner that gives us the advantage over our opponent, to see the action in the mind and then immediately carry it out.

In the case of a violation, and hence anger, the anger is the bodily reactivity that allows for the metabolism to be raised through deeper breathing and in martial arts we use this situation so as to be able to apply the force that we need. It is also true that we can use the energy of our opponent against them. So for instance if they are running towards us we allow for the last possible moment before moving so that they not able to change direction and hence can be attacked while moving in the wrong direction. But either way energy is needed. The bodily reactivity of anger provides the energy required.

Fear is different because fear is the preparation for action. Once the action is taken, once you engage in defense, there is no more fear. I can't remember the exact words but Sun Tzu said "when the troops are in the midst of the battle field, fighting, the are fearless, they no longer feel fear".

You also bring up the example of politicians. Most politicians, not all, are psychopaths. These people do get angry but as you say they have "good control" or at least appear to have. Psychopaths get angry when things don't go their way or someone crosses them. I have seen psychopaths that get angry even if you disagree with them about the weather. How come they are "so well controlled"?

The answer is that these people are all networked. None stand alone. They use underhanded means to attack the other person and in particular those that are humane, whom they see as "the enemy". Like one psychopath had said to me "don't get mad, get even". What he meant is that he did not need to make a show of anger because he expressed his anger by getting others, his like-minded friends, to join with him in using underhanded means.

These are extremely brutal means because they are not simple and obvious crimes. Their methods seriously incapacitate the other person (grievous bodily harm) or kill them (murder in the first degree). BUT these methods are not obvious. They make use of concurrent concealed threats and mentally presented suggestions/ ideas as to cause an unsuspecting person to react adversely. Their reaction is in their body hence they suffer what is known as a nocebo effect in medical jargon. An worse still they have a medical cover because the medical industry deny the means and label the damage as disease and trade it for profit. Little wonder that a corrupt medical/pharmaceutical industry is fully supported by governments!

The dream reversal that I did for you is an example of providing counter, and specific meanings to the general suggestions so that if they try to use them against you they backfire. Also you can prevent your enemy from having the effect they desire.. i.e., to cause you to feel angry by creating issues because you can counter attack them in the mind, where battle is fought and won by the humane.

Dear Kyranni,

Well, I certainly don’t want to go around and around and around on all of this. So I will keep my comments brief. First, about your idea of the body’s reactivity. The Body can be trained. If a man can train a dog, he can certainly train his own body. That is the proper understanding of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – by readapting the Mind, the body’s Behavior also readapts.

About all those nice healthy Greeks back in the ‘70’s – Olive Oil, Garlic and Wine. Go back and see what they are eating NOW. Oh, and in your freewheeling and emotional… and Angry… Mediterranean and Latin Countries, aren’t injurious brawls and knife fights and impulsive homicides a big problem?... at least compared to the more laid back and collected Cultures. Oh, and don’t statistics show that Martial Arts Proficients have arrest records for Assault that are hundreds of a percent greater than the general public? Fighting Conditions People to Fight. I don’t know why that isn’t obvious, but Martial Arts People always argue the Counter-Intuitive on that Point… that it makes them Calm and Peaceful… if only statistics would bear that out.

Oh, and I don’t mean to appear personally critical, but it seems that many of your Universal Assumptions are a bit negative, overly critical and hint of a tiny bit of paranoia. It would be so much easier to be convinced that you were reasonable and informed if it did not seem so much like you were coming out of the shadows of the Dark Side… (Statesmen are ‘psychopaths’!!!???)

Hi Leo,
I guess President John F. Kennedy also bit paranoid?
He gave the best description of evil..

"For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence -- on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match."

I am not interested in convincing you of anything, only to show you how general suggestions can be made and then used against you AND how you can overcome the problem.

For me better to be called paranoid than to have anger that I need to try and manage.

And for your comment (Statesmen are ‘psychopaths’!!!???)
Wikipedia seems to find some.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopat ... _workplace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissis ... _workplace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_leader