"Our darkest times often give birth to our most lush and transformative growth." - Alan Wolfelt
I used to both get angry and burst out with anger very easily. My anger and its outbursts were intensified when I drank alcohol though I did so partly to soothe my anger and prevent its outbursts. It was not until my fatal anger outburst under the influence of alcohol cost me a heavy "price" about two years ago that I decided to stop drinking once and for all - since then I've been breaking my personal record of sobriety every day - and start doing something serious to tame my anger.
The single most important thing that has helped me in this effort seems to be my daily practice of mindfulness. Not only did I come to burst out with anger less and less but also did I come to get angry in the first place less and less. Of course, I can't say I never get angry, but this happens very rarely now, and even when it happens, I can remain mindful of my anger, which seldom translates into angry speech and action. I've even stopped feeling as stress what used to be stress for me and caused my anger.
Recently, however, I've started thinking that this change of mine might be not only thanks to my daily practice of mindfulness but also because with my career change I don't have to cope with what used to be the main source of my stress. So I'm just curious how I would manage in the same circumstance with this altered state of my consciousness. Fortunately or unfortunately, this experient will remain a theoretical one.
In the meanwhile this altered state of my consciousness has come to cause me another type of stress though it doesn't cause anger in turn. I'm torn - thus feel frustrated - between two opposites: on the one hand, I feel like sharing with three groups of people in all of which I myself used to be a member some materials for thought so that they may reexamine what seems to me now the unwritten dogma of the collective ego of each of these three groups, but on the other hand, I fear that many of them simply hate me if I should dare to do so, especially publicly in an explicit manner. I should probably get rid of such desire of mine that borders on judgementalism, for as I see them now from outside, so to speak, many of them seem too deeply trapped in their respective dogmas.