Abuse Facts

Irrational, control-oriented thinking is one of the angry person's mainstays in imposing control over feelings.

Instead of allowing the full range of normal feelings to pass through and garner the information they offer, angry people tend to focus in on one or two negative themes - and obsess and obsess and obsess. They are adept in creating a full-blown depressive, paranoid, or panic state.

Note the multifaceted nature of the angry person's rules and reasons:

• They are self-serving because they seek to control others or control outcomes. Rich's secret emotional agenda is to control his wife.
• Rules and reasons offer a measure of self-esteem, or, more accurately, short-lived ego boost. It feels good to be right, to win, to be the smartest, the richest, the handsomest, the most famous, etc. In its absence, self-esteem is replaced by achieving (or appearing to achieve) an externally-defined measure of success. People's opinions are very important since their admiration or consensus provide the only nourishment angry people know.
• Rules and reasons, in cutting off human emotion, allow angry individuals to do nasty things like lie, cheat, treat others poorly, and much, much more for some. This further depletes the soul.
• Rules and reasons distort reality. There is a circularity in that the distorted assumptions are used to justify distorted assumptions.
• Rules and reasons are a lie. They shoot their owner in the foot. They don't work.

With each Ouch, the angry person, obsessive by nature, heads for the pitfall trap. As the tendency to obsess kicks in and some minor aspect of What-I-Don't-Like is made BIG, the individual knows few options. He or she tries to control everyone, everything, and anything - except the self. (God forbid!)

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