Gwyn, it sounds like you're coming to understand how your emotions are undermining you and that there's a way out. Keep working on that. It's good that you see the association of your venting anger at your H, with his withdrawing. That anger isn't serving any good purpose, right? Besides that, the other damage anger is doing for you is to keep you feeling miserable.
You have the right to be angry.
But does manifesting anger help or hurt? That's really the question for Gywn! Letting H know how hurt and angry you are just doesn't help him nor you. It just creates more anger, doesn't it?
You can help let go of anger, by stopping its creation.
Thought control and changing perspectives/thoughts are used to stop its creation.
It doesn't mean giving up your self in order to change your thoughts about things. It means adding to your self.
For example, "he changed the locks on the house. MY HOUSE, I alone own it, but when I found this out, I had no reaction but... it really made me mad. "
Let's use this as an example of learning how to let go of anger and control it, OK?
True, you may not have displayed your anger, but had anger nonetheless. Why? Because you saw H's changing the locks as violating your ownership of your property. Anger may be an appropriate reaction, but again, someone else may just have been intensely curious about H changing the locks, and not angry per se. It's all in the way we look upon a matter, isn't it? See it as a personal affront, we get angry. See it as witnessing something quite bizarre, we may get curious and annoyed. See it as something really goofy, and we may just laugh at the absurdity of it, and that alone may help take the edge off the annoyance factor and task of getting the locks changed back again.
What happens next? Think it through... the locks are changed, I would like them to be changed back. I can have that done, or H can take care of it. It's a matter of some work or some money, that's all. Though it may inspire some negative emotions ("Oh, I can't BELIEVE he's putting me through this chore!") It need not have negative emotions ruling it, festering.
How do we get that different perspective? One good way is to find out just why H felt the locks needed changing. There's a reason he did that seemed valid to him, what was his viewpoint? Can you understand where he's coming from? You need not agree with him, but can you see it along with him? By way of a weak analogy, a baby cries in the middle of the night and it's annoying to you and as dead asleep as you are, now you have to get up and trod around and do some work in figuring out what is bothering the baby and in quieting the baby and getting the baby back to sleep. If you just look at the baby's act of crying as the issue, you may resent it. If you understand that the baby is crying because it wet itself and is very uncomfortable and reacted this way because it knew no other way to help itself, you're much more understanding of its cry.
On a scale off 1 to 10, with 10 being WW III, what does this incident rate? "Really mad"... OK... The locks can be changed back. At most, it's an inconvenience, and not a major disaster type of inconvenience, like the house burning down, not even minor disaster type like the basement got flooded. It's certainly an annoyance, though, sure. So, where does it rate, and according to its rate, how much of a response does that rate warrant? In other words, since locks can be changed within a few hours, is it worth stewing over it for a week or two?
Is H forever 24/7 doing every and all things asinine, and this is but one example? Or does he once in a while do something you don't understand? Aren't people going to do some pretty large dumb things from time to time? Is this one of them? Does it mean you create a negative feeling regarding him... or only at what he did?
If you even need to have the locks changed back, in which case, you may wish to have a bigger chuckle even more at what H did, as changing the locks may not have really changed anything, right?
Can someone expaliln to me the "as if" concept - I couldn't find it in the DR book.
It's that you're creating your own reality. If something like the above makes you angry, for example, you act "as if" it doesn't. Do the things that someone who would NOT be angry would do. Think the thoughts that someone who would NOT be angry would think. "Act as if" you're not angry... Since motivation actually can get kick-started from action, "acting as if" can lead to it being so. It also has an effect on the world around you, since NOT being angry, as per our illustration, will influence how others act around us, as opposed to how they'd act otherwise if we did display our anger.
