Anger And Grief
How Does Anger Relate To Grief And
What Can I Do About It?

The Healing Anger Newsletter brings you a refreshing, helpful and upbeat approach to anger management and how it can work for you in every aspect of your life. Here is your chance to keep up with my (Dr. DeFoore here) latest discoveries and insights on anger management and how you can heal the anger in yourself, your family, your school and your workplace.

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Contents of this newsletter

• What's new on AngerManagementResource.com?
• What's good about grief?
• What does grief have to do with anger?
• The 7 stages of grief
• The Anger: Deal With It Before It Deals With You 4 CD program will help you understand and heal your anger and the related problems of depression and rage.

Seven Stages Of Grief--how to understand and move through the grieving process without getting stuck in anger and denial.

Using The Emotional Balance Sheet To Assess Your Emotional Health--a practical self-assessment tool to help you understand why you feel the way you do. Learn about resources to increase your positive emotions and emotional energy by removing the barriers of pain, fear and anger.

Quotes On Forgiveness--a list of quotations that will help you to understand forgiveness and how to forgive more easily when you need to.

Love And Forgiveness--for quick relief and lasting control! Tools that you have right now, and some within reach of your fingertips that will give you the relief and control you're looking for.

Grieving is an act of love. The greater the love associated with a person, a marriage or job, for example, the greater grief you will feel with the loss. When you're grieving, you are honoring the beauty and value of what you have lost, and choosing not to grieve is to dishonor your lost love, marriage or job. And the best thing about the grieving process is completing it--that means you can love again and return to joy and well being.

It's simple...anger is one of the stages of the grief process. Anger is a protective emotion, loss creates pain, therefore the anger comes out to protect from the pain of the loss. The problem is that it's way too easy to get stuck in the anger stage. I've had many clients over the years who come to see me because of serious anger problems. Then, as we get to the underlying causes of their anger, we often find unresolved (unexpressed) grief. The good news is that when the grieving is done, the anger usually goes away. The anger associated with grief can result from several different situations, such as:

• Anger at the injustice of the loss--this is especially the case with the loss of a child or someone younger than you, or in the case of violence or senseless accidents.
• Sometimes people get "angry at God," which is of course hard to resolve. This can be addressed in grief or anger management counseling.
• Anger can often come up when you have "unfinished business" with the departed, or if the person who died left a huge mess for family survivors to clean up.
• It is easy to be angry at the person who died, for example if they did not take care of themselves and that contributed to their death.
• In the case of divorce or job loss, it is all too easy to get angry and stay angry at the ex-spouse or boss. However, as I mentioned, this stops the grieving process, and can lead to bitterness, depression or even illness.

Remember, anger is a healthy, natural emotion--it's a good place to visit, but you don't want to live there. Understanding love, anger and forgiveness is often essential to moving through and past the anger stage of the grief process.

1. Shock--a natural "shut down" mode that allows you to survive the initial flood of pain and sorrow. Learn more here.
2. Denial--this is the mental part of shock. It can last for hours, weeks, months or years. It is natural, but it needs to pass so that you can continue to move through the grief process.
3. Anger--this is the protective emotion kicking in to ease the pain. It doesn't always occur, but sometimes it can be a major part of the grieving process.
4. Guilt--quite often you will feel that you are to blame for what happened that led up to the loss. Ultimately, the letting go of grieving includes the letting go of the forgiveness process.
5. Pain and sorrow--this is in a way the essence of the grieving process. These emotions can be so big that you might choose shock, denial, anger or guilt to avoid them. Ultimately, the way to have the strength to face the pain and sorrow is to focus on the love that was there and that is still there now. Love is the key to healthy grieving.
6. Release and resolution--this is where the healing starts. The earlier stages have passed, and there is a sense of acceptance setting in.
7. Return to the willingness to love--this is when you know you are healing and completing the grief process. Love is where it starts, love gets you through the grief process, and love is where you end up.

Comments? Ideas? Feedback? I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to this zine and tell me what you think! If you have ideas for future Healing Anger Newsletter issues, I'm open to considering them. Here is your opportunity to get involved--I might even include your comments, story or link in a future issue of this ezine.

Thanks for being here!

William G. DeFoore