Rose Longworth Counseling

My Anger Management Group

I have always been interested in anger management. I have a tendency toward anger and fire in myself. The anger was always there, for as long as I can remember. My father, my favorite person in the world, also had a similar trait.

Now I’m doing anger management groups each week, I find they are my favorite part of the week, because those who come share their stories and their particular brand of anger.

“I gave the person a little slap.”

Or “I threw the phone and it bounced somehow and hit her lip and there was a lot of blood…”  

And the most hilarious of all, “I have no anger issues at all.” 

Anger and the Pituitary Gland

I tell my anger management clients that there is a fine big computer in the brain, the Pituitary gland, the Master Gland of the body. It is listening for our every thought.

So if the thoughts are angry, rushed, aggressive or hostile, the Pituitary directs the energy into the war department within us. This spurts out adrenaline and stops all digestion and any repair going on in the body.

This sympathetic nervous system leaves us feeling shaky, hot under the collar, or any other of a number of symptoms. These reactions to our own anger are as different as the number of people who have them. 

So consider when your life feels rushed and angry. Fall back into music, exercise, whatever brings you into the slow mindful life.

When the pituitary hears the purr of positive thoughts, it says, “Stop the war and come back up here. We will go out on the vagus nerve that flows everything down that will help the body.” There is no fret, no war about to start, and the need for fight, frozen or flight is gone.

The Butterfly Effect of Positive Thoughts

While recently at the beach, I rode my bike in the early afternoon on the shaded biking paths of the Cape Henry trail.

I just love this easy ride feeling, every sensation on the side of deep relaxation and the parasympathetic.

I saw two big yellow butterflies doing a mating dance together. They were close to me, just skirting my eye. I hopped off my bike just then to avoid a mud puddle, and was able to better see the two butterflies.

As they danced, their bodies lined up. A vibrant blue streak, the color of the indigo bunting bird, appeared to me, whether real or imaginary. It seemed to be moving in a zigzag pattern. For an instant, I was moving with that blue streak.

When you have good thoughts, thoughts of blessing and prayer, it goes through the Pituitary where it flutters around like a butterfly looking for its mates. It may be a beautiful all-yellow thought. When it finds its mates in the memory bank, they fly up and down together until an electric, ecstatic blue force draws it to the imaginative realm. This takes up, as into a chalice, all the beautiful prayer of our saintly self, making a sweet odor, a beautiful flight of the yellow butterflies, an offering to the highest that is in us.

From there they land on the heart, the soul area, where this pure thought of love and blessing lowers the barriers between the soul and the spirit. This creates a radiance breaking through, a part never forgotten, which is in the heart waiting to be awakened.

This positive vibration gives us a leg up into service to others, an education from all the memories of happy past times, coming in to help us on our way.

Sunrise and Meditation

On the fourth morning at the beach, I made it out to see the sun rise. I had only a few moments to spare. I scanned the dark red line of horizon over the ocean.

Then a little area of pure pink appeared in one spot and became more light-filled and warm as the sun emerged. It was a glorious gold and red.

I stood at the edge of the ocean on the gradual rise out from the water where the waves were breaking. Every time a wave broke, the water that flowed back reflected the gold and red of the sun, before the water sank into the sand.

I did my meditation for an hour at the water’s edge, with very few people around. I noticed a yoga class in progress closer to the sand dunes and I joined them and did their class. When I was finished, I went home for breakfast, where I acted like a starving child after my early roaming on the beach. I was ecstatic that the god of the golden grains fed me corn and left me feeling satisfied.

The Trouble with Coconuts

I bought a big beautiful coconut at a store at the beach. It was a white coconut and felt really heavy. True to its weight, it produced loads of coconut water, which was lovely and cool fresh out of the fridge.

Once I had emptied it, I threw the coconut hull seven feet down to the cement area where I park my car, to break it open. It cracked almost in two, but it held onto the essential roundness and it rolled toward the road and out into the center where it stalled like the head of an almost bald child before rolling back toward the curb.

As I ran down to retrieve this sweet morsel of coconut, what should I see but a police car slowing up to not run over my little treasure. I was suitably mortified as it rolled over to my feet.

I was smiling broadly at the policemen in the car, but they had very quizzical looks on their faces as they slowly gathered speed and went on their way.

Dear readers, you have made it to the end of my writing. If you’d like to make sure you get the next one in your email inbox, you can sign up to subscribe to this blog. Or simply like this post if you do, so I know which musings you enjoy the most. I also love reading your comments, as this is all a growing body of work and understanding that we’re co-creating.

Please please please record your dreams! Email me at rlongwort (at) gmail.com or call me to order up a session to look at life from both sides now, the conscious and the unconscious.

Love from Rose.