Recently I have been thinking about the anger component of my bi-polar disorder. Various studies on the subject indicate that some 40 to 60 per cent of sufferers from bi-polar disorder experience anger attacks. Sometimes the anger is seen in the context of a quite separate illness called "intermittent explosive disorder.” Sometimes, too, it is seen as related to, a part of, bipolar disorder; sometimes it is seen as a normal part of life, everyone’s life. My intention here is not so much to analyze anger and its several typical expressions, but to get an overview of it in my own life. The first time I remember getting angry, in an uncontrolled ‘over-the-top’ sense, was just before my 20th birthday in the spring of 1964, just before finishing my first year of university. The last time anger found a niche in my psyche was in 2002, three years after retiring from full-time work. I was 58. Although by the age of 58, I was not able to mindfully dissolve my worst thoughts, I was able to successfully release the tiger of anger from its cage by buying a few precious seconds, recognizing the destructive potential of angry feelings as they emerged and bringing them down to manageable portions. It has now been more than 40 years from the ostensible onset of bi-polar disorder in 1964 to its latest treatment with a second and a third medication package, fluvoxamine and now sodium valproate giving me a haven of peace. I can say with some pleasure and a degree of contentment I never had before: “peace at last, peace at last, thank god-almighty, it’s peace at last,” -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, July 26th 2006(updated on 21/11/07 for Daily Strength) Such a long, long story punctuated by slices of a bad dream on a stony, tortuous road, never felt like a message from the gods.....perhaps it was!! A too-conscious memory now leaving in its wake unease, fears, anxieties, hopes, resource for poets and electrophysiological recordings in confusion. Part of a cobweb, semblance of reality in the theatre of life, I am left now with feelings, pictures and meaning looking back in reflection, with gathered associations by that remarkable mechanism the brain and that gentle and delightful tyrant, memory which dominates us softly and ethereally until we die. Ron Price July 26th 2006 (updated 21/11/07)
No problem, ANGRYtomwu. With poetry, people either love it, hate it, have no reaction to it---or simply don't read it. At least you had a reaction.-Ron in Australia
