Anger 12 Bitterness

We're looking at anger gone awry - yesterday as a hidden killer - today as Bitterness .

“The mind can move from being troubled to irritated to anger to vengefulness,” Henri Nouwen.

The reservoir of accumulated anger within us might be lying dormant, but very often it activates into grotesque, poisonous, bitter shapes, not recognizable as anger. When a root of bitterness springs to the surface, it not only destroys the person within but relationships without. It contaminates all it touches.
“See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” (Hebrews 12:15 ).

Accumulated, dormant anger has been demonstrated as destructive by a research lab. Charlotte van Oyen Witvliet, an assistant professor of psychology at Hope College, lead a study about memories and blood pressure. When the 71 volunteers were told to recall a past hurt, tests recorded steep spikes in blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tension, the same responses that occur when people are angry. When the volunteers were challenged to imagine empathizing and even forgiving the people who had wronged them, they remained calm by comparison.
Anger can be spontaneous, but Bitterness is a choice.

S.I. McMillen, a physician skillful in writing as well as in practicing medicine, speaks of the devastating effect of bitterness turned into hatred. In “None of These Diseases”, he wrote:
“The moment I start hating a man, I become his slave. I can’t enjoy my work and more because he even controls my thoughts. My resentments produce too many stress hormones in my body and I become fatigued after only a few hours of work. The work I formerly enjoyed is now drudgery. Even vacations cease to give me pleasure. It may be a luxurious car
that I drive along a lake fringed with the autumn beauty of maple, oak and birth.
As far as my experience of pleasure is concerned, I might as well be driving
a wagon in mud and rain. The man I hate hounds me wherever I go.
I can’t escape his tyrannical grasp on my mind. When the waiter serves
me porterhouse steak with french fries, asparagus, crisp salad and
strawberry shortcake smothered with ice cream, it might as well be
stale bread and water. My teeth chew the food and I swallow it,
but the man I hate will not permit me to enjoy it.
The man I hate may be miles from my bedroom; but more cruel
than any slave driver, he whips my thoughts into such a frenzy
that my innerspring mattress becomes a rack of torture. The lowliest
of serfs can sleep, but not I. I really must acknowledge the fact that
I am a slave to every man on whom I pour the vials of my wrath.”

Bitterness may not kill the body (though it could), but it definitely kills the spirit. It kills enjoyment of life.
Next post: anger induced anxiety