Anger. Understanding. Book Thursday.

A friend pointed me to Lynne Namka, Ed.D.’s book, “Your Quick Anger Makeover: Plus Twenty Other Cutting-Edge Techniques to Release Anger!”

It is a free ebook, available from the site, Time to Love Yourself, which you can go to by clicking here.

Namka, who has a Doctor’s in Education, specializes in helping children and families cope with anger.

I’m only 45 pages into the 240-page “Your Quick Anger Makeover,” but every page is a healing balm to my anger over the recent loss of my sister-in-law. (see related post, Anger. Stages of Grief.)

My sister-in-law, in her later years, came to be very angry over a childhood trauma. Family and friends were unequal to the task of helping her heal.

Namka’s book specifically focuses on this kind of anger, believing that most unrelieved anger in adults can be traced back to unresolved traumatic events in childhood.

Namka says that when a child experiences trauma that is too large for a child’s ability to cope, they separate mentally, to isolate the trauma and continue on.

This often only comes out in later adult years when they are more equipped, emotionally, to confront the effects of the trauma.

I heard a commentator on a radio show several years ago discussing what we used to call “split personalities.” This condition is now called disassociative identity disorder (DID), or multiple personality disorder.

The expert on the show said this usually happens when there is prolonged trauma in a child’s life that they cannot escape. It is a survival technique.

A woman called into the show and said she was the victim of such trauma and she is very grateful that her mind was able to protect her by disassociating from the reality she could not escape, until she grew up and was better able to cope with it.

Much of Namka’s book focuses on tools to cope with childhood trauma as an adult and the anger that results.

Her techniques and insights are useful whether such anger turns into a clinical diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, or simply interferes with the ability to lead a healthy life.

She acknowledges that much of this work can only be done with the caring guidance of a counselor or therapist.

But, even reading about how the healing process will work, with suggested exercises to follow on your own, would ease work with a therapist later.

One of the many exercises she describes speaks to the understanding that parts of a child’s emotional self break off to isolate the trauma:

1. Let a memory of the trauma emerge

2. Use your imagination to call the disassociated angry child to you.

3. Soften your heart into love.

4. Thank this child for being the protector of the frightened child within.

5. Keep your child part safe by being there in ways their parent could not be.

6. Forgive the child part that slipped out to avoid feeling bad.

7. Welcome and comfort the child.

Thank you, Dr. Namka, for explaining the cause and effects of anger and the process toward healing.

I still have a ways to go to get over my anger over the loss of my sister-in-law.

But, every page in this book helps.

To you, those you have loved and lost, and the healing that comes after.