If you are on our website and even reading this, it is usually because you desire more than most people, to become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, to grow in love of God and neighbor, to love them as you love yourself. Yet in the struggle to do this, and in failing so often to do it well, we are angry with ourselves, and perhaps with others, who fail or have failed in the past to help us in this. Parents, priests, teachers… so often they have disappointed us! Yet we know anger is a poor response, so we repress it and hide it away deep inside, until it reveals itself one way or another.
I think some of the best yet most angry people I know, are amongst traditional Catholics, who feel as if they have been abandoned by the very ones who should lead them to God. We are exhausted by traveling long miles to find a Mass that isn’t too liberal to attend, and as good Catholic schools are few and far between, we often school our children at home, and this too is tiring. I have overheard many exasperated conversations upon these topics and others, and have been a part of them myself. Haven’t you? Where is the peace amidst the conflict? Rather, there is much discontent. Instead of drowning your anger inside where it will only stew and turn into something rotten, learn how to deal with it.
This book will help immensely, but I forewarn you. You will nod your head many times as you read, and recognize yourself and others in many of the situations, and so think you have understood. But you haven’t. Why not? Because there is something we do when we read whether we are aware of it or not. Our pride has a sort of auto-defense mechanism, and when it spies dirt within, it quickly turns our attention away from it, and points to it in our neighbor, our spouse, our friend, everyone but ourselves. So we read and say “Aaah, I understand completely”, when we don’t understand at all! We finish the book and go on with life, and wonder why has nothing changed? And so we go from one self help book to another, each time hoping this is the one! We have only avoided the log in our own eye to gaze instead at the splinter in another. It is a very subtle thing, and I think we do it so often so early, we don’t know we do it at all. I can only tell you this, because I did this myself when I read this book, and I wouldn’t have realized it, except I was working with Dr. Richmond at the same time. I would think I am all mended and ready to proceed with life, yet he would tell me in his polite and gentle way to back up and take a look at my dirt again. Finally, after backing up for the umpteenth time, something marvelous happened. It was like looking at one of those hidden 3-D picture books… you know, the ones that look like a mass of confusion but if you stare long enough a picture emerges? Well, that is what happened with me. Suddenly, I could see this pocket of poison within myself, it was like a boil that needed lanced. I did not want to see this ugly thing, so I’d been subconsciously hiding it for years, yet certain people and situations would rub against it and irritate it so to speak, forcing me to be aware of it. I would suddenly boil over, or drop from fatigue, or become depressed … because after all, I am a good person and good people don’t have such evil inside of them, do they? I began to realize that all of the many situations that rubbed and irritated this sore and made me angry, these situations and people that “prevented” me from being good, were in fact part of the cure God was providing me! One must only see them for what they are, and embrace them properly!
So I am finally beginning to see the dirt within, and realizing it can only be swept up and disposed of when we lift that darn rug and look underneath it… and if your house is anything like mine, that is an ongoing process that will only cease when we die.
Kathy Holbrook,
Owner TradeMark Publishing
From the back cover
We all feel hurt or irritated when someone or something obstructs our needs or desires. Anger, though, in its technical sense refers to the desire to “get even with”—that is, to take revenge on—the cause of the hurt. And there are far better ways to cope with hurt and insult than with anger, because anger itself acts like a poison in your own heart that ultimately degrades the quality of your own life as much as it hurts the life of another person. This small book is written in a clear, non-theological language, and yet it demonstrates the simple, psychological truth of Christian teachings about interpersonal conduct.
92 pages
Paperback $7.95
Other Books & Pamphlets in the Spiritual Healing Series
by Dr. Richmond, Ph.D.
Healing: Emotional hurt and giving the pain to God
Understanding Faith and Doctrine: Belief, Faith, and Tradition
Psychological Traps: including Fear and the theological errors of New Age healing Clinical Issues: Catholic recommendations for Weight Reduction; Smoking Cessation; and treatment of Bipolar Disorder, Depression and Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Personality Disorders
About the Author:
Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and a license as a psychologist (No. PSY 13274) in the state of
He also holds an FAA private pilot certificate. Dr. Richmond has written and maintains two websites:
A Guide to Psychology and its Practice Guide to Psychology: A secular website about the practice of clinical psychology. http://www.guidetopsychology.com/
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