In a previous post I mentioned that my husband said recently that he didn't realize when he met me that I had so much anger. He just thought I was a nice, happy person. And I was happy when I was with him, but that couldn't fix the rest of my life.
Since coming here I've made a lot of progress thanks to all I have learned here from you and from also being able to post my thoughts and have others read them.
This weekend something happened (that I won't go into here as it is personal). But I need some help with the anger it brought to the surface. My husband can't help because it is affecting him too much. And he has many similar problems, due to voicelessness, that I have. So, we are not able to help each other at this time. I am not sure where I'm going with this yet, so the help I need might be just to have the freedom to try and pin it down in this post. It seems "big" to me. This trouble I'm having with my anger. It has always been there. So many causes. And I have always been afraid of it because of what it has led to. Not being liked, feeling humiliated, utter, complete and total frustration. You know, the kind of frustration where you're just a little kid and crying and screaming and just getting laughed at and there is no where to go with any of it. No relief. No refuge. I cannot have been the only little kid who had to live like that. But it has sure felt like it most of my life. So, I taught myself to bottle it up. It came out often. But the goal was to obliterate it. This anger.
I figured something out awhile back, but I wasn't sure if I was on the right track because it didn't feel like an aha! It seemed correct, but just some small part of it. What I figured out had to do with my co-worker who triggers such intense dislike from me. The one who is junior to me yet seems to not have to work as hard as me, etc. It finally occurred to me that I am replaying a very significant dynamic from my childhood. She reminds me of how my sister, who was younger than me and behaved quite poorly at all times, still managed to run the entire family. I always had to give in or give up anything I wanted, or might want, in order to keep the peace, or get ready to keep the peace. Always. It was a daily, sometimes hourly, consideration in my life. My mother always gave the impression that she was keeping things fair or even. But in reality it was not fair or even. The table was always tipped in my sister's favor. And even if things had been materially fair and even, there is a drawback to fairness. If you treat everybody equally, well, then where is anybody's motivation to contribute fairly? My sister could lie, misbehave, be all kinds of trouble for everyone, and still receive what I received. Often she even received more. Materially and attention-wise.
I think I'm seeing the same thing, or being reminded of it, because of how it seems to me I am being treated, or how I am acting, at work. But this knowledge hasn't changed anything. It has just made me aware now. So, I'm somewhat angry all the time anyway. Constantly reminded.
So, this weekend, something happened which made me feel completely disregarded. Something that I had said needed to happen, well, just the opposite happened. Not the first time either. And while it was happening, I was watching it and seeing that it was done purposefully. My request was being blatantly disregarded. I had a choice of saying, stop it, and then being blamed for the bad outcome. I had a choice of doing what I did, which was to do nothing except watch. And feel my feelings. And ended up being disregarded. Which also feels like being blamed.
So, for the first time since coming here, I have to feel this anger. Big anger. It is different now. I think there is less internal pressure since I'm not bottling it up. I think there is a lot of it in there, though. So, I still feel the need to be very careful. It makes me feel very restless. It's hard to sleep.
This sounds so dry and clinical. That's not how it feels. It feels like I'm on a different planet. All by myself. I can't think of a thing to do with this except keep feeling it. My husband is beyond frustrated with me. For awhile I actually thought to myself, I should go sleep with someone else and really betray him. He still likes to throw that in my face every so often. Then I remembered, duh! those were emotional affairs, those guys didn't really want to do the things you thought they wanted to do. They were just playing a game. And not even thinking for one moment about your feelings getting hurt. Just ran roughshod over your heart for no big reason other than maybe they were bored or something. And remember, you're not actually capable of connecting with normal people who might connect back. If an affair can be considered a normal connection. You silly, silly girl.
I don't know how long it takes to feel all the anger I have in me. There is a lot of it. I don't know how it's going to come out. So, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, oh it's going to take forever. The rest of your life. Of course, I can't really know such a thing. In fact, it is quite unlikely to take that long. It's just that it doesn't feel the way I thought it would feel when it started to assert itself. I thought I would cry more. Or feel a really big aha! It doesn't feel that way at all. I can feel it all over my body, coursing around in a very insolent manner. Something I'm completely unused to. Does anger feel different when it is felt by someone who is "aware"? I wasn't aware before I came here. I was uninformed. So, is that why it feels so odd? How healthy is it to let anger out? I don't necessarily think that venting is all that healthy. But is letting my anger exist and be felt, is that the same as venting? I don't think so. I'm not really willing for it to be.
I think that many big problems are feeding this anger. There doesn't seem to be a refuge for me from any of it. I go to work and am triggered by the unfairness of the place, the built-in disrespect, the dynamic with that co-worker. I come home and there is my husband with his accusing face. This is how my life felt when I was fourteen and everything fell apart and went wrong. Back then I got lost in it. This time I hope to see the forest for the trees. But it feels like such a burden. I have always thought, you can survive anything the first time it happens. But to go through it again, having the knowledge of what is coming, that is much more of a trick. Much, much harder to succeed with.
Did any of you ever conquer or recover from this much anger? Come out on the other side of it and then be able to go on and feel anger as it occurs and not let it become a disease again? What does it feel like to be on the other side of it? I don't sense that it was a problem for a lot of you here. It seems like other emotions or issues come up more often than this consuming type of anger. But maybe I'm wrong about that and it just hasn't come up as a topic lately.
Floundering here, I know. But I've known for awhile that I would have to deal with this. It just kind of came up now by accident. God at work again in my life. I sure didn't see it coming. But it's here now. It seems like this is going to take awhile.
I think I have mentioned most of what I'm thinking about. My hope is that there is someone of you out there who has actually had to deal specifically with the emotion of anger in your own body. But any feedback at all has got to be helpful since I'm feeling very ignorant at the moment. I think it is possible that many of you have had to deal with an angry person in your life and that this post may act as a trigger. Because of that possibility I won't feel offended if few people feel up to responding. Hopefully the title of this post properly reflects the content. Responses or not, I'm going to be working on this anyway. It will go the way it goes. Must be I still have some hope for a good outcome.
Pennyplant
