Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers ANGER THREAD - How do YOU deal with it???

Bam. LA- Mine says the same thing. He says it to hurt me. It actually does not have the intended effect. Frankly, I am nothing like my mother except in how I manage my anger with the mouth. Otherwise, nothing. My mother was physically abusive as well. In addition, she is most definitely narcissistic. In some ways, she and H are much more alike than she and I are.

I likely do have OCD. I have ADD and anxiety as well. I have taken meds in the past. I am not on anything now. I have been considering something. If you can even imagine I am all over the place. I try to really do lists and I have to stick with them and do things in short bursts. My calendar is my friend and I have come up with various ways of coping.

I never really thought I was OCD until recently. So perhaps it is compounded by the added anxiety of the sitch?

BTW- My learning style is read/write so I completely understand the book thing ;-) I will check those out.

btw- to add to this- I have an appt with Nurse Practitioner at IC on Monday to see about meds. I also just reread what I wrote and had an A ha moment. lol How ironic that I feel H is like my mother in many ways. I never seemed to connect it before. How dumb is that? I am just repeating my patterns. Staying stuck in the same old doesn't work b s. Hmmm. What now?

My anger comes from way back of course, but in my M it was kindled by my drive to be perfect both at home and on the job and then when I had kids, it really got crazy. I allowed my resentment to grow because I was working so hard to keep all the balls in the air and he was, in my opinion, doing nothing. Or at least not enough. Read my thread for the specifics but we were hand-in-glove.

The perfect storm of dysfunction although we looked good on the outside. (I'm smiling 'cause I know y'all get that)

I love the term live-wire cause it so describes how I felt much of the time.

Counseling, meditation, exercise, yoga all have helped me learn more about my body, my emotions, my reacting. I know that I get tension in my upper body, inc heart rate, and my breathing gets shallow. If I don't slow things down, I get tunnel vision, I can't see anything outside my forward field of vision. Then I know the adrenaline has really dumped and it's hard to come back from there.

But I can, unless I'm being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger.;)

Just dealing with little things on a day to day basis has helped me slow down and ask questions like "How important is this?" "Is this about me?" "What's really upsetting me in this situation?"

And a phrase I learned in AlAnon Q-TIP Quit Taking It Personally has helped immensely. Everything is not about me.

I still have moments but they are at looooooong intervals. I had a minor melt-down at work this week, which in retrospect I could have prevented. I was carrying some stress from a conversation with S19 from the night before and even shed a few tears on my way to work.

I should have know to take a few minutes and deal with that but I didn't.

So I got to work and before 8 am, about 5 frustrating things happened, which all stemmed from long-standing system issues that know one has corrected. I started to unload on my supervisor (a saint) and at one point said "I'm hot!" (meaning angry) At that point I knew I had to back off and get out of the conflict so I said "I need to go outside for a walk" and I did and came back and apologized. From there we were able to have a constructive conversation.

My mistake was not dealing with my stress/internal conflict before.

Thanks for this thread, kg.

OK here's my p-ism no, not know in the parag beginning with So.

I absolutely can relate to that. Now do you think it was your desire to control that helped prompt all those balls in the air?

Definitely!

But, if you've read my current thread (I think I saw you there) about emotional unavailability you know that we meshed perfectly. As my IC says, I was always overfunctioning and he was underfunctioning (neither of these is good or bad, it's just who we are/were)

Yes, I had a need to control because in my childhood back story, if things weren't done and done right, the boom was lowered with a vengeance. Like you, my survival skills did not serve me well as an adult.

About the underfunctioning vs overfunctioning, they are both unhealthy must not judging either me of my H as good or bad.

KG thank you for starting this thread. I have been reading and thinking.

I think I have started, since i began DB, to recognize what makes me angry and i am starting to understand what emotion is behind the anger.

I carried a lot of anger with me in my teens and into my adult/M life. And that stemmed from (previously documented) my dad leaving us, my R with my dad and my own parents M and D.

That anger was masking up hurt, feelings of abandonment and injustice. That it wasn't fair that i didn't have a 'normal' family growing up. I felt different from other children and I had a deep longing to feel complete. So i covered it up in anger and defiance. I HAD to be right in my Rs because I had to feel CONTROL so that I wouldn't be left again.

I had to have the last word and I had to convince people why I was right. I guess I needed to feel validation for my feelings but because I masked it in anger and self righteousness, i got very little validation for those deep seated feelings.

So of course when I entered my M I had visions of what was SUPPOSED to be. I knew my H had emotional trauma (his mum passed away with aggressive cancer when he was 14- and his life changed dramatically afterwards). He was emotionally distant, and while there were times when he expressed his emotions to me, I knew there was a lot more underneath. I, of course, thought I would be able to fix him and make him feel better. I expected that with time, he would be able to open up with me.

I thought that was SUPPOSED to happen.

Yet, I was still carrying on with my anger. I responded in angry, i acted in anger, i thought in anger. All stemming from fear that I was not good enough,, that I will be abandoned again, that I was not creating the perfect M. And I also expected my H to take care of me and treasure me. And do ANYTHING to make me feel better.

ugh...so much anger. So many expectations on both sides. So much emotional distance under the illusion that we were both emotionally healthy and of course, RIGHT.


Fast forward to today. Now that I have begun to understand more, I recognize that when I start to feel anger by stomach actually turns. My breath goes short and i begin to 'freeze' mentally and emotionally. I cannot see past my nose.

So when i recognize that i can pull myself back and widen my vision and begin to see more of what things are really about. e.g. the anger is because i have visions of H and OW. but really that makes me feel hurt and sad and betrayed. and i feel injustice. But its not in my hands to CONTROL. So i can let it go.

I now recognize that and I try to apply it to all aspects of my current sitch in addition to my work Rs and my children and even my friendships.

I have less need to rant and rave, and more desire to find my inner calm. I have more desire to be happy (thanks 25). I have much more desire to be positive. I realized that even in the past when i thought i was being 'mature' emotionally i was really just being passive aggressive. snide comments. Always trying to trump my opponent.

My anger led me to nag and complain a lot in my M. I blamed anyone else but me. And even when i would apologize, it wasn't a learning experience that I moved forward from, i repeated the same patterns because I had to be right. Still needed some sort of validation for all of the feelings underlying the anger.

I really just wanted to know that I could be loved and that it was going to be ok.

And that meant i was not being the partner my H needed as well.

I focus now on what really matters to me. And that is my family and me being a better person. When i can accept the emotions i feel at the time i can process them, instead of deny them while masking them in a self righteous anger.

So much to think about KG. Thank you ((((( )))))

p.s. I also believe that I was carrying around some depression for a long while, and again masked it in anger. I did take meds for a while and they helped me, but it wasn't until i really started to DB that i could work through those issues with myself.

Now that i am starting to 'see' better, i see so much of the pain H has been carrying with him all of these years. The love was never a question. it was how i expressed it to him. It gave him no hope as the years went on.

Now that I see that..., what I could actually give to my H, my REAl self...well it is probably too little too late...but of course i still have the hope that it could be better late than never.

I had major issues with anger before. I wouldn't get angry for nothing, but once I got angry it was hard to calm down and it usually escalated a lot.

How did I deal with it? I didn't. I let it rip me apart, and it left me with a lot of regret I can never undo.

I finally realized how anger only made my life and everything in it worse.

Today, that side of me is gone, it changed me.


I'm happy that I've changed, but I wish I would have a lot sooner than I did.

Don't let the anger destroy you! You obviously seek help as you are posting here, that's great. Keep going this way!