Anger Management

After many months of therapy and several recent weeks of introspection, I concluded that I have a problem with anger.  Specifically, I have misplaced mine.  I have no recollection of getting angry with anyone since I was a teenager.  No fights, no arguments, nothing.  I just don't get angry.  I don't know how.  This is not good.

It turns out that not getting angry has put me in a place I don't like being in.  However, thanks to countless hours with my therapist and many more spent probing my own head, I've come to realize that being angry and expressing it properly is an integral part of emotional health.  So, now, as an adult who has ignored anger for half her life, I need to learn a few new tricks: i) I need to learn how to recognize anger and ii) I need to learn how to express it.

So far, I'm still working on step one.  What I've learned is that there's a huge list of things that have happened in the last 20 years that I'm angry about.  Very angry in some cases.  Unfortunately, it's a bit late to go back and express my opinion about these events now.  Even if I did, I've lost the edge and the impact of my expression will be greatly blunted.  But I've managed to verbalize my list and recognize that these incidents affected me adversely.  That's something, at least.

I'm still very slow to recognize anger.  I still don't get it as it happens -- it usually takes me a day or two to realize what I'm feeling.  The new challenge is to muster up the courage to then do something about it.  My current theory is along the lines of "better late than never".  I figure I'll go with that until I manage to speed up the feeling to thought process.  For years I seem to have just skipped over the feeling part and went straight to thought. (Apparently, I've become very good at avoiding many of my feelings and tend to intellectualize them, but for right now I'm working on anger.)  The ultimate goal, of course, is to merge the feeling with the thought so that I can actually do something about it as it happens.  I've been told it's much more effective that way, and therefore, much healthier.

It's a scary thing, all this self-discovery.  Because once you realize how messed up you are, you really have to just buck up and start fixing things.  It's never easy to admit one's shortcomings and it's even tougher to look them head on and decide to improve upon them, especially if you haven't the foggiest idea how to go about doing it.  But it must be done if I'm ever going to be the happy, healthy person I want to be and need to be.  How can I ever hope to be a successful healer if I can't help myself first?

ps - I was reading this article today and came across this sentence: "Canadians are certainly good and worthy folks, but they suffer an excess of civil obedience, politeness and lack of civic rage that could be harnessed to combat political atrophy."  I wonder if perhaps I couldn't just change the context of this slightly and apply it directly to myself: "As a Canadian, I am good and worthy but suffer an excess of obedience, politeness and lack of rage that should be harnessed to combat emotional atrophy."   

Tears II

It sucks when you realize how messed up you are.  After weeks of introspection and a visit to my therapist to discuss my findings, that's exactly what happened: I found out how truly messed up I am (at least in certain respects).  The other thing that happened was that my therapist told me that it was ok to feel what I had been avoiding for a very, very, very long time.  The result was that I began to cry -- and continued to cry, sometimes wail, off and on for two days.  Today, at least, I've managed to get through the day without shedding any tears (although I came close this morning), which, oddly enough, I'm not sure I consider an improvement.  I'm still a mess and I expect to be for the foreseeable future but I know that it's all part of the journey.  All this learning and growing is tough shit.  The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I'll be a better, stronger and happier person if I ever make it through. 

Tears

So many tears.  So many reasons for them.  So many feelings causing them.  Anger, fear, frustration, doubt, sadness, confusion, despair.  I don't even know where to start making sense of it all so for now I won't.  For now I let them fall, slide, drip, run.  Release and cleanse.  I won't think about what they mean, I'll just accept them for what they are.  They are me.  They are my emotions.  And for now, I have no other way of expressing them but in tears.

Relate and Repopulate

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about being alone.  She is a single (widowed) mom to two young girls and knows very well what it means to be alone.  However, the conversation we were having was not about her, but about me.


Over the course of the past 15 years I have moved a lot: I've lived in 10 cities in 5 countries.  What this means is that I have a multitude of friends all over the world but that, whenever I end up in a new place, I am more or less alone and have to be very reliant upon myself.  I think I've done a pretty good job of it, having raised my kids thus far without the help of anyone but my husband and having negotiated the day to day doldrums of setting up house and making a life for my myself and my family on 3 continents.  This also means that I have always lived far away from family and have never lived in one place long enough to have built up any sort of support network of friends.  Usually, by the time I've lived anywhere long enough to have a close, reliable circle of people I can trust, we move.  So, I'm pretty used to being on my own.

Let me interject here that being alone is not the same as being lonely.  Being alone does not necessarily cause one to be lonely, and one can feel tremendously alone even when surrounded by people.  But loneliness aside, I have lately become very aware of how very alone I am at present: no extended family around, I've let most of my local friendships lapse and my marriage is not what it should be. 


But, after pondering this for some time, I've decided that there is a reason for my present situation.  As a friend of mine said, I'm figuring out who I am so I can be my own person, find my own path and put the people I need and want on that path with me.  It would seem that I have deftly and unconsciously depopulated my life so that I can, at some point, repopulate it with people who understand me, support me and love me for who I am.

Spirits and Things

A couple of months ago, I took my level I Reiki training.  During the meditation following my attunement the second day, I had a very interesting yet, at the time, rather unnerving encounter with a non-physical (the spirit of one who has passed over).  If you'd like, you can read about it here.  A week or so later, I went to see my crystal therapist and had another encounter with a non-physical during the meditation and in a dream that night (it was the same 'person' in both instances).

I hadn't really given either of these encounters much thought since they happened so you can imagine my surprise when my father-in-law showed up while I was in the middle of giving my husband a reiki treatment the other night.  His presence put me a little on edge because a) he always made me nervous and b) he died almost 7 years ago.   The abridged version of this story is that my father-in-law was there simply to let his son know that he loved him.  I relaxed and continued with the reiki session and my father-in-law left.  However, not one to ever do anything simply or quietly, he decided to start tapping on the ceiling (to let my husband know he was there).  This was terribly distracting for me, so he finally did leave -- tapping the ceiling down the length of the house as he left.

When the session was over, I told my husband what had happened.  He was surprised and intrigued and really quite thrilled with this new-found gift I seem to have.  I'm really not sure what to make of my gift.  At the moment, it's a bit unsettling for me to be seeing dead people, although at least so far, they've all been people I know.  More importantly, I'm really not sure what to do with this gift.  I will have to start looking into it and talking to others with the same gift to see what it all means and what I might be able to do with it.

The day following my father-in-law's visit, my husband told his mother about what had happened.  She is no stranger to psychics, spirits and all things other-worldly so was not at all surprised by what had transpired.  In fact, she went so far as to say that she's always known that I'm "special" this way and that my husband needs to understand that I live in a different world.  I think perhaps this would have been good information to have had a long time ago-- although it likely wouldn't have made sense before now.

Timing aside, I've been giving a lot of thought to what she said and I think she's right about the fact that I live in a different world.  At first, I didn't quite know what she meant but I think I do now: the world I live in is full of energy and light that most people can't see or sense.  I've written before about how I often feel so alone and like I just don't fit in.  I think I've just figured out why... 

Absolute Joy

In Friday's class, we had to give a 1-hour massage -- blindfolded.  Many of my classmates were nervous and some were dreading it but I thought the idea was intriguing.  My husband figured it wouldn't make much difference to me; I am so good at feeling people's energy fields that I wouldn't even need to see.  He was right: the blindfold made almost no difference to me at all and I completely enjoyed giving a blind massage.  (In fact, the biggest problem I had was that in not looking at my client, I found my head lolling about and ended up getting a kink in my neck.)

By the end of class, I had received a one hour (blind) massage and given an hour-long blind massage and was feeling pretty good.  That was when one of my instructors came over and told me, "It was an absolute joy to watch you work".  Wow!  It was an absolute joy to hear her say so because for me it was more than just a compliment, it was (yet another) affirmation that I am headed in the right direction.

Everything Happens (For a Reason)

We've all seen versions of this idea before either forwarded to us in an email chain or passed on to us from some wise friend.  Regardless of the source and of the wording, I'm sure we're all familiar with something like these words from Deepak Chopra: 

"Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution."

Any of you keeping up with this blog will know by know that my school has had a profound effect on me, as it does on everyone who chooses to study there.  It is a magical place that guides lost souls on a path of self-discovery, all the while teaching them useful career skills.  As one of my instructors said, learning massage therapy keeps us focused while we learn about who we are.  There is a reason that I found my school at this particular time in my life.

 It's no surprise, then, that the friendships I am building at school are also quite special.  It's been a rather slow process but in the last few weeks I feel as if we are all finally getting to know each other on a less superficial level.  We have moved beyond being classmates and are on our way to becoming friends. 

I've recently been spending quite a bit of time with one classmate in particular.  We have a wealth of common interests and I was struck the last time I was with her by the way that our life experiences are so complimentary to each other.  We each seem to have experiences that will help and guide the other.  I have a feeling that she play an instrumental role in my life over the next six months, in one way or another.

Whether I believe Deepak Chopra who says that everything happens for a reason or Penny in "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog" who simply said, "Everything happens", I am pretty sure that the current relationships in my life will lead me somewhere very interesting -- and I am eager to find out where.