‘Suffocation’

A sample from Book 12

 Suffocation
  
 this heart
renders a need
to hurt, to bleed
 that moment
joy
wants to intercede
 I halt its need
to proceed
  
 happy's unending
perseverance
to feed

 fear takes over me
 stopping
pathways in receive
 ‒instill in me
to believe
 every thought
in my mind–
 it's always in conceive
the reaction of angry
 it's heart-stealing deceive
 as a child
is all I did see
  
 I push hard
to the dream–
if I could just free me
 –all that anger
I did see
 a child
not long in maturity
 lose myself
in its captivity
 of what it means
to be me

Anger discharges arousal, but only temporarily. Right after a blowup, people often feel oddly relaxed, like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders. It seems like they can breathe again. Even tough these effects are brief, and tension soon returns, the anger discharge can be highly reinforcing. You get a break from everything that frustrates and overwhelms you.—from The Anger Control Workbook by Dr. Matthew McKay and Dr. Peter Rogers.

But there’s a downside to using anger for stress reduction. The stress comes back with a vengeance. Studies show that anger creates more anger. Blowing up makes it more likely that you’ll blow up again soon. Each time you indulge in anger to cope with stress, the next outburst becomes that much easier and stronger…and harder to control.

Can you relate to the above quote? I can. For me, it has gotten worse over time. As I seen in my personal life, people label you faster than you can blink an eye instead of helping you. Most of us just need help…something that can free us of this suffocation of anger.

How did we get this? Most of it comes from our childhood, then those of us who go on into the military are trained to hone in on this anger emotion so that we can stand the wall, then we enter civilian life again and no one tells us how to undo this training. We then try to develop a normal life by getting married, having children, building homes, building careers. There comes a point that we need this help, but we don’t know it. We just float along with everything going on in life, missing important red flags that begin to trigger a massive explosion.

How to get better? We first have to want to get better. People can say heal all day long. Those of us who really need the help are, a lot of the times, also very stubborn, independent people. We don’t listen. I often said back in 2012 when my darkness fell on me that if all those people who went to church would just take me and the ex into the woods and leave us there, it would force us to talk and get it all out and figure what is causing all the anger. They didn’t. No one came.

I went through six years of therapy. I never talked about the true nature of what made me angry. I’m still not rightly sure. But I do know that when you get to a point that everyone isn’t talking to you, yet you feel okay except those moments, something has to give.

‘Suffocation’…how we see the adults behave when we are children comes back on us as adults. You can deny this all you want. It does. And if we don’t take the time to deal with this behavior that has become who we are, we pass it onto the next generation and the cycle never ends. This behavior leads us to abusive marriages, codependency, PTSD, anger, frustration, and depression. The cycle keeps revolving over and over. I saw it in my mother, in my grandmother, in my sisters.

Of all the things I’ve written about, I denied this outright! I, of course, talk a lot about anger and depression and PTSD and fibro and divorce and abuse. Sure. Something leads to all of that. And it is our job to shift through all the shit and get well. We don’t have mental illness as much as we have fears and anger bottled inside of us and we explode at a drop of a dime or we let that evil negative self-talk hinder our growth.

The intervention. It fucking hurts. This is not the first time in the past seven years that I was forced into this intervention deal. The first couple of times it was byway of my daughter. We had some serious fights. We said some horrible things to each other. She left. I didn’t learn. Oh, I didn’t say I didn’t try. Read my books. I tried hard. There’s was just this key that was missing.

There has to be resources in place, people in place that support you, but won’t let you give in to hurt, self-pity. You might think I write a lot of shit. I know I don’t. I reread every single word I’ve written that became books and everything I did, said, wrote…came to pass. If it’s put into my heart, I’m going to write about it eventually. This is no different. It is therapy. Yes. But it’s so much more than that.

‘Suffocation’…Stripping what causes our anger, that death emotion, away and learning to replace it with calmer reactions and emotions. I’m in a forced halt with my environment. Intervention. I want to so bad scream, cuss, leave forever him…but that’s not my heart. That’s my anger. Take care of yourself. He tells me that. [I’m talking about he sweet man here.] And this part is what I really had missing my first intervention deals. Having that person that you love encourage you, force you to take care of you no matter how much it hurts made me go find groups and workbooks to help me deal with this inside anger once and for all.

Anger costs. It’s a constant start and stop mess. Not good when you find love. Not good at all. My constant moving. My constant outbursts. All because I failed to really deal with what hurt me deep down inside. God brought me to a very nice place to deal. I’m not totally alone. He calls me. I feel very grateful to have all of this in place for me. I still feel that I’m being prepared for something. What that something is, I have no idea, but everything happens for a reason.

Get out of hurt. I’m told that again and again. It’s not that easy. Abuse comes from anger. You see it. You experience it. You do it. You run. You battle with yourself all the time. Give it up and deal. You have to get yourself out of suffocation before you can give happy a try. Whatever is in there, way down deep, we have to dig it out and let the hole heal. It’s a very tough order to make. But when you are tired of being angry, tired of living in this race against time, tired of the negative self-talk, tired of things going around in stupid circles, you have to stop and look in the mirror…one more time, and the hardest look you’ve ever had.

All that happened to us, is not our fault. We don’t have to pass it down to our children. We don’t have to keep living like this. We gain weight, we cry, we push everyone away, we put ourselves in this negative sparrow. Stop. I’m telling myself this as well. Stop. It wasn’t our fault. We have to deal. We can heal. We can learn not to be angry. I have a book sitting right here that says I can. Another book you can read is When Anger Hurts by the same authors as the quote above. I don’t want those I love to hurt anymore because of things I say. I don’t want to be angry anymore. I want to enjoy what life I have left. I’ve wasted too much time on being angry, on assuming, on depression, on bringing my own self down, on hurting the one that walks by my side. Enough. Stop.

I don’t know what is coming when it comes to my journey. If you are a reader of me, you know that the numbers of my address, where I live, always tells a tale of sorts of what’s to come. The initial address I had when I first came out here added up to 8. Fitting. The circle of 8. The completion. My current official address adds up to 19. Next year is 2019. That’s extraordinary to me. We shall see.

We can’t change the way we respond to others and events without first learning how to react when it comes to our emotions. This is really hard for me to do. I’ve did myself a disservice by discontinuing the practice I had started back in 2014. That fault lies with me. I’m getting it back and I’m going to go further and learn how not to lose it again. If that makes sense.

Love the skin you are in. I look back on my life and thank God every day that I wrote all of this down. I learned a lot. I forgot a lot. But life is a cycle that doesn’t stop. We have to trust that those we love will still love us when we’ve come out the hole we’ve dug for ourselves. Hope. There’s always hope. Keep the faith.

Get Your Copy Today!

Paperback: The Metamorphosis of Self—Into the Light…Rebuilding with Bricks Thrown Book 12

Kindle: The Metamorphosis of Self—Into the Light…Rebuilding with Bricks Thrown Book 12