So, Why Am I REALLY Angry? – Day 6

Here continuing with writing self-forgiveness from my writing myself out on How Do I Control My Anger? – Day 1.

Previous self-forgiveness writings are here:

Why Do I Get So Irritated? – Day 2

What’s Causing This Instability? – Day 3

Why Can’t I Get Being A Parent Right? – Day 4

Why Am I Reacting? – Day 5

I forgive myself that I have NOT accepted and allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that when I am/become angry, that I am an in-fact angry at myself. Within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see that there exists only one kind of anger – anger at myself.

I forgive myself that I have NOT accepted and allowed myself to see, realize and understand that this one anger at myself that I have is a consequence of me not being self-honest – and because I am not allowing myself to see myself as the cause/source/origin of my anger and because I do not want to be seen as an ‘angry person‘, I project and suppress my anger so that I do not have to experience it – within this, what I have not seen is that I AM going to experience it – one way or another. The anger is going to emerge from myself as accumulated anger until I blow or I’m going to see outside of myself in/as others and my world. I have not considered stopping and facing the points of self-dishonesty that are the cause of my anger instead of trying to run, hide, ignore, or push the points away.

I forgive myself that I have NOT accepted and allowed myself to STOP myself when and as I experience anger – when and as I am experiencing anger, I become mind-possessed rather than breathing and asking myself: WHY am I angry? WHERE did this anger start? WHICH POINTS in my world have I not been honest with myself about? — If I had allowed myself to ask myself these questions and bring my anger back to myself, I would have assisted and supported myself to not become that ‘angry person‘ that I don’t want to be.

I forgive myself that I have NOT accepted and allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that when another is directing their anger at me, that they are actually angry at themselves for points that they have not been honest with themselves about – the very same thing that I do. Because I have not seen, realized, nor understood this, I take it personal when others direct their anger at me and so I direct my anger at them – I have not allowed myself to see this scenario for what it is: two or more self-dishonest people within separation from ourselves and attempting force another to experience our anger so that we do not have to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take others anger personally, become angry, and then express my anger/outrage at this rather than seeing that it is not personal, not becoming angry, not participating in the fight/battle/competition, breathing, and waiting it out until the energy runs out. I have not allowed myself to see and realize that I do not have to participate in this game.

How Do I Control My Anger? – Day 1

Art By Andrew Gable

I found that it is often difficult to control my anger with my child.  This is more difficult when the child is expressing anger themselves where they are in a fit of rage that includes screaming, crying, swearing, hitting, throwing stuff, and stomping up-and-down.  To add to the intensity of the experience, my child will follow me from room-to-room with this behavior so many times it seems impossible that I can get myself to a space away from the situation where I can stabilize myself.  What eventually happens here is that I get to the point of where I can’t take it anymore and I end up yelling, demanding that the child stop ‘Or Else’, and in the worst cases, physically restraining them.  I have tried talking them through it, I have tried getting them to breath with me, and I’ve tried using distraction – these do not work for very long before the child is back at it again.  I have even tried saying Self-Forgiveness out-loud with the child but this puts them ‘over the edge’ and they becomes abusive and destructive.  In my mind, I work on other ways to approach this with my child to support us and I do not come up with anything that is lasting.  This causes me a great deal of emotion because I am constantly in-conflict with my child – some moments we are calm and some moments it is hell.

I realize that I cannot support my child to sort out their anger until I sort my own anger out.  Also, I feel guilty constantly because I take their anger personal – I mean, I AM responsible for their anger – I birthed the child, I created them, and I’m the main caregiver.  It IS my fault.  I’m also the one responsible for figuring out how to fix this – and I haven’t been able to so I’m feeling like a bad parent and not worthy to take care of and raise a child.

Why am I angry?

I am angry at myself that I cannot diffuse or stop my child’s anger.  I am angry at myself because their outbursts make me extremely uncomfortable: the loud, nerve-grating noise, the physical attacks, and spoken backchat.  I fear what will happen if I don’t stop it and I fear of what will happen if I do.  In my mind I tell myself that I should have this under-control and the fact that I don’t makes me a Bad Parent and a Bad Destonian.  I am angry at myself for bringing a child into the world when I have no clue how to support them – and, if they end up growing into being a bully, violent, and an abuser then I am directly responsible.  I am angry at myself for not knowing any other way to control the child other than using force and fear.

So, after I wrote the above entry, I saw that my child was getting frustrated and angry from a video game that they were playing.  This anger and frustration would ‘set them off’ and I was not able to get them stable with breathing.  That night, we discussed making some changes as the way that we are living is not cool and is not what is best for us.  We agreed that I would collect the video games and that we would work on ourselves and our anger so that we could enjoy our time together.

Since then, our anger has been improving daily which has given us the opportunity to work on the points that lead to anger and points that we express our anger.

From here, with support, I continued to walk the process of understanding my anger and how to no longer allow my anger to control and direct me in the future.  I will be sharing this process in the blogs that follow.