At the parenting class that I am currently doing with our travelling group, we have been asked to draw one of the biggest challenges that we successfully overcame.
At first I didn’t know what to choose but at the moment I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in, I knew exactly what it was.
And to share it and talk about it openly, I took a lot of time and a decent amount of courage.
But the more I work with my self and learn my self to know from inside out, the more work I put into working with others, I realise how hard is to talk openly when it comes to certain topics.
I am ok with opening this up now and I want to share cause I believe that far to many things, emotions, struggles are kept in secret in the places inside of us that we don’t know what to do with, where they become heavy burdens and a lot for one to carry on in the world where challenges are a normal part of every day life ( not only the traveling one).
So the one of the biggest challenges, the one that actually got me to look into a therapy 3 years ago, was my ANGER.
It led me to the point where I could see how harmful it was and how helpless I was when my anger filled me up - and that was happening more and more often with the time I was providing for small humans.
Being a mom for the first time and then second and third escalated everything. Being a parent it usually does to us: bring all our struggles, childhood traumas and unhealthy patterns and reactions and when feelings and hormones and sleepless nights kick in, it can leave us completely swiped away, frustrated and overwhelmed with guilt and shame and all that uncomfortable underneath. It kind of starts a cycle where we try over and over again to overcome the struggle but just to find more of it in our failure to succeed.
Back to me. I had so much anger and I really didn’t know why. I didn’t know what to do with it, I didn’t learn a healthy way of staying with my anger and releasing it from my system. I was just so angry: angry on my partner for not meeting my expectations of what ever everyday life brought: dishes, laundry, taking care of the kids, making me happy…I was angry of my kids: being them self, demanding more and more and not compelling my ideas and needs…I was angry on my self for not meeting other needs, for being a human, for feeling all those unpleasant emotions, for screaming and yelling at others (those that I actually care the most for)…
There were so many things that got into my insecurities and tender spots, there was so many triggers to start the chain reaction and even though I knew the theory behind, I didn’t know the proper way to react. I just couldn’t do something that I wasn’t taught. And my therapy showed me how I couldn’t do something that my own parents weren’t able to do themselves. If we aren’t modelled something through out our own growing up, we probably won’t learn it before we as a grownups ourselves search for that.
It took so long time because I felt so much shame of feeling the anger. But I will learn how it runs in my family and how it is a big part of my trans generational trauma to carry on so much anger.
And to tell something, and to repeat for those needing to hear, there is nothing wrong with ANGER or you feeling it.
If you were conditioned to feel bad when you were angry, if you might have been shamed or even punished for expressing it, I am sorry for you to have been through that, I am sorry that no-one was able to hold you lovingly and have capacity to hold your anger with you.
ANGER is a healthy emotion that everyone feels (more often or less) and it is perfectly normal to be angry.
My anger was huge and was complex and so so heavy to carry further on. Luckily, at the point I felt it was harming me most, I seaked and found the right help.
My therapist helped me to re-pattern conditioning about feeling anger and then showing me tools to react when being angry - tools that were healthy and right one for me to use. I used them a lot, much more in the beginning and still occasionally when I feel this big anger moving inside. I learned how to sit with my anger, how to respect it, and what to learn from it, I even learned to love it as I now know how it helps me and shows me sides of myself that need my love and attention.
In our family we refer to “pushing the wall” or “breathing a dragon” and my kids now now when to lovingly remind me to go and “push a wall” - a physical act of placing my hands to the wall (or anything strong and static that is not another human) and push through the anger which realises all the energy and shifts my anger into liberation of what ever lies underneath and needs to be released.
What I was a shame of before, makes me now proud and content as it is one of my strongest tools in dealing with the world and myself. I didn’t overcame my anger but I learned how to accept it and how to be with it without harming others and myself.
It is not a perfect mechanism but it is a work in progress that becomes easier as it repeats.
What I hated about my self before and what made me smaller, now derivates a huge power and strength in one. I want to spread the word about it and help others to find their way in sitting with uncomfortable feelings of what ever that might be, learning to deal with them in a healthy and loving way.