As I tear down this wall I am rebuilding around myself, the second thing to look at is the unexpressed anger. Those things that reside under the surface and manifest itself in over eating and/or over reacting to something that isn't really the problem.
I am having a hard time with this one. I will admit that in looking back on my life, I used to hold on to a lot of anger. I was constantly swallowing any irritation I felt and carrying around a ton of angry vibes and ill will. Now, I really don't have any. My therapist has me asking myself 3 (or more) times a day to think about how I am feeling, and really tracking the emotions I am having back to the root of the problem. When I do that, I don't carry around a lot of unexpressed anger because I just deal with it right there. Nothing is unexpressed because I face what I am feeling, I figure out if it is worth feeling, I look at it, and I let it go. I don't carry it around.
That said, just because I don't spend a lot of time carrying around unexpressed anger, doesn't mean I have forgotten. As an example, I have a friend that has the ability to get irrationally angry when I tell someone else something I don't tell him. He yells and screams and generally throws a fit, and I don't actually hold any anger toward him anymore, but at the same time, I haven't forgotten that he has the ability to get this way. So when he starts his irrational behavior, and he starts in on how it is supposed to make him feel, I casually mention that it probably makes him feel exactly the same way it has every other time he has gotten irrationally angry over the same thing. And after a few experiences with it, it is something I am tired of so when he starts in, I tell him that I don't need this again, and I tend to shut him out.
Of course this isn't to say that I remain calm and "zen" all the time. I can get angry. I can yell, I can scream and I can be irrational.
I suppose it could be that I am hiding something from myself, but ultimately, I think that I have anger management under control. I recognize when I am angry, I recognize what is causing it, and I can deal with it and release it.
I will be aware of this, and try to look more deeply into the issue of anger, but ultimately I just don't think that repressed anger is part of my problem anymore. That doesn't mean I have gotten cocky about it though, even though I haven't manifest irrational anger toward someone who wasn't challenging me in some time, I am aware of the fact that I have the ability to lie to myself about it, so I will keep the alarms and reminders to check in with my emotions and I will try to remain aware of the situation.
Fear on the other hand, is a completely different story.
Fear I still swallow and keep under the surface. Fear, I hide and lie about. Fear, I keep masked under laziness, excuses and justifications. Fear, I carry with me all the time.
Interestingly, once I reached this part of the blog more than an hour ago, I have found a lot of excuses to distract myself and not complete it. Perhaps I am not yet ready to face my fears. But that is the point of this exercise. I have to face my fear.
I fear failure above anything else. Not that I will end up in financial ruin, or that I will fail to keep my children fed or whatever. Perhaps there will be occasion where we have to tighten the purse strings and they don't get everything their little hearts desire, but that isn't failure.
The failure I am talking about is a failure to live up to expectation, either explicit or implied. I don't want to feel like I somehow fell short of the mark. I have all this promise, all this potential, all this whatever. But what happens when I work at it, and still don't improve?
My husband likes to remind me that I am lazy...like that is going to get me off my ass to do what he wants. But his friend M is not lazy...she is paralyzed by fear. I sometimes wonder if because I don't have apparent social anxiety and I don't lay in my bed all day that it seems to him that I must be functioning just fine. It is fear that stops me from working on those things I could do to improve my skill sets.
I don't play music all the time and work on getting better, because what if in the end, I still am only as good as I am. I can sight read music fairly well, I can pick up instruments and play them okay. I'm not great, but what I do is enough to impress a few people. I'm not getting a record deal or whatever, but it's a nice parlor trick..."Oh, you don't really play that much, wow you are decent for never having played that song before." That is so much better than, "You practiced for how long? Yeah, that is way better than I could play it, but it took you how many hours of intense work to get there?" Totally not worth the effort.
Art was the same way. I can draw fairly decently. I'm not great and I won't be great, but I can do a good enough job to get the point across. What if I work on it and work on it, and don't get better? I spent some time working on developing facial features. I worked on it with a training program for awhile and I didn't see much in the way of improvement. I was still sloppy. Yes, I got discouraged very quickly, but it is the fear that I will never get any better than, meh, that had me quitting.
Then comes the fear of disappointing my family. If I am in the middle of a book and I want to read it, and I get interrupted to make chicken nuggets, wipe a runny nose or cuddle, it irritates me just a little. I hate being interrupted. If I am distracted from a silly game, I can put it aside without much trouble. If I am on the couch, bored with a ball game, but entertaining myself with facebook on my phone where I can respond to J if need be, I feel like I am giving him at least some time, where if I tell him I need an hour of no distraction for a meditation practice, he will tell me that I never spend time with him, it is always work, then this, then that, then something else. At least if I am on the couch with him, it is time with him...right?
Anytime there is a perceived expectation, I get a sense of paralyzing fear.
Stage fright...comes from the expectation that I have to entertain the crowd.
The intense nervousness, every time I belt test? Fear that I didn't improve enough to pass.
I live my life in near constant fear. But I have found the level of work that makes everyone around me "happy" and so I do just what I need to do to succeed. I don't do more, because what if that more isn't really good enough?
Lazy? I will accept that as a word to express what it appears to the outside. I am okay with that. I accept that to anyone not in my head I appear lazy. I'll wager a guess though, that many people who appear lazy, appear that way because of deeply seeded fear. I could be wrong.
I could go on an on about my specific fears, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that I fear I will be a disappointment to people. The moment someone tells me I have talent, the first thing that happens is that I feel really good, then I drop into an intense fear that now they expect me to get better. And once the fear sets in, all of my good intentions go out the window. I can't seem to function beyond the level at which I currently exist. I can't motivate myself to improve. What if I try to improve, and it wasn't talent at all it was just luck?
Yes, practice and improving takes hard work, but no matter what anyone thinks, I am not opposed to hard work. I am willing to put effort into things I see being an improvement to my life and to the lives of those around me. I find myself unwilling to put effort into anything where I think there is a level of expectation.
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