OverFlow: How To Deal With Anger & Aggression
Been having trouble dealing with these strong feelings post-stroke. Why?
OverFlow is what happens when I overthink, overflow, and over-everything. When my feelings have nowhere to go, I write about them.
When I was a lot younger, I made it a whole project to learn how to deal with my feelings of anger and aggression. So why am I having so much trouble with it now?
Inheriting the Fire of My Feelings
As a child, my temper was always demonized by elders. I saw displays of temper by adults as beginning points for fights, medical emergencies, and longstanding misunderstandings. I heard people talk of anger and aggression as negative traits of my father and his family — and I heard them say that I inherited them.
It was always treated as a problem. I had to rein in my temper because it was my responsibility to do so. I never had the opportunity to make it my own or display it as a real version of myself. I wasn’t supposed to be angry.
When I was belittled because I was the youngest in my family, I couldn’t be angry. When I wasn’t listened to and made to be the one to suffer because I could take it anyway, and other family members got away with whatever it was they were doing that bothered me, I couldn’t be angry. I couldn’t be myself, in the way that I wanted.
People-Pleasing to Be Kinder to My Body
In my 20s — when I found out I had hypertension and was probably more at risk for experiencing a stroke — I changed my entire way of dealing with my anger because I wanted to survive. I was already a people-pleaser at this point, but I went way overboard. I don’t think I’ve ever shown how angry I can be to the world. I always just say “I’m OK” and get through whatever I need to be going through.
And then I had a stroke. Not one that was caused by any cardiac issue or any strong feeling, so I guess I can’t blame my temper for this. Maybe that broke me, I don’t know. When I had a stroke and it wasn’t because of me feeling my emotions, my brain just went a little weird. I rewired myself to never show my anger and this still happened? What the hell.
During the pandemic, I also worked on myself a lot and I got pretty good at identifying when I was being a people-pleaser. And I hated it! I hated what it said about me and how I’ve been doing it for so long as a survival tactic. Why did I make it my responsibility to please other people when I had myself to focus on and I couldn’t even do that properly? Everyone has their own baggage from childhood, but this one felt too big to leave behind without unpacking.
Dealing With Anger and Aggression Now
I’ve talked to my therapist about this a bit, and also to medical doctors, because it scares me. I’m telling you now that I’ve consulted professionals, so you don’t get scared for me.
When there’s a huge surge of anger or aggression in me, I start to develop a headache. It starts behind my left eye and doesn’t go away until I’ve resolved my feelings — usually through meditation.
The worst examples of this happen when I’m in a fight with my husband. I have to say, “Let’s pause this fight because I can’t concentrate on it right now.” I lie down with a cold pack on my head. How can that be beneficial to us as a couple? Ugh. But it happens when I come across a storyline or piece of news I don’t like when I’m reading or watching something. Something angers me and then I can’t finish reading or watching it.
And the entire time I’m calming myself down and trying to get rid of the headache, I’m always in fear that I’ll have another stroke — even though the last one didn’t start with a headache. How can I deal with this?
Going to Therapy
I think maybe the headache starts because I think I shouldn’t feel the amount of anger that’s in me. Maybe that last stroke has shown me that tamping down strong feelings doesn’t really help me, so now my heart doesn’t know how to feel. Should I let myself feel what I feel or should I let things go like I usually do?
Therapy helps. What a difference it is to be able to say everything you’ve ever wanted to say, without being judged or expected to think or act a certain way! And with therapy, I get to feel everything in a safe space.
What was missing from me working on myself a lot during the first few months of the pandemic was a deep understanding of what people-pleasing did to me. I wasn’t ready to meet my shadow self — the part of me that I never showed anyone because it wouldn’t please anyone. The stroke I had vindicated that shadow self. I really didn’t need to hide that part of me, so why keep on doing it now?
Being Kinder to My Heart
I need to accept that there’s a raging fire in me. Anger and aggression are definitely part of who I am — I inherited that flame of dissent and I never accepted it for the gift it was. But of course, I’ll also need to figure out how to tame that fire.
I’ve become so used to drowning in depression that I can’t imagine drowning in anything else. Sometimes, though, I drown in anger and aggression and I don’t know how to float in it the way I do with pain and sadness.
My father controlled his temper through meditation and through not expecting anything from anyone. I know because I saw him do it. He still slipped from time to time, but in general, it was a great strategy. So I’m doing that now.
I don’t think my father learned how to do the one thing that I think will quiet my shadow self. He never learned how to love his shadow, even though other people did. I loved his shadow, even when it hurt me and the people we both loved. Now I’m facing the same problem my father had — learning to love my shadow. Something that’s been demonized for so long, suddenly worthy of love? I don’t know how to deal with that.
Finding My Next Steps
A lot of what I need to do to fix this, I’d already started when tried to erase people-pleasing from my personality. But the despair of knowing that sometimes, anger and aggression is all you can contribute to a situation — that’s new. I need to be able to settle into that feeling and grasp it as something that is part of me.
Recently, I’ve been called out at work for being “too intense.” I guess that’s part of this entire thing. Maybe my anger and aggression come out when and where it doesn’t belong because I’m still tamping it down when and where I actually feel it. I should learn to lean into those feelings as they happen — while not actually doing anything that would make the situation worse.
At the end of it all, I need to do three things: I need to feel anger and aggression when and where it arises. I also need to love that part of me that feels these emotions, and welcome it as a part of myself. Finally, I need to be okay with being a person that not everyone will like.
Learning From Others
How do you deal with your anger and aggression? Is there anything you can teach me that can help me deal with these strong feelings?
I want so much to be normal, and then I realize that I don’t even know what normal is — how could I if I’m not normal, to begin with? How do normal people deal with their strong feelings? How do people do it without giving themselves a headache?
Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash
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