My husband and I had a wholloping fight the other night. Well it was really more about me and my lack of control over my anger. I seem to go through these bouts where I get really really angry. When all my emotions just flood over me. And when things are like this, I get even more frustrated because I don’t feel in control.

Let me share my psycho babble with you.

I watched that Sean Hornbeck interview on Oprah the other day. I cried through the whole things. I am not the type of person to sit and cry. The fact that I even let something on TV touch me that deeply was a bit shocking. But I chalked it up to progress. That I was in fact, more whole, because now the evolved me could feel emotions.

(rereading my post, I realize I didn’t describe how I feel about that interview or how it made ME feel… Ha. I have so much work ahead of me)

Later that evening, I was trying to talk to my husband about the interview. I don’t remember what set me off, but he really “shut down” as he often does. To me, I recognized (after the fact) that I felt abandoned. When I was child, I spent much of my time handling things myself. When there was trauma, I was alone. My parents didn’t really recognize my emotions and all emotions were a bad thing. Even joy was encouraged to be repressed. As children we were encouraged always to be under “tight control.”

So when John didn’t really engage with me and help me to peel back my feelings…. It was like tipping over the apple cart. I felt like I was expected to stay in control. I felt like my feeling weren’t validated. I felt like this huge tsunami of emotions… everything I hold together and process without him through the months… come crashing down on me. It’s like I have this emotional damn. And the Sean Hornbeck interview was a pinprick of emotion. And once the emotions started…there was this huge crack… and the damn burst. I could not differentiate the emotions… it didn’t matter. It was just pure emotion.

Suffice to say, it was not my proudest moment as a wife. Because of how I cope in the extremes, the thing I go to is “I just don’t want to do this anymore”. Not that I feel that way really, but I know it will hurt him and it’s the one thing I can say that will get a reaction. And John, because of his past just suppresses everything. And he doesn’t react. (Like my mom … are you seeing a broken triangle here?) But if I go there…. To his worst fears, I get a reaction.

But back to me… we did over the next day or two process everything. I won’t list John’s issues here (even though he said I could), but he recognizes his issues and I recognize (most of) mine.

One thing I realize is that I am continuing to live in the all or nothing area when it comes to emotions. I am not being balanced. By damming up everything and not letting it out as it happens, it becomes something that overwhelms me eventually. Repressing emotions isn’t going to serve me anymore. And I thought I had made so much progress. I thought I was feeling emotions because I wasn’t using food to stuff them anymore. Which isn’t true. I’m just not using that coping skill. Food isn’t the problem Kym… food is the symptom. Turns out… I’m still damning them up and just using different coping skills to deal with them. And my coping skills do not work with a tsunami of emotions. Or rather they are much more effective when used in concert together repairing “breaks” instead of having to build the whole wall.

It is obvious to me too that I am transferring pain and taking it out on my husband. I just group everything under the “pain” heading and can’t pull it apart. I just repress it all and then it doesn’t get processed… just like I did when I was a kid. I don’t know how to process discomfort. I have trouble putting words to my feelings.

Awareness is the first step. First I have to be aware of the pain. Then I have to be able to feel it and describe. I have no idea yet what I will “do” with it. I’m not that far yet. First I just want to recognize it and be able to articulate it.

Hmmm.. probably not even just awareness of pain… probably awareness of all emotion. Including joy. I wonder if joy can tip me over too? I’m going to focus on pain for now….

I am now aware that when I have discomfort, I have trouble articulating it. That includes physical discomfort, that includes frustration, anger… all of it. When I was in life threatening pain from my plastics surgery… I couldn’t explain it to the doctors. My tooth pain I have had for the last month? Couldn’t describe it really. Knew it was there, but couldn’t articulate it. I’m thinking it might be because I just “stuff it”.

This evolution in me is even evidenced in my running. I’ve noticed with my running that I have been complaining about every ache and pain to my best friend. Why? Because it’s safe telling her about the pain. But I’ve even had trouble describing the different pains to her. And I’ve become hyper aware that I have been complaining to her A LOT and I need to cut it out. It’s uncomfortable for me to have no “plan for the pain”. (I can’t take Nsaids which is really throwing a wrench in things). So I am “avoiding” my harder runs. And Im starting to get to the point where I just want to avoid anything that causes me any discomfort. Because I’m feeling overloaded… the damn is filling up and my capacity to keep everything under control is becoming stressed.

And because I don’t know what a healthy processed pain feels like… I’m going to use my ability to articulate it as a key to determine if I have processed it. I’m not sure if I am going to be able to blog about it to be honest. Being vulnerable isn’t a strong suit either…. And I crave anonymity for this process. But we’ll see.

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