Blow up.
Aug 19, 08- (by Diary of a Quitter)
- one response
- Sober Salon
It happened again.
Every few months, I’m unable to contain the mass of anger inside me and I blow up at my partner. Unsuprisingly, this tends to happen about a week before I get my period. For a long time, I wrote it off as PMS, but I’ve come to realize that I actually am that angry all the time. It’s just that when my hormones are raging, I can’t stuff it away and hide it as well as I usually can.
This blow up involved me angrily and loudly verbalizing ever nasty, bitter, resentful thought I’ve had over the past few months about my partner and the state of our relationship. When the hate was spewing out of me it felt awful, I felt powerful and terrible but also full of pain and totally out of control.
Recovery involves learning to feel feelings - to stop stuffing them or numbing them with chemicals or behaviors. This anger thing is really hard though. I’m afraid of my own anger and the destructive power that I feel coursing through me when I let my anger out. So I’ve gone along for years repeating this pattern of stuffing my anger until the pressure is unbearable, blowing up, then crying and apologizing and taking it all back.
This time something was different though. This time, I realized and admitted to myself that at some level, I really did mean all of the nasty things I said. They are my thoughts about my situation with my partner, and I’m owning them. This time, I apologized for yelling and for communicating my thoughts in an angry and abusive manner and committed myself to learning how to communicate my feelings honestly and respectfully in the future. But I didn’t apologize for being mad, and I didn’t take it all back and say that it’s not you it’s me and I really didn’t mean any of it and everything is fine really I swear.
I’m still mad. I’m angry about a lot of things, and every one of them is a good reason to be mad. Now I just need to figure out what I’m supposed to do with that. For now, I’m finally realizing that I’m not doing myself or J any favors when I rationalize away or minimize every angry thought or feeling that I have. Those thoughts & feelings don’t go away - they hang out in the back of my mind, a perfect store of ammunition to be used the next time I lose my temper.
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You might want to consider working on your own recovery from the effects of his addiction. There are good 12 step programs such as Nar-Anon and Al-Anon that will help you to feel better about yourself and deal with the resentment and anger. I’ve come to see alcoholism as a disease that I didn’t cause, can’t cure, and can’t control. That enables me to see the alcoholic in my life as someone I can’t “whip” into shape no matter how angry I get. I have to detach with love and live my own life.