Thread: Is this normal?
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Old 01-14-2012, 03:00 PM
  # 12 (permalink)  
m1k3
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Join Date: May 2011
Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 2,884
nicam, I understand what you are feeling. When I left my wife I used to watch the hulk on netflix. He'd go into one of his rages and I'd be sitting there thinking "is that all you got?".

What I learned is that anger and rage are emotions are real but they are not facts. When I am feeling anger over things in the past it means that 1: I have work to do on myself to figure out how to let it go and 2: if I am living in the past then I am missing the present. The past is gone, I can't change it and the future isn't here so I can't control it. There is a Buddhist saying that says hanging on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal waiting for the person your are mad at to show up so you can throw it at them. I finally got tired of hurting myself and put that coal down.

I am in a pretty good place in my recovery especially where it concerns my AW. What is new for me is that memories I suppressed from my childhood and living with an abusive AF are starting to return and I am dealing with some of those exact same anger issues again. This time I have the tools to deal with them in a healthy way. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt and the anger doesn't come back but now I can look at them for what they are, a form of healing. It's like draining the pus out of an infected wound. Hurts like heck but it needs to be done for the wound to heal.

So now when they come back I feel the emotions, recognize where they came from and let them go. The situations that caused them are not part of my current life any more.

I also understand your rage because he stole your innocence just as my father stole mine. Be that as it may I am getting better and will grow from this. It's my way of saying to my father "is that all you got?", I am stronger than that now and you will never have any power over me again. I will do it not by hurting him but by becoming stronger than he ever could have imagined.

Your friend,
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