Waves of anger and rage

[Dalloway]

Hello people,

it´s been a long time since I posted something here. Life was going on, I started a therapy which is going pretty well and I have really nice moments of self compassion and pride towards the things I have achieved and done for myself and my recovery.

But in the past few weeks I´ve been feeling overwhelmed and anxious. Am I doing it right? I mean - the whole "life" thing. And as I have experienced before, every positive period is followed by this depression-like state, where I start to panic and "ruin" this little joy of small good things. The scheme is always the same - I am happy about myself and then comes the realization: fine, fine, but you know you still struggle very much in general and there are big issues unresolved in your life. And then the magic is gone and it´s the sad, anxious and pessimistic me again.

Today I was experiencing this above mentioned process while sitting in a park and watching happy people with their loved ones and suddenly, tears started to fill my eyes and a thought popped to my mind that was wanted to be said: "Why is this happening to me? I am a nice and worthy human being, I didn´t hurt anyone, I just want to live a normal life but the chance was taken away from me by the way I was raised and the way my mom behaved to me. IT´S SO UNFAIR.

And this last thing, this very deep feeling of unfairness towards me, that I didn´t have the choice, didn´t want to become an adult who struggles this much, and the chance to a more fulfilling life taken away from me, this is so very hard to accept.

I just wanted to ask if you had similar experiences and if yes, how do/did you cope with them.

Thanks is advance 

[woodsgnome]

This sounds soooo famiiar to the way I live with all of these horrendous ins/outs and yes, the intense sadness on seeing other people expressing love so easily with each other.

I so wish I could wave a magic wand during these episoodes. But I've been at this stage for so long my only conclusion is that this journey dealing with the aftermath of Cptsd is indeed a lifelong project. Yes, I can play the acceptance card, but I still hurt. Can't shake loose from its grip and yea, the anger (almost always hidden, deep inside). It was/is unfair but I'm here now.

That being here now has become the good news, as it's at least a starting point. But that word 'least' stings, as it still keeps me stuck. Or does it, in reality? I need to flip that, to loose the old binding habits of shame, anger, etc. And brace myself for all the times I fail  to move the needle.

My therapist helps, and truth be told I have progressed from the wreck I was; despite 'accomplishments' in various creative artistic fiels that I loved and was good in, at the end of it all I still feel lonely, spent, very angry, and sad (repeating myself, eh?).

It's certainly no cure, and any healing is quite hard to pick out, but here's where I feel helpless. All I can really do, I guess, is to use an old image I play in my brain -- there I imagine I'm on a long road, and I'm drifting free of the traffic the further I move along. The best thing -- I glance in the rear-view mirror and see everything moving back, getting smaller and more distant. When I'm really distressed, remembering that little vignette is a needed reminder -- that I am far enough ahead, at last, that I can feel and know that I'm on the right road, even with its blasted bumps and detours -- really good news, those detours; I can wander further off, into a new horizon. Still lonely, still angry, sad, but also at least feeling more attuned to myself.

It's all I've ever wanted. Alas, it takes accepting some loneliness, some at least gives me the chance to stay ahead on the long trail, not knowing where I'm going, but sensing I'll be okay.

Meanwhile, how I wish I could just squeeze your hand and reassure you that, based on what you've shared, you're on the trai as well. And so are so many others we meet on this forum every day.

 

[Dalloway]

Woodsgnome,

as I was reading your reply, every word resonated with me so much, like I was reading a random excerpt from my journal. You captured this emotional state, this helplessness I´ve been feeling all my life and the pang that it will never get better and all I can wish for are some "pretty good" periods in the deserted and unhappy years, decades, life. It´s so hard to accept and try to find good things in life when you have this burden of life-long suffering, knowing that things that happened in the past will always shadow my present and future to some degree.

The "at least"-s hurt so much and maybe this is what makes me tired and helpless the most - this road full of bumps and downs and sadness and anxiety and fear and struggle. The fact that I have to be content with those small joys and victories I collect on the road. But as you also mentioned, I am really far from the wreck I was and I´ve learned so much and sometimes I forget how blessed I am that I have me as a wingman during this journey.

This whole life is blurry and ambivalent and maybe it gets better over time but I think it will never get easier. But I want to thank you for your kind words, reading something that describes my mental state this well gives me so much hope that I am not alone in this. 

[woodsgnome]

Nice to have touched on a bit of your soul, injured though it may seem.

If it's okay, I have one more point I'd like to share. It follows on something I learned via some other members on this site. They, like me, discovered the 1911 novel presenting the fictional tale of a 10-year old girl who found herself via finding and replenishing an old abandoned garden she found. Written by Frances Hodgson Burnett and title The Secret Garden, it's also been serialised on BBC in 1975 (accessible via YouTube). My point, though, is not to suggest one should read it or see the filmed version (there are others but the BBC adaptation is the best one, IMO). Either/or, though, makes for a good read as well as a well-done film adaptation).

Personally, I hit on a realization after reading and seeing the film, though. While not explicitly touched on in either version of the basic story, my thoughts hit on the notion that the best gardens can be helped via composting -- taking old food scraps and discaded portions and planting them as compost.

My therapist chimed in on this as well, suggesting that maybe my old life could be considered as a form of mental compost, discarded but reformulated, even as it's elements are buried alongside the new seeds of the replenished inner garden.


Sometimes, if I remember that amidst the still present waves of anger and rage about my old story, I can re-imagine all that old bitter story as a form of compost while I'm finding the new life (garden). Those waves are now out there, in the raging sea, while my new garden is starting to grow, under ground/inside me.

This may seem as only imagination, but for me it's all I care to ever carry forward from my old story. Like an old movie as well, I've tried to give it its own space, but to only use the parts I can compost into nourishing the present garden.

This attitude adjustment is far from being a panacea. But that's more due to the original c-ptsd symptoms being so severe. Now, if I remember to utilize the idea of the past as compost, I feel more empowered to move on; to let my garden grow at its own pace, even when I'm so impatient and anxious to realize that better life I feel can come about. Maybe it is, if I let the compost and the seeds do their magic.

Take good care, Dalloway --   

[Dalloway]

Beautiful allegory, thank you very much for sharing  The patience and will that is required to keep going and digging and planting and harvesting this garden is already in all of us, maybe more covered with old leaves and mud in some cases, but present and still, waiting to bloom.

Indeed, beautiful. 

[MountainGirl]

Yes, I also understand this feeling of having been cheated. But there are two things I think about when this feeling overcomes me. 1) why should I be exempt from the damage of life when most humans are not? I'm not special in that way. Damaged human life is rampant in this world. I wasn't singled out for this. Actually, what I think of as "normal" (which I have never had and which exists just in my mind I suspect) is probably an experience of a minority of people on earth. Maybe ?? 2) I think about a movie made by Paul Newman (which I DO NOT recommend unless you want to be emotionally gutted) called "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds." That movie (play originally by Paul Zindel) deals with a dysfunctional household and how one child thrives despite the insanity of her mother, but the other child is pretty much destroyed. It made me realize that I do have qualities that are valuable precisely because I went through Hades as a child. Not sure if this makes sense
but these are things I ponder sometimes.