Years ago, I took an anger management course. I was asked to take it.
It was part of some stipulations or something so I did it.
I took it years before when I was in the hospital.
The first one, had some insights.
The main one being that anger was a 'mask' for other feelings.
The second one was different, but it focussed on the expression of it.
The main insight was that anger itself wasn't 'bad,'
it's all in how we express our feelings.
I've had a lot of communication issues. Mostly verbal.
When I was a kid, I didn't know how to say certain words properly.
There was a lady who took the time to teach me certain things,
like how to say the words properly,
how to walk in a straight line, things like this.
That nobody else seemed to want to take the time to teach me.
I learned to express my anger from others expressing their anger towards me.
And I was at the brunt of it, most of the time.
It seemed that they were allowed to be out of control, and I wasn't.
I was still expected to have some sense of self-control.
Even though they didn't demonstrate that.
People learn how to express themselves by seeing others express themselves.
Primarily in their family environments.
With me, it was seeing my mother raging, screaming at me 98% of the time.
It was seeing my brothers' father drunk like 98% of the time.
This lady I just wrote about, she knew how bad it was.
She saw it at times. When she used to come get me for weekend visits,
I used to get so mad at her when it was time for her to take me home
because I didn't want to go back to that.
For a long time, she only saw me getting mad.
She didn't realize why I was getting mad.
Then she figured it out and figured out why I didn't want to go home.
I remember times when I had to LOCK myself in my room.
And even that lock wasn't good enough.
So I wasn't taught a lot about self control or impulse control back then.
It's not something that really gets taught very much, actually.
I don't know why that seems to be the case.
It's like we're taught about the lack of control
by people who lack control, but not how to learn how to achieve it.
People tend to justify their emotions and how they express them
by blaming it on someone else. "You made me angry. You made me hit you."
I heard it so many times as a kid. Then the "Sorry, it won't happen again."
Which meant nothing because it ALWAYS happened again.
The first few times, though, I wanted to believe that it wouldn't.
I wanted to believe that it was okay to trust, again. But I couldn't.
Because they hadn't learned how to control their impulses
or how to express themselves in a better way.
Also, they weren't trying to learn either of those.
So those patterns repeated and repeated and repeated.
So how could I have believed them when they said it wouldn't happen again?
But as a kid, you want to believe what you are told.
Even as an adult, but there comes a time that you realize that it's not true.
Then, as you get older, you realize that they didn't know any better.
That they couldn't do any better because they didn't know any better.
But you also realize that to know better, they must learn better.
It's up to them to learn self control and impulse control
if they weren't taught by their parents.
And that essentially, they have to 'unlearn'
what they were taught by their parents.
But... Unlearning and learning things that are hard, is hard.
So many choose not to unlearn or to learn.
Even if it would dramatically improve their lives
and the lives of the people who are in their lives.
"Everything is hard before it gets easier."
Including self control and impulse control.
But what is worth mentioning is that it actually does get easier.
Being an alcoholic, my impulse control hasn't been the best.
Especially under the influence.
My poor impulse control is what helped me become an alcoholic.
I ended up learning a lot about impulse control by quitting drinking,
and by quitting smoking. And by curbing my other habits.
It's a lot to do with our habits, really. It's all habitual.
Like my abuser had the habit of being abusive. Perhaps he was abused.
My mother had the habit of screaming at me constantly.
And throwing things at me.
I got into my own habits, smoking, drinking,
expressing myself in the only ways I knew how. How I was taught.
Even though I didn't scream at my son and I never threw anything at him.
I didn't want him to feel like I felt when I was a kid.
Although, I did fail him. He expressed to me that he wished that he was never born.
That it would have been 'easier that way.'
Which breaks my heart, but I can only do so much about how he feels.
Just like others could and can only do so much about how I felt and feel.
The thing is that when I was his age, I didn't know that I could choose.
That I could gain control over how I felt and how I feel.
Granted, I'm still working on this, but it's not too late.
I wasn't even ready to listen to anyone who suggested things to me.
When I was around 14 or 15, I knew a guy around my age.
I used to call him just to talk. He was really good to talk to.
Anyway, he was the one who told me that if I stopped wearing black all the time,
my mood would actually improve. So I tried that. It did have an impact.
So I rarely wear black anymore. I primarily wear blue.
I looked him up online, to see how he's been. We haven't seen each other
since my son was about 8 months old or so. He came to visit me once.
He became a teacher at the high school we used to go to.
Beyond that, I don't know how his life has turned out.
I'm just grateful to him for being that one person back then
who answered the phone when I called, who listened, and who helped.
Because everyone needs that.
Like I said, though, it is habitual. How we act and react is habitual.
Habits can be formed, reformed, etc. Habits can be changed.
I went from being a smoker and a drinker to being a non-smoker and non-drinker.
Because I learned to control those impulses and learned to give up those habits.
I used to get a lot more angry than I do now.
I used to express it in different ways than I do now.
I used to get angry easily. Over things that were pretty stupid to get angry about.
I can't remember what changed specifically, or when.
When I got angry at the hospital, they injected me with CP-Z.
Which is a knock out liquid. They'd literally have to hold me down
to inject me with it. Obviously they had zero tolerance for anyone getting upset.
Even over things I had the right to get upset about.
Like my mother telling the doctor to move my discharge date back
to see how I would react to that. I didn't know she was behind that.
I was so pissed at the doctor for that.
Getting someone's hopes up of getting discharged and getting to get out.
Only to take it away from them. Like a broken promise.
It really pissed me off.
My mother knew it would piss me off, too. That's why she told the doctor to do it.
To prove that I had 'anger management' issues.
Had anyone in my home NOT had anger management issues,
maybe I would have been taught how to better control my emotions.
Instead of being almost 35 years old and realizing NOW
that YES, there is a better way and to learn that better way,
I have to literally teach myself or seek out teachers.
Otherwise I won't get to learn what I should already know.
That's why I'm going through all this stuff now.
Why I don't want to start a relationship right now.
Why I need to continue to work on myself and work out my issues.
So that I don't have to continue to live my life the way I was raised.
And yeah, I could have started this a long time ago.
When I realized how bad my drinking really was, but I couldn't.
I had to get certain things removed from my life to be able to go further.
Until I quit drinking, I didn't realize how much alcohol affects impulse control.
But, it also affects the emotions, too. Which I didn't realize, either.
It's been almost 5 years since my last drink,
but in that time I've tried to date twice and put working on myself aside.
Now I'm in my mid-thirties and just getting my sh*t together.
But I have to look at it like "at least I'm getting my sh*t together."
"Getting your sh*t together at 35 is better than never getting your sh*t together."
And working on forgiving myself for not being able to or ready to do it sooner.
I often wonder what's harder:
Actually getting my sh*t together
or forgiving myself for not having my sh*t together.
The one thing that makes forgivig myself so hard is that it's hard to accept it.
Because yeah... I'm almost 35 f*cking years old
and yeah... I should already know so much better than this.
And yeah... I should already be so much better than this...
But I'm not. I wish I did and wish I was, but I'm not.
I made a lot of stupid choices because I didn't know
that there were better choices to make.
When you're not given many choices in your life,
you don't learn how to make choices until much later in life.
As sad as it is, it's the truth.
It was part of some stipulations or something so I did it.
I took it years before when I was in the hospital.
The first one, had some insights.
The main one being that anger was a 'mask' for other feelings.
The second one was different, but it focussed on the expression of it.
The main insight was that anger itself wasn't 'bad,'
it's all in how we express our feelings.
I've had a lot of communication issues. Mostly verbal.
When I was a kid, I didn't know how to say certain words properly.
There was a lady who took the time to teach me certain things,
like how to say the words properly,
how to walk in a straight line, things like this.
That nobody else seemed to want to take the time to teach me.
I learned to express my anger from others expressing their anger towards me.
And I was at the brunt of it, most of the time.
It seemed that they were allowed to be out of control, and I wasn't.
I was still expected to have some sense of self-control.
Even though they didn't demonstrate that.
People learn how to express themselves by seeing others express themselves.
Primarily in their family environments.
With me, it was seeing my mother raging, screaming at me 98% of the time.
It was seeing my brothers' father drunk like 98% of the time.
This lady I just wrote about, she knew how bad it was.
She saw it at times. When she used to come get me for weekend visits,
I used to get so mad at her when it was time for her to take me home
because I didn't want to go back to that.
For a long time, she only saw me getting mad.
She didn't realize why I was getting mad.
Then she figured it out and figured out why I didn't want to go home.
I remember times when I had to LOCK myself in my room.
And even that lock wasn't good enough.
So I wasn't taught a lot about self control or impulse control back then.
It's not something that really gets taught very much, actually.
I don't know why that seems to be the case.
It's like we're taught about the lack of control
by people who lack control, but not how to learn how to achieve it.
People tend to justify their emotions and how they express them
by blaming it on someone else. "You made me angry. You made me hit you."
I heard it so many times as a kid. Then the "Sorry, it won't happen again."
Which meant nothing because it ALWAYS happened again.
The first few times, though, I wanted to believe that it wouldn't.
I wanted to believe that it was okay to trust, again. But I couldn't.
Because they hadn't learned how to control their impulses
or how to express themselves in a better way.
Also, they weren't trying to learn either of those.
So those patterns repeated and repeated and repeated.
So how could I have believed them when they said it wouldn't happen again?
But as a kid, you want to believe what you are told.
Even as an adult, but there comes a time that you realize that it's not true.
Then, as you get older, you realize that they didn't know any better.
That they couldn't do any better because they didn't know any better.
But you also realize that to know better, they must learn better.
It's up to them to learn self control and impulse control
if they weren't taught by their parents.
And that essentially, they have to 'unlearn'
what they were taught by their parents.
But... Unlearning and learning things that are hard, is hard.
So many choose not to unlearn or to learn.
Even if it would dramatically improve their lives
and the lives of the people who are in their lives.
"Everything is hard before it gets easier."
Including self control and impulse control.
But what is worth mentioning is that it actually does get easier.
Being an alcoholic, my impulse control hasn't been the best.
Especially under the influence.
My poor impulse control is what helped me become an alcoholic.
I ended up learning a lot about impulse control by quitting drinking,
and by quitting smoking. And by curbing my other habits.
It's a lot to do with our habits, really. It's all habitual.
Like my abuser had the habit of being abusive. Perhaps he was abused.
My mother had the habit of screaming at me constantly.
And throwing things at me.
I got into my own habits, smoking, drinking,
expressing myself in the only ways I knew how. How I was taught.
Even though I didn't scream at my son and I never threw anything at him.
I didn't want him to feel like I felt when I was a kid.
Although, I did fail him. He expressed to me that he wished that he was never born.
That it would have been 'easier that way.'
Which breaks my heart, but I can only do so much about how he feels.
Just like others could and can only do so much about how I felt and feel.
The thing is that when I was his age, I didn't know that I could choose.
That I could gain control over how I felt and how I feel.
Granted, I'm still working on this, but it's not too late.
I wasn't even ready to listen to anyone who suggested things to me.
When I was around 14 or 15, I knew a guy around my age.
I used to call him just to talk. He was really good to talk to.
Anyway, he was the one who told me that if I stopped wearing black all the time,
my mood would actually improve. So I tried that. It did have an impact.
So I rarely wear black anymore. I primarily wear blue.
I looked him up online, to see how he's been. We haven't seen each other
since my son was about 8 months old or so. He came to visit me once.
He became a teacher at the high school we used to go to.
Beyond that, I don't know how his life has turned out.
I'm just grateful to him for being that one person back then
who answered the phone when I called, who listened, and who helped.
Because everyone needs that.
Like I said, though, it is habitual. How we act and react is habitual.
Habits can be formed, reformed, etc. Habits can be changed.
I went from being a smoker and a drinker to being a non-smoker and non-drinker.
Because I learned to control those impulses and learned to give up those habits.
I used to get a lot more angry than I do now.
I used to express it in different ways than I do now.
I used to get angry easily. Over things that were pretty stupid to get angry about.
I can't remember what changed specifically, or when.
When I got angry at the hospital, they injected me with CP-Z.
Which is a knock out liquid. They'd literally have to hold me down
to inject me with it. Obviously they had zero tolerance for anyone getting upset.
Even over things I had the right to get upset about.
Like my mother telling the doctor to move my discharge date back
to see how I would react to that. I didn't know she was behind that.
I was so pissed at the doctor for that.
Getting someone's hopes up of getting discharged and getting to get out.
Only to take it away from them. Like a broken promise.
It really pissed me off.
My mother knew it would piss me off, too. That's why she told the doctor to do it.
To prove that I had 'anger management' issues.
Had anyone in my home NOT had anger management issues,
maybe I would have been taught how to better control my emotions.
Instead of being almost 35 years old and realizing NOW
that YES, there is a better way and to learn that better way,
I have to literally teach myself or seek out teachers.
Otherwise I won't get to learn what I should already know.
That's why I'm going through all this stuff now.
Why I don't want to start a relationship right now.
Why I need to continue to work on myself and work out my issues.
So that I don't have to continue to live my life the way I was raised.
And yeah, I could have started this a long time ago.
When I realized how bad my drinking really was, but I couldn't.
I had to get certain things removed from my life to be able to go further.
Until I quit drinking, I didn't realize how much alcohol affects impulse control.
But, it also affects the emotions, too. Which I didn't realize, either.
It's been almost 5 years since my last drink,
but in that time I've tried to date twice and put working on myself aside.
Now I'm in my mid-thirties and just getting my sh*t together.
But I have to look at it like "at least I'm getting my sh*t together."
"Getting your sh*t together at 35 is better than never getting your sh*t together."
And working on forgiving myself for not being able to or ready to do it sooner.
I often wonder what's harder:
Actually getting my sh*t together
or forgiving myself for not having my sh*t together.
The one thing that makes forgivig myself so hard is that it's hard to accept it.
Because yeah... I'm almost 35 f*cking years old
and yeah... I should already know so much better than this.
And yeah... I should already be so much better than this...
But I'm not. I wish I did and wish I was, but I'm not.
I made a lot of stupid choices because I didn't know
that there were better choices to make.
When you're not given many choices in your life,
you don't learn how to make choices until much later in life.
As sad as it is, it's the truth.
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