I Am

[Bach]

Boy do I get tired of emotional control sometimes. Sometimes I really just want to have tantrum. A big cathartic explosion of chaotic and unreasonable feelings. A purge of everything I spend all my time and energy to hold back, transmogrify, warp, morph, justify, minimise, neutralise, intellectualise, contain. I want it out of me, all of it. Kicking and screaming. I want to disturb, unsettle, frighten, distress like I used to when I was a kid and there were no holds barred when protesting my unjust treatment and my unmet needs. But then be comforted, tended to, understood. Validated. Helped. Soothed.  Loved. Like I certainly never was back then. I want to be taken care of. I'm so sick of having to be an adult when I was never allowed to be a child.

[sanmagic7]

bach, is there any way you can have that tantrum?  or some modification of it?  does it help to write all that stuff out?  at one time i kept an anger journal, and it was for nothing but that, being angry about people, circumstances, situations in my past/present. i'd start writing (always using a red pen - that signified anger for me) words, and often they morphed into scribbles, slashes, tearing the page, swearing, etc.  and when i filled one notebook, i'd immediately walk it outside, out of my home, and put it in the trash.

it was very cathartic for me, as far as it went.  it was the closest i've ever come to having a tantrum.  of course, i had to soothe myself afterwards - i've always been missing that part as well, having someone soothe me.  i get you.  love and hugs

[NarcKiddo]

Actually having the tantrum could help, as San has suggested. One of the reasons I do so much vigorous exercise when I possibly can is so that I can channel tantrum-y feelings that way. Patrick Teahan suggests it can be a good idea - one idea he proposed on a video I watched recently is to get some cushions and something to use as drumsticks and then drum out the feelings while voicing whatever you want to voice.  Starts at 4.22 on this video - but the whole thing is worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ6hmgeodvw


But the comforting afterwards is of course the really tough part to achieve. Especially after an epic, actual tantrum. I had one of those the other week and then had to get myself back to a semblance of rational adult human being. I have no tips for you on that front.

[Bach]

I am trying to figure out how to stop regret and self-hatred from ruining the rest of my life.

[Chart]

I'm right there with ya Bach.
 

[NarcKiddo]

 

[Hope67]

 

[Blueberry]

I kinda get that Bach, except I don't feel as if I'm even trying to figure it out rn. Kudos on you for trying to. 

[sanmagic7]

i do hope you succeed, bach.  those two are nasty!  love and hugs

[Bach]

I've had the death-wishing voice a lot lately. That provokes my fear of death and my feeling of being trapped, as well as angst about my age and my worry that the rest of my life will go by in a flash and I will never change anything, never do anything with myself, never realise the mythic potential I have spent my life being told and believing that I have but being unable to tap. I feel it, I stuff it down, I push it away, but it comes out in weird yelly dreams and deep inertia.

[Blueberry]

  

[NarcKiddo]

I will never change anything, never do anything with myself, never realise the mythic potential I have spent my life being told and believing that I have but being unable to tap.

That's a mean, critical voice and I am sorry you are hearing it. There's nothing wrong with having desires and ambition, if they are truly your own desires and ambition rather than some obligation placed on you by others who use potential as another rod to beat you with - but you are good enough, Bach, just as you are.

[Hope67]

 

[sanmagic7]

i agree w/ NK, bach - that is a very mean and critical voice you're hearing.  i, too, am sorry it's anywhere near you and is disturbing you even as you sleep.  as far as i can tell, just from you being here, you are a warm, wonderful, caring  person, and i think that's a lot for one person to be, a success in itself.  that potential is in all of us, but not everyone achieves it.  you have.  i'm not saying there isn't more for you on the horizon, but (and part of this is good for me to hear as well), right this minute you are already a success as a human being.  i've been involved w/ too many who have not become this, even tho they have had time and resources to do so. love and hugs

[Bach]

Thank you for the kind words, friends.  I wish I could see these things in myself that other people see.  All these years later, I'm still suffering from being a kid with parents who said one thing and did another.  I'm really tired of attributing everything that's wrong with me to things that happened over half a century ago, but the thing is, these things are true.  They happened and they hurt me, and I try and try but don't seem to get past them.  Maybe for a minute here and there. 

Right now I am really feeling those whole sections of myself that didn't grow up and are eternally still trying to please or appease a world of adults who didn't want me.  For a lot of my life, I thought that my mother was the bad guy and that my father was okay, but I have come to realise how gravely he failed me, in how many ways.  Aching right now are memories of all the times I did stupid kid things because I didn't know better, and instead of being taught, I was credited with bad intent and emotionally punished.  Emotionally punished, because nothing in the houses of my parents was ever so straightforward as consequences for actions. 

I have lived since young adulthood with "My mother kicked me out of her house and sent me to live with my father because I'd become too much of a problem to her", but it took me until quite recently to process that my father did a different version of the same thing.  After I graduated high school, he sent me away to a completely unsuitable university situation because it looked good on the surface and it was easier than figuring out a realistic option for me.  He then put me in a mental ward for three months because I committed one of the most classic acts of teenage stupidity that exists (getting drunk at a party and passing out on someone's front lawn looking for help).  After I was released from the hospital, he told me I could not live in his house anymore and sent me out into the world with a manual transmission car that he spent about an hour teaching me how to drive, a small monthly allowance and the instruction to find some kind of a job.  That within perhaps six months I had totalled the car and gotten and lost three or so jobs and dwelling places was covertly represented as my own fault.  I blame myself constantly for not doing more with my life, but honestly it's kind of amazing that I even survived the transition to so-called adulthood. 

Oh, what could I have been if I'd had even the slightest little bit of nurturing?  I was always told that I was smart, creative, capable, "gifted", whatever, and that with my putative talents I could do or be anything I wanted to.  But how the heck was I ever supposed to do or be anything when for my whole life, all I could learn was whatever I could figure out for myself (usually the hard way)?