Disclaimer 1: off-the-cuff and unedited…possible triggers…all opinions and thoughts here are mine and not from anyone else…read at your discretion

Disclaimer 2: still working on self-care. Will try to resume Sunday publishing of posts, but could be sporadic over the next few weeks.

Sometimes anger is a secondary emotion. It hides the primary emotion that feels more vulnerable and could possibly create dangerous situations if expressed. For me, anger often hinds shame, guilt, and fear.

not this time.

I feel so angry all the time. It’s like hot lava pouring through my body and gives me hot flashes when I sleep. My dreams are angry, sometimes bitter and have me exuding so much heat that even the temperature in my room changes sometimes.

The source of my anger?

Feeling helpless and stuck because new memories, new flashbacks (all new to me in this period of my life) are not responding to the usual coping strategies. In spite of all the positive experiences happening right now (and there are a lot), but that’s for another post), I’m still stuck in the child victim’s mindset of shame and worthlessness much of the time. So much that it’s starting to interfere with daily life again.

Anger is easier to cope with than fear, at least for me. But the fear exists and manifests in many ways. Shame is number 2 on the list of anger triggers.

Did you notice that I didn’t mention the sources of my anger?

Well, that’s because they’re mostly triggers that happen beyond my control. The present day angry feelings would not feel so intense without the trigger contributions. With them, life just seems like a never-ending roller coaster of ups and downs with a couple sideways loops thrown in.

I’m tired and grumpy. My apartment’s heat is not the best, but the new management company is doing everything to ensure it does stay warm in the coldest two weeks of winter so far. I can’t sleep for weeks. Then I sleep too much and still wake up feeling tired. My body is healing, but also in pain much of the time. I’ve got what looks like fat around my middle and abdomen, but is probably 75% edema (swelling) from body memories expressing themselves in my cells/tissues/muscles/organs and 25% fat.

Looking fat doesn’t bother me so much as seeing and knowing the source of those puffy areas spilling out under my bra band and over my waistband. My back, chest, and abdominal muscles are finally waking up. So are the bone and tendon around my rib cage and under my armpits/around my shoulders. As they heal on the inside, those vulnerable areas create water cushions to protect themselves from external jostling – that results in me looking like I have a belly and a few extra rolls arounds the sides of my waist.

If it was all fat, I’d be perfectly okay with that – after all I earned it by eating healthy, gaining weight, and doing less exercise/physical activity than necessary to remove the fat. But this visual/physical/tactile reminder of my past experiences feels like too much  to handle sometimes. And it makes wearing a bra painful. But I’m not comfortable going braless outside my apartment either…

And so I feel angry all the time. Anger colors my interactions with people and self. It brings flashbacks and intrusive thoughts into my mind during  the day. It invades my dreams and urges me to give in to self-destructive impulses.

So far, I haven’t given in. Not to the self-destructive impulses and not to the past anger.

But if you don’t hear from me for another week or two after this…it’s because I’m still working on self care and finding balance. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

As always…

Thanks for reading.