Hey all, I had a story you might find interesting. Last night a girl that my work has brought me into contact with this year has consistently found it fun to just kind of jab people with put-downs, me included, and last night threw another one at me as I sat at a coffee shop with some mutual acquaintances. I just stopped and asked her: why are you mean to me? You consistently do this, those types of put-downs. They don't feel good. They hurt.
She claimed she was completely unaware that what she thought were just jokes were actually really hurtful and disrespectful. She was really apologetic actually, and said she was happy I told her. It felt good to stand up for myself, and to not let someone walk all over me. Growing up, I'd bottle up the anger, never fight back, and then explode on bullies a few months later in a fury of fists and tears. Don't worry: they were always guys. :)
It hit me last night that the reason I was so afraid of being angry toward these people who disrespected me was because I had so much anger buried in me already. To tap into my anger toward these bullies was to tap into a huge wellspring of anger that I already had buried inside of me, long before they ever came along. To pop open the cap on that was to have it gush out and overwhelm me; it was to totally lose control, you know? So I'd bury it. Bury it. Bury it. And finally of course couldn't take it anymore. What I'd tried to keep at bay would get triggered by some later experience regardless, and I'd find myself overwhelmed by rage, doing things I couldn't control.
Last night was different though. I've come to sense that the buried anger inside me wont' kill me or anyone else. I can begin to feel and come into touch with it. I can honor it without losing myself. I have nothing to fear or repress. :)
I was still worked up over that interaction and did some furious air punching and kicking when I got home to my room, imagining the real source of my initial buried rage - my parents - as the people and Code of Being that I was most fundamentally finally fighting back against. Then last night I dreamt that I was in another shouting match with my parents (this was like the 5th dream like this that I've had, all of them this year after I started working with a bioenergetic/mindbody therapist who (a) taught me to physically tap into and experience the emotions my body and mind have been exhaustedly trying for years to keep buried, (b) identified my parents and family dynamic as the earliest and most significant sources of my buried rage, sadness, and frustration), and in the argument, I completely stood up to them and didn't let them co-opt me, like I had never felt I could when I was actually growing up under them.
Again, the dream last night spoke to a quote I recently read by Alice Miller, whose books really captured some of the dynamics in my family growing up:
"It greatly aids the success of therapeutic work when we become aware of our parents' destructive patterns at work within us. But to free ourselves from these patterns we need more than an intellectual awareness: we need an emotional confrontation with our parents in an inner dialogue."
That's exactly what that dream seemed to be, and the improved handling of this minor bully the evening before it felt like a sign that with the repressed emotions I so dutifully carry, and still cannot help but to allow to weigh me down, progress has been made.
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Bullies, Buried Anger, & Dreams
Posted - 07/07/2010 : 01:29:11
