Into the Sun

So I haven’t written much this past month. If you read my last entry (which you can find here), you know that I’m doing some work with my therapist as I come to terms with long held belief systems and childhood trauma.

Grief.

Anxiety.

Depression.

Co-dependency.

I left the cliff, arms spread, ready to fly into the great abyss I had been afraid of for decades.

I walked into therapy, boxing gloves on, ready to rumble. Let’s sort through it. Get it over with. Move through it and be done.

And then the curveball.

<insert that terrible record scratching sound here for extra emphasis on my foolishness>

“Let’s tap into your anger today, Heather.”

“My what? I’m not angry.”

“You just mentioned how something made you feel angry. Let’s explore that.”

“I did? Well. What do you want me to say about my anger, C?”

“I don’t know, we’ll just see where we land. Tell me about your anger.”

“Well, this happened and then this happened…”

Interrupting, “Heather, tell me about your anger.”

“I am!”

“No, you’re telling me about the thing that made you angry. The circumstance that preceded it. Tell me about your anger.”

Hot, heavy tears poured from my eyes.

I immediately experienced red, hot panic too.

And C, my therapist, let me sit with that for a few minutes until I could get some words out.

“I don’t want to talk about my anger. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“What are you feeling right now? In your body?”

And I sat with that, too, concentrating on my breathing and bringing attention to my physical body.

I was shaking. Racing heart.

Scared. Embarrassed.

But beneath all of that, as I sat there, I had a realization.

I was experiencing shame.

“Weird”, I thought to myself.

“I’m starting to panic a little, C. I feel like we went straight to the cliff and I’m scared.”

“Ok. Let’s talk about that. Sometimes we can come into a therapeutic setting like this and we think to ourselves, ‘OK! Let’s get it all on the table. Hash it out. Move on and be done with it.’”

Being called on my own bullshit is not a particular favorite of mine, but she nailed it. I’ll give her props for that. That’s exactly what I wanted to do.

And so over the course of the next 30 minutes, we tapped into my anger. We talked about what it felt like. What I was clinging to for dear life. We maybe spent 5 minutes really digging deep and then we took a step back. Back away from the cliff. Back away from my anger.

“You’re still sitting here in this room with me, Heather. You haven’t thrown things through the window or demonstrated any tendency to lose control, physically or otherwise. You’re sitting in this room with me. You’re on the same couch, with the same feelings, in the same body and you’re ok. Your breathing is calm. Your body is relaxed.”

More hot tears.

“I didn’t know I could do that. I didn’t know I could talk about that stuff that’s been buried so deep and still come up for air.”

“When you are swimming, Heather, do you take a deep breath and stay underwater indefinitely or do you take a breath, go under the wave and then come back to the surface and get more air? Because that’s what we’re doing here. We’re going to approach the wave, we know it’s coming. You’ll take a breath and when the wave hits, you’ll save your air until it passes and then YOU WILL COME TO THE SURFACE and take a breath.”

That metaphor just slayed me.

Because if I’m honest with myself, I had always approached the wave (or cliff, if you will) with dread and expected it to pull me under. I certainly didn’t expect the wave to be anger. Anger was the enemy I didn’t see coming.

Grief. Ready.

Codependency. Let’s do this.

But anger? WASN’T EVEN ON MY RADAR.

So, over the last month. I’ve sat with that.

I asked myself lots of questions, like “Why was that a surprise?” and “What was I taught about anger?”

Now, let me say this. This past month has been brutal exploring this. It’s been messy. Raw. Painful.

But here’s what I’m learning from dipping my toes into the water of my anger:

Somewhere along the way, I heard and understood anger to be shameful.

My father had a terrible temper. Multiply that with alcoholism. I learned that anger is scary and makes people leave.

When I felt anger as a child, I was told to pull it together, no discussion allowed. I learned that anger is secretive.

When I experienced anger in a personal dating relationship, I was told it was my fault. I learned that anger is quick, hurtful and is to be avoided at all costs.

When I worked at a church and expressed myself passionately, I was told there was no place for that in the church. Calm down, you’re out of control and good leaders don’t lose control. I learned that anger is out of control and unhealthy.

And over time, those messages led me to a place where I was a month ago. Unable to articulate my own feelings of anger without feeling shame.

C asked me at the end of that session, “Did we get out all of your anger, Heather?”

I laughed, “well, of course not.”

“Right. There will always be anger. We’re human. We feel anger about all kinds of things. Small things. Big things. Everyday. There is nothing wrong with feeling anger, Heather. It’s what we do with it. And we learned today that burying it, not talking about it isn’t a healthy coping pattern, is it? So, we give ourselves permission to feel anger. We let it come like the wave does in the ocean. It comes to the shore and it dissipates. But another wave is coming. They won’t stop coming because the first one made it to shore.”

Man, that metaphor has been stirring in my heart over the last month. What we want to avoid because it’s painful is often the place God does His most important work in our hearts. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and where I was pointing myself to the south shore of grief, God gently took me by the shoulders and pointed me west to the burning sun of anger.

Here is where the work is, daughter. Lift your face to the sun, my girl.