Two Weeks, Two Insights.

I didn’t post for two weeks. It was akin to weaning yourself away from painkillers. This blog has been a painkiller. It took my attention away from the distracting debilitating thoughts and helped me focus my attention on writing, but I needed to work without help from this blog, and so I deliberately kept myself away.

It wasn’t easy. I got angry on at least three occasions and I cried a few times, but I trudged up the hill, sweating and bleeding, but sub-consciously aware that there was a place where I could talk about my feelings. I’m still not sure if anyone reads this blog, but putting it out there has been therapeutic and during my two-week weaning away period, the knowledge that I could come back anytime, had been comforting.

The good news is, it wasn’t that bad. It was better than before – and I did end up writing a piece of flash fiction for my YonderWorlds blog. The story is called “One Two…You Too.” If you have the time, head over there to read it and leave your thoughts in the comments. I also painted a little, drew some, designed a couple of training programs – so all in all, I was productive, and I am feeling rather proud of it (Even though I accomplish only about a fifth of what I used to.)

These two weeks left me with two insights. 1. I can wean myself away and my emotions can stand on their own. It will happen in time. 2. I am still not ready – and until I’m ready, I’ll continue to recharge myself here.

And thank you for the likes. This place won’t be the same without your fingerprints 🙂

The Anger Monster Refuses to Die

The Anger Monster is every bit like the Terminator (the Liquid Metal Shape Shifter T-1000 in Terminator 2 – Judgement Day.) When you think it’s dead, it coalesces and forms itself by attracting its pieces from every nook and crevice.

I crossed the threshold again today. I had been calmly observing the triggers and the subsequent automated responses governed my impetuous and foolhardy amygdala, but today I allowed the amygdala to control me once again.

Truthfully, I’m ashamed of it. 
Truthfully, I had been apprehensive and was expecting it.

And mornings are just the right time for the amygdala to send the anger monster in. You see, when you are asleep or half-asleep, your cognitive defenses are really low. Before your lazy prefrontal cortex is able to process the whole sneaky game, amygdala has already established its superiority.

Does this mean that the whole reflection/observation bit was a barrel of crap?

No.

It kept the monster in check for almost three weeks, which is great. So, I am back to Reflection, which I did a little later – but what I must remind both you and me is that after any bout of anger, the system is flush with adrenaline, and depending on the quantity of adrenaline secreted (that possibly depends on the intensity of anger) the remaining adrenaline would keep you susceptible to new bouts of anger.

Now how do you explain this to someone who has never experienced it before?

Guess you can’t.

So stay focused and trudge on.

(I am talking to me, and Grammarians, you’d be smart to ignore that “me” because my system is still flush…)

Anger is a monster that…

is easy to control…

when the hurt doesn’t go deep and when the pain fades away, day by day,
when the loss can be accounted for and when you hope to forget it one day.

But when you must face your loss and those responsible for it, every day?
What then?
Then anger bursts out of you – it breaches every dam you erect, and its force devastates you and everyone around.

How do we manage anger then?

What is Anger and How we can train our brains to overcome it.

Anger and its Symptoms

• Anger is a strong feeling of hostility, an almost automatic response to a feeling of being wronged or threatened.  The feeling may be real or imaginary, the wrong may belong in the past or present, and the threat may be present or future.
• Anger manifests itself in the actions, expressions, and or the speech (verbal communication and body language) of the person who is angry.
• Anger draws certain biological responses from the body – the heart-rate and the blood pressure rises, and adrenaline shoots up in the system, so while one is angry, decision-making is severely impaired. Thus, any decision made while one is experiencing physical/biological symptoms of anger, should be considered flawed, unless reviewed and found otherwise.

Normal Anger & Abnormal Anger

Yet all this discussion would yield nothing if we grouped all kinds of anger into one. Anger comes in several varieties and shades. Mostly, the righteous anger on finding a car that’s wrongly parked that manifests itself in an epithet that the erring driver never gets to hear, is the normal everyday kind of anger. It dissipates as quickly as it emerges and leaves little or no footprint behind.

The anger that concerns me, is the (abnormal/extreme) anger that is rooted in the pain that I suffered, and which takes but a fraction of a second to manifest itself in my tensed muscles, my overwhelming need to push everything out of my way, and use the most colorful words that I can find to criticize the wrong that was perpetrated on me…and to do all this for the nth time – because anger has this habit of becoming a habit.

But what does my anger buy me? 

Nothing.

Rechargeable Me – Mantra 2: Events Lead Us.

When things started to go wrong in my life, I found myself reviewing why it had all happened. I went over it again and again – and felt that the catastrophe that had wiped away my sanity was triggered by a decision I made. So I blamed myself – but then it didn’t feel right – I made that particular decision because I trusted others around me. So then I blamed others who I thought should’ve had more humanity, kindness, morality etc. etc.

Honestly, the blame game still continues in my mind. But a recent meeting with an elderly Sikh gentleman made me reconsider my need to fasten the blame on someone – even if it were me.

A few weeks ago, I visited this Sikh gentleman who is about eighty but so full of joie de vivre that he puts people half his age to shame. He happened to say something that began a kind of churning in my mind – a churning of thoughts the kind I hadn’t experienced in an year – why? because my mind was so crammed full of negative thoughts that fed on each other, there was no place for happy thoughts to breathe and play. Suddenly, I had something to hold on to – and something that nudged another schema into wakefulness.

Why “Rechargeable Me”?

This should’ve been the first post, but I’ve been a bit of scatterbrain lately. Yesterday, I did a huge mistake while choosing the name of the blog (I didn’t do a Google Search of it “before” registering the name – instead, I did it one post later and several hours later. To my horror, I discovered that a cellphone retailer has the exact same name – and then I scrambled to save the day. I lost 10 likes and eight followers – regained some through this blog I hope.)

So returning to the question – why this blog?

Last year was a witch (and I replace the “b” with a “w” so that I don’t malign the reputation of one of God’s most loving and generous creatures – the she-dog…in one of my future posts, I’ll introduce you to Jhabs, the girl who makes me smile every morning.) So, last year was the worst year of my life so far, and I intend to keep it that way – this is why this blog.

What happened?

Nothing that doesn’t happen with many others – except that each one of us goes through a unique experience – based on our particular circumstances, and each of us then reacts to it, depending on our emotional range. My range extends into the infra- and the ultra- of emotions, and so somewhere in the middle of the year, I found myself quite alone and lost.

Then, when I hit the nadir…when I was lying on the wet and slippery bottom of the dark well of depression and anxiety that I had fallen in, my self-pity gave way to some concrete assessments and directional questions.

I asked myself, “Why am I lying here?”