Approximate reading time: 15 min
It’s been a while, I know, I know ..a whole 6 days….I’m clearly slipping.:-)
I will admit Neurotic Angel woke me up in a blind panic a couple of nights ago. Something along the lines of:
“If you post a blog post EVERY SINGLE DAY then your subscribers are going to be bombarded by email notifications!!!!”
I can’t tell you how many blogs I have eagerly signed up for and then had to block all notifications because they were driving me insane!
( I have a very short tolerance span…have you noticed?)
Hell, even my own blog spams me constantly with ‘ plugin updates’, ‘weekly performance updates’ and ‘new user registrations!’ (Which mind you ordinarily would be LOVELY – were it not for the fact that 98.9% of my new users are BOTS.) Or how about the emails from the numerous digital marketers telling me how they can increase my SEO metrics? (Not a clue!)
Which I can only assume will make my blog more visible and get waaaaaay more subscribers!
I am about one digital marketer away from deleting my ‘contact form’…completely.
FYI to all digital marketers out there:
Leave me ALONE!
I AM NOT INTERESTED!
I just want to write…..
Anyway, sorry…..back to my point…..
I then had to remind myself that I’m done looking after other people’s needs!
And
I am perfectly entitled to post as much as I want to post!
And
anyone that’s feeling spammed is perfectly entitled to block my notifications. 🙂
And
I promptly went back to sleep!
I feel so proud!
The moral of my rant?
Feel free to block my email notifications – I shall not take offence….
You know where to find me!!!:-)
*******
Ok, so what can I say about this poem?
In a nutshell?
I was fucked off!
Gratitude was out the window and I was ready to murder.
Well, let me rephrase that…Lyssa was ready to murder.
She doesn’t come out often but when she gets triggered she can be a little frightening.
Phaw!!!
No thank you!
Lyssa is unadulterated rage and her intention is to tear apart the guilty perpetrator!
The one ‘to blame‘ for hurting me!
When Lyssa is driving I can barely even think. Sometimes it feels like this out-of-body experience where I am literally watching myself overreact.
In 2018 I wrote a post on the ‘Pain body’. The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle describes this pain body as an accumulation of painful life experiences that have almost become like a separate entity living inside of us. He describes the pain body as being made up completely of old emotions which is why we react out of character when we are angry, often saying things we regret afterwards. As Eckhart says every interpretation, every judgment about your life, about other people or the situation you may be in is totally distorted by that old emotional pain that has been triggered from your past.
I was of course immensely relieved at the time to realise that we all have this part in us!
(Always good to know you are NOT alone!:-)
TO MAKE HER GO AWAY!
But as someone who has spent years following different spiritual teachers and trying to ‘better myself,’ I still felt frustrated. Indeed I had learnt ways of managing Lyssa ….But I still didn’t know how to stop her!
(I mean I have currently been meditating for at least 10 years!
Surely I should have wracked up ZEN status by now?:- )
What I have slowly started to learn and understand these last couple of years is that yes, we all get angry, but a certain percentage of us, have a little harder time, controlling this ‘pain body’ when she does rear her ugly head and that there is actually a word for it…..
Emotional dysregulation refers to a person’s poor ability to manage emotional responses or to keep them within an acceptable range of typical emotional reactions. This can refer to a wide range of emotions including sadness, anger, irritability, and frustration.
While emotional dysregulation is typically thought of as a childhood problem that usually resolves itself as a child learns proper emotional regulation skills and strategies, emotional dysregulation may continue into adulthood. 1
Simply put, learning to regulate and calm yourself is not a skill that you are naturally born with and it is something that needs to be taught and modelled by our parents. I know for a fact my mother was unable to emotionally regulate herself, which was the reason she was shouting so much of the time. My dad’s way of dealing with my mother’s anger was either shouting back at her or disappearing when things got too much.
It’s interesting that I never felt threatened by my dad’s anger, perhaps because he never directed it at any of us. Or maybe because he had been cast in the role of ‘good parent‘ and had been placed high up on a pedestal, safe from any parental accountability. It took me years to figure out how much it actually hurt me when my dad would simply escape to his garage or the TV room to avoid my mother’s rages.
Honestly, during my teenage years, it felt like he just gave up.
The dysregulated screaming matches between my mother and me were just too much for him.
So clearly neither of my parents, through no fault of their own, had any knowledge on how to model healthy regulation and the expression of emotions in any substantive way.
As a child/teenager/ young adult, I remember having numerous sobbing meltdowns over a whole range of things, eg exams, projects, lost luggage. When I hit meltdown mode my mother was the person I ALWAYS ran to. My mum was really good at calming me down and “mothering me” during those times. Those are, honestly, some of the best memories that I do have of her. Somehow my dysregulation (When not related to an issue with her) brought out the absolute best, most loving and caring part of my mother. I realise, in hindsight, that when I was hysterical she got to be the calm soothing rescuer that could swoop in and save me. And in fairness to her, she always did it beautifully!
There was nothing my mum wouldn’t do for her kids. (Or anybody for that matter)
Up until my late 20’s I ran to my mother with pretty much everything, even when I moved to London I always knew she was a phone call away. When the wheels came off she would always be the first person that I would call, often with my dad on the other line. My parents, bless them both, were masterful at helping me put out my emotional fires and solving the numerous drama’s I managed to inadvertently land myself in. My mum through the years did a ‘wonderful’ job of protecting me from emotional pain by simply not telling me stuff that she thought would ‘upset’ me.
When my father died in 2010 he had been in hospital for 3 days before my mum even told me. I booked a ticket home the day that I found out….but he died the next morning. (It took me a long time to work through my anger about that one) I constantly felt like I was being handled with kid gloves so that I wouldn’t be triggered into a meltdown. The frustrating irony was that when I did eventually find out about these things that had been kept from me, I would have astronomical meltdowns of utter rage!
(My mum wouldn’t see them of course, as I ussually found out stuff from other family members or family friends who hadn’t been fully prepped on the ‘Keep-Gayle-COOL and CALM-Plan’.)
At those times it would literally feel like my whole world fell apart, like all my trust in her had been shattered.
Why couldn’t she just be honest about things with me?
I was a grown-up, dammit all!!!!!:-)
In my early 30’s it began to dawn on me that there was a chronic problem with this whole dynamic.
The problem is that simply ‘rescuing‘ your kids whenever there are situations or emotions that they cannot handle or protecting them from painful experiences is not the same as teaching them genuine coping skills, capability and resilience.
Sadly my mum never understood the value of truly dealing with your emotions and was initially very angry when she found out that I had started therapy in my early 30’s. I was going through a very painful breakup at the time and I think I had finally reached that point of recognition that ‘something’ wasnt right with how I functioned in relationships. My mum was (initially) completely incapable of acknowledging that perhaps her daughter needed help and she was adamant that it was my boyfriend that needed the therapy
…not me.
Admitting that I needed help was (In her eyes) equivalent to admitting that she had failed at the one thing that she gained so much of her value from….being a supermom. When I went through my mum’s journals after she died I found an entry where she wrote about how her one true dream and passion was to help teach people how to have happy family lives. She spent years working for Mothers Union with her sole focus being the promotion of healthy Christian family values. The bitter irony was not lost on me that she was greatly loved and appreciated for the work that she did do in this field. I have no doubt that she helped many people. (The packed church at her funeral was evidence of this)
Outside in the world, she got to shine and she had all the answers but at home, with 3 needy little children …she was so often lost and floundering.
In one of her journals she wrote:
“When I am out of the house working I feel happy, like I make a difference in the world…but as soon as I come home, I don’t recognise the person I become. It’s why I try to stay out of the house as much as possible…“
It broke my heart when I read that, I couldn’t help but wonder……what was the driving force behind her deep desire to help other families be happy?
Had that been precipitated by her own little hurt child parts, so desperately trying to create, for others, something that she never experience growing up?
Looking back, I realise, subconsciously she must have felt petrified of losing me…
of losing her job of being my regulator.
Being ‘my calm in the storm’
Those first couple of years of therapy learning to ‘separate’ from my mother and start standing on my own two feet were incredibly painful for both my mum and me. I know my mum felt hurt and abandoned because I was no longer running to her with everything and I didn’t have the words or even the understanding at the time to explain any of it to her. I on the other hand had to deal with an insurmountable amount of guilt because I couldn’t continue to play the role that she needed to feel fulfilled as a ‘good’ mother. For the first two years of this journey, I seemed to continually flip between absolute rage and heart-wrenching grief.
After years of being enmeshed, I knew that somehow I had to start learning how to regulate myself when things got tough…..even though at the time I wasnt even sure where to begin.
But I started by simply noticing and becoming aware of my emotions…
I made (very feeble) attempts to speak up when I felt frustrated or didn’t agree with something my mum had said or done…
I began putting small boundaries down and decide what was acceptable, and not acceptable in our relationship, which felt both liberating and completely petrifying at the same time.
It didn’t always go well, my mum and I had some horrendous fights during that time.
Cutting that umbilical cord, so to speak, was one of the
that I ever did for myself and for my mother.
In the last couple of years of her life, we found a way to ‘be’ and love each other that wasn’t all-consuming. It felt, for me, that my mother became more conscious and respectful of my need for space and autonomy, that she was finally getting that I wasn’t her little girl anymore. I, on the other hand, was able to be more patient and loving with her and could start to value all the wonderful parts of her that I had been unable to see or appreciate for so many years.
It felt like for a briefest while we both got to see each other without our pain bodies running the show and I will forever be grateful for that time.
I’d love to be able to end this post by saying I finally have this dysregulation thing sorted.
But unfortunately, life isn’t a rom-com!
But I will say this:
These days I’m pretty proud of Lyssa who definitely doesn’t get as easily triggered as she used to be.
When she does visit, I’m thankful that I have found a way to soothe her through my writing.
Somehow pouring Lyssa’s rage into a poem infuses a little calmness and rationality into the equation.
(Which is always a bonus:-)
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY:
I am no longer driven by this desire to eradicate this ‘unwanted part’ of me.
Cause frankly now that I understand her, I kind of love her!
(PS When I hit ZEN status you will be the first to know!!!😉
(PPS DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH!!!)
Written 3rd February 2021
R.A.G.E
who the Fuck do you think you are?
judging people from afar.
laying out your pristine beliefs
like you are the goddam chief.
what makes you think you are always right?
painting others in a paler light.
you spend your life drowning in fears.
you are never content it would appear.
you have all you need.
to live your best life
your health, a great job, (You get to be a wife!)
beautiful children who adore you so
yet you can’t relax and let things go….
about all that is not
good lord can’t you be grateful for all you’ve got?
Fucking hell I hate it
when you tell me what to do!!
you push all my buttons.
(this much is true!)
I can’t even begin to explain how fucked off I feel.
I can’t even pretend.
or attempt to conceal.
why can’t you just let others live their own life?
let go of the judgement and pull out the knife.
the irony is not lost, as far as I can see,
those things that annoy us and drive us insane.
have nothing to do with others,
(I can’t even feign!)
I look in the mirror and all I see,
four fingers pointing right back at me.
this is all my own shit,
kinks not yet addressed,
blinding awareness,
So, I am not going to rise or take the bait.
I will take a deep breath.
write a poem.
and wait.
I know in my heart.
if I want change to really be
I will need to start with fucked off.
little me!
What Is Dysregulation?. (2022). Retrieved 10 September 2022, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-dysregulation-5073868#:~:text=Luis%20Pelaez%20Inc-,What%20Is%20Dysregulation%3F,anger%2C%20irritability%2C%20and%20frustration.