Rage

I scared my son yesterday. I hate it when I act so poorly. It started in the middle of the night before last when I woke up to the sound of rain on the window. Yesterday I had to work all day and as I listened to the rain at 3 in the morning I thought about how much I didn't want my daughter to have to walk through that to get home from school. She hasn't been feeling well the past month. So I started thinking about how I should take a long lunch so I could pick her up after school but thinking about asking for that makes me extremely anxious even though I know my co-workers are more then understanding. Then I started wondering if her sweater was dry because she refuses to wear a jacket because she doesn't like going to her locker so I got up and found that it was still in the washer so I put it in the dryer with the load that was almost dry. Our dryer is on its last legs so it doesn't dry things as quickly as it should. When I got into bed I started worrying that since I put her black sweater in the dryer with a load of whites that it would get a bunch of white pills all over it. Meanwhile I am needing to toss and turn and my hubby, sweet man that he is, is trying to cuddle up to me to comfort me while he is still asleep. This makes tossing and turning more difficult and I start worrying that I am going to wake him up.

Yesterday morning went as usual. I got Jess to school, jumped in the shower, got the tub filling for alex while I put on my makeup then got him in the bath. It is hectic because even though everything has enough time to be accomplished things must progress at an even state. It is important that I keep reminding my son of this.

At 10 minutes to 9, durinig the critical point of getting my son ready, my mother in law calls to ask me what my son would like for Christmas. Now you all are probably thinking how nice it is of her but it irritated me because I have told her my ideas once already and then had my husband talk to her. He told her the things that Alex had asked for. Well she decided that she wanted to wait until the toys r us ad came out. So I went through our garbage and found the t.r.u ad. While I am doing that Alex is standing in the middle of the livingroom with a towel around his waist swinging the end of it back and forth in a different world he goes to when he is supposed to be getting ready for school. I get back on the phone with mom in law and tell her I will have to call her back because I don't have any idea right now what would be good. I swallowed the words, "since what I have already told you would be good is obviously not good enough". I yell at Alex to get dressed because we have to leave in less then a minute. Sigh. Then he is trying to get his shoes on and I am trying to help and the stupid thing is laced weird so I can't tighten it so I decide to relace it but as soon as I pull the lace loose from the top hole I discover that the plastic thing on the end of the lace is gone which means I can't relace it. My anger is rising, my head is starting to ring. So I get the ka-bob skewer in hopes that I can use it to shove the lace through the hole. It doesn't work, the skewer is too fat. I am so pissed off that I throw the skewer across the living room and it slams into the window. Fortunately our cellular blinds were down so the window didn't break though I did put a hole in the blind. The look on my son's face was heart breaking. He said "mom you scared me" and looked like he was about to cry. It was awful. I managed to get his shoe laced and got him to school but I feel horrible for my bad behavior.

I appologized to him yet again. When I picked him up after school he seemed ok. This morning I don't work so I didn't need to take a shower so I was able to get him started on getting dressed much earlier. It is funny when I get him going early he gets dressed in no time flat. He was ready so early that when he asked if he could walk to school I said ok. It is a mile so we don't do that often. We had a good walk, after he crossed the street to the school I went off for a run and got home feeling pretty good.

A final word on my Mom in law. On the way home from taking alex to school I thought of the perfect thing for her to get him, little Yu-gi-oh figurines. So I called her back. Told her this would be the absolutely perfect gift for her to give him and even told her exactly where in Toys R Us she could find them. She said "well, do you think he might like the game boy game better." ARGH!
Thanks for letting me vent,
Carrie

To whom do I owe the biggest apology? No one's been crueler then I've been to me.
I am sorry to myself, my apologies begin here before everybody else.
I am sorry to myself, for treating me worse then I would anybody else. --Alanis Moresette

Carrie,

Thanks for sharing that. I see some of the same patterns in myself, and didn't know that you felt the same way sometimes too. I can get frustrated over big things or a bunch of small things, and sometimes it sends me into a rage where I might yell at my kids, slam doors and things, throw things, etc. It's not uncommon that there is some SI involved too. That's how it went last month when I lost it and wound up stuck in a severe depression for a few weeks. The first incident was that the kids got into my chocolate chip supplies - 3 or 4 bags were missing, or rather, they were all over the kids' beds and in their backpacks, etc. I was mad, but also frustrated because they know better and whatever I try I just can't get them to learn not to take things that aren't theirs, and frustrated because that was what I was going to use for Christmas baking and I just can't keep anything safe. I yelled and threw things and stepped out of the room and tried to calm myself down (you guessed it, by cutting), went back and tried to deal with the kids again until I was banging my head, left to try to calm down again, ... That cycle went on all evening and even the next morning every time the kids saw me they started pointing fingers at each other and all of them claiming, "I didn't do it" and the cycle started over again. When I told my T about what happened that was when he said I had to stop the cutting. The rage was so bad that I wasn't sure about my memory of it even just a few days later. I try not to spank my kids because I'm afraid of losing control, especially when I am that mad, and I didn't think that I spanked anybody but wasn't sure.

Rage is really scary. Not to minimize what you go through, but I admire you so much for being able to bounce back after things happen. It takes me days or weeks to climb out of the hole if I get in it. The unfortunate thing for me last month was that just when I had about gotten out of the hole I got shoved back in again and fell hard, and it took the rest of the month to get out again. I'm doing good now but still get fragile easily. So I really admire your ability to recover. In fact, learning how to recover faster or getting better at climbing out of the hole is what I have told my T I want to work on, since I have no hope of always being able to avoid that hole. I have just been in it too many times. And I feel bad about acting so poorly too.

<font color=green>"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible" Carl Jung</font color=green>

I have found 2 things help me to bounce back quicker. The first thing is to admit to the people I was yelling at or around that I was behaving badly. Before I actually totally calm down but am back in control I appologize for yelling or slamming things. Then in the evening before bed I sit down with my kids and appologize to them (since they are the ones to usually see me at my worst) and explain to them that what I did was not appropriate and that I wish I had done it like ______________. I also tell them that I love them and hope they don't pick up this habit because it is not good. Then I tell them how I am going to discipline myself for the poor behavior such as going to bed early--they don't know that is actually quite a treat for me, ha ha.

The second thing I do is I put myself in my therapists chair. I try to view the situation from the outside. I have seen my guy for long enough now I pretty much know all his answers. So by "sitting in his chair" I find that I am able to access those answers but if I don't do that role play I just can't seem to remember what it is he said. This process fascinates me. It is so strange that I have the information in my head but can't access unless I step outside myself. Totally wierd.

I do agree with your T on the subject of us having to stop with the SI. As long as we continue to do it we are preventing ourselves from learning and using appropriate calming rituals. But stopping is so much easier said then done. When I have tried in the past to stop cold turkey so to speak I ended up drinking damn near every night and my driving would get down right dangerous...not because I was drinking, I have rarely driving after drinking...well I will down a screwdriver in 15 seconds at the bar by my work then jump in the car and drive home. The booze just starts to work its wonders right as I enter the driveway.
Carrie

To whom do I owe the biggest apology? No one's been crueler then I've been to me.
I am sorry to myself, my apologies begin here before everybody else.
I am sorry to myself, for treating me worse then I would anybody else. --Alanis Moresette