You Have To Feel Your Emotions To Master Them

sometimes the process can be destructive.

I struggle with anger occasionally. There, I said it. We all get angry. We’ve all been upset before. Anger is a normal human emotion.

But dark, violent anger? The kind of anger that makes you actually yell as loud as you can at someone. The kind of anger where you begin to see red and no longer regard the objects or people around you.

Speaking of objects, there will be some thrown, and something is about to get broken.

The kind of anger makes me want to put a hole in the wall, or even worse, a hole in somebody.

Whoa.

Slow down there, buddy.

Pulling Back The Curtain

These lurking parts of myself were not always known about. As a matter of fact, I have always been one of the nicest people I know. I never fought at school or even had tendencies to do so. I never bullied other kids.

And although I’ve gotten upset before, I was never the type to act out in anger until I began dating the person I was at the time.

Before this person, I had no idea that anger could be provoked beneath the surface of my conscious knowing self.

Then one day, I specifically remember waking up and thinking to myself,

What the hell happened last night and why did it have to happen that way?

The night prior, we had engaged in yet another one of our unwarranted, malicious altercations.

How the fight started doesn’t matter so much, probably her facing another one of her insecurities and me not fully comforting her and reassuring her as I was supposed to.

We were arguing like always. And as usual, I was fed up with our inability to communicate and reach an agreement or resolution.

I decided to go home and let the argument cool down.

It seemed at the time, like the best way to de-escalate the situation. It appeared as if that's what any normal person would do.

Maybe you have been in this kind of situation with someone before.

The kind of situation where they don’t know when to stop. When to call it quits for the evening. When to let go and step away.

They desperately seek to control the situation by any means necessary, inherently pushing those away who they seek to control.

She decided to get in her car and follow me.

I could feel the blood in my veins boiling as I turned off her street and saw her headlights coming down the road after me.

What is she doing? Why is she doing this?

You clearly see me leaving your house. So let me leave. Let me cool down.

She turned the corner and sped up to my car, approaching so fast I thought she was going to crash into the back of my car.

I cautiously stopped my car, aware of how close she was behind me.

Enraged, I got out with both arms up in the air, yelling and cursing profanities at her, wondering what on earth she was attempting to do with her erratic behavior.

When she didn’t budge at all, I approached the vehicle and tried to open the door.

It was locked.

She sat there doing nothing — her vacant stare making me angrier.

Why is she following me when I clearly told her I needed time away from the argument?

I banged on the window and door, telling her to open it, demanding an explanation for her behavior and why she was acting this way.

She may have been able to open her door and calmly talk.

But I think it was too late for me.

When she didn’t open the door and explain her erratic behavior, I tore the door handle straight off the car like an ape.

Not moments later, I threw the door handle as hard as could at the driver-side glass point-blank, her face inches away on the other side.

The glass shattered into a million pieces, bursting in every direction.

When she became hysterical and said there was glass in her eye, my rage high quickly dissipated, and I realized what had been done.

What I had done.

I spent to the rest of the night gas vacuuming an endless amount of glass shards out of her car, and she took an ambulance to the hospital.

She suffered a small cut to her eye that affects her vision to this day, and I was held responsible for replacing her window and door handle — as well as the shame, guilt, and remorse of what I had allowed myself to do.

A few days later, I’m pretty sure we were acting as none of it had ever happened.

It was an unhealthy relationship at the time, to say the least.

That was four years ago.

Emotions Can Be A Dangerous Part of Us

I’ve witnessed the dark sides of myself that I didn’t think existed. Maybe you’ve experienced this on your self-discovery journey or within an interpersonal relationship, a small shift in perspective of how you see yourself because of something you did or said to someone.

We all have part of ourselves that we love, admire, and show off to others. This is everyone on social media. It’s easy to observe.

Then we have other parts. Parts that we haven’t fully accepted or love yet. The parts we try and hide from others or even pretend that they don’t exist.

Those parts always manage to slip out, one way or another, until we learn to disconnect ourselves from them and allow them to move through us, instead of acting on them and then letting them define us.

Wrapping it up

I struggled with defining myself as someone with anger issues following that incident. When I say I struggled with it, I don’t mean that I was angry or did random acts of terror or violence.

I had an internal struggle labeling myself as someone with having anger issues based on parts of myself I hadn’t excepted.

The discoveries I had made about myself were not pleasant ones.

They were empowering because finally acknowledging parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed is a rewarding experience, even if those pieces are damaged and need healing.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, acting out in such rage is a sign of something within myself needing healing.

Becoming more aware of such emotion is the start of a more fulfilling journey, one that does not involve violence or acting out in anger.

I can now say I’m a completely different person from when that story above unraveled.

I used to have anger issues.

Now, I’m acknowledging that I will not be confined to the said label.

I am growing; I am changing.

I am learning.

I’m aware of my emotional capability, and it’s consequences if not handled properly.

I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I don’t identify with that part of myself any longer.

I won’t allow that label to haunt me any longer.

We’re extremely complicated and multifaceted creatures, and we have many faces. It’s just as important to acknowledge the nasty parts of ourselves as it is the beautiful ones.

Acknowledging and integrating these parts gracefully brings greater fulfillment and the ability to connect with others in a more loving, empathetic way.

You used to be a certain way, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build a better future for yourself.

Just because someone gave you a label doesn’t mean you have to allow that label to define your future.

Break out of the chains.

Don’t your circumstances or past haunt or hinder you from becoming who you know you can be.

You're a rockstar, and like Benjamin Hardy, Ph.D. says,

Personality Isn’t Permanent

But only you can decide that for yourself.

If you made it until the end, thank you for reading.

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