Therapy time

I'm really, really starting to grasp under the concept that I need to process things before I respond. Surprise surprise, the thing I was always told to do.

But, like I mean, for myself. And not just being arbitrarily told by a parent who has not gained my trust. Like I really, really do.

Not only do the hot reactions of yore serve nothing to solve the least of an issue, they just really do not serve to solve the least of anything. Not one thing.

Most largely because not doing so has restrained me from learning how to digest and process my feelings any healthy and a regulating way.

Even though I have learned in a very unsatisfying way how to yield my emotions to reason, the very real truth is that I still have those hot reactions and triggers from 20 years ago. I still feel like an unregulated, emotional teenager. I feel like a hot wreck as the hormones and whatever chemical inability that keep me from harnessing a calmer self continue to rage through me.

I don't feel like it controls me but in truth, it totally does. Sometimes it's just an arbitrary change in my hormones that I can legitly feel course through my veins. Other times, it's something someone says. Usually somebody close to me. And sometimes, woe be to God, it's both. Then all fire and hell rain down upon us all. 

The story: I went to the cupboard to pull my favourite cup to make some tea and noticed it was gone. I accused my husband of taking it, in a question. "Did you use my Moon and back cup?" He admits to it. Okay, so far so good. Should have been good enough. Let it go. It's over and done with. 

An entire thought creeps up in the back of my skull all the way to the front of my brain which likely works out more to be a story than a single thought. How is it fair that he gets to use my cup when he doesn't like me using his?

And I mean, I get really agitated even recounting this. For reasons that I cannot rationalize at all. He is not some unfair guy. He is not unreasonable. We've gotten this far, ten years, with my "fiery" ways and all. We've slogged through the mud enough to know the do's and don'ts of each other.

Part of that starts to get to me, too. My fiery ways. He knows that I'm going to get pissed off. Which sounds pretty damned narcissistic except for I only mean to point out how much he cares when I get mad in other instances, how flooded he gets when I even express the tiniest agitation, to the point where sometimes I feel like I can't even be myself in some manner of personality. Like he can't even with the mere possibility of it. 

And then also gets the same level of mad about it. It doesn't make sense that he gets flooded with something that feels less loaded (to me) of mine in other situations that include my temper, but is noncommittal about this mug. It doesn't make sense. It's not consistent.

But I feel like he doesn't care. I feel like I'm supposed to care and he doesn't have to. I feel like I have to be on hyper alert and he gets to be flippant. He says he didn't realize it was my go-to mug and offers the reverse scenario empathy. "I can understand [my side]." It's still not good enough.

But why??? 

Why is it not good enough?

Why is it not good enough tonight?

Why is this a particular problem tonight? And not on other nights? Why, another nights, in other situations, is it good enough but it was not good enough tonight?

And why, oh WHY, are we here again? Why are we here again after all this time? Why am I still doing with this crap? That bubbling rage in my chest? And why oh why the inconsistency on my part? Why okay some days and not others?

I think a lot of that extremist perspective confirms things I haven't worked out so I'm trying to work them out here. I also think that quitting smoking while trying to move have been their own kind of hell. To be continued...