How Do You Deal With Anger You Know is Unjustified?

Everyday I wake up and try to force myself to “do something”, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. In addition to suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder for the last 18 years, I’ve suffered from depression for almost 3. When I was a teenager, adults would constantly ask if I was depressed in an attempt to find out why I was missing so much school. I never thought I was depressed, and 3 years ago I confirmed I definitely was not. Boy it’s good to be right.

 

I had a string of things happen starting with minor stuff, like jury duty (remember I have a fear of social situations), my computer needing to be replaced, my dog was having health problems, a strange reoccurring exhaustion that would leave me bedridden for 2 week at a time, I had to do everything at least twice for work, because I consistently screwed it up one or more times, by the end of the year almost every electrical device I owned went bad and had to be replaced (seriously, from my TV to my toaster – pretty much everything except my phone), and just a truly bizarre amount of little things going wrong, one after the other. It was all little stuff, but I had never in my life experienced such an overwhelming amount of it all at the same time.

 

After a few months of one little thing after another, it became one big thing after another – with all the little stuff still going wrong too. In August, my dog got much sicker. Her head would twist sharply to one side, she’d walk into walls, she’d quiver, she was vomiting more, and she’d just lay their whimpering and nothing I tried would comfort her. Every night, I’d have to lay on the floor with her while she shook and whined until she’d fall asleep, otherwise, she would pace around the floor in a panic, whimpering and crying all night. She wouldn’t sleep on the bed with me, and I could see an almost constant anxiety and reoccurring panic in her. This was all in addition to her chronic bronchitis, which would make her wheeze and cough like a smoker, and hypothyroidism for which she required daily medication. She’d survived breast cancer twice before, and had a history of coming out of situations where her survival chances were low. Our vet said it was probably a brain tumor and referred us to a neurologist.

 

So my mom and I took her to the neurologist. He agreed that it was probably a brain tumor. An MRI (to look for a tumor) with a test for Meningitis (a remote possibility) would cost $3000. I couldn’t afford that, and my mom said she wouldn’t pay for it. Besides a tumor, or Meningitis, there were a few rare diseases which he could do blood tests for. He also said that judging by her symptoms, the brain tumor (if it existed) was likely in a location making it inoperable, and radiation treatment would cost about $10,000, would mean sending her to Colorado by herself for at least 1 month, and was unlikely to save her. We had the blood tests done hoping it was one of those rare “something elses” – “something else” that could be treated or better yet cured. When the nurse called to give us the results, she assumed it was good news that they were negative. My mom, who answered the call, played along with her excitement because she didn’t want to be rude. I was sitting there watching her act happy, and then found out there was nothing to be happy about.

 

Around October, my mom threw her back out. Every time she felt better she’d stubbornly try to do “just a little housework” and throw it out again. So she was unable to do most of the things she normally did, off and on for about 2 months. I’d take over her part of the housework – at least the part that absolutely had to be done, and my father, brother, and I took care of bringing her food, drink, etc., so she wouldn’t have to get up too much.

 

Then one morning we had to rush my dad to the hospital because he thought he was having a heart attack. A few years ago he had bypass surgery to place a stint, and he was, and is, on high blood pressure medication. He was in the hospital for 3 days, and they never did determine what happened.

 

In November my dog started getting worse. She’d whine to go outside all night. I’d take her out and she would pace around the yard whimpering and moaning, clearly confused and scared. After about 20 minutes in the cold, I’d carry her in to the house, and she’d immediately start whining to go out again. So we’d go in and out all night, neither one of us getting much sleep. Then it was my mom’s birthday, and I spent that night taking my dog in and out again. But this time she was giving me these pleading looks (which I am crying about even as I write this almost 3 years later). She looked at me like she was begging for help to make it stop. Her confusion was also much worse, and at one point outside I tried to pick her up to go back in and she bit at my hand and growled, looking at me like I was a complete stranger. She didn’t want to be touched, but I couldn’t let her stay out in the cold.

 

At about 6:30 in the morning, after having been up all night, I went in and woke my mom up and told her what an awful night we’d had and that I wanted to go to the vet. So my mom called and I heard her saying she thought is was time to “let her go”. She wasn’t making an appointment to see the vet, she was making an appointment to have my dog put to sleep. I had wanted to see if we could try some pain medication or something for her anxiety, I had thought we wouldn’t loose her till around Christmas – it was supposed to be at least another month. But I didn’t say anything, I was in shock.

 

I held her on my lap on the way over. I carried her in, I held her on my lap in the waiting room. I laid my head against hers and tried to comfort her. She was calmer than before, but still quivering (something she had done all her life when we’d go to the vet). I cradled her head like a baby, and spoke to her. I tried not to cry in front of the other people in the waiting room, managing to only quietly sob. When the girl came out and started to tell us what was going to happen now she asked, “you’re going to sit with her aren’t you?” I said no. I couldn’t, I wanted to get out of there, I wanted to run somewhere away from other people and just scream as loud as I could. I wanted to go somewhere where I could curl up into a ball and cry. I didn’t want to watch her die. So she took her and we left. Later of course I felt an incredible amount of guilt. I wondered to myself if she was scared when it happened, but deep down I already knew she was. She’d spent the last month of her life scared. Of course she was.

 

A few days later it was Thanksgiving, and we had family over. Then Christmas, and New Years blew by in a blur. By January I knew I was depressed. For the first time in my life I was thinking about dying. I was never suicidal, but it would temporarily cross my mind for a couple seconds at a time. I’d always stop myself from thinking about it immediately. Intellectually I knew it wasn’t the answer, and with the exception of my irrational fear of people, my intellect almost always wins out. But now I can definitively say I know what depression feels like, there’s absolutely no doubt. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that’s what it was, I knew it completely.

 

In the meantime, a relative of one of my in-laws had her throat slit and was left for dead. Her would-be murderers didn’t know what they were doing though, so she thankfully survived. (I won’t give any more detail, except to say she’s not someone I’m close to but I’m very glad she’s alright and they caught those responsible.)  And I now had something specific to think about when I thought about my own problems and told myself “things could be worse”.

 

I had hardly worked since August, and that new computer I had to charge the previous summer wasn’t getting paid off because of it. I made my minimum payments and that was it. I had to borrow money from my parents for my mailbox rental and business license. Then I had a disagreement with my brother, who had been a client, and was fired by him. Then I had a huge fight over my nephew. None of these things were great tragedies, but piled on top of everything else they felt like it. I was now having some physical repercussions just from being under stress for such a prolonged period.

 

Then in June, two men (well, they were about 19 or 20) busted down the front door to my house a little after midnight. They were, we believe, trying to rob the house. They held both my parents at gun point, while I hid in my bedroom with a phone that, to my surprise, had no dial tone. They even fired a shot towards my mom to try and scare her. We were all okay, but let’s just say there were some emotional consequences from the rest of the family which did not help matters. In fact, one family member really made things a whole lot worse than they had to be – actually screaming and swearing at us on several occasions for not being more upset. This family member didn’t want to get past what had happened, and wouldn’t let us move on either; telling us that we were being selfish and inconsiderate of their feelings because we weren’t feeling the way we were “supposed” to about what had happened to us. So instead of moving on with our lives in about two months, we had about 6 or 7 extra months of arguments and drama, anger and blame, paranoia and bullshit (excuse me but it’s true), all for no good reason. The three of us who had been there during the robbery were ready to move on, but we weren’t “allowed” to until this particular person was finally ready to back off. And I mean we weren’t allowed, with months of almost daily verbal abuse and some truly frightening pronouncements, I wanted to move somewhere and never see this family member again.

 

Before all of this “bad luck” started, I was actually at a high point in my life. I was getting more control over my anxiety, and I had started a business which was doing alright. I had more hope for my future than I had had since I was a kid. Thing were really going well. But now I feel sad, guilty, hopeless, and angry. I am starting to feel a little less overwhelmed at this point and maybe even a little hopeful again, but I have a long way to go still. One of the things I’m having trouble resolving is my anger. I’m angry at myself of course, but the problem lies with my anger towards other people.

 

Take my mom, for example. I have no right to be angry with her, and she certainly doesn’t deserve my anger in any way. Even though I shouldn’t, I feel angry because she had the money for my dog’s MRI. I’m angry because she decided to have her put to sleep, and she didn’t even ask me. I wasn’t consulted about whether or not I wanted a necropsy (an autopsy for animals), my mom just made the arrangements without talking to me. I’ll never know whether she really had a tumor (Her symptoms came and then disappeared for a couple of months before returning, which doesn’t happen with tumors.). I need to know whether I could have done anything and now I never will. Of course I’m sure my mother made those decisions in an attempt to make things easier on me; I know she was just trying to help. And, after all, I didn’t say anything, I just went along, I was just too much in shock. And I still haven’t said anything. How could I be angry? She loved my dog almost as much as I did. She still gets sad thinking about her too. She’s depressed herself, I think, and I don’t want to make her feel worse by telling her how I feel.

 

So how do I resolve this anger? Usually, when you’re angry with someone, you tell them how you feel and work through it; you express it instead of bottling it up. I know my anger is unjustified, and telling her how I feel will make her feel worse. But after 3 years the anger is still there. My head knows it’s wrong, but my heart won’t let go. If I don’t resolve my anger, how will I ever get passed this? Sometimes I’ll snap at her for no apparent reason. She thinks I’m just grumpy, but I think it might be my repressed anger showing through. I can’t tell her how I feel; I know it would make her feel guilty, and I don’t want that. I want her to start feeling better too. 

I feel guilty because of my anger. Even if I resolve all of my other feelings, I’ll still be left with this anger and this guilt. So am I doomed to feel angry and guilty and depressed for the rest of my life? How do I resolve my anger without hurting someone else’s feelings? If I know there’s no reason to be angry, why won’t it go away?

~ by peoplephobe on July 30, 2008.