The Anger Iceberg
To set context: I was diagnosed with Anxiety, Depression, and Borderline Personality disorder in 2017. I have been on and off medication and in therapy since then.
A couple of months ago I came across a comment thread on facebook. The comment thread was from an educator asking for tips to help her eight year old students manage their anger. I skimmed through the thread out of curiosity and was both surprised and a little sheepish because so much of what they were sharing could have applied to me.
“Do I have the emotion management skills of an eight year old boy?”, I thought to myself, embarrassed. My mind immediately sprang to my disorders. It’s because I have BPD. It must be just me. Other people aren’t like this. Normal people aren’t like this. One particular image hit me hard. This one:
I googled the image and clicked through the images till I found the accompanying article. It applied to adults also. Whew. I wasn’t emotionally stunted. But I still sat there having flashbacks to all the times I had let anger do the work without looking past it to see what was actually underneath. One specific episode still burns in my memory.
It begins with a boy. A boy I had known of but never met. One day I finally plucked up the courage to talk to him. One thing led to another and he was sitting in front of me at a restaurant on our first date. Everything after that felt like it went in fast forward.
The first six weeks flew by in a blur of hormones. My brain was flooded with feel good drugs. I had finally found the one. The one I would spend my life with. I was more sure than ever. He met all my friends, they all loved him. Validation. He met my mother who liked him. Even more validation. I met his friends. They liked me. Could it have been more perfect? The way he looked at me, the way he smiled at me. I allowed myself to step outside the wall I had built around me to allow myself to be loved. Maybe I did deserve to be loved after all. Maybe all the previous relationships were just a build up to this. This final, beautiful, gorgeous, perfect crescendo. Here was my happy ending. The year came to a close on a hormone fuelled high.
January 1st. I will never know what happened when I woke up that day. Suddenly two years of recovery from my disorders felt like they had been undone. The next six weeks were a blur of madness. I had lost control of my brain. I didn’t know which way was up. Everything made me want to cry and scream and dig sharp objects into my own body. Not only did it feel like my progress had been undone, it felt like I had dropped to an all new low. I experienced panic attacks for the first time. An upgrade from anxiety attacks. My brain was trying to kill me.
The night before three months since our first date my brain malfunctioned again. It took one mistake and turned into a relationship ending catastrophe. I was overloaded. I couldn’t handle this on top of everything else. I was hurting too badly. My brain was on fire. I needed to eliminate everything that made me feel bad and that day he made me feel bad. I unleashed my secret weapon. I crafted a machete with my words, found his sore spots and stabbed him. I stabbed again and again and again until I knew he was feeling the kind of pain I was feeling. It wasn’t fair that only I had to feel bad. Why wasn’t he feeling bad also? I would make him feel bad. I knew how to do it and I did.
Two days later the embers settled down, the smoke cleared and I saw what I had done. I felt like the protagonist in a true crime podcast. A mentally ill, unstable person who lost control and wreaked havoc. I saw him lying there in a pool of figurative blood, clutching the wounds I had inflicted.
No no no I didn’t mean it oh shit no I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean to I’m sorry please believe me I lost control I didn’t mean to oh god what have I done. For two months I tried explaining. I apologised and cried and left him flowers and cried again and apologised again.
“How do I know I won’t get hurt again?”, he asked one day.
I couldn’t answer. Instead I got angry again. I lashed out again. “Why can’t you give it a chance and find out?”, I screamed. I screamed that he didn’t actually love me enough to give me a chance. I screamed that he was a hypocrite. I screamed myself hoarse, throwing daggers I am ashamed to admit I even had with me.
“You’re proving that I’m right. This right here. This is what will keep happening. Every time you get angry you’ll treat me like garbage and I can’t take being hurt like that again.”
I said every single mean thing that I could think of, my hands shaking, my heart racing. Three hours later I was on the bathroom floor sobbing. What have I done what have I done what have I done. I did it all again. I proved him right. How did I let this happen? He’s right to be afraid of me. Who am I? What have I become?
The guilt and shame of what I did still linger in the pit of my stomach; surfacing when I am most vulnerable, just before I fall asleep and as soon as I wake up. I fall asleep tired from crying, eyes burning, heart aching. I wake up in a panic, heart racing, until I remember why I feel like that. It takes me almost an hour to calm down before I can actually leave my bed.
I’ve spoken openly about my mental health before, I preach forgiveness and acceptance of disorders and the inability to manage one’s emotions. Yet every night I lie in bed, pillow wet with tears, a playlist of tear jerkers on repeat. Punishing myself for allowing my emotions to get the best of me and hurting someone else in the process. Usually my anger implodes, tearing me up from the inside, leading to self harm, self loathing, and winding down into the calming mental image of suicide.
I have learned to deal with that cycle of emotions. I have ten years of experience with it. But this time I hurt someone else in my anger. I couldn’t allow it to happen again. Sure I could blame my anxiety, my trust issues, my fear of abandonment, but what good is all that and preaching self awareness if I don’t learn the lesson?
That image of the anger iceberg has continued floating around my mind. I spent hours journaling, talking to myself, crying, talking to friends, talking to my therapist trying to make sense of what had happened. Looking back on the first episode, I was scared, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious. I was dealing with too much. One small nudge and I shot back with anger. The second time I lashed out I felt rejected, disappointed, hurt, and insecure. If only I had known this then. I could have said “I feel overwhelmed, I need help.” I could have said “I feel rejected, I need reassurance and love.” and everything would have been different.
Life isn’t that easy I suppose. Hopefully I am not the only one who struggles with this. Hopefully this will make someone else feel less alone in their struggles, knowing we are all imperfect and all we can do is keep trying. To the person I hurt, if you read this, I am truly sorry for the way I acted. You don’t have to forgive me. All I can say is that I will try and do better next time.
More from me on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/takeiteasypolicy/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kingfisherontap
YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/UrvashiTakeItEasyPolicy
Buy my Merchandise: https://nonsense-by-urvashi.blinkstore.in/
Buy my Book Recommendations: https://www.amazon.in/shop/TakeItEasyPolicy
Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/takeiteasypolicy
