I have anger issues.
It’s been an issue almost my entire life, and it was a trait I developed because of my upbringing. But it’s not in the way that you’d think. I don’t get mad at other people, not very often anyways.Yes, I’ll get frustrated, and yes I’ll get annoyed,
But never angry.
You probably won’t really understand the different between anger and frustration until you’ve really been angry. I personally have only ever really been truly angry three times in my life, two of which were at my mom. That of course only includes other people though. When I say I have anger issues, I mean with myself.
For those of you that read what I write, you probably already know that I’ve always struggled with acceptance. The constant need to always feel accepted, useful, and liked.
But having this issue doesn’t only mean that I’m often insecure and that I bend over backwards for everyone else.It also means that I often always found myself, disciplining myself.
I, especially as a kid, punished myself when I felt I did something wrong. Whenever I failed I felt the need to teach myself not to fail again. I was often told, or it was implied, that I was a disappoint-ment, a failure. I grew up with this mindset and it made me fear failure. I hate the idea of failing, and that’s one reason why I’m so scared of judgement. I don’t want people to see me fail and judge me for it. I don’t want to not be good enough.
Because I always used to discipline myself as a kid, I became very angry with myself. Anytime I didn’t get something right I used to bite my knuckles till the bled. I punched the walls and pinched my thighs and threw tantrums but I wasn’t mad at anyone besides myself. I was mad that I messed up and so it ruined me to a point where I became so short tempered with myself that I was always angry.
Whenever I’d throw tantrums I would cry after because I hated myself for the way I’d act. I always cleaned up any messes I made around the house. I grew out of it for the most part once I approached my ending years of elementary. I stopped harming myself physically and throwing tantrums but I never stopped harming myself mentally.
Ive learned in high school that anger is a choice.
I learned that the last emotion anyone should turn to is anger. It hurts other people and when you’re angry you hurt yourself. So at this point, i was never mad at anyone, and even when I got mad at myself I’d just cry. I figured, even now that, I’d rather be called weak for crying than for being angry. And you can call me emotional, which is okay, but I can’t fix this anger that’s been born inside of me. It’s an issue that was caused by my mothers failure to raise me with positivity. Of course, she’s not all to blame. The way I react is my choice, but it’s been hard to even get where I am now. I cry a lot now because of it, because it’s the only way for me to not always be angry at myself.
Today I spent 45 minutes trying to put my hair in a messy bun. 45 minutes, 7 attempts, 11 broken bobby pins, hundreds of strand of hair torn out, and I even got scissors and chopped off part of my hair. I was angry. I was angry that I couldn’t complete a simple task, I was angry that I failed. I wasted 45 minutes just to take it out 3 minutes later just because I wasn’t happy with how it looked. This is why I don’t do my hair.
Now I’m emotional, very emotional. I had to sit on the floor, against my bathroom door, and cry. Had I not, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. Thankfully, my mom wasn’t home.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last. I’ve had experiences like this with other things too, and it really is just something I have a hard time controlling. It’s not easy to explain but it’s just something I wish I would fix. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to have to cry to not be mad at myself. I just want to be happy, but sometimes in situations like these I make nothing into a big deal and I just can’t be.
