jumbles
Just a word to depict so much to deal with and so hard to deal with it. One refreshing things is that there are so many journeying in a deeply transparent way, sharing raw emotions personal pain and challenges and the toughness on carrying on. Always such huge lift to read the life happenings of people seeking to learn grow and change as they walk the road before them. I know one huge thing for me right now is how Im really learning how much i need to let go of the controlling way i attempt to live in my head, especially as a way to try and avoid dealing with pain and things i find highly uncomfortable. I have lawys bottled up anger as long as i can recall, just dont like feeling angry and also i have felt alot like the Hulk big strong altthough gentle, and afraid of hurting people when angry. I also struggle because i have anger over things from long ago that i thought could be v handled by just burying and suppressing till it dissipated. I know it just comes out in different ways ways i deem safe.
i feel jumbled in social ways still. The defense mechanisms built up to protect from being rejected and ridiculed cause a stuntedness at times so much especially when wanting to seek to get to know a girl better to see about asking her out or anything. Also just feeling like Im *one down* internally from the way i felt while growing up. I am able on the outside to function and serve in the roles i have in life. But deep inside i still feel so much of the shy and hurting 8 year old on up who doesnt know how to manage things alot of the time and fights fear and feeling unwanted by kids own age and unable to overcome things that i need to gain emotional maturity. its hard to write about this in the way i envision it in my head. I dont like having a huge part of me feel like Im stuck at 8 and 14 years old not fun hard to write about feeling like aIm not the man i wanted to be or should be because of hiding from myself and experiences hy growing up around women. I just want to have Gods help to mature and let go of the anger and fear that keeps me in patterns that are hurting and not healthy. Hope to see some of you stop by.
posted by Robert @ 9:11 PM
3 Comments:
Robert, thanks for stopping by my blog.
And thank you for being open with your struggles. We all struggle with who we are and who we were and how we're going to choose who we'll be and how God's going to work through things, though, in all honesty, we wish sometimes He'd just leave it alone, thank you very much.
robert,
your honesty revealed something to me about the way I avoid what God wants me to face. I am a terrible escapist - everytime God backs me into a corner where I might have to feel rotten for more than five minutes, I take the cheap way out - escaping into a book, a movie, a bag of cheezies - I look to other people, to excitement and fun, to cure me of "feeling bad". I never run out of ways to chew myself out of a dark corner - anything that gives me a quick shot of "feel-good" so that I don't have to keep on feeling, well, bad.
There are two problems here. God is not setting me free from a temporary bad feeling because he wants to remove the very thing that makes me feel that way. He may very well be trying to give me something that will be a lasting "feel-good" instead of the quick-fixes i choose for myself, but instead I circumvent his every attempt. Second, I remain trapped in a world of immaturity, unable to overcome my own feelings/wants. Growing up means saying that I don't have to be driven by my wants; that I can want things and still say "no". I can even keep on wanting them and keep on saying "no". This is what God wants for me - to grow up so that I won't be trapped, deeper and deeper, in this hole that I keep digging to avoid dealing with discomfort. He can set me free, but not if I keep running away!
Thanks for sharing your story with us. I am realizing that admitting the problem and accepting the pain puts us in a place to be healed. If I could accept 5 minutes of discomfort now, I could save myself years of struggle! I'll be praying for you, too, to be healed of your hurts and set free from your fears by the power we have access to in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You said, "I also struggle because i have anger over things from long ago that i thought could be handled by just burying and suppressing till it dissipated. I know it just comes out in different ways ways i deem safe."
Robert, I can relate to this. I knew for a long time that I was very angry. I just didn't know why and I didn't know how to deal with it. Sometimes the anger was directed at myself and other times at everyone else.
I think the thing that helped me find some degree of freedom was finally seeing how my anger was hurting those I loved.
What did not work was prayer, Bible study, prayer, exercise, more prayer, and more time in the Word. I knew in my head all about the way I SHOULD be. I could do a great study on anger and present a sound Biblical view on how a Christian should deal with anger. But it didn't mean anything.
I'm not saying that God was not part of the solution. It's just that prayer alone wasn't sufficient because I wanted God to magically remove the issues and to suddenly make me anger-free. God was intimately involved in moving me forward, even though I usually didn't see His hand in the painful process that He used (and that I fought.)
I remember when I being told that we only give up our addictions (and I believe anger can be an addiction) when those addictions threaten us with the loss of something we are unwilling to lose.
Anger was a familiar feeling, a place I knew well, especially anger at myself. I returned to it time and time again because it was safe. That sounds so strange to call anger a safe place, but when I was angry I was the one who was being wronged. I was the one whose standards or expectations had been violated. In a way, I was more important then, even if I didn't consciously feel that way.
Do I still get angry? Sure. Do I handle it differently now? Yes. I have trained myself to stop earlier in an anger-cycle and to reconnect with reality. I often have to reorient my expectations, to realize that my anger came from wanting the world to bow down to my needs and desires. I'm not saying that all of my needs or desires are illegitimate or unworthy of resolution. Some are foolish and immature. Some are simply selfish. Others are normal, but the circumstances do not permit them to be realized. Other times they require that I initiate and sometimes even take risks.
Sometimes I hear someone describing a relational issue that does not directly involve me. But I see a wrong there, and my first reaction is anger. I want to interject myself into the situation and work to make things right. I want to make the "wrong" person see the light. I sometimes get the same response when I hear or read someone whose understanding of faith seems so wrong to me.
Part of what is going on when I respond that way internally is that addiction to the feeling of righteous indignation. Sometimes it feels so good to BE RIGHT.
But I think you may be talking more about when life does not treat you fairly. I have been there too. For me, anger in those circumstances is both a means of protection and a bit of a balm. If I am angry about it, then there is part of me that believes that it should be different, that it could be different. Sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not. But the anger is a signal that I believe it could be different, that my violated expectations are not unrealistic.
I'm going on way too long here. And I feel that I have started thoughts that are incomplete or potentially misleading. But for the sake of "brevity" I'll stop now.
Peace, brother.
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