Yesterday morning I opened my copy of The Dance of Anger and began reading. Only a few pages in, I can already tell this is going to be an immensely helpful book for me.

I used to be very angry. Growing up in my house, there was a lot of unproductive venting and I was certainly one of the participants. I remember wanting to beat the crap out of my sister on more than one occasion. As a child, most of my anger was on behalf of myself. I didn’t get what I wanted, I was forced to share, I was made to wait. I experienced a very normal childlike indignation to such inconveniences. But as I grew, the anger stopped being on my own behalf, and became focused inward. I hated myself. I hated my life, my appearance, and my relationships and somehow I knew it was all my fault. Such anger evolved into despondence, and then eventually depression took hold and all I could feel was helpless. Still, that helplessness was directed inward. During one of my early therapy sessions I remember explaining to Kari my philosophy on my existence. As I saw it, there were only two possibilities for why my life had turned out the way it had. Number one, I was born defective. There was something in my brain or my soul that was not normal and that was the root cause of all the “bad” things in my life. Or number two, God created me for the purpose of experiencing tragedy. As I saw it, statistics proved that bad things were going to happen in the world. Perhaps I was born to experience those bad things so that statistically, everyone else stood a lesser chance. It was as a result of this conclusion that I lay awake nights terrified for the lives of my children. It wasn’t a matter of if something horrible would happen to them, it was when. I could imagine nothing more painful than losing them, and since I was created to experience pain it was only a matter of time.

Since I have been going through each item on my list, there have been so many times I have imagined you reading and thinking to yourself, “Thank God in Heaven this woman is in therapy.” I have to confess, I thank Him myself every day. Can you imagine how hopeless a life it would be to believe that the only reason you were given anything good was because you were meant to experience the pain of losing it? The self-loathing I felt was overwhelming. I hated myself for being selfish enough to get married and have babies, because it was obvious to me that the mere fact of having me in their lives was going to bring them pain and sorrow. It has taken so much work to change that way of thinking, and to create new pathways in my brain that don’t automatically lead to such awful and frightening conclusions. Since so much of my energy is focused on being a good mother, Kari has helped me use that to heal my own wounds. When I vocalize my fears and my self-loathing, she asks me what I would tell my daughters if they said that to me. Such an exercise helps me to bypass the mental block of feeling worthless, and find a loving and empathic response that I am able to apply to myself. Little by little, step by painful step, I have grown. When a familiar loathsome or abusive thought pops into my head, I slam down the mental breaks and turn my thoughts onto a more compassionate road. I used to have to force my mind to redirect itself in that way, but I now consistently surprise myself with how automatic it has become.

Now that I spend less time focusing on what a disgusting failure of a human I am, it has freed up a lot of mental energy for other kinds of growth. I am finding that anger plays a bigger part in this process than I ever could have imagined. Say I’m driving along, minding my own business, and some guy speeds up behind me and starts tailgating. I check my speed and find that I am already going five over the speed limit, so there’s no need for me to speed up. When he realizes that he’s not going to make me go faster by tailgating me, the driver changes lanes and flips me off as he races past. Instead of berating myself for somehow justifying his abuse, I now find that the thought that pops into my head is, Wow, that guy’s a jerk! Maybe it seems ridiculous to you that I am proud of myself for this, but do you not see the progress, people? The first sentence in The Dance of Anger is, “Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.” Worth is the important word here. I have found enough self-worth that I now believe myself entitled to be treated with kindness and respect. This is new! This is wonderful! Even though I know I have a lot more to learn, I can already see such immense progress. I have worked my butt off, and it shows!