Anger is from Unfairness... duh!

You would think by the title of this blog that I would be talking about the unfairness of infertility.

But I'm not.

First, a cycle update before my story: Dotty had her baseline yesterday and all went well. She is starting her meds today. I should get an update on Monday after her first ultrasound. Fingers, toes and eyes are crossed that we get a few good embryos out of this deal... well, that and a baby too :-)

Ok, back to the story... I learned a lot yesterday from my therapist. A lot about unfairness and anger. And while it now all seems very obvious, I feel like I understand some of the anger that I carry around inside a whole lot better.

I get angry, like screaming angry, at my sister and at my husband, but mostly in my dreams (sometimes in person... but I try not to). I'm usually angry at them for doing something that I think is unfair, or not the way I think it should go. I don't WANT to be an angry person. And mostly in real life, I don't think I am. But I definitely have some deep seeded anger down inside there.

I talked with my therapist yesterday about these dreams and the anger that I carry around. She said that anger is from a perceived feeling of unfairness, injustice. And it's ok to feel things are unfair and react, but the reaction should be on par with the stimulus. So it's ok to give a little eye roll at something small, say like when someone cuts in front of you in line, but it's not ok to feel intense tightness in your chest. That tightness though, really isn't about the line cutter, say, but about some deeper feelings of injustice/unfairness in your life that you haven't resolved.

We then talked a bit about my mom's disease (bipolar), and about how old I was when she was first hospitalised. I was only 12, I think. 12 years old... and at that point, I took on the house maker role in some ways. I did laundry, and cleaned the kitchen, and organized things, I packed lunches. It was a lot for a 12 year old to deal with but I think, if memory serves me right, that it kind of felt good. It felt good because things were quite chaotic in our house hold when mom was at her sickest, and when she was gone, there was sadness, but there was also peace. And I liked that peace.

It's funny though. As I look back on that time in my life, I see it now as a 36 year old, not as a 12 year old. And I have no friggin clue what and how a 12 year old thinks and how having to step into that role and be an adult for a while, at age 12, affected me.

Hmmm.... I wonder if I feel like that was UNFAIR!?!?!? Unfair that I had to worry about those things and didn't have a care free 12 -20 year old existence? Unfair that my mom and I didn't have the relationship that I probably craved. Unfair that my sisters were younger and maybe didn't seem affected by it as I did at the time. (Clearly, each of us has our own memory of our childhoods, which might not always match... but that's ok. There is no right memory, ya know? They are individually ours)

And so maybe, when I get angry at things in my dreams and sometimes in my life, and I feel that tightness in my chest and desire to correct the wrongness, it's not really about that perceived unfairness at that time, but it's actually about this unfairness I haven't dealt with from so long ago.

Hmmmm... It all seems so obvious to me..... now! I think I'm really going to like going to my therapist. Next question for her is... why my sister and my dear Tidy? Why are they the objects of my anger in my dreams?

I think therapy is going to agree with me :-)