Tell me thy name, Demon!

I had been fine for months and then the storm started to brew. I could feel it gathering in my chest, and I could feel the pressure trapped in my throat. I could feel myself off balance and off-centre. I had been on antidepressants, and after a period of peace, I started to feel like my thoughts were gloopy. Formulating an idea was like walking through molasses. I kept trying to tell myself that I had to remember things, that they were important, and then I could not remember them. I couldn’t count on my mind anymore. There was something that I needed to see, and it kept escaping me. This was when I decided to stop taking the pills. This was not what anybody suggested. This was very much against what I had discussed with my GP; it was against what my therapist had recommended when we initially discussed it, but I felt that this was what I had to do.

As the medication left my system, all of my friends were back. This was the reunion that nobody wanted or needed, but I felt in control of my mind again. I could think straight and apply myself to assess the situation. More importantly, I listened, watched, and looked at what was around me, and the more I watched, the more I disliked what I saw. I kept on thinking about it, and I decided that I needed help again, so I texted my therapist and we set the time for a session.

I had so many things to get off my chest, and I had thought about this for so long that I didn’t allow for a break or any feedback for fear that I might run out of time and not get to say everything. On the dot, my therapist finally got a chance to say: “Do you know you barely took a breath this entire time?” She suggested I take the standard tests like before, but I didn’t want to because this was not anxiety or depression. This was anger.

My relationship with anger has always been quite troublesome. As a girl, the message from the women in my family was that it is not ladylike to be angry or have conflicts and that I should always avoid, mediate, or look to extinguish a fight at all costs. My mom didn’t fight with us; she would give us a look of disgust as if we weren’t worth her time and effort, and she would leave the room. One would try to engage further, and she would say that that was it, and she had had enough. I was left alone with all my thoughts and no way to release emotions, nobody to debate.

On my dad’s side, things have always been more turbulent. While my mom was quiet and dismissive, my dad would fully engage. He would be going from shouting matches, to leaving his room when it wasn’t convenient for him anymore and going to his room and closing his door, to being hit by him. When we would complain to my mom about how he flew off the handle and how volatile he was, my mom would say, “What can you do? That is how he is, choleric.” Which didn’t help at all, nor did it offer any solace. It just said that this is how things are, and they will not change any time soon, so it is best to get with the program. There is a traditional position that a child has to earn respect, but the parent is automatically owed respect regardless of what they do. There was a false sense that there had to be fear established to assert authority.

How did that affect me, you ask? On the one hand, it taught me to continuously monitor the room, expect a fight and know that one will be coming, so I needed to pay attention and see where it would be coming from. Nobody is safe. If a topic is being debated even though I am not comfortable or interested, earlier attempts to raise these frustrations resulted in a fight starting, so now I stay quiet and allow it to take place, as it is easier to swallow my frustration and allow my boundaries to be crossed. Better still, I learned that whoever yells the loudest wins the fight, and if you bark loud enough, you will not have to bite, so I yell. I yelled, and I allowed the anger to consume me because I was scared. I didn’t get to walk away; I didn’t get to have distance like they did. If I left the room, I was told that I was playing the wounded princess and that would not be acceptable, so I had to get back in the room and discuss. They said discuss; they didn’t mean discuss. They meant to sit and listen to all the reasons they were right, and I was wrong and how I should change.

None of them would sit down and discuss what happened. Mom would allow me to apologise, and then she would decide if she forgave me or not. After a big fight when they came to visit me in the UK, I decided to reconcile with her and my sister. After I made that step, my mom never apologised but even suggested that the youth would need to maybe seek some help with calming those tempers. That was after she had pouted, made faces, made hurtful comments, and made sure she dredged up every single bit of painful past that she could think of and started daily fights. She took zero responsibility, even went the extra mile, and blamed it all on us. I was too stunned to speak.

My dad will glide back into the room like nothing happened and be all smiles and jokes, or offer you a sandwich in terms of reparation. In my entire life, I can never remember my dad apologising to me for anything. We have fought multiple times and sometimes every single day, and there was always this sense that we are fine, and we should get over it. Nothing in this family is explained or discussed; everything is just a big smile and wave exercise. Ignore the elephant in the room and just go on like nothing happened.

Armed with no skills at all, I have been walking in society, engaging in people-pleasing to avoid a conflict, allowing my boundaries to be crossed, staying silent when I was wronged, allowing resentment and hate to build up, crying and losing sleep thinking about it again and again, reacting to make everything stop in outbursts but mostly turning all the anger on myself. I wasn’t good enough.

The best I could do is to learn to control myself long enough that I don’t have to answer at the moment, just control things enough and calm the situation enough so that it gives me time to think. I would leave the fight, and while people may think that is dismissive, they really must consider the alternative. I was born in chaos, and I lived in chaos. I did not choose violence; violence chose me. Whenever I go into crisis mode, I am like a trapped, wounded animal, and I will do whatever it takes to get out of this situation. Also, what people don’t understand is that a big part of people pleasing is understanding the person and how they operate. While I might not have been self-aware, I was fully aware of the likes and dislikes of other people. To people please, you have to avoid upsetting the other person. I know and understand the weaknesses and things that hurt and might make a person lose control. I can manipulate one and cut extremely deep, but I choose not to. I choose empathy, I choose to see that I am in no position to think straight at the moment, that instead of resolving an issue, understanding the other person, and growing from it, I will dig a deeper hole. I understand that I need to regroup and reconsider, so I initially self-isolate. I am also afraid that if I hurt them, I will lose them.

In the initial stages, I will start feeling myself getting annoyed, and more things will start to bother me as the storm is brewing. I will start breathing shallower, I might start tapping my foot, pace, feel pressure building in my head, and I will feel the need to rub my temples or my forehead, rub my eyes. As my heart starts beating faster, my voice is starting to get higher in pitch and volume. I will isolate, and I might shout, I might hit something, I might throw something. The physical distance from the issue will give me a chance to calm down and repair. That is, if I don’t start putting myself down and add fuel to the fire and keep on adding my own self-loathing and feeling like I deserve everything that I am getting to it and then get stuck in this circle and add the shame of having reacted in front of somebody and letting them know that I am bothered. When I can’t take any more, the pressure gets too much, the only way to cope with it is crying, crying until I exhaust myself, and I am too tired to be angry anymore. I will start to think logically, then, try to analyse what part of it was my fault and if I am right in what I assigned as blame to the other person. Next, I will check my reasoning with someone else. I tend to take on blame that isn’t mine, so I need to check that I am not taking on too much, nor do I give myself too much credit, and I find excuses for myself.

I am a verbal processor, so whenever I am angry, I need to say it all so, the poison of the anger escapes me. I hate it when people try to tell me to just get over it or when they try to stop the cycle. Someone tried to hug me to calm me down, and regardless of how many times I have said that I am not ready for a hug, they tried to push it. That made me even angrier because it made me feel patronised and handled, it made me feel like they just didn’t want to deal with me, and all the negative energy got turned on them. They became the target where my anger was trying to find release.

When I started doing therapy, I came to understand that not all anger is the same and that not all of it is bad. Initially, the reason I was so depressed was exactly because I could not muster and maintain anger, and therefore, I could not move forward, I could not act towards healing because I was stuck in denial. Once I could accept the facts, once I knew that I was not to blame for everything that happened, but that I needed to change myself to protect myself from this happening again or me being in the same low state, anger was a good motivator. Sometimes you are more than right to be angry. When people have taken advantage of me when the treatment I am subjected to was unjust when they are trying to push my boundaries. I am fully entitled to feel angry, but the matter is how I express that anger, how I use it to get my point across and in that I need help.

Fast forward to discussing it with my therapist, and she suggested hitting a pillow or yelling into a pillow, trying something like boxing or running to try to channel and release the anger. So, there I was in my house, trying to yell and seeking the right place to do it. I tiptoed in my own empty house from room to room and felt like there was nowhere to yell or hit because I would disturb the neighbours. I settled for a soundless scream. It might sound weird, but it engaged the same muscles in the body as an actual scream, and it provided tension relief.

In exorcisms, they ask the demon to reveal itself because knowing the name of something gives one power over it. A demon that says its name is weakened. In that aspect, I could see my anger, I could see how it affected me, how it hurt me and how if I didn’t find an outlet for it, it would morph into anxiety. The brain tries to seek out and focus on threats in an attempt to eliminate them and to be safe again. When I don’t deal with things, my mind keeps raising the alarm until I act.

I started by observing myself, taking walks and trying to do as much exercise to eliminate the energy from it. I have journaled and I have written my problems down so I can analyse them and see what upsets me. I have started to catch myself and take deep breaths and visualise the bad energy gathering in my body being replaced by liquid calm, and just pushing the darkness out of me. I will also visualise that I am punching somebody in the face when I am in a fight, and mentally, it is very soothing and satisfying. I am never violent, but the idea still brings a smile to my face. I said I am healing, not that I am healed.

I have changed my work conditions and my life conditions to give myself more mind space to manoeuvre. I have focused on improving my self-esteem, and my boundary setting and reinforcing them, I have tried to be kind to myself and allow for setbacks and mistakes to be made and so, I am trying to slowly create this space where instead of just acting on the first impulse, I can take the time to think things through and be more aligned with my values and my goals in my reactions. I am working towards being present in my own body and staying unbothered.

Anger is also a smoke screen and a thief; it clouds the judgment and robs one of clarity. It hides the true feeling under a cloud of righteous indignation or violence. People shy away because violence is uncomfortable, but sometimes, under shouting hide “I am scared,” “I am hurt,” “I am vulnerable,” “I am in pain,” “I am tired to keep trying and getting nowhere.” People shout and direct anger towards whatever. Bark loud enough and keep people away from what is behind it. Anger is a prison, and it makes people turn their backs. Imagine being starved for connection and being too afraid to let people in.

It took time, but as I recognised the issue, accepted that it is all right to have the feeling and took everything as an opportunity to know myself better, to just observe myself with curiosity, I can now stop myself most times from going into this vicious cycle. I can ask myself what is going on here, and if it is the issue at hand that is upsetting me or if I am in a bad mood and the current person that I am focusing my anger on is just a target for something they didn’t do. Rather than taking things personally and patting myself on the back for being so righteous or feeling like I have a target on my back, and everybody is after me, I can say, Is it them or is it you being irritable because you haven’t slept last night or because something else is not working in your life? It is not a perfect system, and I am sure that there will still be plenty of situations where I will lose control, I will end up fighting, saying things I don’t mean and then I will feel the shame of it in the morning but, I am trying my best to understand, heal and be better than I was yesterday. The true goal is peace and balance, and I can only do that by accepting all the darkness that lies in me, naming it and releasing it, one demon at a time.