Anger

I am SO angry. I thought I had dealt with all this stuff in steps four and five, but a year and a half into recovery and I think it is about six months now since finishing step nine, the pain and crushing reality of how my disturbed past has affected me has come to the surface.

Is this processing as they call it in meditation, all 'my stuff' coming to the surface because my sub conscious knows that I am now well enough to process this stuff. I want to talk about it. No one really wants to listen, which is why I have to pay someone. All this stuff has been repressed for so many years. I want to get it out and I want sympathy, bucket loads of the stuff. Will the pain end? Can I endure it? Why has it come up now? Is this me just being chronically self centered?

The pain principally manifested as intense anger, really is excrutiating. Can other people really endure these levels of pain without flinching? Is this what normal non-alcoholic people feel on a daily basis? Before AA I only felt the deep throb of depression (endured/covered up/denied by use of prescribed drugs and alcohol) now my feelings are back. An AA saying I heard when I was new springs to mind about coming into recovery: the good news is we get our feelings back; the bad news is we get our feelings back. They always turn out to be true those annoyingly glib sounding AA sayings.

The source of my rage is not yet clear to me, there is plenty there to be angry about, but my biggest fear is those occluded memories, things that pop into my consciouness that are deeply disturbing and are only just revealing themselves to me now. The good news is that I know that I will deal with it. The reason: I know people who have endured similar levels of pain and deal with. Another reason why I am glad I am in AA: experience, strength and hope.