Today's Freak-Out

I freaked out today.

I'll spare you the details of the long hard weekend I've had, or how I'm still extremely hormonal even though my period is almost over, and all that happened today. But suffice it to say at one point, I was soooo upset and angry that I totally freaked out.

When the anger comes upon me, it feels like I'm being electrocuted. I can feel it burning through my body, through every blood vessel, through every nerve. The thing I wanted to do most was yell at some people and storm out. If I had done that, my life might have fallen apart yet again.

Instead, I thought about my DBT workbook, and did this: I locked myself in the bathroom, turned on the cold water in the tub, laid on the floor with a nice soft towel for a pillow, and counted backward from 100 by 7s. The whole time thoughts kept popping into my head about how angry I was, how unfair things were, and how I felt, but I just kept focusing on subtracting Its hard for me to do simple mental math because I cannot visualize numbers well, so it kept my mind distracted long enough for my body to calm down. Plus I also have this theory that since the logical part of your brain works with numbers, doing math problems activates this side when you're being illogical (which I am when my emotions take over). I just laid there counting till I got close to zero, not caring about anyone else in the house...then I listened to the water with my eyes closed and before I knew it the burning anger had gone away and told myself "I've gotten through this feeling before, I can get through it again." I emerged from my temporary little cocoon feeling a bit more normal. Maybe I'm not normal or didn't really feel normal, but I was able to go back into the world and function like I was normal.

I'm learning...