Saturday, August 1, 2009

How to be angry... Maybe a brain is reborn... Walking the city walk... Busy is good beware the facebook.

I WAS quite the angry blogger in my last post wasn't I? That's a good thing I think.

We did a deal on anger management on the therapeutic day programme in hospital but it was wasted on me. Knowing how to control anger isn't a problem, knowing how to have and express any anger at all is what I need. I'm just not angry - ever. I'm a bottler upper, a seether and a brooder, a churner and a sitter upon, a doormat and a push over. Not healthy, oh no, I know that, it just doesn't come out of me.

I've been angry of course, you can't walk down these mean streets without getting angry. Hell, you can't listen to the radio or read newspapers without getting angry, can you? It's not working for me. My anger has only really come out when I'm drunk, the times I've expressed rage when sober I remember vividly because they are so few. When drunk the top has come off the bottle in alcoholic blackout - I've been told afterwards what I've said and done when I crawled back into the pub to apologise.

But, I've a feeling it will come. My mind is coming back to life I think. It's getting more of a workout for starters; I'm enjoying my new webtastic writing stuff, I'm busier on here (and spend far too much time smart-arsing around on facebook) and I've been helping Mrs CD sort out financial stuff - a thing I would have previously filed as not my thing - run away! Lets see if I can get some anger then and stop this automatic slinking away and secret tears with an it's-all-my-fault seed sprouting in my brain.

I'm working on my nerves more successfully too. I really took on what I was told by the psychologist at Pathways and I try, try is the word, to put those techniques into practice when I feel the fear frothing up. I'm also starting to walk a city walk. That's a bit sad really but it's helping. I wouldn't paint my upbringing as bucolic and untroubled - it wasn't, the town I'm from is rural and smallish, however, it has tracks and they had a wrong side. There were bullies at school as there are from Eton down. But it's different from city life and it's a lifestyle I prefer - slower and smaller, I knew so many people in my home town that I would say hello to someone every time I left the house.

I've lived in Birmingham and London in the past, and fell under an alcoholic steam train in both cities. Strangely though I enjoyed the anonymity of London (I was drunk most of the time remember so the anxiety was being medicated) and the feeling of being an atom amid an ever revolving, remaking, ridiculous whole. Yes, I was very drunk.

My city walk, by the way, has more of a head down gait to it. I look around me less, I look where I'm going, I don't look at people, I don't listen to them as much as I normally would. It works for me. Cardiff is small and almost village like in character but for me, at the moment, this is the best way forward.

I'm busy, and that's the best thing that's happened to me since my detox. In fact last night, once I'd done all I had to do I was exhausted and needed to go to sleep because I'd been busy all day. More of the same please.

If you spent it thank you for your time.

Here's a lovely song about controlling anger.

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