Confessions of an angry mother

I guess it's time to fess up.

I'm angry.

I'm angry that I lost my first son, Wyatt's twin brother.  I'm angry that I had such a hard pregnancy.  I'm angry that Wyatt has Ichthyosis.  I'm angry that Wyatt had to come so early and spend the first 97 days of his life in a hospital.  Not regarding Wyatt, I'm angry with myself because I don't love being a mom like I thought I would.  I'm angry that my body is a complete failure and that I have to rely on science to have my family.  Our house was broken into a couple of weeks ago so on top of everything I'm angry that some stranger invaded my house.  I'm angry that they stole meaningful heirlooms and jewelry that I had planned to pass down to my children.  Including a necklace inscribed with 'mom' that Jared gave me for Christmas when I was pregnant with the twins.  

Oh my gosh I'm angry about so many things.

So angry that sometimes I see red and say things I don't mean and act like a complete child.

I'm pretty good at hiding it most of the time, but have found that real life and being a mom is infinitely more harder than I imagined it to be and that I just don't have the patience to listen to a tiny person scream and cry and tug on my leg all. day. long. 

You know what else.

 I'm tired of being angry.

I'm tired of holding on to things that I have absolutely no control over.

So I started going to anger management a little over a month ago.

I guess the timing for the break in was good because I had already learned some anger mgmt skills... gotta look at the positive right? But it hasn't been easy.  It's been nice to go somewhere and talk with people who understand what I'm dealing with inside of my head though.  I'm so glad that I'm finally helping myself to be a better person, a better mom, a better wife.

I want Wyatt to love me, not respect me out of fear.  I want to be able to keep my cool and stay in control of myself during every kind of situation I may be thrown into, not completely lose it and see red.  You know what I'm talking about right?  Those moments where you're so mad and so out of control that it's like your floating above yourself just watching the scene.  You're telling yourself, stop!  You're making a big deal out of nothing!  Absolutely nothing!  So what if he forgot the ranch from the pizza place for the 10 gajillionth time?  Is it really that big of a deal?  It's not worth being mad about for the rest of the night!  But you just keep floating up there, listening to the absence of ranch dressing turn into things like it means he doesn't care about me and that ranch was the one thing that could have made this crap day better {really? exaggerate much?} and so on... oh my gosh please tell me I'm not the only one that does this.  I'm so embarrassed that things like this have happened... I can't believe I'm even writing it out.  

First steps to getting better are admitting you have a problem though and boy do I have one.

In this class I've learned that there are 8 different approaches to controlling anger and different situations require different ways of approaching.  Here's what they are.

-Respond don't react

-Empathy

-Stress Management

-Forgive

-Retreat

-Adjust Expectations

-Assertive Communication

-Change the Conversation

The one I struggle with the most is Changing the Conversation.  I think it's probably the one most people struggle with.  It's you feeding yourself things to make you more angry.  For example about the break in, I just kept thinking about it.  I kept thinking 'what if' this or 'I should have' that.  All I was doing was fueling my fire.  I needed to change the negative talk to something more positive.  Change 'I should have made sure every single window was locked before I left' to 'thank goodness we weren't home when that happened.'  and 'At least we're all safe'.  It's ok to think that I should have made sure the windows were locked, and unfortunately I learned that lesson the hard way, but not to dwell on it.  I've learned a lesson from the experience and now it's time to move on.

I have confidence that this class is going to help me.  I'm grateful that I can admit that I have a problem and that I'm able to take the steps needed to take care of it.