I'm Tired and Angry, Now What?

I am EXHAUSTED. My body is tired, my brain is tired, my emotions are tired, my life is tired. Do you know what that feels like? I'm sure most people reading this do. I just feel drained. I didn't even know what to write about today - and I'm always FULL of things to say.

Let's start with what I'm tired of, see if you can relate to any of it (my anger is not limited to this list): 

I'm tired of thinking about my past. I'm tired of it dragging behind me. I'm tired of all my shame for my past actions. I'm tired of being disgusted with who I am. I'm tired of continuously making mistakes.

I'm tired of being treated differently than men. I'm tired of being a woman in a world where women's voices aren't trusted and respected equally, and sometimes at all. I'm tired of trying 5 times as hard to get people to believe me when people will take a man for his word. I'm tired of worrying about my body and the way it looks EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I'm tired of living in a world that encourages me to make that my UTMOST priority as a person...and as a woman in particular. I'm tired of being angry.

I'm tired of living in a world where the social determinants of health - the context, society, world, families everyone is born into, shaped some people into having mental and physical health problems, and others into being ignorant of injustice - and that those are usually the people in power. 

I am TIRED of kicking myself for every time I try and speak up about things when my voice was never wrong, and getting invalidated for my realities. 

I am tired of being told that other people should advocate in order to be believed. I'm tired of hearing this happen to others. I am tired of being told that these messages make people uncomfortable.  

I am tired of thinking about food and what I eat all the time that once was just a distraction from life that turned into an obsession that controls me. I'm tired of being objectified by myself, and by the world. I am tired of being antisocial because there is just not enough time to think about all these things, be tired, and get my homework done if I go out with people. I am tired of putting God on the back burner and trying to do it all myself. 

I'm tired of asking for everyone's advice before I make a decision that I know already should make. I'm tired of my body giving out on me when it's just tired. I'm tired of not sleeping. 

I'm really tired. 

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, darn it!

 Can anyone relate to any of this?

I feel a lot of shame for all of the anger and emotion I hold inside of me. Often times, it's paralyzing. I can't get anything done. All I do is perseverate, and then I end up losing sleep because I haven't gotten any homework done. Or I end up missing out because I rejected a social gathering claiming I had too much to do - and end up spending the whole time perseverating, when with the amount of time I end up spending on homework I could have gone out anyway and gotten the same amount of sleep.  

Emotions aren't bad, though. Emotions were designed by God. God is emotional. People are designed by God, and people are extremely emotional. We unpurposely react to interactions with emotion, and we feel. The world has painted emotions out to be weakness. Glennon Doyle says, "Anger is the immune system for the soul." Anger naturally comes with injustice. Shame does not need to be attached to emotion. I need to let myself feel the emotion, allow it to happen, let my immune system work, let myself feel, in order to be human. I need to let emotions drive me not into shame or paralyzation, but into a fire that fuels my passion.

What I'm learning in school is that chronic stress has a physiological effect on our bodies and affects our health. Constant shame for who we are will do this. Internalizing injustices and feeling a lack of power over our own destiny, scientifically, will do this. The truth is in the numbers. Not only in human statistics of lower life expectancy and higher rates of chronic disease - but even studies done on monkeys, dominant monkeys vs. monkeys who have less power over their lives, have lower life expectancy and chronic disease. That's bananas! 

I had the pleasure of attending a breakout session at the Female Athlete Conference where a Sport and Forensic Chief Psychologist named Mitch Abrams spoke on anger in the female athlete. He spoke of a study done on women where it was found that women’s anger is mostly related to "powerlessness, injustices, and the irresponsibility of other people." The third one made me laugh. These are all accurate, for all of the anger built up inside of me. And the first two reasons are the stressors that can cause physiological outcomes if I let them control me over time. 

Mitch said "talking about negative emotions makes people shut up, rather than use it for good." Using it for good, can bring a sense of power and hope back. Because we are not powerless - but the belief of that can plummet us into a sense of hopelessness. Owning it instead of shaming it is essential. He said "It's not whether an emotion is good or bad. Emotions cannot be 'good' or 'bad.' It's whether or not the emotion helps you. Learn to adjust the flame [of your anger/emotions] to get the results you want. You can't do that until you own it, identify it, and accept it as a part of life." 

Shame is a useless feeling. Shame keeps us from accepting grace. From God, and from ourselves. It keeps us from believing in ourselves. It spirals us into hopelessness, and into the black hole of perseverating. This is what it has been doing to me! My anger can be so strong that I have to conceal it. I have to isolate so that I don't react from it and get into more trouble or emotionally injure somebody. I get so ashamed when I'm angry. But what I'm angry about isn't wrong. My sense of powerlessness over it is what eats at me and keeps me from progressing in my growth, and in life. 

Let me maybe be the first person to tell you, that your emotions are valid. If they came naturally to you, and you were designed to have that feeling after a specific experience, then your emotions are VALID. We need to learn to validate and accept emotions for what they are, and reclaim the power that nobody can take away from us.

The power to feel, experience, and not shame. The power to agree with ourselves. To trust our soul's immune system. The power to think about what is causing our emotion without shame, and decide HOW we are going to deal with it. Not decide what we are going to do to get rid of it. We have to deal with it in one way or another. Even if it is merely seeking validation from a trustworthy confidant. Even if it is praying our hearts out and accepting from God that our emotions are true. God will not gaslight you. He is the safest confidant. And we are allowed to do something about them. We just get more optimal results when we believe that we are not powerless, when we choose to use them as energy to fuel our lives, or to make a difference. I know my anger holds me back when I go running angry and I am much slower. If I need to study for an exam the next day and I can't. All I can think about is how I feel about myself as a person, or what wrong was done to me, and it paralyzes me, as well as making me feel rebellious towards hard work or doing anything that could have a positive outcome. But when my anger pushes me harder, when I let it fuel me, my success is greater than it would have been if I was just feeling neutral. 

Mitch continued to say, "Real power is when you cannot be provoked." You can feel the anger, it can be intense, but you decide the result of it. You can adjust the flame. Adjusting it and our use of it, not blowing it out. The more we try and blow it out, the bigger it gets. The more we exacerbate it. Our flame is not a birthday candle. It is our soul telling us that something isn't right. Our soul is where our fire for life comes from, it definitely isn't a birthday candle. He's trying to emphasize that anger is not bad, but punching someone in the face probably won't get me where I want to go. That doesn't mean we can't want to punch someone in the face. It means let's get to a place where we use our anger to fuel our fire. To change, to grow, to help others grow, to speak up, to give us energy. Without letting it take years off of our lives because we think we have no power over it. Because that's a waste of life. It's just not true. 

Your emotions are true, not bad. They are reality. There's no other label for them. We don't need to let them tire us out from believing they are bad, that we have to feel ashamed of them, perseverate and internalize them. We get to use them, and we need to use them. 

I'm on a journey to learn how to adjust my flame, instead of blowing at it.

….Thank you for coming to my TED talk.