The Slightly Aggressive Affirmer

We first realised Anger Therapy was for me when my best friend took me to a Smash Space for my birthday - one of those rooms where they give you baseball bats and crowbars and shit, and just let you loose on a bunch of crockery.

People asked her to take video of me, and she did, but we never showed it to anyone because it was... frankly, disturbing. I am absolutely unhinged in some of it, just the smashing and the screaming and crying - and the stuff that I am saying.

She was the best possible person to be with me, because I had absolutely no inhibitions around her, and nothing that I said or screamed or cried needed explaining to her. She was there for Trauma A, not only the first, but the deepest-set, the most fundamentally soul-altering - The Alpha Trauma. And she was there for all the others. So she'd be like "who's that jar?" and when I told her she would say "oh fuck him up". And fuck him up I did.

Nearly caused myself a seizure from over exertion.

So anyway...

It's taken a good while, but I have finally managed to find a psychologist who is qualified to do Anger Management Therapy with me. We've been through what my many traumas are, and I am currently assigned homework.

Every day, I have to beat the ever loving shit out of a pillow, pretending that it is a person (or thing) from my traumatic past. Normally she'd recommend a punching bag or something, but because the slightest exertion risks a seizure, I'm doing it very small scale. Afterwards, I must do something that brings down my heartrate and that is very relaxing. I've been eating chocolate and reading fanfic.

I need to start writing letters to the people from my past. Not every day, but frequently. I have to write their actual names at the top, and sign them, because the act of doing that makes my brain feel like I have genuinely written to them, even though I obviously don't send them.

I am still allowed to write enraged poetry.

So. I've been in therapy for 20 years, basically, on and off. But, the short version of this story is that when I was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder in late 2020, I was told the only treatment for it was to treat my "trauma" through counselling.

I laughed and said to my neurologist "Which one?"

The counsellor I saw tried a couple of things, but really she was doing a lot of the whole "you have to forgive yourself" business. And I have forgiven myself. I did nothing wrong. In any of the multitude of traumas I have. I was shocked to find I don't blame myself for anything any more. I have Slightly Aggressively Affirmed my way out of self-blame and self-hate. I no longer dislike myself!

It became very apparent that the help I need is with my anger. My absolute boiling rage. What happened to me was that when Trauma A occured - I was 15/16, I got no closure. I never got to be angry about it. And then I pretty much never expressed anger for about 15 years.

Slight Aggression, yeah! But not anger. And I was afraid of other people being angry. It got to a point where I couldn't cope with two people in the same room as me who held two different opinions in a perfectly amicable way, like one likes Star Wars, one prefers Star Trek and I was so afraid of anger and conflict that this scenario would make me sick with anxiety.

Then one day, I was retraumatised. Trauma B (occured at 16/17) was brought back to me when I was 33. My feelings about it were a bit odd, and new and I didn't quite know how to handle them. I asked Twitter if I might actually deep down be quite angry. And my sibling in law said I was. And that I was allowed to be.

This is the new me. Furious all the time. About 30 seconds from screaming every moment of every day, but never actually screaming.

It’s just there when I visit the post? I go into my post archive, and click on a post and the date, etc and notes are all there underneath.

I found it! I found the affirmation that made this blog a hit! Before this, I had like 25 followers and thought that was impressive, and would get like 6 notes per post. One post had 21 notes, like WOW what a big deal!

Then this one happened, and there’s nothing different or special about it. It’s just exactly like all the others from the same time period. For some reason, it just went the fuck off, and my phone kept blowing up all day.

Then at some point it goes to 4 and then 2.

Well that depends. Some days, I get a couple of new asks that are really simple requests like “can you do a shout out to lesbians” or “can I have an affirmation about being afraid of change?” So, on that day, I might just queue those two simple affirmations and that doesn’t take long.

Other days, I have some free time. That’s a day like today, where I spent 3 hours uncluttering the inbox. I queued up 10 posts, including some advice posts and one where I had to google for the best resources. I just had more time today, so I did more.

I’ve thought about it. But I’m so so careful with what I write, and I freak out about using one word instead of another so much that I’m not sure I would feel safe giving another person the keys to the Affirmation-mobile.

Whether you ask my dearest friends, those who utterly despise me, or my own mother, they will all tell you the same thing: I am a control freak.

To answer your second question, I know one of them doesn’t, because she’s not really on Tumblr anymore. The other one I no longer am in contact with (long story), but maybe she still reads them, I have no idea. If she still finds them helpful, I hope she does read them.

As to the first question, too agressive would be like: “FOR FUCK’S SAKE, NO EVERYONE DOES NOT HATE YOU, YOU PARANOID FUCKING BITCH, CALM THE FUCK DOWN ALREADY!!!”

Like... that’d be extreme even as just a private affirmation for me alone! Definitely not appropriate for the general public - I certainly would delete it if I came across it while I’m doing retags. I’m sure that the one I have deleted didn’t say that, though. I’d remember if it was that extreme. That’s like... “Unnecessarily Offensive Affirmations”.

Thankyou! :)

You know, I’ve read so many as I retagged them, I can’t even remember!!! It was from June 2015, so very VERY early. Since with others I’ve added a note to correct wording I no longer think is helpful, I imagine it was more problematic on a fundamental level rather than just the wording. Or did it seem like more trouble to add the explanatory note than it was worth, perhaps?

They were vaguer though. Much more universal. And occasionally problematic. I’m into the 3rd month of the blog’s existence (this is why retagging is taking so long. 12 a DAY!) and I’ve deleted just one.

Rather than binge eat I’ve been keeping my hands busy while I watch TV by doing some art.

I’ve been stalled on my novel so to help me, I created a piece that represents the inner psyche of my narrator/protagonist, Lucy. Some of it was easy because she actually describes some of the physical environments she’s invented to protect herself in the book. Other stuff is more abstract.

I wonder if maybe I should have done all those triangles in a yellow tone, instead of the garish array of colours - but I also sort of like the disjointed, confused, hot mess that I’ve ended up with, because that is definitely an accurate description of her.