Individual Therapy: Finding Underlying Causes

So today was the first individual therapy session with the clinician from Soldiers Project.  It laid the groundwork for what I am hopeful will be a very productive long-term therapy relationship.  It has been a long road and the past few years have been particularly tough to cope with.  That being said, I have written often about knowing a lot of the underlying issues I needed to work through - I just didn't know how or where to start.

Well, I found out today that I am going to have a very long road ahead of me as well.  All things being equal, my blog eventually circles back around to the fact that I am angry.  Not just angry...ANGRY.  When I feel that anger, I can feel the impulse control starting to slip away from me.  That lack of control causes me to clamp down on my anger so hard that I box it up and put it away.  Not a healthy way to deal with anger at all.

Well, we talked about this for a long time and what it comes down to is this:
Everything I Fell Stems From My Anger Issues

How about them apples?  She saw right through a lot of barriers I have put up to protect myself and others from my anger and got to the heart of it...and fast.  She asked if I thought that needing to clamp down on the anger all of the time is what was exhausting me and draining me of energy.  *smacks forehead*  How the hell did I miss that one?  That makes perfect sense.  It is also why going to work every day is so draining for me - shit at work always finds a way to trigger me, fair or not.

Ok, so underlying cause identified:  Anger.  Anger so profound it doesn't need a target.  I wake up angry, am angry all day long, and go to bed angry.  Angry at what?  Nothing in particular.  It's like having a pressure in the back of your head that won't go away.  It's always there.

So what the hell do I do now?  Not a clue.  The clinician wants to make a safety plan in place to ensure everyone's well-being in case my ability to cope goes south.  We're going to go over that next week.

All in all, a very draining session - but a good one.  It's nice to feel like I am headed somewhere with this.  Guess time will tell.