For most of my life I was angry. Very angry. I’m not even sure what I was so damn angry at but I was constantly filled with a bubbling rage. From an early age I found ways to shove this rage down so that it didn’t boil to the surface, the first being emotional eating. I would eat until I had somehow used carbs to smothered the anger and chaos I was feeling. In my late teens I discovered a new, more “healthy”, way to deal with my anger. Exercise. And lots of it. It began innocently enough with me changing my eating habits and working out a healthy three times a week. And then it exploded. People started to noticing the physical changes in me and I became even more angry, at myself for not finding this healthy lifestyle sooner, at everyone else for suddenly noticing me now that I was in a slimmer body. I increased my workouts to seven days a week and with my busy student and work schedule these were often very early workouts shoved into an already 16-hour day. I really did and still do love working out, however at the time lifting heavy things up and putting them back down only temporarily soothed the angry bull stamping its foot inside of me. Eventually that bull needed to release and I found a new way to let it out. Toxic Relationships. I would repeatedly throw myself into the same pattern of doomed from the start chaotic relationships, this time though my bad relationships gave me an excuse to be outwardly angry. I could be outwardly sharp with my words now because instead of a mystery reason I had something tangible to be angry at.

So what changed.

I did.

Desperation, complete doom, recognition, and knowing that I could not and would not keep repeating the same patterns that were inflicting this pain upon me.

I sat in my anger, I felt my anger, I allowed my anger to tell me what I needed to do in order for it to go away.

I made changes, broke old habits, said no to toxic people and relationships, and I began the process of slowly peeling away all the layers of anger inside me so that I could heal them and move on.

Moving on from old unhealthy patterns is not comfortable, in fact it is one of the most uncomfortable, life shaking, emotion rocking experiences out there. It leaves you vulnerable, confused, and at times very isolated.

Healing is not a quick one dimensional process that you go straight through, healing has bumps, curves, U turn signs, and sometimes black holes of time. Your ego will be very upset with you for wanting to rise above it, it will find ways to try and bring you back down to its level, make you question if you are worthy of a happy life that does not include its chaos.

But when you reach the light at the end of the kaleidoscope of miss matched crazy images that are circling over and over you reach calm.

Calm.

I will be going deeper into some of my stories of self-inflicted chaos and self-healing in later posts but if there is something in your life that you feel needs healing I ask you to listen to yourself. You have a voice inside of you that always knows what the right path is. We are not meant to live lives of anguish. rage, jealousy, entitlement, resentment, fear and all negative emotions are only keeping you from a lifetime of joy.