I have a problem with anger. There. I've said it. I have a problem, a REAL problem, with anger, many times to the point of it becoming rage, and almost always expressed at myself. I've talked about it with a few other people--my counselor, a couple of friends, but most of the people who know me don't know about it, at least not the extent of it--how truly serious it is.
It's been a problem for me most or all of my life, and given the abuse I endured throughout my childhood, I suppose the anger I experience on a daily, almost minute-to-minute basis now is to be expected. But you would think it would be expressed at other people, not at myself, and it's not. It's all taken out on me, in the form of self-abuse, mostly. I hit myself, I swear at myself, I call myself bad names, I think denigrating thoughts about myself. If there's a way to beat up on me, I'll do it. I'll come up with it somehow. I've given myself black eyes before. I've been defacing my face for many, many years. I've caused minor damage to the edge of the retina of one of my eyes because of hitting the side of my head. It's only because of God's mercy and grace that it's not a lot worse. I can only pray that I'm able to stop doing it before it gets any worse or, God forbid, I go blind.
I wish I could stop being this way. I know it's not pleasing to God--I guess that's the main reason I'd like to stop, is that it's displeasing to God. Aside from that, God forgave me of my sin, so why can't I forgive myself? It seems like I'm setting myself up as an idol above God. If God, the Master of the Universe, the Creator of all things, can forgive me for my sins, then who am I to decide that they are unforgivable? Who am I to say that I'm better or bigger or smarter than God?
When I think about it, though, while I am angry at myself ALL the time, I'm angry at just about everything else as well. I'm angry at anything and everything that seems unjust or unfair in the world--and there's a LOT that's unjust and/or unfair nowadays, so it feels like there's a LOT about which to be angry. I get angry about things that happen during TV shows--for instance, things that happen to people on Criminal Minds. I know it's silly to be angry about stuff like that, because TV shows aren't real life, and the stuff that happens on them isn't really happening to real people, but even though I know that logically, I still get angry. Angry enough to yell and swear at the TV during almost every episode, silly as it sounds.
And the thing is, I take the anger that I feel towards all the injustice and unfairness in the world out on myself, as if it were my fault somehow. I don't know, maybe somewhere, deep down inside, I really do blame myself for it all, like I blamed myself for all the abuse when I was a kid. Somehow I should be able to change all that injustice and make it all better. I know that sounds ridiculous. There's no way that one person out of the billions of people on this planet could make that kind of change.
I'm not sure if that's any part of what's behind the self-abuse. I just know that when I make a mistake, any mistake, the tiniest, silliest mistake, I start hitting myself and calling myself the worst names. Lately I've become aware in the split second between making the mistake and the beginning of the abuse that I can make a choice. I can choose to hit myself and call myself bad names, or I can forgive myself and let it slide. But in that split second I can feel this lump welling up in my throat and I have to make it go away, and hitting myself will accomplish that.
So I pray that God will show me what to do about this. I'm sure that it's simply a matter of me responding more quickly to the choices presented to me--making the right choices more quickly so that the abuse cycle doesn't get started in the first place once the mistake is made. It's just so frustrating and hard. The Bible says,
"No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it."~~I Corinthians 10:13, NKJV
So now I just have to figure out what the way of escape is, and why I'm not taking it, especially when God is providing it for me. I wonder if there's some kind of secondary gain that I'm getting out of doing this? I think that's a question I need to look at: Am I getting some kind of secondary gain out of abusing myself and holding on to all this anger and rage at myself? If there is I want to know about it so I can deal with it and let it go, so I can stop with the abuse. I'm tired of hating myself. I'm someone who God loves, so I really don't have the right to hate myself. Jesus Christ loves me so much that He endured abuse and torture on the cross and died for me, so I don't have the right to hate myself!
This is the choice I have to make: to believe and receive God's love for me, or continue to believe that I know better than God. I can't know better than God. He knows me better than I know myself, so my choice is that I believe and receive God's love for me. It feels like just words on the page right now, but maybe that's where it has to start. So, because God loves me I choose to love myself and no longer abuse myself...
