Control

People yearn for control of various things. Kids want control over toys, adults want control over situations, possessions, and sometimes people. The only thing I wish for are control over my emotions. Sounds easy right? To me, this is one of the hardest things I've had to overcome.

Even in the most mundane activities, your emotions can surface. The envy I have is immense for people that can control the simplest of feelings. Those people whether they realize it or not are so in tune to their mind and body that they are able to diffuse or regulate how much of an emotion they need at that time. I still can't figure out how to do this.

It doesn't matter how "self-aware" you are. Emotions can sometimes suck you in and not let you go. Personally, I can't stand this. It seems like when you pull yourself out something else will pull you in. A situation so small like someone cutting you off in the car can have the same destructive emotional reaction akin to someone just cheating on you with another girl.

From everything I've been through, I used to put up a wall of stone which caused me to block out problems from those bitches in high school, the marital problems with my parents, boy friend problems, and everything else under the sun. Then one day I just broke. It felt like every emotion flooded out of me all at once. Since then, patching up the flood gates has been immensely hard.

This has caused me to self-sabotage so much of my life recently. I have a good job- fuck that! i'm going to do xyz to mess that up. My relationship with my boyfriend- oh let me fuck that up while i'm at it too. People are getting sick of the "Seriously, I can't help it. It's like something I'm doing sub-consciously" excuse. Quite frankly, I'm getting sick of it too. Emotions are an ungodly beast and here I am, just a small David, trying to tame this thing.

I've been reading about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) which is is a therapy designed to help people change patterns of behavior that are not effective, such as self-harm, suicidal thinking and substance abuse (Wikipedia). Now I would just like to clear this up, I am in NO WAY suicidal or have thoughts of self harm, but apparently this approach works towards helping people increase their emotional and cognitive regulation by learning about the triggers that lead to reactive states and helping to assess which coping skills to apply in the sequence of events, thoughts, feelings and behaviors that lead to the undesired behavior (Wikipedia). Hmm, so I can change my anger and my perceptions for things so I can stop self-sabotaging myself? Sign me the fuck up!!!

I already work with a therapist to help navigate through my feelings, but I feel like just cognitive behavioral therapy isn't enough. I like the premise of DBT because it sounds like something more hands on and tangible that I can grasp. I even ordered  The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, & Distress Tolerance - by Matthew McKay, Jeffery Wood, and Jeffery Brantley. I want workbooks and shit. If I put the work into it and it's something I can actually see and refer to, then I think this would help me better.

Well wish me luck and hopefully if you need to tame your emotional beast there is help out there for you. I use therapy and most often I eat my feelings. Cheese fries makes everything okay haha.