Feeling frustration

I am a patient person. Being a teacher and in the past a nanny, I have had to be. Having the mother I do I also had to learn patience from a young age. ‘A virtue’ my mother often said. Of course, it was only a skill for supporting others not myself.

Lately I find my patience is wearing thin. I feel the frustration boiling away under the surface. Things that I used to let go now make me feel like someone has turned up my stove to simmer.

Tiny bubbles running through my veins. Feeling like a something is crawling through the layers of my skin. My breathing grows faster and heart beats loudly. I try to push it down, like a reflex I breathe deep and try to leave the situation.

I was not allowed to be frustrated, it leads to anger and that was always forbidden. I was taught that anger leads to violence and hurting people’s feelings. Well, this is what I am trying to combat.

I got angry as a teenager. I tried to change my situation and my narcissistic mother. It never really worked and instead I was accused of bullying her. I was and am blamed for starting every family argument. My mother would cry and become hysterical. She would remind me of the bullies in her childhood, her angry mother and violent father. She would find a way to made me feel guilty. I was shamed for having my feelings and for wanting to stop the emotional abuse she was causing to me and my siblings.

I was trying to get her to change. We were all unhappy with the situation, her matriarchy of control. I was not the only one. Yet when we called our family meeting and issues were raised I was on my own. My mum said we were ganging up on her to split our united front. She told my dad that of course he would support me, as I always was a daddy’s girl. Something used against us for years. Often she stormed out, expecting my father to follow her.

Now I am in my thirties and I struggle to feel frustration let alone angry. Slowly I am allowing myself to feel it but it is hard. My body seems to have an automatic reaction to push it down. For me frustration or annoyance feels more like heartburn. I know I need to let my emotion in but it is tough to feel them and deal with them. I need to learn to allow them, accept them and then move them along in this mental world.