Men & Anger

Feeling What We Feel

Dear Friend,

This morning the sunshine came. Golden. Pouring under the blinds. The bed warm and delicious. But something felt off.

Chiara and me talked it through over breakfast.

It’s no surprise to anyone in a committed relationship that one of the key ingredients is communication.

The clue is in the word. Relating.

Over the years I’ve learned to listen. Listening is a big part of my working life, but the most challenging listening, I find, is listening to the ones we love.

Chiara is Italian, raised by an Italian mother, Betty.

Things shine in Betty’s home. It’s like a five star hotel. The girls were raised to help at home.

I’m northern, British. Our house was spotless too, but in all the time I lived at home I never raised a finger to help. As far as I knew, toilets cleaned themselves, bins were self emptying and laundry just magically appeared folded, ironed and smelling of meadow flowers. It even hung itself up in your wardrobe.

That early conditioning is something we have to work with. It’s pretty reactive stuff. It also taps into the practice of being present with one another.

Chiara relates to her environment as living, conscious. She literally loves the plants, the space around her. For her everything is alive.

She tells me about it from her point of view.

I’ve learned to listen.

I’ve learned to sit with the reactivity inside of me.

I can do that now.

Telling you about it now, an associated memory floats up from the subconscious.

After my band had been dropped by our label, back in the 90’s I was struggling to come to terms with what to do next. I wasn’t doing much about anything.

My brother Kevin came to visit.

Before he left he said something that blew my fuse.

“I hate to see you wasting your life.”

Thing is, he was right. I didn’t want to see it. I was furious. Insulted. Hurt.

Eventually grateful.

That he loved me so much he was willing to put himself through that for me. My brother is a sensitive and principled man. His truth telling comes from a place of compassion.

I’m speaking for myself when I say that men, our first reaction is often anger.

It swells in your belly and forces its way up into your chest up your neck and into your head, where it switches off the lights and you lose it.

I can recall one episode where our Dad had provoked me to the point I could hear someone yelling at him, delivering some home truths and thinking “No, nope, you should’t be saying that, definitely stop now!” But I couldn’t.

The rage was such it became an out of body experience.

Beneath the rage, hurt. Deep, deep longing to be held and understood. To be close.

We push away the ones we love when we’re hurting. We get angry.

Anger is one of two socially sanctioned emotional states for men. You can be on top of the world and you can be mad. That’s your lot boys.

So this morning I’m listening to Chiara and the bomb explodes in slow motion in my belly, and I sit knowing something potentially good is happening.

I feel acutely uncomfortable.

I force myself to listen. We’re getting to core conditioning. It’s hard stuff to reach. There are blank moments. The false self gets involved. It thinks we’re wasting our time on trivia. I know we’re not.

The fire hits the chest. You want to run, but you sit. It reaches the head and you breathe and you listen to the still quite voice at the centre of the storm that urges you on. Listen. It’s okay. Let it go. Resist nothing.

Is she telling you the truth?

Are you absent?

Are you aware of your surroundings?

Just listen and feel.

The fire storm passes. I imagine I can feel by brain rewiring.

I say my side of things.

The barrier between us dissolves and we hold each other. It feels good.

I go for a walk in the sunshine.

I talk with a cafe owner by the canal.

He strums a guitar and shares how he came to be diagnosed as bi-polar.

I come home and write this.

I hope it helps someone, somewhere.

Till tomorrow

Love

Mikey