How I fixed my rage

Is it mom rage or my childhood catching up to me? + "pulling cords", a woo woo healing experience

this odd pic will make sense soon

I sometimes lose it. On the surface, it looks like “mom rage” the term tossed around all over the internet, the result of impossible expectations of modern motherhood.

This isn’t that.

I don’t think. We can unpack that in a little bit.

For now, what I’m talking about doesn’t happen often, maybe once a month. Sometimes less, other times more often.

When it does happen, it makes a lasting imprint. I scream and yell. I’m full of fire inside and it comes out in explosions on the ones I love the most. I’m confident my kids will process mom’s crazy with their therapists in 20 years.

People who know me from a distance may think this is hard to believe. I am lighthearted. I am sometimes funny, I think. I’m lovely to be around, damn it. :)

In many attempts to solve my anger issue, I’ve spent years in therapy, I learned breathing exercises, and I meditate but, admit, I’m inconsistent. I know I should leave the room before I burst but, in that second, I either forget or I have the strong urge to act on the feeling. Then, this mama pops.

I hadn’t found a great solution. Until recently.

It’s funny how you find answers in places you least expect and when you’re not expecting them. Like in a hot tub.

On a full moon a couple months ago, I got together with two friends who talked about their toxic ex-partners and how they make their lives hell. They’re “stuck” with these people because they share children with them. I thought, phew, thank god that isn’t me. I announced that I do not have such people in my life.

Later on that evening as we sat in my friend’s hot tub, mid conversation, I interjected. Shit, I realized, I do have someone like that in my life.

My dad.

I feared him. He was a difficult man to live with. Most of my memories as a child involved me wishing he was gone because he was always yelling at us and angry. But some of the loudest, angriest times were when he wouldn’t speak to us at all, ignored us for days. The silence spoke volumes. And when he was gone from the house, I prayed he’d never come back.

I developed ulcerative colitis in high school. Once I left the house, all symptoms vanished. I moved away and thought that was the cure. Once he was dead, I thought, cool, one less thing to worry about. I said to my friends, ooh, I’m glad he’s no longer around because I don’t have to deal with him.

I paused. The heat of the hot tub began a slow simmer of a realization.

the hot tub of realizations

My dad may have been dead for 16 years but he’s still “stuck” in my life.

My outbursts didn’t happen until I became a mother.

Those rage instances I was describing earlier, when it happens, I hold my kids emotionally hostage to my anger.

But it doesn’t feel like me.

Maybe this sounds wacko but the spews of lashing out at my kids feel like it’s my dad flowing out of me. Is this rage actually my dad channeling through me?

Not to evade responsibility, I do know it’s me, not my dad. But holy shit it sure does feel like the man. The anger looks like him, feels like him, and the terror on my children’s faces look like mine when I was 12.

With this description, my friends suggested I visit a woman they had both seen in the past. She’s a healer who pulls cords.

Wtf is pulling cords?

If you were like me, you had a morbid vision of yourself with socket holes and cords spilling out of you, like a multi plug outlet surge protector. Oddly, it’s a good visual.

“Energetic cord cutting is a method to release emotional ties that no longer serve your growth. You can use a cord cutting ritual to protect your energy, heal from past relationships, let go of lingering resentment, and pave the way for new, healthier connections,” wrote Caroline Stewart at Insight Timer blog.

As I read about the ritual on the Internet, I nodded along with the possibilities. Yup, count me in. I called a lovely alternative medicine practitioner named Sue.

Before I get into what happened in our session, it’s important you know that I subscribe to woo woo-light. Typically, my first thoughts to mysticism or alternative medicine is met with slight skepticism, however, as I age, I consider myself more open minded to a way of healing that I may not fully understand, even if it didn’t go through clinical trials.

A week later, I met Sue.

The session was not at all what I thought. I have difficulty writing what happened because, if you’re not into the metaphysical business, this just sounds straight up nutty. But stay with me.

After an extensive discussion about my rage, I stood in her quaint office wondering what is going to happen next. She did a muscle test¹, a bizarre process of watching her try to push down my extended arm. Then she waved a pendulum in front of my chakras², and identified cords in my 2nd and 3rd chakra, which are the areas of the body that govern emotions and, if blocked, experience anger. She had me pick a crystal from her special stash. She lit palo santo and waved the smoke around.

As we stood there, I pulled an imaginary cord from my lower abdominal area as she “cut” the space an inch in front of my jean zipper, with an intricately carved wooden knife. As I pulled the cord out, I thought of pulling the energy from my dad, then I said a few lines about shedding this cord and giving it away to the earth.

It was awkward and I went through the motions with reluctance. At one point, I giggled.

Sue responded, “Yeah. I know. This is weird.”

Thank god she acknowledged it, too. We pulled the other cord. She explained some people physically feel something when this happens, others do not. I was in the camp of feeling nothing.

She did a few other practices in the session that I can’t explain well without butchering the healing work, and giving it justice. And that was it.

I went home full of questions. I thought, “what in the hell just happened?”

Then I wondered, how will I know if this weird ritual works?

As I mentioned earlier, these raging moments don’t happen often. Will I need to wait for that sporadic timing sometime in the next month or so? I went to bed that night thinking, I guess I’ll wait for awhile and see.

The next morning, on a Tuesday, I woke up and got ready for the day with my kids. They said and did things that are typical for them, for any kid their age.

“Mom, can you get me a spoon?”

“My hands are sticky!”

“I don’t want an apple, I want an orange.”

With each comment, I noticed my would-be self. All these statements and requests would normally bring up thoughts I’d say to myself, in my head, like, “You have two legs, get the "f*cking spoon yourself” or “Why do you think I care about your sticky hands?” or “You are annoying, go away.”

Yikes. I’m thankful for the filter to not say such things out loud to my kids.

But that Tuesday morning, I did not have these thoughts. My kids would make statements like this and I simply felt neutral about them.

Until then, I didn’t realize how much I was filled with what I call, tiny rage. Little bits of anger, all the time.

During this process, I was trying to fix my giant eruptions but didn’t realize how much I was walking around as a mad woman with little bits of rage all day long. Does this tiny rage I didn’t notice before fill up over the course of a few weeks and then when it is full, erupts all at once?

And is this mom rage? For me, I’m not convinced it is. I have a lot of support from my partner, from extra childcare, from friends and family. It does feel like my childhood catching up to me. I’m sure it’s a bit of both. But we’ll see, I still don’t have all the answers yet. And maybe I won’t ever. And that’s ok.

So now what do I do with this?

I’m not sure yet.

I’m in process mode, as I sit with this new observation. I now have more information.

Did the seance-like ritual in the middle of a San Diego office park work? Of course I still get mad, I’m human. But I have noticed my tiny rage isn’t as prevalent. Was it fixed with pulling cords? Or is it because I now come from a place of awareness?

So I guess I’ve answered my question. It depends on how you perceive it. Yes, it worked. Who cares if it was the crystals or my mindset. Showing up to Sue’s office was the gateway to learn more about my anger. I have new information to work on. It worked because I’m now more curious about how my anger presents itself, internally and externally.

I see Sue again later this month. She brought up the concept that we need anger in our lives, even though we may believe we should make it smaller, or distinguish it when it appears. Obviously, this practice has not worked well for me in the past.

What if we take the anger and we channel it in a different direction, where it needs to go?

I’m curious.

“I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight... I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

1. On a basic level, muscle testing looks at a muscle and then determines that something may be off with an entirely different body part. It’s usually an internal versus external thing, like you have an issue with your calf muscle, which signals some kind of an issue <gestures broadly> with an internal organ. (More on that in a second.) Muscle testing doesn’t diagnose you with a specific issue, but fans say it can help you pinpoint areas of your health that you need to work on. - Women’s Health

2. Chakras are thought to be focal points of energy throughout your body. Some spiritual views hold that our body is more than just physical and mental, it’s also an energetic system. "Chakra" is a word in Sanskrit, an ancient language from India, that means "wheel" or "cycle." In many Eastern and spiritual belief systems, chakras are seen as spinning wheels or circles that life energy flows through. When your chakras are in balance, life energy is able to move through them and connect you to the world around you. - WebMD