Anchored In
Waking up tired and the small things already start to build. It’s been 10 minutes and your patience is already gone. Your wife asks a simple questions at breakfast and it somehow turns into an argument. Your kids need help finding their shoes, finishing their homework, or making their breakfast and you lost it. You shout, grab your stuff, and storm out of the house
At work you put on a mask shoving the thoughts and feelings down. Just trying to get through the day. It feels like life is something to get through, not something to enjoy, appreciate, or like. It’s a vicious cycle of wash, rinse, and repeat until … death.
Maybe at some point along the way you think, “Is this it? Is this all that life has? What’s wrong with me?” Maybe you're asking yourself the wrong question. Maybe instead of asking these questions, assuming the anger is the problem, or blaming the circumstances for the issues that you face; maybe instead it’s time to confront a different perspective. To recognize that you’ve been carrying too much for too long without any healthy way of processing it. Maybe it’s time to confront the reality that although you may not have chosen or created some of the things, the burdens, that you have to carry you do have to deal with them.
For some men stress and burnout shows up as sadness and for others it shows up as anger. Either one often pushes men towards isolation, overworking, shutting down, drinking, scrolling, gambling, obsessing, or anything to just shut out the pain - the noise. We become emotionally unavailable.
The enemy isn’t the anger or the sadness. Our feelings, the emotions we carry, are not the monster to be defeated. The root is a belief, a value, an anchor point that we were never given or taught - to be shown what to do with all this stuff bursting inside of us.
The anger is the smoke of the fire in our souls that are crying out for something we have either never been given, or we have neglected for too long.
The solution isn't a weekend away or a night off. There is no quick fix. If you want real change, if you want healing that actually restores rather than just numbs the symptoms, then you have to dig deep and first find the anchor for your soul that’s going to help you weather the storms that may come.
