There’s a Rage In My Brain and it’s Making Me Sick
I’d been having a constant migraine with flashing lights and ringing in my ears for almost a month. My doctor sent me for an MRI which revealed some abnormalities.
The day before, my partner and I made a plan to leave for Colombia in a month and a half. We were just about to book the flight. Those plans are now on hold until I know more about this condition and how to treat it. What’s that expression — life happens when you’re making plans?
After I got the results, I went outside to wait for my taxi. I sat on the bench looking at the MRI report. ….”irregularity of the cervical internal carotid artery….appears to be a left para-ophthalmic aneurysm….”
What does this mean? Am I going to have a stroke?
Will it burst? What is this irregularity?
I know nothing and am forced to wait for a neurology appointment so someone can explain it to me.
I don’t have a family doctor at the moment, so all of this happened at a walk-in clinic with a doctor that comes in over a computer screen from a different city. It was an impersonal and cold way to learn about something potentially scary going on in your brain.
Bring them in, stay neutral, give only as much information as you know and pass them off to the specialist. As a nurse, I also know that vascular irregularities and aneurysms are not good. But I don’t know the extent of this condition or what can be done to treat it.
I’m definitely scared.
The old me would have descended into a cycling loop of worry; sending me straight down the drain of depression and self-deprecation.
The new me is different. She’s got a clear head and a good beat on how to stay aware during moments of stress. I haven’t always been this way, but thankfully I’ve gathered some tools in the last few years to help me through moments like this. That doesn’t mean I’m fluttering through like some bohemian spirit of positivity. I’m not ok, but I’m calm, and I know there’s nothing to do but wait and ask questions.
I can do this.
If you’ve read my other articles, you’ll know that I used to work in mental health, public health, and teaching undergraduate nursing. I know a lot about physical and mental health conditions and also what goes on behind the scenes of healthcare. In my 20+ years of nursing, I left the profession with one glaring truth that I can never ignore.
No, I don’t know exactly how that works and no, I’m not suggesting we are responsible for our ailments. I only know that energy is what we are made of and this is an indisputable fact. I know it like I know the back of my hand, the curve of my nose and the sound of my voice. This has been proven to me through so many years of watching, working and witnessing through nursing and through my own experiences.
So, as I navigate this new health issue, I’m checking in with my body to see what the energetic implications are.
Three years ago, I quit drinking alcohol. For anyone who’s ever stopped drinking, you know that the worst part of initial sobriety is how your body comes back to life after years of numbing it. It’s like sitting on a leg until it falls asleep. Once you get off of it, there’s a horrible tingling pain as the feeling comes back. Things eventually return to normal but that initial moment is a ferocious period of neurological craziness. Early sobriety is like that.
Once I got sober, I realized that there was a powerful force I‘d been numbing for years. Pure unhinged rage. Thankfully, I knew enough to get help, and I found a good energy healer that taught me how to express this rage safely. I learned that anger is an incredible energy that exists for a reason. However, when it’s stuffed down and repressed, it turns to rage which can do a lot of damage.
I had decades of rage come up all at once in that first year of sobriety. One day, when I felt it welling up, I went to scream in my pillow as I’d been taught to do. I cried and screamed and even bit the pillowcase like a wild animal. My body went red with heat, sweat streamed down my face, and my fingers were clenched so tight they went white. Later, I saw that I broke a blood vessel in my eye.
Surely only a crazy person would do that right? But I’m not crazy. This is what PTSD and decades of repressed anger and emotion looks like. It’s ugly, unpredictable, and absolutely dangerous to your health.
As a mental health nurse, I’d seen people screaming and biting pillowcases just like me. Except that those people, (who were mostly women) were carted off by security and locked in a padded room. Some were given injections to calm them down. When repressed anger turns to rage, it can be uncontrollable.
After my expulsion of rage, I wept as I looked at my blood-filled eye in the mirror. I thought to myself, “what kind of person screams so much that they hurt themselves?” I am that person. I am the same as those people put into a padded room.
I eventually progressed through rage, and I don’t feel it with such intensity anymore. But that doesn’t mean that all those years of harboring it hasn’t done some severe damage. Also, by the time I let it out, it was so large and so monstrous, that it may have led to whatever is happening in my brain now.
Indeed an aneurysm behind my eye, the same eye that was filled with blood, is pretty indicative. Also, I’ve always been an over-thinker and have used my mind as refuge for every stressful event in my life. I can almost feel the pulsing of way too much energy in my head.
New possibilities come up around how to soothe my troubled mind. I can work on slowing down my heart rate, meditating to relax my blood vessels, and nurturing a calm and compassionate energy in my body. And here’s a big one — I need to stop concerning myself with things that are out of my control.
I know I can choose better when it comes to getting angry and how to focus it more productively. There are important things to act on and others that I can walk away from. I don’t need to spend 24/7 inside my head solving every tiny problem in the world. And so I continue to learn.
This is part one of my journey. I’ll be documenting it here if you want to follow along.
There’s a Rage In My Brain and it’s Making Me Sick
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