It can be a scary thing, though, to embark into therapy, not so much because of uncertainty about the therapist as uncertainty about where talking about your depression/anger/etc. can lead. It’s scary to let things get messy for awhile when what you desperately want is to make everything make sense. At least, that’s kind of how I view therapy or any self-exploration of unsolved (unsolvable?) issues.

Anger in and of itself is not a bad thing. I am only recently learning this myself, but anger is not something to avoid or be afraid of, because anger is a manifestation of your desire for something to change. Being angry can give you the power to invesigate what you need to change and then to take the appropriate action. I think it’s perceptive of you to recognize that you were misplacing your anger with the water on the floor. Those are important steps: recognizing that you are angry, and then figuring out exactly why you are angry, because then you can figure out how to respond appropriately to the anger to make things better.

I know I have always had major, major difficulty expressing anger of any sort. Which has meant that I’ve turned that anger into other sorts of problems. (Some people say–and I’m not sure exactly what to do with this, but they say–that sadness is anger turned inward, in other words that your depression may be in part about your unwillingness to allow yourself to be angry, which makes you focus that anger inward on yourself, which leads to depression.) I had a personal breakthrough at the end of last year about a bunch of issues, including finally recognizing that indeed I was angry about a bunch of things that I’d been holding inside. It led to some unhealhty outbursts of anger on my part, too.

Talking to a therapist about that anger has been helpful for me–to recognize that it is good to be angry in some situations, and that there are healthy ways to express anger to other people, and that expressing my anger in healthy ways both helps me to not express anger unhealthily and to not feel so angry at myself for bottling it up.

Like Mel B, I spent a lot of my life talking to various friends about a lot of my issues, and that did help me a lot. But it’s not the same thing as talking to someone who isn’t invested in your life and who is (at least hopefully) trained and competent at helping you figure out your own needs.

One more thing I’ll say abotu therapy: I think part of my problems with therapy in previous attempts was that I had no real idea why I was there. I went to therapy because I figured, in some sort of abstract way, that I had problems and so therapy was the thing to do. It has helped me a lot this time around to have more awareness of what it is I want from my therapist. So I went into therapy saying, for example, “I am just now learning how to express anger and I need help from you at figuring out healthy ways of doing that.” That’s why I recommend printing out some of these posts and bringing it with you–you lay out some very specific issues here, and that should help you to get more from your therapist, once you find one. I hope so, at least.

But please find someone, because it is so, so difficult to figure out how to manage anger when you had no healthy role models for that task as a child. And now, when you’re feeling not quite as depressed, is a great time to be pushing yourself to find someone, because it’s so hard to do when you’re in the middle of it.

I’m going to try my insurance company’s referral service, even though Scrivener says he did not get good results. It may turn out I have already called all the therapists my insurance company recommends, however. I’ve called a lot of them.

It is just unbelievable to me that every one is booked up. I asked one doctor about that, and she said simply that it’s a busy time of year. Maybe there are lots of people afflicted with that seasonal depression. I don’t know. Mine is variable, but never goes away. I’ve become accustomed to lengthy periods of blackness followed by more optimistic, lighter periods of brief contentment. Right now, perhaps as a result of writing here and finally admitting I have a problem, I am feeling somewhat better.

But that goes away and the darkness falls again, eventually, so I need to get help now while my mood is improving. I always think of my moods in terms of colors: white means all is well, blue means I’m down but not depressed, gray means the veil of night is descending, black means I’m in the pit. I’ve noticed lately that I rarely have blue or gray periods anymore; mostly I go from white to black, sometimes in the space of minutes or hours, and I stay in the black for longer periods.

During these times, I want to be totally alone. I don’t even want to talk to anyone on the phone. L. has remarked how when my Mom calls on the weekend, I either don’t answer, or act put out and short with her. I haven’t talked to my Dad in weeks, maybe as long as a month ago.

During these times, I tend to spend longer periods of time in my video game. I obsess about my failings and flaws. Particularly, I find myself obsessing about my abilities as a parent. I have the recurring thought that my son is going to grow up and detest me because I am such a bad father.

I feel angry at those I love, snapping at B. and L. or saying something harsh for no reason. Then I feel guilty afterwards, and begin having the obsessive thoughts about being a terrible husband and father.

Just as an example, this past Sunday evening, while Lynn and out, I put Brendan in the shower for his bedtime bath. I was depressed, so I left him in there and went and sat in the dark in my office. I did not even stay to make sure he washed himself. I didn’t care. When I heard him shut the shower off, I just felt this welling up of anger. Why did he finish so soon? I wasn’t ready to get him out and dried off and dressed. And then when I went in to the bathroom, the floor was soaking wet. He had not kept the shower curtain in the tub. The water was so deep it had flowed out to the carpet in the hall.

Instead of being angry at myself for not having kept a better eye on him, I was angry at him, and I did a lot of yelling. Later, Lynn said I was justified in my anger because there was a ton of water on the floor. But I don’t think I was justified. I know the anger came from somewhere else, and was not really a response to the flooded bathroom.

The anger is a real problem. It manifests itself usually unexpectedly, which is dangerous, I think. I rarely foresee it, and only barely control it. I don’t think of myself as an angry person by nature; I’m an introvert. My Dad on the other hand was a violently angry person, the kind of person who liked to break things when he was mad. I only recall him hitting my Mom once, and I don’t even have any memories of him spanking me, but he would throw things and smash whatever was handy, be it a toy of mine or something else.

That’s hard to believe, but true–my wife is probably shocked by that revelation because Dad seems so calm. But I seem calm, too. Then something triggers the anger and it’s all I can do to keep from putting my fist through a wall.