Create Competency for Yourself

Creating competency for yourself is the first step to understanding any unresolved issue that's been taking up space in your life. When you can see the issue clearly, you can choose how you want to respond to it. 

So a few years ago, I scheduled a 20-minute rage room session that transformed my healing journey. I still hadn’t recovered my 15-year suppressed memory, (although I was only about 18 months away from that discovery). I was in my 10-month sprint master’s program, working a part time job. And, I was having tension headaches nearly everyday and had lymphatic build-up in my face and limbs. I had to ask for medical accommodations from the school so I could manage my C-PTSD and the workload without stressing myself out about deadlines. Obviously, in the film industry, deadlines are a really big deal to meet. To ask accommodation around them then, is not so favorable, and to have to ask in the first place always kept the devil on my shoulder saying, “you shouldn’t have to ask” making me doubt or question the legitimacy of my needs. Which brings me to this topic of creating competency for yourself — when you create competency for yourself, you can clearly see the necessity of a need to process, the need to ask for accommodations, or to just take a break. 

During that time in 2020-2021, I still hadn’t learned yet how to feel my anger, how to listen to my body, or how to transmute rage. The tension headaches? All suppressed and unprocessed emotions pent up in my body. I had become a sponge, holding onto toxicity and didn't even know it. I didn’t fully realize the importance of getting in touch with my anger, until I discovered that rage-room where I could go smash inanimate objects. I booked it simply cause it sounded fun, like a nice break from my schoolwork and part-time job. And when I got there, they happened to have a filing cabinet on hand...it was the object that, after taking my rage out on it, clearly painted the picture for me of what was really going on internally.

Think of your brain + body and nervous system as a filing system, just like a filing cabinet. Any disorganization of the "files" of the events in your life, or damage done to the cabinet itself, creates malfunctioning in your body+life. So in a lot of ways, it was the best 20 bucks I'd ever spent, while I was so close to recovering my suppressed trauma. The best 20 bucks I ever spent because, I could finally see clearly the damage I was up against in my own body. That damage and need for resolve, keeping me feeling at war with myself, split in two. And, I'm forever grateful for the host saying, "I gave you an extra 5 minutes — seems like you needed it."  

And that's what creating competency does for yourself, it nurtures your needs. Listening to and meeting the hard emotions of anger, rage, disappointment, disgust, frustration; etc is an emotional need. Treat it the same way you do breathing and eating, it's a basic need to take care of which keeps you regulated. And when you're regulated, you can really live and thrive, instead of just getting through life surviving. If you're like me, I know you don't want to just survive, that you have a huge heart, and you have a lot to offer. 

Cause here's the deal, if you’ve survived things that are incredulously grotesque, a manipulation of human nature, where your human rights are not just violated but later dismissed and devalued when you speak up — the anger and rage which can come from overlooking and dismissing your emotions, works like a cancer on your nervous system. It's a sure and slow crippling of your spirit, when you ignore the need to release and/or transmute these emotions and experiences. And while I’ll save transmuting for another post, a quick example of this is the GET OUT OF MY WAY album, with Black Bird Collective. This was a work of art derived in part from my experiences of being trafficked, stalked, abused, misused and devalued over the course of my life. My lyrics for the bridge of "Enigma" for example, were written in the winter following my attack in September 2023. Another example is my main title culminating project, "Nastavi se Pojavljivati" -- which is Hrvatski (Croatian) for, "Keep Showing Up". More on this topic in a later post, but case in point, transmuting is all about turning a negative experience outside in, letting it die in the new life you create from it. 

By smashing a filing cabinet in on itself, I created competency for myself and simultaneously released my rage. While releasing rage in this safe container, I grunted out deep wounds with each swing, until I couldn’t throw weight any longer. My muscles in my shoulders, neck, lats, deltoids and triceps gave out. They became heavy with fatigue. Heavy with grief. And when I was done raging, my entire body was tingling. Exhaustion was setting in but I also felt insanely lighter. I was sweaty. My grown out pixie-turning-bob stuck to my forehead and neck. My stride was slower and bouncier at the same time. I sort of glided back out through the hallways, out to my car. If you could imagine what it feels like to be the buzzing sound of a corner shop neon sign — it felt like that. You’re hovering above everything, yet gravity is pulling you down and you’re buzzing. You're grounded, because you chose to take care of your need safely, without harm to yourself or others. You are full of the satisfaction of meeting your own needs. 

And thinking back to it, something left my body that night. Some twisted, toxic, self-imploding, reckless spirit that had taken root in the core of my being for far too long. I felt it leave. This "spirit” can be seen as other things: a vibe, a demon, a self-inflicting habit, a deep viral-like emotional wound, generational trauma — it has dozens of names. The point is: it needed to be extracted. I had to be the one to say, “No more. This will not rule my life any longer. Get out of my way.” And since we are spiritual beings, where our negative emotions will reside in our bodies for as long as we store them — you must physically release those emotions in healthy and safe ways. 

They do not belong in you. 

They do not belong on other people.

What you can do is choose to meet them, hear them, and release and transmute them from your life. 

Give yourself gracious aftercare during and after responding to them. Be gentle with yourself. 

What is all too often forgotten in the face of anger, hurt or rage, is that we have a choice. We have a choice to listen to those emotions, feel them, and let them go. We have a choice to respond. Or we can ignore them and let them spread like a virus, like a cancer, like a misfiled report, leading to disorder and dysfunction. The point is, you can choose to release anger + rage in a safe way. (Literally, in a rage room, they give you a motorbike helmet, gloves, a shop suit and slip covers for your shoes.) It is simple to provide yourself peace and resolve. You just have to commit to doing that. Commit to creating competency for yourself. Cause once you have competency with your life, everything that you're wanting and hoping for: relief, confidence, exuberance, peace and joy will flow in. 

If you gotta swing and take out your anger on something, do it on something that you can afford to lose. 

When you turn to swing reactively at another human, it doesn't help you, at all. It only creates distance and a divide. Where, you can't afford to lose connection from others during your times of need. That's where raging in a rage room is so effective, you have a chance to connect with yourself, regulate, and release the toxicity, so that you can return to connect with others. 

Your need for help, doesn't equate to belligerence towards others, this includes yourself.

It's an invitation for deeper self-love. So just ask for help.  

-B

National Crisis Line call: 988

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741