A few weeks ago I cussed at my TV. I know this article is supposed to be about inner Peace, but often the road to inner peace takes a big detour into anger.

I was binge-watching a show on Netflix. The show is called Love, a short 3-season ditty produced by Netflix and directed by Judd Apatow. If you have the time, check it out. It’s a great show.

The reason I was cussing at my TV, however, was because there was a scene that made me rage harder than probably any other scene I’ve ever watched. The show is about a girl named Mickey, who is your typical “wild and crazy” girl (and an alcoholic). The show delves into her relationship with typical “nice guy,” Gus. The whole show is basically Mickey being a drama queen, and Gus trying to fix her.

I don’t want to be too spoilery here, but if you haven’t watched the show you should skip this paragraph. There’s a particular moment in the show where Gus and Mickey are having problems. Gus is going out of town for a while and it is freaking her out. So, while he is gone, she returns to her ex-boyfriend and has sex with him (several times over the course of several days).

She justified it because her and Gus weren’t “exclusive” yet. Basically, it was in that little grey area of “technically we are not exclusive, but we are basically only seeing each other and have been for quite some time.”

The point is that, despite the fact that I am justified in being annoyed by and angry by that sort of behavior, my reaction was WAY worse than what the Situation warranted. I mean, it’s a freaking TV show, and I am sitting there calling this girl all sorts of names and cussing at my TV.

And therein lies the entire point of this article…

Intense emotional reactions are often about something deeper than the current situation.

In other words, I was getting angry, but it wasn’t about the zany misadventures of Gus and Mickey. I was getting angry because I have been Gus. I was getting angry because I had emotions towards that type of situation that I hadn’t resolved. I spent a few minutes after my crazy over-reaction looking inward, and I uncovered some pretty massive buried feelings.

I don’t want to sound too “shrinky” here, but most of your Intense Emotional Reactions to things are from stuff you neglected to deal with as a child. You can spend your entire life avoiding those things. Or you can be an adult and face them. I recommend the latter. Whether you choose to face them or not, I promise that you’ll never know true inner peace until you do.

It also leads to another interesting discovery…

That deeper thing is going to sound really silly once you actually uncover it.

We spend our lives being afraid of facing our emotional issues. Especially guys. So, rather than deal with the emotions that have been bubbling under the surface for years, we do stuff to distract ourselves from them. All the while these unresolved emotions arejust sitting there. If you ignore it, it will eventually force you to acknowledge it.

My little outburst at the TV was just a symptom of something deeper that I had been carrying around with me for a long time. An old insecurity. A deep feeling of inadequacy caused by some things I perceived in my childhood. But, when I realized what it was, I actually started laughing.

I laughed because the thing that had caused so much pain was something so stupid. It was an old childish thought. Most of those issues you fear, the ones you don’t want to face because they seem scary and/or cause you to relive old traumas…they can be traced back to childish things and childish thoughts.

The insecurity will disappear on its own pretty quickly once you acknowledge it.

I think we are afraid of facing our insecurities for many reasons. We are afraid that the thing we are insecure about is actually true. What IF the worst thing I think about myself is actually true?

First of all, these things are rarely true. If you examine a belief (any belief you have about yourself) thoroughly, most of the time you’ll find that nothing you believe about yourself is objectively true. It’s just your perception of who you are pitted against the backdrop of your experience. Someone else in your shoes might perceive the situation completely different.

Second, even if it IS true…so what? I’ve uncovered some deep, soul-sucking thoughts about myself and, after looking at things with my grown-up eyes, decided that I was right. Or, rather, I was right to perceive a situation a certain way. That does not mean that what I thought about myself as a result of the situation is true.

When you acknowledge your insecurity, you will realize that you are doing the best you can with what you have.

I got mad at an old memory from when I was a kid. I spent a good chunk of my life believing things about myself that were only true for my situation at the time. Your entire perception of yourself and who you are is based on the situation you were born into.

If you’re born into a happy, loving family, you will create beliefs about yourself and the world that reflect that. If you were an orphan, you will create beliefs about yourself and the world that reflect THAT. The theme is that your entire perception of yourself is based on a situation that you had no control over.

So, stop telling yourself that you are unlovable. Stop telling yourself that you are ugly. Stop telling yourself that you are ________. You fill in the blank with whatever awful stuff you have been carrying around with you.

Yes, the road to inner peace is maddening and frustrating and littered with a bunch of memories and thoughts you don’t want to face about yourself. But it also comes with the premise that, if you see those things for what they truly are, you can choose to redefine yourself and who you really are. You were doing the best you could with what you knew, but now you know better. Now you have the chance to do better. To be better.

When you release the load of the past, you free yourself up to new possibilities.

This whole process is beautiful. You face things you have been avoiding because you were scared that they were true. You realize that they are either true or (more likely) not true and that you have been defining yourself by old, outdated information. You laugh at how silly you’ve been.

And, at the end, it’s like unloading a giant bag of bricks from your shoulders. Inner peace is within your grasp. You just have to have the courage to go after it. Being down on yourself, thinking crappy stuff about yourself, and beating yourself up isn’t serving you.

You are not your past. You are the person who is at the here and now and all you have with you are the memories of where you’ve been. Stop letting those memories define you.

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