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By innocence I mean that there is some view in you that angry hostile emotions are bad and makes you a bad person and so you try to not be that which means you try to not be human. For our soul we are sacred and loved and seen as innocent no matter what we do. Our goal here isn't to come and just try and figure out how to be good and holy. It is to come here and bump our heads and fall down and figure out how to get back up. It isn't about being bad but about understanding we all slip up and act out because being human is hard. Emotions can be hard to navigate but we can learn with time. But for you it is no longer safe to be human. To be a negative minded human and that very well is a source of your depression. You are cutting off a very essential part of yourself necessary for a healthy psyche. Considering your grandmother in the other dream was shaking her head at your 'bad' behavior I would say how you were raised is partly where you got the idea that anger and negative behavior are bad. The only way you will learn how to get your thoughts out while emotional is to do it and stumble at first. But it does get easier with time.
You sound a lot like me a number of years ago. I struggled to communicate when I was upset and never said what I wanted to. Often the other person got the upper hand because I was just scared of confrontation and was never taught how to handle emotions in a healthy way but I would role play afterwards and kind of go over in my head what I would have like to have said. I had the conversation after the fact without the person and it helped me to be better able to handle future altercations. It wasn't over night but with time I did get better at being composed when confronted. But it isn't the end of the world if you fall apart when emotional. it is not a sign of weakness. It just means you have strong emotions and don't have the tools how to walk through them. Mostly what I do try and do when I am upset is walk away initially, think things through and then have a conversation after the fact so that I can get my points out without things being a total mess. So I guess I am still not great in the moment but I no longer bottle it away where it wreaks havoc in my general well being. Even if we don't speak in the moment it is important to express how we feel or those resentments will fester in us undermining our relationships.
I was like you. I suppressed a lot and though I had myself fooled that I was pretty put together and tied up in a nice little bow if I was honest I had a constant under current of anxiety that left me pretty out of balance. All those bottled emotions never went anywhere and though it didn't happen often there were a few occasions where I did explode in a rage. I am not implying that will happen to you but bottling up our emotions is not the answer either. Even if I try my best to not show them towards others I have found a safe private place to allow them a voice at least just for me but I feel much better that I do allow them a voice then keeping them all inside.
I as well struggled with depression and I spent a lot of my time pursuing the spiritual side of life as a way to rise above it all. But I was essentially trying to use it as an escape from negative emotions. If I can be perfectly loving and balanced then I will never be angry or wind up in a confrontation. Spirituality was a way to avoid negative emotions but it became a quest to be a good person and only a good person which means I had to be good or it meant I was bad and my self image took a big hit because it is impossible to be perfectly good. Eventually I found myself quite self loathing. But good and bad are really subjective and so we can always find something to look down on ourselves as bad. Ultimately what I learned is that having negative emotions, even hostility doesn't make us bad. It just means we are human. If we have some restraint over the hostility it is probably good because it will keep us out of jail but to be angry or even hostile is simply to be human.
As I was working through this myself I had a dream where I was told to allow and release. What that means is I was being directed to allow my strong emotions to be expressed so I can take a look at what was going on in my head and then once I had a handle on it I could then release, do things to release the negative feelings like deep breathing and even distracting myself with music or whatever. The practice is called Mindfulness. Do some research on it because I think it could really help you gain some confidence with your strong emotions. Some of us are just born with stronger than normal emotions but that doesn't mean they have to hold us hostage. You can learn to manage them in healthy ways. I am around if you ever want to talk. You can PM me as well. Take care.
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