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[The December Days theme this year is "Things I Used To Fully Believe About Myself." Some of these things might be familiar, some of them might be things you still believe about yourself, and some of them may be painful and traumatic for you based on your own beliefs and memories. The nice thing about text is that you can step away from it at any point and I won't know.]
#11: "I'm Not Allowed To Get Angry."
You know, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, and all that. Although a fair amount of that suffering comes from having damaged something or someone in a fit of Big Feelings. And those tend to come much more out of frustration than anger, because sometimes you're a person who has big hands and is being asked to do a fiddly operation with parts that need a precise amount of force applied to them so they'll come apart or they'll go together. Too much force, and they break, too little, and they stay improperly joined. But there are also other frustrations in my life that generally I can't do anything about, either, and they're good for a vent here and there, or commiseration with co-workers.
( This is actually mostly about frustration, rather than proper anger, but the two of them are linked enough. )
It's still a work in progress. I no longer believe that I'm forbidden from having frustration and anger, except when the weasels are biting hard or I'm in a shame spiral about having expressed that frustration and someone else reacting to it. There's a solution out there that will work and doesn't insist that harmony is fully dependent on me to never express an emotional that doesn't fall into the pleasant category. It will take time, effort, and probably many more stumbles than have already happened in trying to find this solution. It is, after all, frustrating.
#11: "I'm Not Allowed To Get Angry."
You know, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, and all that. Although a fair amount of that suffering comes from having damaged something or someone in a fit of Big Feelings. And those tend to come much more out of frustration than anger, because sometimes you're a person who has big hands and is being asked to do a fiddly operation with parts that need a precise amount of force applied to them so they'll come apart or they'll go together. Too much force, and they break, too little, and they stay improperly joined. But there are also other frustrations in my life that generally I can't do anything about, either, and they're good for a vent here and there, or commiseration with co-workers.
( This is actually mostly about frustration, rather than proper anger, but the two of them are linked enough. )
It's still a work in progress. I no longer believe that I'm forbidden from having frustration and anger, except when the weasels are biting hard or I'm in a shame spiral about having expressed that frustration and someone else reacting to it. There's a solution out there that will work and doesn't insist that harmony is fully dependent on me to never express an emotional that doesn't fall into the pleasant category. It will take time, effort, and probably many more stumbles than have already happened in trying to find this solution. It is, after all, frustrating.
