What's eating you?

So what's on your mind? What's irritating you? How do you know?

The first two questions might seem straightforward enough, but the last one may seem a little silly. Well, to you, maybe. For me, that last question has been the key to me realising something important about myself.

This period of change has placed a significant strain on me in different ways. I have had to redefine my relationships with quite a few people, and I have had to decide, once again, who I really am and what I am about.

Some of this has been quite painful, particularly where I have parted company with friends who I never expected to lose. Whenever I have been stressed about a particular issue or relationship it sends me “nearer the edge” emotionally. I'm sure you've experienced something similar.

When “near the edge” everything is more annoying, I'm quicker to anger and closer to tears. It's surprising to me how slow I am to recognise what is causing me the problem. I was desperately annoyed by something TL did the other day - almost beside myself with frustration, and yet, when I used logic instead of feelings, I decided I was actually sore about something else.

Even though it felt weird to do, I forced myself to express in words to TL what it was that I was actually messed up about. The effect was magical. My frustration with TL just melted away - in fact I can barely remember what it was now.

How easy it would have been to express my annoyance about the minor thing - how easy it would have been to pour all my emotion out in criticising someone else, rather than face up to my own lack of ability to deal with the real issue.

As with all the most valuable lessons, they are so hard to apply in the heat of the moment. It's amazingly hard to climb down emotionally and to admit I'm wrong, or that my bad feeling applies to something else.

I'd be fascinated to hear of your experiences in this area - comments can be left anonymously if you like, or please do email me. I'd like to chat about it.

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*The illustrations used in this piece bear no relevance to the writing whatsoever. They are there because illustrated articles are, in general received better than those with no illustration. With that in mind, I hope I provided adequately for all. :)

Comments

[John Cooper]

I know exactly how you feel. I sometimes treat Claire dreadfully, and not because she's done anything. Sometimes we just need to spleen-vent, and the safest person is always the one closest, the one who we know will take it. Claire and me made a promise to always stick to the Biblical principle of sorting things out the same day, and sticking to that has always meant we've sorted things out quickly. But I still jsut rant at her for saome petty things sometime. The worst thing I do is bottle it up, and boil over after she's left for work. The rpospect of yet another boring day doing housework just gets too much, so I ring up and rant. What a heal I am.

[Ian]

I think that next time you get your egg boiled too hard by TL you should just sit on the beach and eat it (you will be able to soon) That way you will be more concerned with sand and less with consistency.
Now Im pretty sure that there is something prolific in that, as long as some chinese bloke hasn't said it first.

[Ruby Riley]

Just last night I was working through some feelings I'm having about a situation in my life, and realizing that the feelings have nothing to do with the situation at hand. It's what I'm bringing with me based on my expectations or my fears or my baggage from previous experiences. I use the following set of questions to get the root of my feelings about things: 1) What are you unhappy about? 2) Why are you unhappy about that? 3) Why do you believe that? (or, do you believe that?) 4) What do you think would happen if you weren't unhappy about that?

What I tend to find pretty universally with the things I'm unhappy about is that I'm choosing to make myself unhappy in order to protect myself from something - often from what I see as my potential to make a "bad" decision, or from allowing myself to get hurt. And when I'm upset with someone else's behavior, it's generally because of what I'm making it mean about me - that they don't love me enough, that they don't respect me enough, that I don't love myself enough because I allowed myself to be treated badly, etc. Once I get to the root of the issue, it's a lot easier to choose to be happy. Or at least understand that I'm choosing to be unhappy, and no one is making me that way.

That's my experience, at least. I'm still learning. And have been on an emotional rollercoaster lately. Still working at it.

My problem isn't so much having trouble admitting when I'm wrong. I take on responsability for the whole world and everyone's feelings, and assume I have the power to ruin everything for everyone. An odd combination of low self esteem and egotism.

[Jason]

Yes - it's true that we often hurt the ones who least deserve it, and can me incredibly selfish and insensitive with our partner even though they are utterly blameless and indeed almost perfect. One day, soon I hope, Toni will understand this and start treating me with the respect I deserve.

[didger]

I often find this the case too. It can be hard to do that looking into the annoyance thing so good on you. the closer the people the easier to confide in, definately. however that can be often really hard too. I am a stong believer in the not going to bed with a sore head theory, but it can lead to long and sleepless nights, cos sometimes things don't often stop when you want them to.

[anon]

I'm taking up your kind offer of remaining anonymnous whilst simultaneously offering something to the point that you've raised. I've had many, many difficulties in my life regarding my perception of others and their reactions towards me. Mainly, huge disappointment for me caused by my believed expectations of others which resulted in frustration, despair and ultimately depression. At one particularly desperate stage, was second guessing the actions, thoughts and motives of everyone I knew and, when they didn't conform to what I KNEW (godammit!) they were suposed to do, I used to turn everything on myself and beat myself to a pulp at the sheer unfairness of it all. Awful times. Then I learned something very interesting about an unrelated thing altogether but something clicked and I'm much better now and I find everything so much easier to deal with. Basically, I read an article about dream interpretation (bear with me) which proposed that whatever you dream about is manifested by your own brain (that would fit). The article further explained that, if you were to dream of meeting Jennifer Aniston say (or any other random fantasy character) the Jennifer Aniston in your dream would actually be yourself as you have no experience whatsoever to draw on to have JA being herself in your dream. Further, any known persons appearing in your dreams (your mother, sister, family dog, etc)are supposedly interacting with your dream persona as themselves but it is actually your own brain which is manipulating these characters and making them behave in all manner of strange ways. They're not real, they're not themselves, it is your brain creating YOUR interpretation of those people. And there is the key. In real life, people interact with us and, unless you're Winston Smith in 1984, you are at liberty to understand, believe, misunderstand, misinterpret, invent, read between the lines, whatever about anything and everything anyone says or does to you. They have their own intentions and purpose but, without an explicit explanation that a lobotomised monkey could follow, you are only able to glean what you can from messages conveyed through your OWN beliefs, experiences, expectations. We're not a telepathic race and, until we are, we are not able to know exactly what anothers' intentions are (unless you're going to have a very detailed "What precisely did you mean by that?" conversation for every little thing. That gets boring and intrusive. If you simply absorb the actions, deeds and requests, etc of others and don't apply your own twisted logic to supposed hidden meanings in things, people stop being inherentley disappointing (in my experience at least). Basically, if someone has bothered you or you're all twisted up inside about something that someone has done, remember the dream thingy and realise that there can be no way that you can truly be having the exact same experience as the other person and equally, the other person can in no way expect you to experience the exact same interpretation of their actions, therefore who's right? Am I making any kind of sense? I may have confused myself which is no help to you whatsoever. Another thing to try in difficult spots is to reverse the scenario and try and guess what others would do if the roles were reversed. Try out all yoru friends and imagine what they woudl do in teh same situation. It sounds naff but what you shoudl end up with is the realisation that there can be many different interpretations of the same situation by many different people therefore you're back to the point above which was basically supposed to say, "Your answer to the question (or interpretation of events)is completely different to everybody elses, including the person who asked the question in the first place. But there is no wrong answer and everybody is convinced their answer is right". I don't even know if I was trying to help but I enjoyed contributing to your worthy blog.

[Rebecca]

Interesting...

[Ian]

Ok....can you do another blog now Andy, one with humorous overtones and a bit of a giggle, and the odd power tool.

[anon]

The worst thing, is when someone close to you changes and you're left feeling unsure and insecure. That then has a major knock-on effect on the way you interact with the people still around.

[Jac]

Change is a 'worst thing' anon? Oh dear - staying the same forever - wow - that's a tall order.