Dear SadSoul:

“One of my employers said something mean to me yesterday, ‘******?  Who has that for their email address?  It’s just stupid.’… I spent the next half a day brooding on it, feeling hurt that she said such a mean petty thing.  I thought about saying something to her about it but what is the point?“- the point would be perhaps to honor yourself, to honor your valid hurt, by telling her something like: telling me I am stupid is not going to help me do better, would it? Or, it’s not wise for an employer to call an employee stupid, is it?…?

“This is so raw and honest.  Thank you for sharing.  I feel privileged“- you are welcome, and thank you! You are encouraging me to be more raw and honest.

“NO.  I am not angry with you!  I struggle to juggle all my balls.  I leave for work at the crack of dawn and get home after dark… it IS NOT YOU!  But… it’s not just paranoia, there are always chances that is a person’s reason too.  I will do my best to be honest when something upsets me – actually, I did… and I will do my best to always do this so you always know and don’t have to wonder“- yes, you did and in so doing, you made our special communication possible. Thank you for helping me, and for caring to help me… You do work a whole lot, got to find a way to work less and relax during non-working hours.

“I wasn’t even lying but if they thought I was it was beatings until the ‘truth’ came out… A few years ago my father said to me… I (father) knew stepsister had it in her wardrobe… He wanted to know why I ‘lied’ and agreed with stepmother that I had lost it.  I said, ‘Because she would flog me each time I said I hadn’t until I said I had, so I learnt to say whatever she wanted to hear, so I would only get one flogging.’… He’d stood by and watched her flog me even though he knew where it was. He let her intimidate and frighten me“- I have a new understanding of the extent of abuse you suffered in childhood, by the (evil) stepmother and the man who had let her do her thing. I feel badly for the young, hurt and abused Sad Soul.

“Anyway, that honesty was beaten into us even if it wasn’t the truth?!  Does that make sense?“- No! And it’s not honesty that she beat into you, it’s abuse. I feel anger at this evil stepmother, how dare she???

And the man who let her.. maybe he was relieved that you absorbed her beatings, instead of him (verbal beatings, if not physical). Maybe for him, your role was to absorb her aggression, so that he didn’t have to.

“I hope you’re having better sleep and a better day today“- actually, now that I read this, I realize that yes, I did sleep better last night, thank you.

“I’m a bit jelly you get to have anger in your repertoire.  I think it would help.  I’d prefer it to hurt which is the one emotion I do extremely well“- I had to look up “jelly”, lol.  Yes, I am going to keep at it, posting about anger. Maybe you can too..? You are welcome to do so in my thread, and it will help me to get a better connection to my repressed/ suppressed anger.

Let me see what you posted in my thread about 5 hours ago: “I’ve been trying to understand my biological mother’s anger and nastiness since reading the things you have posted. ..I’ve spent my whole life being understanding of her meanness and this is me finding another way to excuse her“- having had an evil stepmother, I imagine that you needed to believe that your biological mother was the good mother, the real mother..

“I’m not going to try to understand anymore! I sometimes catch myself thinking of trying to reconcile with her, but I get stuck at the beginning of these thoughts, because.. I apologised for everything even though I hadn’t done anything, just because I was terrified of losing her“- terrified of losing the idea of the good mother.

“I will tell you a little thing though, something really horrible that I did.  It was a year and a half after she cut me out of her life.  She did something really mean and underhanded and it got back to me.  So I sent her an email:  I wish I had never loved or trusted you. I felt so evil after I sent it.  So mean and nasty and dreadful.  The worst human in the world.  I still do to some degree.  But I am aware that it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said to her”-

– telling her the truth, your truth, made you feel so evil.. So mean and nasty and dreadful. The worst human in the world because .. can you continue this sentence with whatever comes to your mind? (sometime when you have a moment and you are relaxed?)

“She did me a huge service cutting me out though.  I don’t have her judgmental criticisms and meanness hounding me every day of my life.  I don’t have the woman who told me I didn’t deserve to have my children… Why would a mother do that to the daughter she professes to love more than anything?…  sibling would brag about the lovely dinners she cooked when sibling got home.  Why would she play games like that with her own children?  That isn’t love.“- no, it isn’t love on her part.  I wonder if you loved her more than your siblings loved her; if you placed her on a pedestal as if she was a loving, good mother, much more, or for much longer than your siblings did..?

And feeling undeserving of the enduring, years-long pedestal you placed her on, created a distressing cognitive dissonance in her mind: a lack of agreement between her knowing that she was a bad mother and you so very much not knowing that she was a bad mother. And so, she criticized and rejected you more than she criticized and rejected your siblings, so to cause you to drop her of the pedestal and end her cognitive dissonance..?

anita

Dear Sha:

“I don’t feel like studying even though I try to… Negative thoughts keep popping up, such as ‘You are going to fail even if you study,’ and I can’t concentrate… I’ve turned into a negative person, and I fear failure even when I study well. The trigger is every time I take a mock test, it feels like I haven’t studied efficiently (like I can’t recall or have forgotten what I studied), and looking at the competition for the exams, I start to think, ‘Nahh, you’re going to fail in this too.’ My career depends on this exam, but I can’t focus even when I need to.“-

– Naturally we don’t want to do what feels badly. And studying has been established, in your mind, as something that feels badly. When you look at a hot stove, you don’t want to place your hand on it because you know there’ll be pain, it’d feel badly, so you keep your hand away from the hot stove. Similarly, you keep your mind away from studying.. even when you try to study.

Naturally we are afraid of pain, physical and emotional, and failing the exams represent pain for you. Do you agree?

When we are afraid on an ongoing basis, aka being anxious, our cognitive functioning suffers, including our ability to concentrate and remember.

Can you tell me in regard to your career, how do you view your career: is it something you want to do, something you look forward to be doing for years to come?

And if you fail your exams, what would the consequences be?

anita

Dear Sha:

How about interrupting the negative thoughts with a hot bath.. or a cold shower (if it’s a hot season where you live), or a long walk outside, a swim every day in the public pool.. something like that?

anita

An Empathy For All (3 friends) Weekend should take P out of her own distress/ misery and be there for you and for your roommate- friend. There is healing in being present for others.

anita

Dear SadSoul:

* I am adding this comment some time into typing this post so to suggest that due to this post being long, and how busy you are, please take your time reading it, if you will. The quotes about anger, I think, can be helpful for you and me.

“I haven’t really felt a lot of anger in my life, not because I’m special, but because I would get flogged if I got angry. As an adult the handful of times I’ve been angry have caused me to lose a person, except that I have been angry at my children quite a few times and let them know it. Interesting how I can feel it if I feel confident I’m not going to be abandoned“- what an amazing testimony about anger. Thinking further about it, girls and women are discouraged from feeling and expressing anger, it’s not feminine, not lady like. Anger repressed needs to be expressed though, if it keeps being repressed and suppressed, it creates havoc on the body.

Motivated by the above, I looked up articles about repressed/ suppressed anger, and found psychology today/ 5 symptoms of repressed anger. Here is what fits with what you wrote right above: “Someone who represses anger may fear that if they directly expressed it, they would be rejected or abandoned”.

Quoting from the article and commenting: “Due to a myriad of reasons from childhood family experience to social conditioning, many people have mistaken anger as something ‘bad,’ or even immoral, and have unconsciously deeply suppressed this natural emotion. However, what is suppressed does not automatically disappear”- true.

“Symptoms of Repressed Anger: 1. Depression… People whose repressed anger turns into depression might have adopted the defence mechanism known as identifying with the aggressor. When they were abused or bullied as a child, a part of their psyche took on the aggressor’s voice, and this part takes on a life of its own, perpetuating the abuse in the person’s mind… Their inner critic constantly attacks them, just like their critical parents, bullies, or teachers once did.. When anger is redirected inward, it could fester and turn into toxic shame and guilt. Whether consciously or unconsciously, this shame and guilt pave way for depression”- very true to me.

“2. Subjugation: Some people have learned from their families, schools, or religion that anger is a bad or even immoral thing. They become afraid of the power of their own rage. When anger emerges, they feel an intense inner conflict. Simultaneously there is a force to squash it all down. They may immediately switch the focus onto other people’s needs… To avoid conflicts, they opt to be the listener or peacemaker and will do anything to maintain peace and harmony… they have learned to silence themselves… Their role in the family was the mediator or the invisible one, and they would do everything to not bother anyone with their emotional needs. They would rather appease others to keep the peace than to express it and risk having a conflict”- fits you in the past.. exactly?

“3. Paranoia: Paranoia is a less known impact of repressed anger, but it can emerge. When someone has repressed anger, they can sometimes project it outward. Rather than acknowledging that something has caused them to feel hostile, they project these feelings onto others and perceive others to be hostile to them. They experience the world to be a strange and dangerous place and find it hard to trust anyone. Whenever they assert themselves, even only mildly, they experience an irrational fear that others will retaliate and punish them”- this fits me.. exactly. This has been my lifetime experience that I’ve been aware of for some time and need to continue to change.

4. Self-Righteousness: When repressed anger is paired with perfectionistic or obsessive-compulsive tendencies, it may manifest in a self-righteous way, in which the person becomes highly critical of themselves and others with unrelenting standards. People who are highly perfectionistic bottle up resentment for two reasons: the accumulated self-hate for not being able to meet their own standards, or other people’s sloppiness or lack of ethics. When they have dedicated their lives to doing the right things, and to a high standard, it is understandable that they feel resentful when others don’t but still seem to ‘get away with it.’… Because they do not like thinking of themselves as an angry person, they rarely express or admit feeling resentful. When they feel it is justified, however, they may blow up in a kind of rage that shocks people”- this fits that person, formerly known as my mother, exactly.

“5. Passive-Aggressiveness: Passive-aggressive anger often involves withholding behaviours. A person may forget something, neglect their responsibilities, procrastinate, or perform badly in a task. They may give their partners a cold shoulder, make sarcastic comments, forget their promises, or stubbornly refuse to comply with any request. Someone with passive-aggressive anger can also subtly guilt-trip others and make others feel responsible for upsetting them”- that’s not me.

The article ends with: “Anger is an important emotion in the human psyche and should not be banished or disowned. It can be useful if we can learn to notice it and receive the message anger is trying to deliver to us. Through assertive anger, we harness the very human and natural emotion to reinstate our boundaries and fight for our birthrights. Anger just is, and being able to be angry when someone oversteps is a sign of psychological health.”- Assertive Anger (AA), I like that!

* choosing therapy/ repressed anger: “Repressed anger is anger that is unintentionally avoided… Repressed anger is different from suppressed anger, which refers to the feelings people purposely avoid. Individuals who struggle with repressed anger often say, “I never get angry!” because they are unaware of their anger… Repression of anger is anger that is not expressed, usually because people subconsciously want to ignore it or avoid it, often out of fear or shame…

“When anger is repressed, it can build up, causing many negative impacts on a person’s physical and mental health… Anger itself isn’t harmful or bad, but without any outlet or way to express it, people often aren’t able to just ‘let go’ of it, especially if the trigger is something they encounter often. Some of the harmful effects of repressed anger include: High blood pressure, Chronic stress, Heart problems, Insomnia, Higher risk for chronic illnesses…”.

Back to your post, SadSoul: “Anyway, back to anger: I believe it is a protective emotion, one that kicks in when we need to be motivated to protect ourselves, because it causes us to have uncommon strength whether that be physical, mental, or emotional“- and if not expressed, as in AA, above, all that uncommon strength/ energy turns inward.. destroying the person repressing it.

“Could your anger be a layer of protection?  Not that you need it now but childhood has handed you a carry-over champion in the form of it?“- the origin of my anger has been about protection, problem is that I see danger where it is not, or I exaggerate it where some minor, negligible danger exists, aka some paranoia.

“I don’t know if this will be helpful in the coping with it being with you as a constant companion… look around me and see if I could see anything that I needed to be afraid of.  I couldn’t see anything, just trees, grass, houses, power poles, sky, cars driving along, you name it.  Somehow having a little stock take of what is around me helps me not to be so afraid“- good advice, thank you for passing it on to me.

“The second thing I do, which I’m told is called mindfulness, is to clear my mind and let my body feel the feeling it is having.  It usually fades away quite quickly…. easier said than done when one has a stupidly hyper mind“- thank you for this as well. I keep forgetting to do this, or I keep not feeling like doing this.

“Thank you for caring.  It’s been a hectic week so far…  I care that you are okay!!!?“- You are welcome, thank you for asking, I’m okay, a bit stressed, tired, overly caffeinated, or so it feels.

“I’m sorry I’ve been MIA, just sometimes I can’t find the energy to do anything more than go to work“- when I saw that you didn’t reply for a while, my automatic thinking was: SadSoul is angry with me.. because I tried to be funny guessing if she is doing the plumbing or fixing the roof.. she found offense in what I wrote, and she will never post again.. or she’ll let me know how angry she is with me. I felt a combo of fear of the anger-to-come and perhaps some anger at you (I don’t remember feeling the latter, but probably I did).

Please don’t take this personally, it’s my paranoid thinking, seeing danger where there isn’t. Or greatly exaggerating and emotionally over-reacting to negligible danger (some anger coming at me from the screen is not dangerous).

“You are a good person!“- I can’t tell you how good this sounds to me.

“I watched this amazing thing about how emotions are the cause of many illnesses – deadly illnesses, not just the type people think are imaginary or mental illnesses.  Are we allowed to post links on this website?“- people do post links in the forums. I am not sure, but I think that sometimes posts with links automatically go into moderation. What I do when I quote from a website, when I name the website, I place spaces in between words.

“You are safe, I don’t tell jokes..“- (a sigh-of-relief emoji)

“I’m sorry though that my contradicting the mud thing was so poorly executed…. I’m sorry though that it didn’t vaguely sound that way in the text of it“- no offense to apologize for, no real offense (although a paranoid-inclined person can perceive a non-offense to be offensive).

“I really like your experiences and thoughts on people with nice childhoods… It’s a sad world but there is sunlight in it. I’m sitting with three furry sunlit things right now“- looks like we live in a similar climate: when it rains where you are, it rains here; when it shines there, it shines here (a sunny Tues morning)!

“Today my muscles seem to be a little better!  Has your sleep improved?  I had a bad night last night, just tossed and turned so much”– good your muscles are better. Didn’t have a good night myself.

“My phone brings up the emojis… If it doesn’t work you can laugh very hard at me hahaha“- I won’t laugh at you at all: I am even more challenged when it comes to technology than I am when it comes to jokes.

“No plumbing, roofing, or tree removing has taken place by my hands… PS I didn’t proof read any of that so I am sorry if it’s a muddle and in the spirit of honesty I have actually replaced a washer and a tap so yeah I’m a full blown plumber!!  Sorry, I had to tell you that because when I thought about it I have done vague plumbing and I felt like I lied.“- I think that we have more in common than I thought: making honest mistakes, forgetting, not expressing myself 100% accurately, neglecting to omit something, neglecting to add something to what I say.. that’s a scary possibility.. as in, it’s perceived as danger?

anita

About 1 week to your 25 year-old birthday, Seaturtle. A quarter of a century. It’s okay if you don’t respond to this post, really! Nevertheless, it’s impossible to forget a real-life, human sea turtle.

anita