see, when you're gone i'll still be bloody mary
Saturday, August 25th, 2012 05:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikaI am so fucking frustrated with my own emotional problems that I could scream. I might actually do it if it weren't 4AM.
Can't I take a vacation from being crazy? I'm upsetting people, and I don't actually mean or want to do it.
It's one thing if it's intentional, on some levels I can handle that, because hello, I fucked up, I admit it, I feel guilty & ashamed about it, and that feels right, because I fucked up.
But when it's unintentional, when it's just the way I am, it drives me fucking insane. I still feel guilty, I feel ashamed, but there's nothing I can do. I don't even notice these things when I'm doing them, and yet I'm hurting people. How am I supposed to fix shit if I have no idea I've even done anything, let alone something wrong?
In addition, I'm trying this new "I'm upset and I'm going to say mean shit if I don't gtfo" thing where I realize that and then leave the situation. It's not working too well just yet; I mostly notice it after I've already said something a bit ... punchy, and that means that putting myself in time-out looks like I'm trying to punish the other person for pissing me off, which isn't the case. It's more that I'm trying to stop myself doing or saying something shitty, as I tend to do every single fucking time I get upset.
Some people (perhaps these vaunted normal people I hear so much about) can recognize their irritation as over the top and let it go. I don't do this. I'm not sure I am actually capable of doing this, but I definitely don't. So yeah, when I internally recognize my irritation as potentially problematic and/or unjustified, that literally makes me more irritated.
All this taken together means that I'm more than capable of going from "eh, well, you're kinda being a dick, but no big" to "FUCK YOU, FUCK THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON, AND FUCK YOUR MOTHER. ALSO I'M GOING TO BLOW UP YOUR PLACE OF RESIDENCE WITH MY MIND POWERS, PROBABLY WHILE YOU'RE IN IT, OR MAYBE WHEN YOU'RE BARELY OUTSIDE IT FOR MAXIMUM PANT-SHITTING VALUE" in about 3 seconds if someone indicates that I'm over-reacting.
(I apologize for the caps but that statement needed to be in caps, all of them. All the caps.)
So . . . this is a problem. [She understates.] People like to tell me that I'm overreacting, which, to be fair, isoften usually true. I don't blame them for that. I try to avoid it, but I don't blame them. But this wouldn't be such a problem if my personal definition of "someone" didn't include myself.
It goes as such:
It's not that this behavior didn't have its usefulness in my earlier life. It did! But now that usefulness is gone. I no longer have to goad emotionally compromised Vulcans in order to captain my ship, but... I can't fucking turn it off.
I was told so many times that I was over-reacting, that how I felt was wrong and furthermore that my emotions & feelings in general were not important, that I was required to ignore whatever was "bothering" me——in a context where the reality was that I was NOT actually overreacting, my emotions were completely reasonable because the things that were "bothering" me were things like being physically assaulted or emotionally abused and therefore damn well should have distressed/upset/unhinged me, and where I should have called the fucking cops or at least told someone with more authority that I was being hurt——that even being reminded of it by my own thoughts is enough to really, really piss me off.
It's not that I want to stop being upset by this. I don't fucking like being dismissed, belittled, condescended to, ignored, or having my emotions minimized. It is, in actuality, perfectly reasonable for me to have problems with that.
But I would like to be able to decide for myself whether that is what's happening in collective reality, as opposed to my current reaction, which seems to be more along the lines of "Kill them all and let god sort it out."
Can't I take a vacation from being crazy? I'm upsetting people, and I don't actually mean or want to do it.
It's one thing if it's intentional, on some levels I can handle that, because hello, I fucked up, I admit it, I feel guilty & ashamed about it, and that feels right, because I fucked up.
But when it's unintentional, when it's just the way I am, it drives me fucking insane. I still feel guilty, I feel ashamed, but there's nothing I can do. I don't even notice these things when I'm doing them, and yet I'm hurting people. How am I supposed to fix shit if I have no idea I've even done anything, let alone something wrong?
In addition, I'm trying this new "I'm upset and I'm going to say mean shit if I don't gtfo" thing where I realize that and then leave the situation. It's not working too well just yet; I mostly notice it after I've already said something a bit ... punchy, and that means that putting myself in time-out looks like I'm trying to punish the other person for pissing me off, which isn't the case. It's more that I'm trying to stop myself doing or saying something shitty, as I tend to do every single fucking time I get upset.
Some people (perhaps these vaunted normal people I hear so much about) can recognize their irritation as over the top and let it go. I don't do this. I'm not sure I am actually capable of doing this, but I definitely don't. So yeah, when I internally recognize my irritation as potentially problematic and/or unjustified, that literally makes me more irritated.
All this taken together means that I'm more than capable of going from "eh, well, you're kinda being a dick, but no big" to "FUCK YOU, FUCK THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON, AND FUCK YOUR MOTHER. ALSO I'M GOING TO BLOW UP YOUR PLACE OF RESIDENCE WITH MY MIND POWERS, PROBABLY WHILE YOU'RE IN IT, OR MAYBE WHEN YOU'RE BARELY OUTSIDE IT FOR MAXIMUM PANT-SHITTING VALUE" in about 3 seconds if someone indicates that I'm over-reacting.
(I apologize for the caps but that statement needed to be in caps, all of them. All the caps.)
So . . . this is a problem. [She understates.] People like to tell me that I'm overreacting, which, to be fair, is
It goes as such:
- Someone I know well & consider important in my life does or says something unintentionally rude/condescending/dismissive.
- I'm irked by this, but console myself with the fact that I know this person and they probably didn't mean it.
- That attempt at calming myself down leads to the thought that perhaps, just maybe, I shouldn't be so irritated.
- The idea that I'm over-reacting infuriates me.
- I immediately set all phasers to kill and commence with verbal evisceration.
It's not that this behavior didn't have its usefulness in my earlier life. It did! But now that usefulness is gone. I no longer have to goad emotionally compromised Vulcans in order to captain my ship, but... I can't fucking turn it off.
I was told so many times that I was over-reacting, that how I felt was wrong and furthermore that my emotions & feelings in general were not important, that I was required to ignore whatever was "bothering" me——in a context where the reality was that I was NOT actually overreacting, my emotions were completely reasonable because the things that were "bothering" me were things like being physically assaulted or emotionally abused and therefore damn well should have distressed/upset/unhinged me, and where I should have called the fucking cops or at least told someone with more authority that I was being hurt——that even being reminded of it by my own thoughts is enough to really, really piss me off.
It's not that I want to stop being upset by this. I don't fucking like being dismissed, belittled, condescended to, ignored, or having my emotions minimized. It is, in actuality, perfectly reasonable for me to have problems with that.
But I would like to be able to decide for myself whether that is what's happening in collective reality, as opposed to my current reaction, which seems to be more along the lines of "Kill them all and let god sort it out."
no subject
on Sunday, August 26th, 2012 08:25 pm (UTC)I'd like to say I have figured out any way to deal with it, but most recently I spent an entire month furious to the point of being kinda hyperactive about it with someone who A. was not really at fault for all of what I blamed her for and B. had no idea I was even mad at her for longer than a day, because I didn't feel in a place to call her out on minor shitty stuff as what I was really doing was overreacting to the thing that wasn't her fault. /run-on
And I'm pretty sure that I'm still a little bit angry because I know I shouldn't be, but also a little bit angry because the first words out of her mouth when she learned I was upset were... sympathy, but laced with more than a little bit of defending herself pre-emptively. "You can be angry with me but this wasn't my fault", basically. And fuck that, I know that.
What I have figured out is that I have a lot of feelings about things.
no subject
on Tuesday, September 11th, 2012 01:14 pm (UTC)I absolutely hate the fauxpology. "I'm sorry that I offended you." But not sorry for being offensive in the first place, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. Go fuck yourself.* (*Not you personally, the fauxpology-person.)
I have all the feelings about everything too. I find the icon I used for this comment helpful in explaining it.