Still pissy, but also thoughtful...

[muck_a_luck]

In the last couple of years I have come to the conclusion that talk therapy is not for me. My basis for this judgment has always been the way I deal with anger.

Sometimes things happen that make me really angry. I'm the type of person who DOES get really angry. But then I get over it. However, if I revisit the angry moment, to tell it to someone, I often get very angry all over again.

So it is my feeling that talking about my angry feelings doesn't do much to help them. I don't just "let it out." Rather, I revisit them and reinforce them. I make myself angry by my own behavior.

Today, I have come to a similar conclusion about unhappiness.

For various reasons, I have been both angry and unhappy today. I was in complain-mode for legitimate reasons for most of the morning. Sometimes you have to complain. You can't let yourself get walked on by the world. But that's not my usual self. Usually, I grin and bear it. Or possibly grumble and bear it. But like anger, it just washes over me and it's gone.

Well, because I was in complain-mode today, I complained about something that was making me unhappy that I usually would have accepted. It wasn't a particularly important thing. And I knew that it probably wasn't a thing that could be resolved. But I let my unhappiness motivate me to pursue the problem on principle, even though solution was improbable, at best. Instead of letting the unhappiness wash over me, I held on to it.

So I complained. And in the process of being unhappy and whining, my interaction with the universe was such that I just made myself more unhappy.

I wonder how much unhappy people make themselves unhappy through their own behaviors. And how much people like me (the usual me, not the me of today) are happy just because they don't make themselves unhappy.

Because no matter how much I complain and whine and rant in this journal, my usual state is happy.

I don’t know if I communicated that well, but anyway, my thoughts about today.

Comments

[cocoajava.livejournal.com]

This makes a lot of sense to me, actually. One thing I do not need to do more of is review and dwell on things that make me angry, cause I just keep finetuning them with each review till they are hard and sharp and scary. And there's just tooooo many things out there that have the potential to get dwelt upon. So I try not to. Not perfect, and I still do it, but I think I do less and less over time. And, not to be flippant about the use of meds, but since being on St. John's Wort (started in January), the paranoia that someetimes goes with my anger is waaaaaay down. Which helps me let go of most stuff more easily. Most stuff. ;)

And for what it's worth, when you do bitch and rant, I don't mind at all listening!

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

That's because you are the best ever. :)

[cocoajava.livejournal.com]

Nah, you are!!!

Is this where we do one of those schmoopy "Oh, YOU'RE the best!", "No, you're the best!" endless smoo-fests at each other till someone else comes along and hits us with bricks?

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

Anybody tries hitting me or you with a brick and they're gonna have another think comin'...