We all have bouts of emotion. Some are more extreme than others, but none the less we all have our good days and our bad days, our happy days, our sad days, mad days, ect...
Personally I've always been a little more on the extreme side as far as my emotions go. I don't have "good" days I have "great!" days and I don't have "bad" days I have "Oh dear God kill me now!" days. While great days are.. well.. great... the opposite isn't so great at all and frankly I was tired of it.
I've always had a bit of a temper and there have been times when I've simply snapped sometimes at the wrong person for the wrong things. This is why so many say "Don't keep it bottled up. Learn to release your anger". TV and media paint a picture that those who can't let out their anger tend to snap. Which leads people in the same boat as me to beleive that we need an outlet for our anger.. something to make us calm down and feel better. Alternatives to "snapping" are things like squeezing stress balls, ripping paper, screaming into pillows or even smoking or drinking.
When I started back to work I knew I'd have stressfull days. In the past I have had too many stressful days and lost it. I didn't want to lose it here. I looked for alternatives so that I wouldn't "snap". I absolutly didn't want to take up smoking and I shouldn't even have to explain why on that one. Drinking on the job would only cause me to lose my job. It's really hard to decorate cakes while squeezing a stress ball or ripping paper, and it didn't seem logical to hide a pillow in the freezer for occasional screaming purposes.
That's when it hit me! Expressing anger even against inanimate objects doesn't make me less angry. Yes, it makes me feel better for the moment, but doesn't take the anger away at all. In fact, if you think about it... we as humans get addicted to things really easily. The nice way of putting it is that we all have "habits" weather it be good or bad. If screaming into a pillow is going to make me feel better then I'll have a new habit, and therefore will look for reasons to scream into my pillow. I'll look for reasons to get angry so that I can run into the freezer to grab my pillow and scream! When we find something that makes us feel good we want to do it, and we want to do it often.
Basically I'm saying that getting angry can in itself become an addiction and finding a "healthy, feel good" habit to release it makes anger feel good! It's like an alcoholic drinking a beer in order to control the urdge to drink.
I'm not saying that it's bad to get angry. Things happen and it's ok to get mad. It'd be weird if you didn't, but it's not ok to get mad at little things. Most of the time when you get mad at little things its really just masking what's really bothering you. For instance I have a little brother who is truly one of my best friends. A few years ago he moved away almost in the middle of the night. I got mad, and lots of things made me mad while he was gone. I could blame my anger on the little things, but the real truth is that I missed my brother dearly, and I was angry at myself for letting him go. He is back now and I can put that anger behind me.
I started back to work six months ago, and some days every little thing would get to me. "I can't believe I've got to make this cake today!! ahhh!!!" When I looked deeper into it I noticed those would be the days that my mortgage or my electric was due, so really on those days my anger was a build up of the fact that I was feeling like I worked so hard but still couldn't provide for my famly the way I wanted. Sometimes while Angel and I are working on her spelling words and she keeps insisting the the word "name" clearly has a "B" in it somewhere I might begin to lose patience... when I usually wouldn't.. losing patience because deep down I might feel like if only I were home more she would know that there IS NOT A "B" ANYWHERE IN THE WORD "N-A-M-E". More anger that deep down is really towards myself...
While I started paying closer attention to my bad days I also started paying attention to my good days... what makes them so great?? Well.. brace yourself.. this WILL sound silly... but.. I.. DANCE! Seriously!! I dance. Either to music playing or if there is none I'll dance to a song in my head. You can always tell when I'm having a good day because I'll just start dancing and sometimes even singing.
A couple weeks ago I decided to test something. Monday December 31, 2012 I walked into work DANCING. I encouraged others to dance with me. Some did and some didn't, but either way I was dancing my heart out. The more stressful the day seems the more I danced to keep the air positive. I've made it a point to do this every single day I walk into work. It's something I can do while working, while driving (I can bob my head a little), while cooking or cleaning, or even while helping Angel with her homework. The atmosphere at work and at home turned into such a positive one that these little things... were just that.. little things...
Of course there are still things that can, do, and will happen that will cause me to get angry and stop dancing for a moment, and that's ok. It's good and healthy to get angry when really bad things happen, but it's not ok and it's NOT healthy to get angry over the little things, so instead I've decided to just... dance!
Personally I've always been a little more on the extreme side as far as my emotions go. I don't have "good" days I have "great!" days and I don't have "bad" days I have "Oh dear God kill me now!" days. While great days are.. well.. great... the opposite isn't so great at all and frankly I was tired of it.
I've always had a bit of a temper and there have been times when I've simply snapped sometimes at the wrong person for the wrong things. This is why so many say "Don't keep it bottled up. Learn to release your anger". TV and media paint a picture that those who can't let out their anger tend to snap. Which leads people in the same boat as me to beleive that we need an outlet for our anger.. something to make us calm down and feel better. Alternatives to "snapping" are things like squeezing stress balls, ripping paper, screaming into pillows or even smoking or drinking.
When I started back to work I knew I'd have stressfull days. In the past I have had too many stressful days and lost it. I didn't want to lose it here. I looked for alternatives so that I wouldn't "snap". I absolutly didn't want to take up smoking and I shouldn't even have to explain why on that one. Drinking on the job would only cause me to lose my job. It's really hard to decorate cakes while squeezing a stress ball or ripping paper, and it didn't seem logical to hide a pillow in the freezer for occasional screaming purposes.
That's when it hit me! Expressing anger even against inanimate objects doesn't make me less angry. Yes, it makes me feel better for the moment, but doesn't take the anger away at all. In fact, if you think about it... we as humans get addicted to things really easily. The nice way of putting it is that we all have "habits" weather it be good or bad. If screaming into a pillow is going to make me feel better then I'll have a new habit, and therefore will look for reasons to scream into my pillow. I'll look for reasons to get angry so that I can run into the freezer to grab my pillow and scream! When we find something that makes us feel good we want to do it, and we want to do it often.
Basically I'm saying that getting angry can in itself become an addiction and finding a "healthy, feel good" habit to release it makes anger feel good! It's like an alcoholic drinking a beer in order to control the urdge to drink.
I'm not saying that it's bad to get angry. Things happen and it's ok to get mad. It'd be weird if you didn't, but it's not ok to get mad at little things. Most of the time when you get mad at little things its really just masking what's really bothering you. For instance I have a little brother who is truly one of my best friends. A few years ago he moved away almost in the middle of the night. I got mad, and lots of things made me mad while he was gone. I could blame my anger on the little things, but the real truth is that I missed my brother dearly, and I was angry at myself for letting him go. He is back now and I can put that anger behind me.
I started back to work six months ago, and some days every little thing would get to me. "I can't believe I've got to make this cake today!! ahhh!!!" When I looked deeper into it I noticed those would be the days that my mortgage or my electric was due, so really on those days my anger was a build up of the fact that I was feeling like I worked so hard but still couldn't provide for my famly the way I wanted. Sometimes while Angel and I are working on her spelling words and she keeps insisting the the word "name" clearly has a "B" in it somewhere I might begin to lose patience... when I usually wouldn't.. losing patience because deep down I might feel like if only I were home more she would know that there IS NOT A "B" ANYWHERE IN THE WORD "N-A-M-E". More anger that deep down is really towards myself...
While I started paying closer attention to my bad days I also started paying attention to my good days... what makes them so great?? Well.. brace yourself.. this WILL sound silly... but.. I.. DANCE! Seriously!! I dance. Either to music playing or if there is none I'll dance to a song in my head. You can always tell when I'm having a good day because I'll just start dancing and sometimes even singing.
A couple weeks ago I decided to test something. Monday December 31, 2012 I walked into work DANCING. I encouraged others to dance with me. Some did and some didn't, but either way I was dancing my heart out. The more stressful the day seems the more I danced to keep the air positive. I've made it a point to do this every single day I walk into work. It's something I can do while working, while driving (I can bob my head a little), while cooking or cleaning, or even while helping Angel with her homework. The atmosphere at work and at home turned into such a positive one that these little things... were just that.. little things...
Of course there are still things that can, do, and will happen that will cause me to get angry and stop dancing for a moment, and that's ok. It's good and healthy to get angry when really bad things happen, but it's not ok and it's NOT healthy to get angry over the little things, so instead I've decided to just... dance!
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