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A thought on anger
Jul. 1st, 2013 05:22 pmSo here's a thing.
People's emotions are different. Mine are very different than baseline (PTSD and early childhood trauma, thanks) but I think everyone has a unique emotional experience, and that's part of being different people from each other.
I think I depart from a large number of my friends in terms of how I experience anger.
When I get angry, it wrecks me. I shake and tremble and scream and hit things (generally myself) and it is an ugly, ugly scene. Then, afterwards, I get absolutely crashed, emotionally. Because this of course doesn't resolve the source of the anger, I will then spend the next week or so oscillating between soul-destroying anger and deep depression.
I understand that, for a lot of people, anger is something that feels liberating, joyful, sadistically pleasurable, vengeful, productive -- that they experience it as a positive emotion. I get that people get told to surpress their anger, particularly oppressed people, and that letting it out can feel liberating. I'm not trying to speak for anyone but me.
I have tools for dealing with this. I have a fairly poorly-maintained sense of calmness and detachment; I have been trying to edit my circles on the internet so I'm less exposed to anger-making things that are so devastating for me. But it's a struggle and has a real cost in my daily life.
So, folks. Please do not come up to me with blind links, or link to something horrible and then pressure me to go look. Please do not say things like "if you're not angry you're not paying attention," or socially pressure me to be angry about something while I am desperately struggling not to fall into the abyss. Please do not try to dictate my terms of engagement with the world: not that I have figured out a means that works, but I have figured out what doesn't work, and being angry all the time (or even semi-regularly) isn't (for me) a functional means of surviving.
Inspired by a post by +Chloe CD but not trying to refute or argue against or anything. Just made me think about this, and decide to write something about it.
People's emotions are different. Mine are very different than baseline (PTSD and early childhood trauma, thanks) but I think everyone has a unique emotional experience, and that's part of being different people from each other.
I think I depart from a large number of my friends in terms of how I experience anger.
When I get angry, it wrecks me. I shake and tremble and scream and hit things (generally myself) and it is an ugly, ugly scene. Then, afterwards, I get absolutely crashed, emotionally. Because this of course doesn't resolve the source of the anger, I will then spend the next week or so oscillating between soul-destroying anger and deep depression.
I understand that, for a lot of people, anger is something that feels liberating, joyful, sadistically pleasurable, vengeful, productive -- that they experience it as a positive emotion. I get that people get told to surpress their anger, particularly oppressed people, and that letting it out can feel liberating. I'm not trying to speak for anyone but me.
I have tools for dealing with this. I have a fairly poorly-maintained sense of calmness and detachment; I have been trying to edit my circles on the internet so I'm less exposed to anger-making things that are so devastating for me. But it's a struggle and has a real cost in my daily life.
So, folks. Please do not come up to me with blind links, or link to something horrible and then pressure me to go look. Please do not say things like "if you're not angry you're not paying attention," or socially pressure me to be angry about something while I am desperately struggling not to fall into the abyss. Please do not try to dictate my terms of engagement with the world: not that I have figured out a means that works, but I have figured out what doesn't work, and being angry all the time (or even semi-regularly) isn't (for me) a functional means of surviving.
Inspired by a post by +Chloe CD but not trying to refute or argue against or anything. Just made me think about this, and decide to write something about it.
