Can I tell you a secret? It’s personal but I figure if you’re a regular reader you won’t mind it. There might even be something in this for you.
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Quite often I’m holding in a lot of anger and a bit of depression. I don’t know that the first has always been with me but the second has.
What makes me angry? Goodness, what doesn’t make me angry. I get angry with a lot of things I read in the news. I get angry when I see a lot of the things I read on social media. I get angry when I have to hear things about politics or religion or racism or… name anything where people show hate towards someone else.
I get angry when I feel someone demeans what I do. I get angry when people speak to me in a manner I don’t like. I get angry when people don’t show courtesy to me or others when I’m in their presence. I get angry for many of the bad ways that people treat each other.
Because I fight all these things, as in work hard to keep them suppressed, I then get depressed. I get depressed because at a certain point I realize that there’s nothing I can do to stop any of it. There’s probably little I can do to change anyone’s behavior because, frankly, if people don’t already care about themselves then what the heck would I ever be able to say so someone to get them to change right?
Now that I’ve said that I want to say two other things.
One, luckily I don’t manifest my anger all that often in public. There are so many people I just want to smack or hurt in some fashion for their being jerks. But I don’t, which is smart for more than one reason. Instead, I get quiet, get introspective, and try to find something to move my mind to a calmer place, a happier place, a place where I can regain my perspective if needed. After all, no one wants to hang around a person who’s angry all the time, right?
Two… I know I’m not alone. As a matter of fact, I’d bet that most of you are angrier people than I am and probably get even more depressed than I get. But you probably have outlets for your anger, things you do that maybe you want to or need to apologize for later on, things that I don’t do.
See, I’ve never cursed, never had a drink, never taken any illegal drugs. I’ve never hit anyone first, never really beat anyone up, rarely have said hateful things to intentionally hurt a person’s feelings… wanted to, but didn’t.
I have been sarcastic though, and I’ve had a mean streak. For me, my mean streak is to make someone feel belittled without my having to have said anything.
One of the reasons I push myself is because I want to be better than any detractor who ever believed I was less than them, or couldn’t achieve something I said I wanted to do.
Yeah, I can be spiteful. I never forget, and I’ve never quite gotten that forgiveness thing down. Most of the time I let things go, or so I tell people, but I never forget; of all the gripes I’ve had about my short term memory as I get older, I want to smack myself because it would be nice to forget the slights, or perceived slights.
Why am I talking about all of this stuff?
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One, because it’s a bit cathartic, as today I end my self imposed week away from all social media. I needed time for myself, time to do things like editing my latest book some more, time to lay back and relax and watch a few movies.
Two, because of the words of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix coming back to me when I felt like I was being split in two:
“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”
Of course that’s just a version of an old story where a man tells his grandson a story about two wolves going through the same battle, mentions that each person has this within himself, and answers the grandson’s question of which one will win by saying “The one you nourish.”
I know many of you go through these same things. Luckily, the overwhelming majority of you are probably like me in not hurting someone else physically, trying not to hurt someone unintentionally, holding those emotions in until you’re alone and then finding your own way of dealing with them. Hopefully, you recognize that you’re not evil and that you are a good person and can and will eventually overcome these feelings and distractions.
And if you need to step away for a while to do so then do it. If you have to write about it then do it. If you have to eat lots of cake and ice cream and cookies… well, do that also! 🙂
The real words to follow: “don’t let the haters get you down“, which appeared there first and then was plagiarized here, but looks better at the second link.
Man, I hate thieves… makes me so angry… 😉
Not sure who ACTUALLY said this as a Google search for the quote gives credit to Tom Gates though I first heard it said by Alanis Morisette. The quote is “Anger is just a cowardly extension of sadness. It’s a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you’re hurt.”
I feel you Mitch. I also have a victim mentality so…
Hey Troy, not quite exactly sure what you’re trying to say but I’ll go with it. lol In this case I’m not going with that quote because if someone smacked us in the head I’m not thinking that our anger was related to sadness at all. lol
I am as human as the next person and do get angry at times but since I can neither fight nor take flight, I simply stew inside for a while and allow the emotion to fade away. Sometimes I may just share with my son the cause but that is about all that I do. And I have no problems with my own self image!
Rummuser, I figure when I get to your point I’ll have a different outlook on a lot of things. But I’m not there right now and, well, I have to continue fighting for my life and my income and my sanity. Luckily, for the most part I beat it, but sometimes… and when I can, I let the person who’s caused the consternation know about it if it’s important enough.
Since we’re quotin’ and stuff, here’s mine: “Be the fisher, not the bait. Spread the love, not the hate.”
I love your honesty, Mitch. I also love your power. It takes a lot of strength to look at one’s flaws and not twist them into virtues. You own your foibles. That puts you miles ahead of a lot of us. 😉
Cheers,
Mitch
Thanks Mitch. I do own up to my issues and there are few of them that become virtues. Some do serve me to a degree but I’ll admit it’s a selfish degree. I often wonder if I got that $10 million in the bank if I’d go throwing it in people’s face who doubted me. Probably not though, as long as I’m married to that woman I let live with me, who’d be telling me “stop telling people how much money you have before they try to take it from you”. lol
I manage to control my anger quite well compared to my younger years, though I still explode sometimes. I can’t tollerate understatements and stupudity, as well as lack of common sense. Haters doesn’t botter me at all.
I think it is more that normal to let it out sometimes. Many people find different ways to do it, though I personally prefer to throw it back at the same person, though usually it doesn’t make much sense to do so.
Carl, so long ago I learned that letting it out all the time was a bad thing, and physically letting it out… always a bad idea. So I cope and deal with it, allowing myself to get angry and then immediately working to put it down. It’s an interesting symbiosis to be sure.
Hey Mitch,
So you know me as Miss Positivity and 99.9% of the time I am. That doesn’t mean that things or people don’t piss me off from time to tome because they do.
I’m a Leo, I’m stubborn and I’m impatient. I have a very low tolerance for stupidity and when I witness some of the disrespectful things people do when around me I speak up. I admit it, I let them have it.
As you have probably heard me say, I live in a condo complex and have been here 24 years. I’ve been an owner here for 22 years, I rented for two before I purchased my unit. This is also my 2nd time serving on the board of directors of my association so when I see renters, owners or people from neighboring communities doing things around our property that they know they shouldn’t I let them have it. I’m known around here as the bitch and I wear that name proudly.
I’m proud of my home and my community and I don’t need anyone in our space that doesn’t feel the same. I’ll stay on them until they either stop fighting me on it or move.
I’m not out to change anyone but there are some things I just will not tolerate and I shouldn’t.
I feel you Mitch, I really really do. Hang in there my friend.
~Adrienne
Thanks Adrienne. For me, it’s like tonight, visiting different YouTube channels that are pretty popular and seeing some of the hate and vitriol aimed at the person whose channel it is by faceless trolls who, if you follow them back to their page, don’t have any videos up of their own. It’s always easy to hate on someone when you haven’t tried to do anything and it irks me to no end. So I then have to get calm because one, it has nothing to do with me, two, there’s nothing I can do about it, and three, if it bothered the creators as much as me they’d just delete all that stuff like I would.
We can’t change all of the world but nothing says we have to like the bad stuff, right?
Anger and depression are more like an unholy alliance Mitch. When one comes, it drags the other along. Personally, those two are what I actually struggled with for a while; I would usually flare up even before I started thinking of what was making me so annoyed and would end up doing or in most cases saying things that I would regret afterwards and the entire process would simply launch me in a depressive mood.
I would say that it is only of recent that I am able to have some degree of control by at-least letting the rational part of myself have a moment to ponder if I should get angry or not and in most cases I have realised that by the time I am done, getting angry becomes completely unnecessary.
Alex, I fully understand where you’re coming from. I’m lucky to have been in more control of it for a few decades now, but it’s always there on the edge. I’m betting we’re not close to being alone, but just the few who are honest enough to own up to it. 🙂
There is a famous quotation “control your emotion before it controls you”. To control my emotions like anger, depression, anxiety and so on, i depend on physical exercises. There is a scientific explanation for this. When we exercise, our body releases chemicals called endorphins. These endorphins interact with the receptors in our brain that reduce our perception of pain. Regular exercise has proven to reduce stress, move away anxiety and feelings of depression, boost self esteem, improve sleep.
Sanjay, I’ve heard that one before but it didn’t work for me. What I’ve always believed is that no matter what a person does, if they’re not mentally ready for it then it won’t work for them. In my case I gave it what we call the “ol’ college try” and went to the gym 67 times in 60 days, as well as went for my walks at the park, hoping to change to a good habit. But I hated every single day of it, like one might feel having to go to prison, and my participation, and my wife’s, dwindled until now I don’t go anymore, though I’m still paying for it. So, it may work for some but it didn’t for me.
Mitch, ever since I read your essay about the Invisible Man, I’ve known that our personalities are incredibly similar. This post confirms that belief.
Always good to have a sympatico partner in things like this Charles. Even when we overcome it, it’s nice to know we’re not the only ones who go through it.
Well, one thing are not going well in life I always get frustrated and get into depression (this might look spammy – but I was really searching for post to over come this thing in google and landed on your blog)
Mind looks very heavy in frustration and I never see who is around me and I broke, this article has some really nice point which I will apply in my real life.
I hope some of it works for you Anil. Depression is a tough one to deal with, but I’m someone who always believes it can be overcome, even if it takes a few days here and there.
This seem to be quite interesting article I manage to control my anger quite well compared to my College Days, though I still explode sometimes. I can’t tollerate understatements and stupudity, as well as lack of common sense. Haters doesn’t botter me at all.
Neeraj, I think we all get better at handling stuff like this as we get older. It’s probably smart since we also lose some of our stamina as we age. 🙂
Unfortunately one can’t control themselves 24/7/365 James. There are going to be times when all of us get angry or upset for some reason or another. Some things deserve it, some don’t, but we never really know what’s going to trigger those feelings. It’s how we deal with them that proves the mettle of what we are eventually, even if it takes a bit of time.