How Do I Continue To Be Someone I Dislike? - 9/13/22

     How do I continue to be someone I dislike? This question, like a malignant tumor born from natural thoughts of insecurity, is one I have no answer to. It is impossible to be someone you dislike, yet many of us are. I look around at all of the people who get angry, manic, or terrified, at the drop of a hat. I wonder about these people. I wonder why I'm not one of them. How do people lose control of themselves? What causes them to become almost an entirely different person? How can we look at people we have known for years and struggle to find any connection with them? I don't plan on answering these questions but I do want to ponder them, together. 

    Where does anger come from? Anger is a natural emotion, everybody experiences it, no matter how good someone may be at hiding it. However, one of my favorite quotes is by a Psychiatrist named Victor Frankl, it goes "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." I believe this to be true. If it is, however, how can we decide not to rationally decide our response? Anger distorts perception, true, but I think the answer more likely lies in our role models. Our parents, adult figures, and people we generally idolize. Many of these people have it normalized within them to have a tendency towards violence when angry. If not direct violence then passive aggressiveness, or some other form of indirect violence. I tried to get this idea across to a friend I had, someone I was close with, someone I know to be intelligent. In truth, he was both drunk and angry and it was in a public setting both times, so argumentative success is divided by three there but all the same, he dismissed the idea, calling it stupid and ridiculous. Many people would do the same. Expression of anger is seen as a natural part of life, but are those expressions not usually detrimental, however small, to the whole of society? One cannot be tolerant of all, but tolerance is easy when you think about it. As long as something is not harmful, it can be tolerated. Even if you half-jokingly say it's harmful to your mind, in truth it isn't. Even if it is harmful, if is harmful to you, YOU usually have the ability to determine how harmful it is. If someone else can be tolerant of something, you can be too. Just think of how incredibly tolerant some people are, you can be that tolerant and more if you gauge and understand your reactions. Tolerance is something that comes naturally with age, but I believe most people hold onto certain angry reactions for their entire life. If they are inconvenienced, complaining will soon follow. Aren't these people insufferable? I always assume these people have more going on than they admit, internal pain which they try to outlet by complaining about nonsensical things. Where is the self-awareness, though? It seems almost paradoxical to have an intelligent person lacking in self-awareness. Maybe this is evidence of different types of intelligence, or perhaps the strength of the mind to avoid thinking about itself by thinking about topics of other importance. I will always believe that having pride in what you do is important, but you must love yourself at all times, regardless of your successes or failures. Anything else is conditional love.

    I have dealt with the issue of stigmatized mental health firsthand. Many of us have. Mental health issues are seen as a nonissue by most people, still to this day. I have dealt with anxiety and depression for as long as I can remember and I didn't start taking it seriously until I began to give up on life. How close was I to death? All because I didn't want to bother others with my thoughts and emotions. That was the anxiety in the driver's seat, determining what I did and didn't say and do. I have been focusing on my mental health for years, trying to break it down internally and understand it for what it is. I advocate for an open environment, for people to say whatever they want and, most importantly, think about why they said it, genuinely. Not "Why did I say that, I'm so stupid," but a genuine, external ponderance. If you let your mind run free and watch where it takes you, it can be an adventure of self-discovery. I say all this to say, I still haven't told anybody how bad it's really gotten. I still keep certain things inside for the fear of public shame. I believe myself to be a good person, I try to do good things, and be as good as I can be to the people around me. I know I can be more, though. I am working towards that. However, my mind can be a disturbing place. Creativity can be a force for good and a force for evil, and deep anxieties and insecurity understand what to imagine to make you tremble in your boots because it is you. Subconsciously, I am doing it to myself. But why? This is where the importance of conscious, inner dialogue comes in. This may also be where I go off the rails a bit because now there may be a bit of a stream-of-consciousness thing going on. Where do these intense thoughts come from? Part of me feels it comes from shame. I bully myself, I have a judge within me constantly telling me I'm not good enough, this is a conscious dialogue that I try to pretend isn't there. I fear this insecurity because being insecure means so many different things. When I think of why I'm insecure, I think of how I look, and how I'm perceived by others, but then I think of what other people have told me about myself and how my perception of how I'm perceived is through a lens of insecurity, therefore it's inevitable I'm going to be negative about it. This is cyclical. It's interesting because at this point in my life I see this as something to let go of. If I have an anxious thought, let it flow through me and move on. Let me tell you, this is much easier on medication.  I have some amazing friends, I really can't complain about that aspect of my life, some I know will be there for the rest of my life.