%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |
before it gets too out of hand. |
  For me, anger has been an issue since the earliest days of my adolescence. Managing it has never been a top priority, though. As a result, I have paid dearly for the consequences of my most potent emotion. By the time I reached the age of 18, however, I decided to get it under control. This attempt resulted in failure, though, and my anger has continued to flourish to an extent. Turth is, though, this can't go on any longer, as my anger has become internally self-destructive, resulting in crippling internal stress that has robbed me of my energy and is pushing me back into the depths of depression. If I don't get a grip, I may likely be dead before I turn thirty, either by suicide or cardiopulmonary disease. When I look at my anger, though, I can't imagine myself without it. It has been my muse on several occassions, and on some days, it's been my main reason to get out of bed. I have been enjoying feeding off the euphoria of anger-provoked revenge for the past few years, and it's about as addictive as cocaine. How do I break free from this vicious circular thinking and make things right in my life for once? That's what I hope to find out through my scribblings here. This particular blog won't be updated daily or perhaps even weekly. It will be updated when I feel the need to discuss how this journey is progressing or regressing. All I ask is you keep an open mind with this journal. One thing I can admit right off the bat is preaching to me sets me off something fierce. If you try to preach to me in any way, I will not make any progress. I appreciate support, but remember that I'm the one who must make the choice to accept your advice. This is up to me and only me. I'm the one who must break the cycle. |
| I know I haven't had many things severely piss me off for a while, but unfortunately, tonight reacquainted me with a latent and rare trigger: prejudice. I've made it clear before that I'm prejudiced. We all are, to some extent. However, there are some types of prejudice I refuse to accept. One of them is religious prejudice. It may seem odd that an atheist has no tolerance or patience for people who bash other religions. However, one thing I have learned throughout my schooling is religion is intended to bring people peace. I have learned bits and pieces of a variety of religions through the study of their literature. This is particularly true of the eastern religions and philosophies (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.). I may not like some religions for whatever reason (especially Christianity), but I have learned to respect a person's right to believe what he/she wants to believe. After having an Islamic roommate (who converted from Catholicism) and a best friend who's Wiccan, I have found that as long as a religion is not used to intimidate or propagandize, it is perfectly fine if you practice it in front of me. However, I absolutely will not tolerate people who bash other religions to make their own superior. This is why I feel the Christians are particularly guilty in this area. Sure, Islamic fundamentalists do it as well, but if you do any goddamn research on the subject, you'll find that politics play a heavy role in their jihad. With a good amount of Christians, though, it is distilled religion they are using as a weapon. Granted, my readings of the Bible have exposed me to a good amount of weapon and war imagery, but even then I knew it was not meant to be interpreted literally. The Bible, like poetry, uses metaphor to deliver its message. This is particularly noticeable in Revelations. Nonetheless, those who have seen it as justification to wage bloody war have helped to seal Christianity's fate as one of the most violent major religions. What doesn't help matters is so many people are still willing to take that text and interpret it in such a manner as to call it a veritable instruction book. It's only useful as an instruction book if you understand its peaceful context. In modern America, the more vocal Christians wish to nullify those contexts. To me, that's a fucking shame, and I can't believe more people aren't questioning their faith. I was raised a Christian, but I strayed from the faith a long time ago because even as a child I knew something wasn't right. With all the intolerance I see being spewed by the faithful, I now know what I felt in my early years. By straying from the faith and becoming an atheist, I have allowed myself to learn about different faiths and their core values. As long as they are peaceful, they are fine. When they use their faith and religious texts to justify the demonization of other religions, it's about as bad as Hitler's genocide plans. Only difference is his was based on race. If the intolerant Christians turned to such a plan, I know I'd be dead for my dissent. At this rate, I'm willing to take the risk, as it will free me from this trigger. Since it's not likely that I'm going to die anytime soon, though, the question is what can I do about this trigger? Seeing that ignoring it would mean ignoring a key issue facing America, I refuse to use this option. My most proactive option is to ask these bigots why they feel the need to verbally destroy those who practice religions differing from their own. Granted, their responses could piss me off even more, but at least my conscience wouldn't keep me awake at night because I turned my back. I guess if I can't make them at least see how disrespectful they're being I'll have to walk away from it. That will gall the hell out of me, but for my health, safety and sanity, it might be my only option. |
 You are classic. Though at times you can be predictable, it doesn't take a whole lot to please you. You are generally pretty happy and easy to get along with. I don't know. My mood swings can hit me like a rock if I'm not careful. Thing is, whenever my mood swings, I can become angry. Why's that? Well, with mood swings, I tend to lose some self control. Notice the word some. Lately, even though I've been a grouch, I have been able to confine my bitching to my journal(s) and a few close friends. Otherwise, I've tried to be fair to everyone involved, no matter how much he/she makes me want to cap his/her ass. So, is this progress? Perhaps, but I ought to consider what happens when my mood does swing. Looking at how my mood swings work is far from easy, mostly because, as I said before, they blindside me. Thus, it's kind of difficult to really pinpoint what happens. What I have noticed is I tire more easily, I'm more easily annoyed (which I'm starting to think might be psychosomatic) and after a certain point, I turn retreatist. Now I did say in a previous entry that isolation is not good for me. However, if you notice I'm becoming angry by being around people, it's probably a good idea to back off and let me retreat to some sort of seclusion. This seclusion was very common in high school, espcially in the later years, as social situations (most notably band) annoyed and angered me. Do I need seclusion so much? Well, yes and no. Offline, since I have my own place, that's seclusion in itself. Online, though, since I'm constantly being pestered, hounded and questioned, I sometimes need downtime. Lately, this has resulted in me taking a few days off from the site. Of course, that's when something significant happen.  Now when I take these breaks, it's not like I lock up my computer. I'll still hop on to check e-mail (and maybe journal), but that's all I do. I don't look at scroll. I don't post in forums. I don't change ratings (which I do a lot). I go on severe site redux, and it tends to help. I'm actually considering doing that next week, but we'll see. My moods are not always easy to handle, especially the physical tiring. I think if I can manage that, I can get past the annoyance that so often leads to anger(such as...now). |
| Though isolation is more of a problem for my depression issues, it does affect my anger, namely in festering it. It might seem more appropriate to classify isolation as a factor, but I have multiple reasons for not doing so. First, isolation tends to makes me harbor my emotions a bit more. Some people find that isolation gives them the opportunity to cut loose on an emotional level. I used to be that way, but the older I get, the more inclined I am to come unglued (and thus seek help) around other people who might actually catch me. Even then, people sometimes have to drag an emotional response out of me, as my isolation leads me to not express myself for fear of being seen as weak. Second, isolation allows me to overthink a situation, which can further fuel my anger to the point of perpetuating it even when the trigger situation has long faded away in everyone else's minds. So...what is my relationship with isolation? Well, it's a twisted one for sure. Isolation and I have known each other since the day I was born. My preference for being alone landed me in all sorts of trouble, from being (mis)diagnosed as autistic (thus landing me in ESE for the first several years of schooling) to cutting myself off from my friends after my grandfather died ten years ago. Isolation's effects have yet to be as dramatic as they were ten years ago, but I still feel them to this day. On my free time, even before I became a site member, I had a tendency to remain indoors and amuse myself with writing out the elaborate stories floating around my head. The ambivalent consequnce of my isolation is most manifest in my imagination, which seems to go into hyperdrive when my isolation is at its worst. Even when I'd venture out, I was usually on my own and people watching most of the time. I truly defined being alone in a huge crowd at those moments in time. What didn't help was the looming sense of lonliness I felt at those times, lonliness from not really having friends to keep me company when I wasn't in school. How about these days, after going through high school and the friendship ringer? Well, there are some solo activities which don't bother me to do, such as going to a restaurant by myself. I also enjoy hitting the road solo and visiting parks by myself. On the other hand, I find if I'm not milling about here, I feel totally depressed and tend to beat myself up for not socializing. Oddly enough, I don't correct this by initializing social contact. Why? Well, I always feel like I'm going to interrupt something extremely important and get chewed out for it. In real life, my body language, not my words, is what prompts people (from friends to superiors) to drag me out of my seclusion and talk to people. So, if I'm online, there's no real way for anyone to drag me into conversation. If anyone drags me into a social arena online, it's usually to quell an uprising (something that has become a bit of a forte for me). It doesn't help that I won't chat socially with anyone. I have to know you for a while before I'll let you drag me into a random conversation because I'm a paranoid bitch like that. So if for some reason you see me online and want to talk to me, get to know me first. Otherwise, I'll choose isolation over you. |
| It's hard to keep up with anger management when you're in depression straight on up to your eyeballs. No, seriously, my depression and anger issues are not strongly correlated. I mean, depression is only a factor because I have to deal with it and my anger in separate ways. Which one causes more problems? Depression, easily. See, when I'm angry, I'm at least energetic and motivated to do things. With depression (especially my current bout), energy is very rare. So is eating. Anger may bring stomach pain, but I can eat in order to alleviate it. The stomach pain brought about by depression is much different in that eating only aggravates my physical pain. When I'm angry, I'll eat a normal 3-5 times a day. Bouts of depression lead me to eat only once or twice a day, depending on how I feel physically. The lack of eating is also the most lingering reminder that I am depressed. After a while, I can start to tiptoe around the depression triggers and still feel okay afterwards. My lack of eating is what reminds me that my moods are off, and it's during this time that I could end up with two problems on my hands at once. See, by this point, I have enough energy to do normal tasks, including get angry. What makes this even worse is I'll fly off the handle over nothing. So yeah, I'm something of a time bomb right now. I'm still depressed but now energetic to get totally pissed off if I wanted. Isn't that a scary thought? That said, while anger is something I'm able to come to terms with on my own, the depression is another issue altogether. Given my living situation (3 months in Stupid, the rest in Miami), I'm waiting until I get back to Miami to start some sort of counseling for my depression. Not long after this recent bout, I thought about what triggered this bout (a flashback to when my ex-boyfriend Jon cheated on me while on a trip I wasn't able to attend). After finally reaching the end of my rope and calling my EAP (employee assistance program), I determined that while I don't have feelings for Jon, I still have not recovered from what he did to me three years ago. Ironically, this leads to one thing that's been pissing me off as of late. I tell people that this was brought about by a terrible flashback, and they tell me I need to get over the past. Well, that might be fine and dandy, but when it comes to trauma with which you've never really handled, you just can't flip an on/off switch to forget about a disloyal bastard that fucked with your head. Okay? It just doesn't work that way, especially since his cheating on me came on the heels of our family dealing with a sick, insane relative and me being put on unsuitable medication courtesy of a psychiatrist who I couldn't reach for at least a couple months because her office burned down. And people wonder why I'm adamant about not taking psychiatric drugs and have huge reservations about seeking counselling. Still, though, the depression issue is too big for me alone. While having peer support helps (even though it feels like I have very little), I realize that this is not a problem for ameteurs to solve. My depression has barely been kept under control for the past couple years, and one trigger released the lock on the dams. Now we're all fucked as I weather the cavalcade of sadness and ambivalence on my plate. In the meantime, I'll have to deal with my anger by ranting like a bitch in my other journal. Topics of bitchings will include everything from work and school to 9/11 and the Middle East. Of course, bits of historical comparision, satire and fucked up theories will be peppered in there as well. I just have to manage my angry impulses while working on the depression horseshit. |
Anyone who has been following mood's contest knows this word by heart now. And the only reason I've been watching is because hey, my journal has been getting hits and links courtesy of some of the participants. I know for sure that Pia Veleno  has been linking my journal in her journal dedicated for the contest. Hence, new readership...maybe.  I admit I also adore the idea of this contest, and had I been in this round, I'd have deftly ignored all the publicity hounding, childishly bickering, insensitive motherfuckers who bring the Livejournal mentality of pettiness to Writing.com. Gee, I'm not pissed about this, am I? Well, since I am, let's take a look at cattiness and how it affects me.I do realize I should not let cattiness affect me as it does. However, between being a moderator and constantly being employed by companies who place me with mostly female co-workers, I deal with pretty much daily exposure to cattiness. It was even worse when I lived in that shitass apartment in Miami with three female roommates. I am serious when I say it took every shred of willpower I could find to not go on drugs to ease the pain. It was that bad. For me, petty arguments can both trigger anger (as it has done here) or exacerbate it. To trigger it, I have to stumble upon it. To exacerbate it, I must be immersed in it. This is the easiest trigger to handle for sure. However, as a factor in the development of my anger, it is the most difficult to handle. Now exactly how does it affect my anger? SImple. It raises my blood pressure and my hackles. It irritates me beyond belief to see adults fight like children over stupid shit like journal entries or people not doing their job. To me, it's that own person's fault, and only they have to deal with the consequences. There is no need for anyone else to instigate a fight over something in which they have no involvement, which is how most cattiness begins. I know I tend to keep myself from participating in this type of behavior, but I am not afraid to pull out the big guns if I need to. In my opinion, cattiness should be counted as harassment both here on the site and in general. I feel it is unnecessary and extremely detrimental to a location, be it a website or a workplace. It hurts relations among members/employees/customers/whomever and decreases productivity. It also hurts the quality of work in any given location. Need I list anymore reasons for catty behavior to piss me off as it does? But yeah. It physically affects me. Besides my blood pressure, I get headaches, adrenaline surges (which translates into repressed physical violence), tightness in the stomach and decreased control of my voice. When I'm angry due to exposure to catty behavior, I have a damn difficult time controlling my voice. With other triggers/factors, I'm not inclined to raise my voice. With cattiness, however, I tend to experience a greater urge to yell. Folks, when I yell, I sound like a demon. I have scared the shit out of several co-workers when I yell. I am loud, my pitch dips to masculine levels, and my ability to project my voice is magnified. Normally, I speak fairly softly (must be the Dutch blood), but in the face of catty behavior, my voice is bust-your-eardrums loud. It doesn't help that I tend to yell in rooms with little to absorb the sound, so on a particularly bad day, I can even generate an echo. If you happen to be standing next to me, you can tell if I'm about to yell. My voice trembles, and I occassionally stutter. That said, you better be ready to dive for cover, unless of course you want to go deaf. All in all, cattiness is a difficult trigger and factor for me to really cope with, and I'm not sure what to do. I have contemplated demotion and take my yellow case back so I don't have to listen to mods fucking bitch all 365 fucking days a year. I personally feel mod cattiness should be punished with no-holds-barred demotion, but then there would only be a handful of mods for a huge site. But there are reasons that I refuse to quit: newsletters, rating changes, answering questions, shit like that. As well, I just can't walk out of a job when two bitches start talking smack in which they have no direct involvement. So what is a girl supposed to do? Kill these scores of bitches? I don't want to only see mi amor during conjugal visits, thanks. Still, this is a huge problem for me, and I need to find a solution other than avoidance to handle this malady. |
| In my previous journals, I have admitted to being a mysogenist. In truth, a lot of women are mysogenists to some degree. Why else are women so damn catty? Thing is, with my mysogeny, I can fuel my violent tendencies. It's not necessarily enough to be a trigger for me. However, it can aggravate any lingering annoyance and catalyze it to anger. Take yesterday for instance. One of my co-workers was bitching about everything work-related from a lack of hours to seemingly special treatment of some employees. I probably did the wrong thing by telling her how many hours I got (which was much hours than what she normally gets, but I also work in two departments. Anyway....). Point is, in her profanity-laced tirade (which was overheard by a couple of our supervisors), she managed to remind me of why I hate women. They bitch incessantly and when on a tirade have no respect for anyone. Anyone. It didn't help that the other cashier (a female) was rambling on about this and that. Thus the outright bitching from my other co-worker simply exacerbated a tired annoyance, and I was getting close to being downright pissed off. On that day, though, I was too physically worn to get all pissed off. So besides bitching, what is it about other females that pisses me off so much? Oh, man. Let me think here. First off, women are territorial, but how they're territorial differs from the way men are territorial. First off, women tend to, uh, how do I phrase this? They don't always get to the point when they're being territorial. They just think bitching you out over random shit will scare invaders away. In my case, it just fuels my temper, causing me to do everything from vengefully ruin a woman's career to punch her. Yes, I have done the latter. It was back in middle school, but the bitch still pissed me off, so I let her have it. (Nice run-on sentence there, Stik.) Also, women tend to bitch without knowing when to quit. In that same vein, some women also believe in the philosophy of Anytime is a good time to bitch. Uh, no fuckers, that's not how it goes.  What else pisses me off about women? They tend to have pettier concerns, which in turn leads to pettier reasons to bitch. I'm sure there are more reasons for me to hate women, but none come to mind at the moment.SO the question remains: what can I do about this? This is an easier factor to work around, actually. It just involves me getting off my duff to do it. Ideally, working in a place with more males than females would take care of this, but that won't happen for a while. In the meantime, I'll have to settle for the ol' "Don't bitch to me." line. I'm not so sure, though, how well, that line will work. |
| I know I haven't updated this piece of crap in a while. Ironically, I've been very angry in high doses the past month and a half. Problem is...I can't get myself to write about it. That's right, folks. I have blog block! The reason? No feedback. If I don't get the impression that people realize this is a serious problem, then I'm not inclined to write about it. Thing is, I've tried a few times to sit down and write about my anger, but I spaz out (literally, as my fingers gain a life of their own) and can't even clack out a fucking sentence. I'm not doing this for attention. I'm doing this because I need to get my thoughts in order. I have it in the blog format so I can get some support. Now, though, support seems so far away, and I'm seeing no reason for me to continue. Guess everyone wants a pissed off Stik. Guess this is your way of pushing me to an early grave. |
| I know it's been a long time, but as I explained in Chalice of Malice, I have not been in a good position to explore my anger. However, a chance fight in my apartment complex provoked a latent trigger. That trigger...is other people's emotions. As resilient as I make myself to be, I can be extremely sensitive to the emotions of people populating the environment in which I may be present, be it work, my apartment or the classroom. I may come across as mellow and happy-go-lucky, but in truth, I absorb a lot more emotional ebergy than is considered healthy for a human being to absorb. At the same time, I find this energy more difficult to purge. I feel the need to harbor it for people so they don't have to be overwhelmed by it. Why do I do this? ...I honestly don't know. I really don't have a clue as to why I committ this behavior. I suppose I could say it was because I was an only child and was not exposed to many other children in my family. This, I heard all the adult arguments while in limbo between reality and the dreamworld. I could say that I harbored my relatives' pains to keep them from suffering. I could say I never knew where to look for an appropriate outlet for others' grievances. I could also claim I took the lesson of empathy a bit too close to heart. Sure, these postulations can explain why I started harboring other people's emotions. However, it doesn't explain why I still do it. What do I do to answer that question? And then there's the question of what effects this absorption have on me. Well, for one thing, it's like keeping a secret, except sometimes the emotions are so potent your lips are subconsciously sealed on them. You couldn't blurt them out even if you had a gun at your head and a TNT vest draped on your mother. In this case, if emotions are top secret intelligence reports for the government, I might as well change my name to CIA. I've been witness to more arguments, fights and revelations than I can count, and some of them...I don't know what to say. One time I found my mom in the office bawling her brains out, holding an e-mail my dad sent to another woman. I asked her what was wrong, but she shooed me away. I knew what she was thinking and feeling, though, but until now I've kept silent on the event. That was about two and a half years ago. Thinking about it now makes me angry, because knowing as much as I (unfortunately) do about my parents' sex life, I'm shocked my dad would put my mom in such a position. So perhaps I still committ this behavior to try to figure out why people do the shit they do and to figure out what I can do about it, as I feel I can do something to remedy the situation. Of course, that mentality of me being able to at least partially fix some of this nonsense is probably among the many things that gets me into so much trouble. For this, I would like to defer at least part of the blame to the education system. Between being in the top eschelons of public education during my adolescence and having risen to the top from special education, I was bound to take the message of being in control to heart. The education elite were constantly being reminded that each of us as individuals had so much control over what we did, that we could map out our own futures and take on the positions of power. They didn't forewarn us of real life entropy, entropy that I've survived probably better than I thought I would. Of course, if I'm doing good for a college kid, I'd hate to be in the shoes of someone who's totally fucked! In any case, I was raised with the belief that the older I grew, the more control I would inherit due to an increase in responsibilities, responsibilities I pined to embrace. Do I still embrace them now that I'm able to embrace them? In a way, yes. I certainly have no desire to go backwards in time, to go back to high school when I was an even bigger emotional screw-up, hinging on dorkish melodrama. I'm mellower, have a bit more restraint and am better able to find more appropriate outlets for my still potent emotions. All of these traits evidence my increased control. The control I have with sorting out other people's emotions, though, is still a very elusive creature to me indeed. |
| As a mod, I come across a lot of crap that would rile up most people. I recently stumbled across Michael Wonch 's blog, and I read an entry where he dissected the requirements to become a moderator on the site. He mostly condemned females mods between the ages of 18 and 24. Talk about nailing my demographic! His basic gripe is we young female mods are too cliquey and immature for the job and basically canoodled our way into the jobs. Though I wanted to set the record straight with him right then and there, I decided not to take that route. Instead, I opted to find something redeeming about him, and I found a solid review he wrote within the past few days. When crediting, I explained what I liked about the review and waited to see what happened. On the whole, it was a positive reaction, and I figure he's probably not aware of my age. I assume my handle would give away my gender. But in truth, acts like this help me make better decisions about the battles I choose to fight both online and off. I say he has a right to be angry when he doesn't have all the facts, but I know now is not the time to state the facts. I know it's best to let him arrive at his own conclusions at his own pace. If he'd like to discuss it with me later on, I'm up for discussion. For now, though, I'm learning to get the ball out of my court every once in a while, to make myself understand that not everything needs to be on my shoulders, especially when I'm irked. It's all about baby steps. |
| For some reason, I've been an extreme procrastinator when it comes to discussing this trigger. I suppose there's lots of reasons for my slacking. It's my most frequent trigger; nearly anything can set if off; and since frustration is a trigger with such outspread factors, it can't truly be corrected as a trigger. Instead, I have to break it down by factor and tackle the factors one by one. There's no other way I can do it. So...why do I list frustration as a trigger? Well, when I'm frustrated, my stress levels soar to unfathomable levels. With frustration, my psychosomatic reactions tend to very the most. On some days, I'm able to push my frustration aside and carry on with my daily life without interruption. Other times, I have headaches and a sour stomach. Many events play into how I handle frustration, but it really tends to vary on the factor more than everything. I've become slightly more adept at blocking out some very minor frustrations (like people cutting in front of me at line or incompetent grocery store employees; one time I was so frustrated that our sushi order took so long I asked one of the employees who cock we had to suck to get our order done that day.). However, my frustaciones grandiosas (for example chronic bitching about a particular topic and watching people blatently talk out both sides of their mouths) have yet to be conquered. In a lot of cases, though, the most frustrating situations are out of my control, and those tend to give me the most problems. So the $64 million question of the day is how am I going to handle the greatest of my frustrations. I know I can tackle some of them, but others could prove to be damn near impossible. |
 Log in to Leave Feedback |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
?