Reflection of Feelings

I saw my first client in 2017, toward the beginning of my time in graduate school. Before my cohort and I saw our cases, we practiced therapeutic basics with one another, such asking open-ended questions instead of closed-ended questions to encourage deeper exploration, or reflecting and paraphrasing statements to get to the gist and the heart of the matter. Though these techniques feel automatic to me now, I still remember how much my listening skills – and my self-awareness – improved when I started using them on a consistent basis.

“You don’t really go toward sadness,” my first therapy supervisor told me, way back in 2017.

Tennis Helped Transform Me from Sad and Lonely to Righteously Angry at the Patriarchy

My current crush fell in love with another man last fall. We agreed to stop talking a couple of weeks ago, so he could have space to figure his life out. Who knows if he will reach out again. I spent a lot of last week sad about this, listening to melodramatic Ariana Grande and Jason Derulo songs and posting angsty selfies on Snapchat. On top of that, I felt that one of my friends had not been putting as much effort into our friendship as I had, and when I expressed this, she did not react well. I also waited to hear back from an internship I wanted yet received no word about. To describe my emotions with great eloquence: everything sucked.

Two Tuesday nights ago, as I moped about V – my crush who said he also had a crush on me and also fell in love with someone else – I went to one of my weekly tennis leagues.

Spilled Milk and Staunched Fears

I grasp the carton of milk in my left hand, and a clear plastic cup in my right. As I raise the carton in preparation to pour the milk, my left hand squeezes.

Milk flies. Splatters the table. Stains my shirt. I stare in shock, as if I’ve witnessed a murder in cold blood.

Oh, no, I think to myself, as realization settles in. Oh, God, no.

Why We All Should Just Cry And Get Angry

Image via Goodreads.

If you’ve read some of my prior posts you’ve probably realized that I can be freakishly kind of emotional. Everyone is. However, in society, expressions of emotion are often interpreted as indications of weakness or immaturity. There is some truth to this. People who continuously drown themselves in dark and negative thoughts or become angry and irritated over insignificant matters may need to reevaluate their mindsets, or just, as my English teacher said, “quit whining” (although she used the verb form of a curse word meaning female dog, but, I won’t write that here).

But expressing emotions shouldn’t solely be seen as a shortcoming.

My Pants and My Mom

My Science Fair presentation is coming up on Thursday. I was trying on clothes in front of my mom, as she decides what I’m allowed to wear and what I’m not allowed to wear. It was getting late, and I suggested a pair of black pants I wore to a friend’s wedding over the summer. She wasn’t happy with this, as she wanted me to wear another pair of looser pants, but she angrily asked me to try the black pants on anyway.

–

I put on the black pants, my heart pulsing.

I turned to face her. Her face was a thunderstorm of emotions, precipitating the rage that was sure to come.

Anger

Anger is a double-edged sword. One can wield anger to their advantage, ruthlessly tearing into whoever is unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of the emotion; or, anger can turn into quicksand, enveloping and completely encompassing its owner until nothing remains.

Personally, I do not like anger. I have seen too many people angry – angry at the world, angry at me, and angry at themselves. Sometimes, the anger is warranted. Most of the time it is not.

When people are angry, they are blind. Unable to view the world from a different perspective besides their own. This reminds me of the bull launching itself at the red flag, not processing what may be behind that flag… possibly an impenetrable wall. But by then, it is too late.

Anger leads to a multitude of other emotions. Two that affect me the most are fear and sadness. The difference is that one is caused by another person’s anger, while the other is caused by my own.

Fear. I can reasonably estimate that 99% of the times I am fearful are due to anger. When one is angry, one is violent. Violence leads to pain. Pain leads to suffering. Suffering leads to fear.

Sadness. I do not ever want to be angry. An unrealistic goal, I’m aware. However, when one attempts to control their anger and force it back into themselves, it changes into an unrelenting sadness. A permanent sadness. A depression. This only occurs when there are not enough sources of strength to use to recover, which, in the past, was my case exactly.

I believe that the opposite of anger is self-control. The ability to feel anger – to experience its terrible power racing through your veins – and not act impulsively on it. Rather, to use that anger and manipulate it into a self-dignified motivation, a driving force per say. This is the emotion I want to learn, to feel, and to use.