Wants, internal conflicts, and feelings

[flamingsword]

I’m still here, despite life’s annoyances.

Things I want:
• I want to be healthy AND I want sugar and dairy fats, and these things are in tension with each other.
• I want to read a bunch of stuff that isn’t just fluff AND I want to mainline comfort as fast as I can pull it into my brain.
• I want to be productive/get stuff done so I can stop being anxious about those things AND I am overwhelming myself with the pace I am trying to set, making myself more anxious - and I want to not do that.
• I want to talk to and be closer to Ghost AND I want to not get closer to him now when I’m just going to lose our closeness soon.
• I want to be a decent person who doesn’t yell at people for not being good at their jobs, AND I want people to have consequences for being apathetic about jobs which affect my life and the lives of thousands of people. Aargh.


Things I felt today:
• happy: I got a fair amount of stuff done today/this week and avoided a lot of the sugars that I was craving, so go me.
• sad: According to my blood test results, I might have a UTI that is mostly only showing itself in some tenderness that I thought was ovarian cyst pain. I am sad for my body that wants to be healthy and can’t manage that.
• angry: Mailbox situation is still being a pain, and delaying getting some stuff done that would make me feel better to have off of my plate.
• disgusted: The management company at our apartments continues to disclaim responsibility for any of the mess with the mailboxes. Because that’s helpful and not at all a bald-faced lie. /s
• afraid: I’m anxious that the court date for the divorce will come either when I will be visiting/scouting the Seattle area, or possibly after I need to be packed up and on my way in December. I want to be there, just in case, but I may need to … not do that.
Also,
• confused at something nyyki said that I am still thinking/researching about. Apparently there is a lot of debate in the psychology community about whether anger is a primary emotion or whether it is always a secondary emotion rooted in fear or sadness. I experience anger as a primary emotion to boundary violations and injustice, but it’s possible that some people are just not wired that way.

Comments

[sabotabby]

*hugs*

[flamingsword]

🫂💜🫂

[extraarcha]

Curiosity is an active trait of mine. Tried to find what nyyki said that you referred to? Could you please make a better link to that?

[flamingsword]

Oh, sorry, nyyki and I have a weekly phone call during which she said that anger is an emotion that is always predicated on fear or sadness, and therefore secondary. Which is not generally how I experience anger? I mostly feel it as a direct reaction to injustice or a boundary violation. But different folx experience things differently, and I am wondering what life looks like from the other side of that divide, since I can only ever live my own life, but I can believe other people and try to extrapolate about their lives.

-Heidi

[extraarcha]

This will take me some concogulating.
I'm very slow to anger as i've always observed that it made the people i viewed do stupid things and make stupid choices. Not always, but deff in most situations. Fear is something that i have no use for. Last time i remember being fearful was on the night infiltration course during my basic training. They were firing machine guns not far over our heads and there was explosive spots spaced around on the course. Yup, it was scary and i admit to covering the 150 yards (by low crawling, very, very low as i could manage lol) or so as fast as i could manage. A micro-second memory of that was when i came upon a stack of sandbags (surrounding the explosive charges) just in time to experience what happens as they blew a charge. That was many years ago.
One of my fav movie lines is Dr. Bruce Banner [Hulk] telling the person: "you wouldn't like me when i'm angry." Long before i bother with getting angry, i'm deep into "let's get this resolved" mode. Sad or fear aren't any use for that.
All that said: YMMV? LOL

[silk_dragon_zen]

I believe what Nyyki says is true for us SilkDragons, although we have often believed we experienced anger as a result of boundary violation, too.

But in our case, I think insta-anger as a response to boundary violation was a learned response from trauma and the at-one-time perceived need to defend ourselves rapidly and so the need to not linger long enough to even feel the fear that boundary violations instigated in us.

That is, the true order of events was/is [boundary violation] —> [unperceived fear/helplessness] —> [anger].

So yeah, I think Nyyki is right at least about us SilkDragons' experience, even though for a time we also believed we experienced anger as a "primary" response to boundary violations. In recent years we've managed to slow down the anger response and now we are experiencing the fear first, followed sometimes — but thankfully not always — by anger.

— Sage