Posted by littleone on January 15, 2006, at 23:57:09
In reply to Re: Talking about anger » littleone, posted by daisym on January 14, 2006, at 19:50:27
Thanks for clarifying, although I don’t think I agree with everything you’ve said. I’m left with the impression that you’re writing off your feelings a bit, like they aren’t justified, and your reasons are there to rationalise that.
> OK -- First off - I asked him.
I don’t think it should matter to your feelings as to who raised the matter. If anything, this sounds like you’re kicking yourself for asking. Like you’ve brought it on yourself. Like you deserve it. I think it was sweet and caring that you asked. It would be a shame if you didn’t ask out of fear of reacting badly to his answer (like I do).
> Second -- My feelings that were hurt weren't rational. My first interpretation of it, when I was mad, was that he intentionally told me to be cruel, since he knew it would upset me. Of course that isn't true, and as soon as I was calmer, I recognized that. I worked it out on my own.
Feelings don’t have to be rational, they just are. Having said that, I’m sure they were perfectly rational if you take all your past experiences into account. It doesn’t make them wrong. I guess the secret is being able to see if you’re really reacting to something in the present or something from the past. But it’s hard to do. Hard to see. It’s good that you could partly do that, ie by seeing that he wasn’t being deliberately cruel. I know you haven’t gone into great depth here about the issue, but did you work through why it upset you? And I don’t mean the beating yourself up kind of working through. Did you really work through it properly? I know from your other posts that you usually give things a lot of thought and are very insightful.
> In talking it over with him, he said I should have told him right then and there that I was upset. But to me, that felt accusitory, and inappropriate. He didn't mean to upset me, *I* got upset. I didn't want him to feel defensive or apologetic when he didn't really do anything wrong.
I think if you reacted this way to a normal friend, it might be accusatory or inappropriate if you got upset at them. But your T isn’t a normal friend. And therapy is not like normal life. What might be accusatory or inappropriate in normal life is actually a valuable learning experience in therapy. Remember that part of this will be your beliefs about anger colouring your views on what you can and can’t do. And it’s your past experiences from childhood telling you what he will probably feel. Remember that you can’t “make” him feel anything. He’s in control of his own feelings.
> Does that make sense? His take was that I might be wrong - I was making a lot of assumptionsI do understand, but I don’t agree (if that’s okay). I think your T is right that you were making a lot of assumptions. I don’t mean that in an accusatory way, I do exactly the same thing. If you talk this over with your T as it happens, then he has a chance to help you see that there are other possibilities/reasons/explanations that you haven’t taken into consideration. He can help you understand what he was thinking/feeling when he said something and help you explore why something upsets you.
Having said all that, I can’t do it yet. I can’t bring something up when it happens. My feelings are too strong and it would be too confronting. But I can (usually) write about it for him so he can address it in the next session.
It might be hard for you to raise with him while you’re actually angry in the session. If that is too hard, can you ask him for some paper and write a little for him there. That way you are bringing the anger into the room in a much safer way. It can be diffused rather than explode everywhere (sorry, that’s probably my views on anger colouring what I say). A smaller, more achievable goal.
> and I was very quick to say I shouldn't have hurt feeings, that it was wrong to feel hurt just because the other person didn't intend to hurt you.
I used to beg my dad to play basketball with me and sometimes he would eventually come out and play with me. But he hated basketball and after just a couple of minutes he would start kicking the basketball around with my brother in a game of soccer (without me) or he would start weeding the grass. I became invisible when this happened. If I tried to get his attention or join in, his anger would be unleashed on me. So whenever this happened, I felt very hurt. I’m pretty sure he never intended to hurt me. Does that mean I’m wrong to feel hurt? And does adding various assumptions in there change anything? I still felt hurt.
I was just thinking that saying I’m wrong to feel hurt feels a little like the blame game. You are so careful not to blame the other person that you turn the blame on to yourself.
> Anger is confusing and hard to understand.Now this, I agree with :). Can I add scary to that?
poster:littleone
thread:597312
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060110/msgs/599524.html