Ciao lovelies! I hope you all are having a lovely winter so far, and have many more fun days to come! Today, I’d like to share a post type that I haven’t done in a long time- a REAL TALK post. These posts, to recap, are essentially opinion pieces that I pick important / more serious topics to talk about. I know these posts aren’t as popular, but these mean a lot to me, and getting these important issues into the discussions they deserve is more important to me than webviews, so I feel really motivated to share this type of post again. This REAL TALK is about….Spreading Kindness! TW/CW: Self Harm Mention, Mental Health Mention, Physical sickness mention.
What does kindness feel like?
I know that’s a weird question, but in my therapy, part of what I work on requires me to find the physical sensations of emotions. Usually something traumatic/memory linked, but not always. When I feel things these days, I allow myself to note the experience and actually feel it. It took some time to get better with identifying those emotions by name, but I always had a physical link, at least.
For example, my anxiety caused me to feel sick, my happiness caused me to feel like I was brimming with electricity, and the emotion that made my head spin, my face feel hot, and my body tense- I learned that was Anger.
I never thought of myself as an angry person. To be honest, I still don’t. What I do think, is that I was a very disenfranchised person who felt that they could never express any discomfort, and turned their anger inward. But when you go years on end pulling an “Uno Reverse!” on your anger, it doesn’t just disappear.
It turns into other things.
For me, I would become highly anxious, and self-critical. When things went wrong, I felt anger at myself no matter what had caused the situation. Further situations would look even slightly similar and I would panic, over-compensate for the outcome I assumed, and develop paranoid, anxious habits to avoid the future that I was sure I had predicted. I’d turned myself into a nervous wreck who feared every and any outcome. Anything to avoid my self-hatred and self-criticisms.
My therapist is the one who cracked the code. She listened to me speak about how I interact with others, she listened to me describe my confusions with social situations and my anxiety about how others see me. A lot of sessions and conversations later, she asked me a question, and I honestly was kind of blind sided.
“How do you handle feeling angry now that you no longer self-harm?”
I really didn’t know. I told her that I probably just held it in or something. She looked at me a little oddly and was still for so long that I thought our Zoom connection had dropped. When she realized that I was serious and that I had no clue, we had a long talk, which led to an interesting realization for me.
( Here’s where this post is about to get a lil “r/thathappened” or “r/humblebrag” or whatever, I don’t intend to sound that way, but this is truly an interesting correlation I wanted to share, so it’s alright if it sounds a little weird. )
Opposite of Anger? (Hint….I don’t think it’s Happiness.)
Kindness / Altruism !
Okay please tell me you didn’t just facepalm at that. I’m serious! Let me explain. You might already know of my minor special interest in social psychology type things, and mental health things. (Side note, if you have interest in that stuff, check out my Mental Health Experiment for a Week!) So, me being….me, I did what I do. An “experiment” sort of thing. I can’t reaaaallllllly call it an experiment since I was just using a thing I learned in therapy, but ya know….
Any angry interactions from that therapy session day onward, before any personal reaction, I would step back. If the situation was appropriate, I would ask for a minute to collect myself before any response.
First thing I would do is try to identify any possible gaps in context/understanding within the interaction. Had I misunderstood or assumed something incorrectly? Had they possibly misinterpreted something I may have said? Was there any missing context for either of us?
The next part was easy. I would address the interaction itself. Something simple like “Just to make sure I’m understanding, could you repeat that statement?” or “Are you meaning *insert possible interpretation* or something else?” or ask for other clarification. Usually this pretty much immediately de-escalates, but there’s still one key part to this.
When they confirm or deny what I was interpreting, I listen. Because, honestly, a LOT of “angry” interactions are just escalated misunderstandings that could and should have been solved by communication and Kindness. (see? Bringing it back to the point now!)
So, at risk of sounding like a disney princess, I really do think that this world needs more kindness. It’s not just a lovely thing to do, it’s also very very useful, such as the point above about solving miscommunication. But let’s go a step further!
Why wait to be kind when in a conflict? Why not extend an aura of kindness to all those who you encounter?
Okay, okay, getting a little disney princess there (only suitable for the ‘Invitean Princess’ I think.. ;3). But truly I think that your life perspective and how you affect others would benefit immensely!
For those of you who like to imagine things, imagine yourself at the center of a radiant ball of light. The color of this light is whatever you choose, whatever you feel attached to. As you go around, living your life, this light splashes your color onto everything it touches. Now substitute Kindness for that color! Think of the beautiful ripple effect that such glowing kindness would cause, a chain of lovely smiles and happy thoughts. That is profound! Who could want more than to spread kindness across this entire world? That is the most beautiful global impact I could ever imagine.
Those of you who reached the end, thank you. Here’s a virtual cookie. (Just Kidding, ;3) If you exit this tab in your browser with any takeaway, I hope it’s the motivation and desire to spread kindness all across this world, everywhere you go.
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7 Comments
I completely agree that the opposite of anger is kindness. I also once had a therapist tell me that anger is like sadness but directed towards others (whereas sadness is more of an internal thing). That personally made a lot of sense to me. When I think about things that make me angry, a lot of times, that anger is really sadness, deep down. Sadness that I have avoided self-reflecting on for one reason or another.
ReplyDelete"Because, honestly, a LOT of “angry” interactions are just escalated misunderstandings that could and should have been solved by communication and Kindness." >> I totally agree with this. Although it can be really really hard (especially for those who are neurodivergent) to detach from your emotions in the heat of a stressful situation. I could see how imagining yourself as a Princess could help. I'll try it next time!
Thanks for another lovely post and I hope you are doing well and staying warm~
Thank you for this comment! I also agree that detaching from emotions in conflict is definitely difficult, especially for neurodivergent people! It definitely helps to have people in your life who are willing to let you take that moment to reflect and think. This is one of the many many reasons I love my partner, we are both neurodivergent and we understand each other on a great level; he is always willing to let me take a moment to "reel myself back in" as i call it, before i can react. He doesn't get upset or offended if I need breaks from conversations so I can be non-impulsive. He's even learning that he can do this too. I think there's also a unique point of view he has in that he is AMAB (male at birth), so his upbringing and societal view on male emotions has a whole other affect on him. Luckily he is beginning to feel safe enough to share his feelings and let out how he feels without bottling it up. All that tangent is to say, I think it's because of people like him in my life that I have the privilege's of accommodation during conversations. .. Hmm, sorry for rambling, I just went on a thinking spiral about all of that. :D Anyway, I hope you have a great day, and that your winter is going well! :)
DeleteThis blog post was incredible! Such a great description of those feelings, so so beautifully worded and truly inspiring. I have been finding myself getting angry as well ans your description of inner work to realize it, stop it, but also the effect it has is so so helpful. Amazing!!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!! I'm so glad that I could help by sharing my feelings! :) have a wonderful day!!!
DeleteI really enjoyed reading this and learning your perspective, but u have to disagree with anger being the opposite of kindness. I love the way you talked about handling anger at others or situations with kindness, but I don't think anger is an inherently bad thing. Anger is what we feel when our rights have been violated- its a protective emotion just as much as it is "negative." It's certainly not pleasant but it has a purpose (sometimes, lol)! I've been working on observing my anger as opposed to acting on it.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I wanted to bring up was self kindness. Spreading positivity whatever you go is such a noble goal, and I'm a big believer in radical kindness- just don't forget to be kind to yourself, too!!
Thank you for bringing this point to my attention! You have a valid point on anger being a protective emotion, to protect us from breaches of our boundaries. I think situationally, anger can be both a good or bad thing. Also on your point of self kindness, I totally agree! To put out kindness is great, but pouring from an empty cup can be damaging to someone's inner balance. Thanks so much for this comment! I love starting discussion like this, and I'm glad you felt confident in sharing a different opinion, it helped me see another perspective and generated a lot of interesting internal thoughts for me. Thank you! :)
DeleteI really enjoyed reading this and learning your perspective, but u have to disagree with anger being the opposite of kindness. I love the way you talked about handling anger at others or situations with kindness, but I don't think anger is an inherently bad thing. Anger is what we feel when our rights have been violated- its a protective emotion just as much as it is "negative." It's certainly not pleasant but it has a purpose (sometimes, lol)! I've been working on observing my anger as opposed to acting on it.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I wanted to bring up was self kindness. Spreading positivity whatever you go is such a noble goal, and I'm a big believer in radical kindness- just don't forget to be kind to yourself, too!!
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