New Photo Blog!

Hello there, old friend!  

I guess I got overwhelmed with this blog because I just never came back to see you again.  I'm sorry about that.  It's not that I haven't been thinking about you; there's so much that I want to share with you!  I've been thinking about things a little differently lately and have started taking photos again!  It's been really fun to find similarities between the composition of photographs and the complexities of life.  So, I decided to share some of those here!  Take a peek and let me know what you think.

Hoping to chat with you soon!

"Life is full of exciting adventures to pursue!"

J shared a great article with me called Lean Into The Pain by Aaron Schwartz. I really liked the article and wanted to share it with you too! 

Enjoy!

Patterns of Anger?

1.  I have talked at length in previous posts about feeling angry when I feel unheard, unseen, and helpless, so I don't really want to talk too much about that here, but it definitely deserves a mention.

I'm sure I'll come back around to this topic soon enough, but here's what's really on my mind lately:

2. Self sacrifice is a long tradition in my family.  You are supposed to take care of other people and put your own needs last -- that's what "good" people do.  You do this without recognition, complaint, or pride and your reward will be a large gold-gilded castle on the cloud the Presbyterians call Heaven.

I've done this as long as I can remember without ever giving it a second thought -- until recently.  I'm realizing that following this edict handed down from generation to generation without question, like most things handed down in this manner, may not be the best modus operandi!

Interesting how easy it was to see the problems with same theory with other things (ahem, hello religion, my old friend), but somehow this one was a total surprise!  Also interesting how something could be SO ingrained in you that you don't even know it's there, that you're doing it, and that it's interfering with your own needs.  What's more, it's interfering with your relationship and making your resent the people you are supposedly supporting and helping.  Now, that's devious!

Nobody mentioned that when they were teaching me how to behave! Seems like an important bit of info...  Makes me wonder if I'm just repeating the same pattern of anger and resentment of my ancestors?  I know my mom has experienced similar feelings -- I wonder about my grandmother?  What would it be like to talk to her as an adult?  Did she have these same insights?  If so, why didn't she pass this knowledge on?


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The bigger question is, how do you stop doing this and deal with the pain you cause others by suddenly not being there for them in the way you used to?

Intentionally hurting people (or letting them hurt) feels like I'm taking slow, intentional steps down a dark staircase toward what everyone has been telling me all my life ends at literal Hell!  I don't actually believe in Hell, but I don't really want to go there either!

So, What Would Drew Say?  Something to the effect of "suck it up, Buttercup"?  But, in a much kinder way. He'd probably say, that I have to be ok with allowing other people to feel their hurt and still doing what I need to do to meet my own needs.

Fuck.  I don't like that answer.

Passion?

Recently I found myself upset and feeling like a cliche because I was upset and feeling like a cliche!  Ugh...  Life is complicated.  ;-)

But, c'est la vie!  I'm a cliche. What makes me think I'm too important to ponder the same questions that others have pondered?  I'm going to take this opportunity to feel one with the rest of humanity and enjoy my mid-life crisis!  I'm going to roll around in it like it's a pile of 100 dollar bills!

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I've been pondering the question of the importance of passion in my life.  I feel like I have the weigh the benefits of stability and security against the excitement of passion and intensity.  Why does it have to be one or the other?  Why can't we have it all?  Why have we as a people made it so difficult to be happy?  We've made the rules so strict...we've made it almost impossible to maintain happiness.  

Unless we choose a partner who will work with us through all the different iterations of ourselves.  A partner who will allow you to explore yourself; who will allow you to change -- sometimes drastically. 

The last few months have been full of change and I suspect the next few will prove to be full of even more while J and I continue to grow into our new selves.  I like who we are becoming.  I can't wait to meet the final transformed people.  <3

Anger 2

This feels like one of the hardest posts so far.  Usually I just sit down in front of the blank screen, put my fingers on the keys, and words start appearing.  This time I already know kind-of what I want to say, I'm seated comfortably, and I've already messed with the font and settings, so the words should be starting to appear here on the screen, but for some reason this post is being unnecessarily stubborn....suddenly taking on a life of its own...

Reading about anger has been exceptionally hard.  I don't think I ever realized just how much is wrapped up in that simple little word: anger.  Seriously!

Remember me?

I learned today that I feel anger because I feel like something is unfair, I feel powerless, and unable to simply tolerate the situation.  But, actually, I feel angry not because of the situation, but because of my perception and judgement of the situation.  So, let's change that first statement about why I get angry to include this new information:

              [I] feel angry when [I] define reality as unacceptable and I feel unable to 
             easily correct it, tolerate it, or let it go.  It's my perception that causes me 
             to become angry. (pg 17).

But, then I found out that I might feel angry to protect myself because I really have feelings of hurt that leave me, on top of feeling hurt, also feeling vulnerable.  I was overwhelmed when I read the list of hurt feelings that often lead to anger.  There are instances that I can recall in which I've felt angry AND most of this list all at once.

I can feel my stomach tense up at that realization.  Suddenly I'm super uncomfortable and I don't want to be writing this post anymore.  No wonder I need anger to protect myself from hurt.  In the two general instances that I'm thinking about now, I felt at least 20 of the 26 items on that list.

I had to take a break from the book at this point.  I stopped and did some reflecting.  I'm going to direct this section of this blog to my mom, but there are others for whom this directly applies and although I'm not saying it below, I'm thinking of you too. <3

In thinking about times that I've been truly angry, I spent a lot of time thinking about myself and how I've felt and with all those emotions listed above floating around inside my head, it's easy for me to overlook other people's emotions.  I know that you were also hurt or angry and I apologize for not being able to get out of my own pain and anger enough to address yours.

I still find myself wondering about your feelings during those times of anger and I think the beginning of this book is helping me to see why.  If anger was protecting me from what I was really feeling, maybe it was doing that for you too?  Maybe instead of just feeling the angry stuff you showed me, you were also feeling some of the hurt feelings on the list above?  That makes me really sad.  It makes me really sad that we were both feeling SO hurt, but only showed each other anger or our tough-cold side.

Mom, even though you've told be 1,000 times since then, there are still times that I wonder if you felt love for me back then.

This makes me wonder what impression you have of me from those days.  If I stop and try to think about the situation from your perspective; I mean, really try to think about things the way you say they were.  If I try to put myself in your shoes and imagine me, Iola, doing and saying the things that I know I did and said, I look like a very angry, resentful, and indignant person.  I was all those things.  But, I was also very hurt.  I also felt abandoned, afraid, disrespected, helpless, humiliated, ignored....  

It occurred to me that if I'm still unsure about your feelings during those times that maybe you're not sure about mine either.  The fact of the matter is, I don't think I could feel that many overwhelming emotions, so much so that I would need anger to protect me from them if I didn't care very, very deeply.  So, to answer this question, during those times when I was angry with you, I loved you very much!  I don't think I could have been so angry if I hadn't!

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Awesome paper created by Markhal and for the truly curious, instructions on how to create your own paper can be found here.

Anger: Friend or Foe?

I've been struggling lately with how to deal with anger.  My anger is a little sneaky sometimes; I don't really realize that I'm angry until I've started talking about something and I'm off on a rant about it and I have to pause and think to myself, "Oh, I guess that really upsets me."  Mostly I try to hide any anger I feel from everyone, including myself, because let's face it, I am hard pressed to find a time when I ever expressed anger in a productive manner and had a positive outcome.

So, my typical response to a discovery like this is to find books to read on the topic.  The first book seemed good....except that it left me thinking that I have major anger issues that are with me every minute of every day and they can only be solved by accepting Jesus Christ into my life and allowing Him to determine my worth and not the people around me.  Oops, wrong book.

The second book gave great descriptions of different styles of anger and focused on how to let go of your anger.  This book showed me how sneaky my anger is -- this is why I didn't really recognize it as anger for a long time.  This book was ok, but still left me searching....

Finally, I stumbled upon The Gift of Anger by Marcia Cannon!  So far, this book is amazing!  It presents anger as natural protection against our environment.  She likens anger to the flashing lights at a train crossing warning you of a problem in your life or your immediate surroundings.  This allows you to feel ok about having anger -- nobody would say that those flashing lights at train crossings are inherently bad things!  She offers examples of how anger helped people do things that they needed to do -- stand up for themselves, protect themselves, etc -- and she even offers an example of when anger saved her own life!  She makes you feel like it's totally ok to have anger and like there's nothing wrong with you if you experience anger.  Anger is not something you have to banish from your life.  The book tells you how anger makes you stronger and even refers to it as a "Power-Boost"!  This left me with such a warm, comfortable feeling that I was able to think about my own anger without such resentment towards it and without the absolute goal of banishing it from my life for all time.

Then the book eases you into trying to think about your own anger and realizing that you already have ideas and attitudes about your anger.  No, the book does more than that, it makes it so ok, so natural that you would already have ideas and attitudes about your anger -- of course you would, you're a thinking being with experiences, memory, and emotion!  It only makes sense that you have thoughts and opinions about anger, so let's just go ahead and address that right up front and talk about it and talk about ways to avoid letting those opinions get in the way of dealing with and understanding that anger.

I'm so excited to continue this book, but I wanted to share it with you in case anyone else was also struggling and wanted to read along with me!

Filling In The Space

It's been a long time since I last wrote.  I'm sorry, life has been a little confusing lately and I haven't been sure how to talk about it.  I'm still not sure, but I've missed you, so I decided to pop over and say hi!



I saw Drew yesterday and he got me thinking about a recurring problem in my life.  Throughout most of my life, people have tended to either decide for themselves what feelings I'm having without my input or discounted what I've said my feelings were and replaced those with whatever feelings they thought I should be having or whatever feelings were more convenient for them.


There are examples of this from my adolescence and on through to my life today, but that's not the point of this post.  The point of this post is the REASON for this behavior.  I learned very early in my life that it wasn't safe to share my feelings; and frankly it often wasn't safe to even HAVE most of my feelings.  I spent a lot of my life burying my feelings deep inside -- hiding them from everyone, even myself. So, I guess there were a lot of blanks for people to fill in.  My emotions, apparently, needed to be guessed and interpreted. 

But, the fact of the matter is, even when I didn't know what I was feeling and people were filling in the blanks for me, they were filling them in incorrectly.  When people guess my feelings and fill in any empty space with their interpretation of my feelings and emotions they are almost always wrong (clear exceptions are J and Drew, but probably because they don't guess -- they ask).

So, the point of this post is to let everyone know fully and finally, that I'm done with that shit!  I want to fill in all that empty space on my own now.  I plan to try anyway.  Even if I'm not always 100% right about what I'm feeling, I'd rather the mistakes be mine and not yours.  I no longer intend to go along with anyone else's interpretations of me and my feelings.

If you don't know what I'm feeling and you want to know, please, ask me!  It will mean a lot to me that you've asked!  It will mean that you care enough to want to know how I feel.  It will mean that you respect me enough to allow me to present my feelings in my own way.  And it will mean that you trust me enough to know myself better than you know me.