I have some weeks now been struggling with some family conflict. How should I deal with people who want to hurt you for no good reason?
My usual response to people that make me angry is to “bury them”. What I generally do is I just stop talking to you. I do this for the following reasons:
Ø It prevents a verbal altercation with that person who has angered me.
Ø It prevents me from balling up and crying ( I turn to be teary when am angry)
This has worked for me like a charm. If you don’t speak you and pretend that you don’t exist you cannot hurt me. My roommate made me some angry that I didn’t speak to her for half of the year that I stayed with her. Ok this is how it generally works, I didn’t do funny things while she was there, I never brought friends or classmates to our room, I never went to her side of the room, and even more importantly I never spoke to her.
Ok this is where my dilemma raises. The people that have made me angry are my family. It all started a year ago when my cousin said so very hurtful things about me and I found out. This time, mind you for the first time in my life, I called her up and confronted her about it. Well... as I expected to play out, she denied the whole thing. I was so mad, so I just stopped speaking to her. Six months later her mother called us together to work it out... She made a long speech about how family should be kind, loving and supporting of each other, and then she left the room for us to speak. I left the room, just after I was sure five minutes had passed. I have a tendency to hold grudges for very long time.
Ok now going back to the recent events that have angered me. It’s now more than one family member involved and since it happened a few weeks ago I hadn’t seen them, till Thursday when we had a family gathering. I just looked at them and never uttered a single word. My justification is, if I speak , i will speak and things will be worse because I will tell them things they don’t want to hear.
So my question is: how does one prevent being sucked in to the web of anger? I know from years of being angry that you can “live off” your anger and it grows and takes over your life. But I cannot pretend am fine.
wow Yoyo... i used to be perpetually angry too... i guess there were some changes in my life and i didn't know how to deal with them. when the anger came, i would just pretend that the offense didn't happen. this is partly because i'm bad with disharmony and confrontations. but confronting is healthy.
ReplyDeletethere are two things i've learned, 1) to lock myself in a room and to cry my guts out. that way when i confront the adversary i'll have a cooler head. 2) speak out as soon as the offense has taken place and say in a very polite manner that i'm offended by what had just transpired. okay and 3) prioritise the things i will show outward anger for. so i rank things that could hurt men and if it warrants a ladylike tantrum, then i go for it! otherwise, it's 1) and 2)...