childish – Protect the Innocent

I don’t understand how other people deal with difficult emotions and confrontations in relationships. No matter how much I try, I always seem to be blind sided by my own reaction to things. It feels like my emotions twist around my vocal chords like vines and leave me speechless. I utterly shut down like a child. I could totally imagine myself crossing my arms and dropping down onto the floor where I was standing. I pout! A twenty-eight year old woman and I can’t keep myself from pouting about things that don’t go my way. It truly feels beyond my control.

On Friday when I thought I might have Covid, part of me was really happy that I would have to miss the dinner my boyfriend invited me to with his family. I even somewhat enjoyed not finding out until a day after I was supposed to. I hesitated to tell him my results because I wanted some more alone time. Then when I did tell him, I happily began preparing for him to drop everything and come see me. When it turned out he wasn’t going to do that, offering to hangout for just a few hours the next day, I was furious. I wanted to not respond at all. It took me tremendous effort to write back a short, passive aggressive reply instead. If I couldn’t hang out with him that night, well I didn’t want to see him at all. Very mature. After that brief message, I proceeded to ignore him for hours. I nearly made an excuse to avoid the Facetime we planned earlier too. One small thing, and I am ready to throw our whole relationship in the garbage out of spite. I genuinely don’t even know why that made me so upset. I enjoy being alone anyway.

It’s so embarrassing confiding these instances to my friends and family as well. Hearing them all echo back “just talk to him about it” or “tell him what you just told me” makes me feel even more childish than I already do. I can’t explain why I’m not able to just express my frustration with the person in question like I am with unrelated individuals. Not only am I afraid of how they’ll take such a conversation, I’m afraid of what I might say. I can get pretty hateful in the heat of the moment.

The longer I sit on these things, the worse it becomes. I add each succeeding irritation on top of the last, until explaining why I’m upset when something small happens becomes nearly impossible. My anger and frustration is also compounded by the fact that I’m just as mad at myself as I am at the other person. My instinct is to scrap the whole relationship rather than work through and face these nasty feelings.

I’m painfully aware of what low emotional intelligence I have, but I don’t know how to improve it. Certainly avoiding all of these encounters isn’t working. I managed to go through with the Facetime call last night and ended up enjoying talking to him. But it feels like I either blow up and destroy everything or drop it and pretend I wasn’t bothered. I did the latter yesterday. When I’m in the depths of my emotion, it feels too unsafe to acknowledge it, but when I calm down, I don’t want to dredge it up again.

All of my mindfulness and yogic practices go right out the window when it comes to interacting with other people. Just trying to take deep breaths when I am left alone in a room with a new person is a great challenge for me. Trying to calmly articulate what has me upset with someone? I might as well try to speak a foreign language fluently. My emotions just feel so big. My prefrontal cortex is short circuited and my aggressive little lizard brain takes over. And I don’t know what to do with that. I truly become unable to find the words that I need. My only options appear to be lash out or recede into myself.

Maybe today, I’ll try to find some kind of exercises to improve emotional intelligence online. Even that idea makes me laugh at myself though. I always want some kind of textbook to teach me how to be a person. When in reality, what would really probably help me more would be to make an effort to stumble through my messy emotions and actually tell my boyfriend how I’ve been feeling. I’m always so afraid of embarrassing myself or seeming stupid that I avoid all of the life experiences that could help me grow. I need to accept that some things must be learned through practice, trial and error, and taking the chance I may look silly at first.

No one else expects me to be perfect besides myself. If I were a baby again, I’d never learn how to walk or talk for fear of those initial trips, tumbles, stutters, and babbles. I must continuously remind myself that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s necessary even. There is no cause to hold every personal error against myself. I’m the only one who cares. Once again, I’m the only thing holding me back.

Emotional Intelligence: 10 Things You Must Know

I feel I may have revealed a bit too much of myself to my coworkers this morning. When I get nervous, or in this case, excited, talking to people I’ll often say things without thinking. I went to college with someone we used to work with, although neither of us ever really acknowledged it. I mentioned that I thought this other woman probably disliked me because she was an overachiever in college, going to fundraisers, very active in all of our psychology clubs, etc. I, on the other hand, was somewhat of a slacker. I did the bear minimum that was required of me. I was a member of Psi Chi, but basically only so I could put it on my resume, I never went to meetings or anything. I didn’t even go to my own induction ceremony. I blame that one on social anxiety though.

Everyone seemed to get a kick out of hearing about my college memories, but I immediately began to regret being so honest. I’m often afraid that my coworkers will get irritated with me for being lazy or a slacker. Now I feel like I’ve given them even more proof of my poor character, more proof that they’re right to think that. I don’t really picture myself as lazy though. I guess I’d describe it more as selfish. Maybe that’s even worse, now that I think about it.

The thing is, I get a lot done everyday. I have dozens of tasks that I diligently complete day in and day out. The problem is that none of these things really matter to anyone but me. The rest of the world could care less if I study Spanish or workout and do yoga for hours or read. These are all personal endeavors. Ideally they are things that are about self-improvement. But in what ways am I really trying to improve myself? To who’s benefit? It’s probably time for me to reevaluate my priorities.

Since I entered the working world, my mindset has always been me against them. The working poor, against the corporate machine. Even though I must partake in this system to survive, to play the game, it always felt like an act of rebellion to do as little as I could get away with doing. If I was going to be paid nothing, I was going to do as close to nothing as possible. Spiteful, yes, but in my mind it only felt fair. If I didn’t matter to the place I worked, then they didn’t matter to me. This is a mantra that for so many years I burned into my heart and mind. Always playing the part of the petulant child.

I never expected to find myself working for a place that I do genuinely care about. A place that also seems to genuinely care about me. I work with such incredible people. I don’t want to let them down. I love my job. I love what I do. I believe in what we do. I want to be helpful. I want to prove that I am worthy of having a place here. But no matter how many times I resolve to do better, I always find myself falling back into old patterns. Shirking my responsibilities just because I can, because it’s even easier to do here where no one is breathing down my neck, micromanaging my every step. Everything in me, everything about who I’ve been, keeps tempting me to take advantage of that. It’s nearly irresistible.

I am tired of feeling guilty. I am tired of feeling like I am letting everyone down. I am tired of feeling like I am taking advantage of an organization that is truly a benefit to this world. I really want to go above and beyond what is asked of me here. I have a lot of ideas too. I know I am smart. I know I could really make a positive impact for this organization, for the kids we see here everyday. I could really help them. I’ve just always been afraid of showing my full potential. Any other job would take advantage of that. I’ve seen it happen to my mother and my sister. I’m also afraid that I won’t be able to live up to the standard I set for myself. I’m afraid I’ll crack under the pressure of always doing my best. When no one expects anything of you, there is no pressure, it’s easy to impress when/if you need to.

After working here for a year and a half though, I think I finally feel safe enough to show my true colors, to really contribute as much as I can. Self-improvement may once have looked like only inner work, but now I think it looks like giving back, sharing my intelligence and creativity with those that will be able to benefit from it, to be an asset to my friends and coworkers, to finally utilize this freedom and agency at work to be all I can be. I know I can do this. I want to do this. I’m going to enjoy doing this.