Switched-On :: Blog

Comfort comes in many forms. Sadly, a backhanded compliment is not one of them. I’m not sure how unobservant I’ve been lately, but it seems that the world has been slinking slowly towards being full of those lacking confidence, and those that feel so low that they have to slide someone else just between them and rock bottom in the best way that they know how. Comfort is to be for the other party, no? And still, more often than not, I’m left feeling more bruised and insulted than relieved because, as we all know, backhanded compliments hit like bricks. Just last week, while discussing success at school with a friend of mine, I’d let on that I could be doing better than I have. Said friend went on to say that I could be at straight A’s, but not without slapping on an, “at your school,” every single time. It hurt to know that even though they were trying to make me feel better, admittedly without my asking for it, they still felt the need to boost themselves, to rub it in my face that their school was prestigious and mine, not so much. I think I counted five of those remarks. I admire your efforts, but. Next time, let’s make sure they’re genuine, alright? All in favor?
- Eric

I have noticed that many people do not know how to deal with their emotions effectively and so shut them away. This is faulty for two reasons. One is that they do not learn how to deal with their emotions effectively. The second is that their emotions don’t go away just because they don’t deal with them. Often times it reaches a breaking point and then they have to come out. When they do, it is generally not in a pleasant or healthy manner. Also, by coming out in this fashion they may incur more emotion that the person does not want/know how to deal with. As is rather evident this incurrence of more harsh emotion only leads to perpetuating this cycle. By repressing these emotions, it is really a denial of what they are. In my experience, we can try as hard as we want to not be who and what we are but not matter what we cannot change the emotions that we feel. We can only change how we deal with them. We can always learn how to better deal with them. For example, if you like the color blue you can tell yourself that you don’t over and over, never wear it/keep it, and talk badly about it and still you will like it. Eventually you may actually convince yourself that you hate it but somewhere you do. This leads to much pain and confusion. This is a bad example because we constantly change what we like and don’t like but it does illustrate how repression works. You can substitute the color blue with an emotion or whatever you want. In essence, I am saying repression is not healthy and generally will have chaotic consequences.
- Kevin

Lately I have been thinking about why how certain emotions become so convoluted and sometimes overwhelm us all. For me I have been trying to control my anger. The most aggravating part about this for me was that I was having inappropriate reactions to very simple circumstances. For example if a bug landed on me I would swear and swiftly strike it. I am not usually one to be so quick to anger and I normally don’t swear at all. Once I realized that I was having an inappropriate reaction, I had to realize what was causing this over board reaction. I think that for all of us sometimes we don’t want to look at certain aspects of our lives. For me I think it was that I was suppressing all of my stress from and not dealing with it. I was putting all away but it was not going anywhere. What I had not thought about is that if it does not go anywhere what is it going to do? The answer is that it was going to come up when it was triggered and that was generally at the most inconvenient time. What all of this means is that I must deal with what comes at me as it does and not wait otherwise I will just have more to deal with later. Hope this helps those of you that have been feeling overwhelmed as I have.
- Kevin