Affected

What happens when you are affected easily by others' emotions but you have to set them aside? 

At work, my job is to be with people as they (hopefully) get well. And I want them to get well. When they don't, I am sad, and when they are frustrated about not getting better quickly, I get stressed out. It's great that I have empathy and I can deeply resonate with their emotions, but it really doesn't benefit me in this sort of situation where I don't have any control over their success or failure, and I'm not really qualified to do anything about it other than be there with them. 

Or does it matter? Is it bad that I stress out over the weekend because I'm concerned about the well-being of a patient who I have no control over whether or not they get better? Me being caring and present for them potentially helps, so maybe it does matter that I care so much. However, being hopeful that I can affect them only makes it harder when they don't get better - because I feel like I've failed somehow. 

I'm definitely taking it too personally but I'm not sure how impersonal I'd want to get. I didn't get this job because it was my life's dream. I got this job because I wanted to take care of people and make money while I'm working on music. So I have to detach myself a little bit. I know there has to be an in-between but I am just having a hard time seeing it. 

Well, tonight I am going to flail around like they do in the East Bay, dancing ecstatically and letting my stresses go for the evening. 

Bubbling Stress

I have often experienced anger bubbling up and through me. I've often allowed that to create and sustain stress. As I've been settling in and becoming more relaxed, I have less tension in my back and shoulders than I used to, I get emotional less often, and I have consistent energy.

What's most striking is my newfound ability to fend off stress or anger as it approaches boiling, threatening to shoot up my neck and right into a headache-inducing exclamation of its presence. It used to be that once it made it's ascent, exponentially gaining speed, I was helpless against it. I would get stressed, defensive, and/or emotional. I would feel offended, guilty, or bitter. And the whole time I would hate that I was feeling that way, which would only prolong the cycle.

There have been a few incidents recently where I previously would have unleashed my stress monster, but I evaded it. Driving is always rife with stressful potential, but I find myself less and less with the urge to succumb to road rage like I used to. Of course, being in a place where people give each other the finger less helps as well - it's useful to not fuel the fire - but it's mainly my ability to better control my stress.

The most recent incident was today at work. My landlord came in, angry that we had called the heating company to clean our air filters. The labor costs were higher than what he wanted to pay ($0) and he said that he could have done it just as easily. I explained to him, calmly, that I had spoken with the heating company and they said they were going to talk to him before they came out, since the account was in his name.

He didn't affirm or deny whether they called. Instead, my landlord asked me why we had needed to clean the air filters. Still calmly, I told him I had been having sneezing attacks every time the heater turned on because dust was coming out of the vents. His suggestion was that we should, instead of turning on the heat to get warm from the chilly air outside, open the windows to air out the office.

I took a breath. The monster was brewing in my gut, but I told him to sit back for a minute.

I reminded our landlord that outside was cold and the reason for the heat was to mitigate the effects of said weather. Our patients couldn't be expected to be freezing during a treatment where they need to sit still for 30 minutes. Flustered, he asked if I felt better, now that this expensive air filter service was completed. I told him that yes, I was sneezing noticeably less whenever we turned on the heat.

His response was that it was all in our heads, and the air filter being really dusty and dirty didn't acutally make a difference. He told me that the next time we needed to clean our air filters, he would come do it, not tell us when, and he was sure that we would never even notice that he changed it.

I looked at him without responding. My monster was anxious for a fight, but my head wasn't even interested. It was a surprising difference from what I had come to expect from myself. I focused on this fact, rather than the illogical man in front of me. My other head would have welcomed the monster as he knocked over everything on the shelves to make room for his fat little body. But this time, I just didn't feel like getting frustrated or emotional about something that wasn't worth my stress.

So, I just stared at him.

He pulled back and explained that he wasn't mocking me, but was simply frustrated that it cost so much when he could have done it for us for cheaper even though he didn't feel it needed to be done. I repeated that the heating company was supposed to call him first but they seemed to not have listened. I apologized for the confusion.

He finally realized I wasn't going to succumb to his anger and left.

Then, my monster, though disappointed it didn't get to play, simply abated and settled back into the recesses of wherever he dwells in my core. He still exists and is able to put up a fight, but I have a better relationship with him now that we've had this reality check.

It's a good feeling, to not feel out of control and sucked into an emotional whirlwind; to not feel put-upon by the external world. Even saying this evokes excitement that I really am taking control of myself and choosing how my world unfolds. So long, it's felt as though I've been saying the way I wanted things to be, but that reality wasn't actually happening in the world and I couldn't understand why.

The irony is that I don't understand what I've been doing wrong until I've come around the bend and start doing it right. I rarely know how to do it correctly beforehand, I just have to take the risk and follow my instincts, when they show.

Competition

I used to thrive when it came to competition. If there was a challenge where I was competing to be the best at something, I'd jump at the opportunity. It made me excited, and I'd be driven to do the best I possibly could.

But 'the best' became convoluted in my young mind. I was too eager sometimes, acting bossy and pushy.  By doing so, I alienated myself from a lot of friends and made some enemies. At the sensitive age of pre-teen and teen, feeling alienated and having people dislike you can have a more severe effect than if a person was more emotionally developed. These days, I think about being competitive and I cringe. I'm pretty sure it has to do with overshooting the mark in the past with my obsessive compulsive 'need to win'.

At some breaking point, my OCD-competitive nature turtled (yes I made that a verb) and I became overly passive, avoiding competition. My ego made sure I stayed that way too, by inducing physical effects. To this day, the majority of times I get into a competitive situation my anxiety skyrockets. My body assures that I can't physically handle the pressure so I won't partake in competition.

First, I need to stop looking at competition as heart-attack inducing. Healthy competition, that's a phrase, right? Currently it feels about as healthy as eating three Big Macs per day. I know everyone feels a degree of anxiety and stress with competition - I acknowledge that part of the reason for competition is that exact triggering effect to drive a person. But in my case it feels excessive.

The next step would be to engage in competition occasionally, in conjunction with developing personal challenges.  Both are sources from which I can draw inspiration and propel myself towards creative, problem-solving endeavors.

Time to brainstorm low-stress, competitive ideas (oxy-moron?) to whet my lurking appetite for a healthy challenge.

Expectations

I have a really difficult time not setting expectations. No matter what I’m doing - whether it’s applying for a job and expecting that I will at least get a call because I am qualified, or setting my schedule for the day and expecting that all will go according to plan. Sometimes expectations seem harmless enough, but as soon as things go against expectations, my stress level skyrockets. 

I don’t think everyone is as easily triggered into stress, but I do think that people set expectations too often. A lot of miscommunication or lack of communication is due to personal expectations not being met and people internally freaking out about it. I’ve certainly gotten frustrated with myself or others because an expectation that I arbitrarily carved into stone was not met.

The distinction I’ve been trying to make is between expectation and intention. I’ve been having a little bit of trouble because even when I think I’m setting my intentions for a certain outcome, I’m actually just setting a wishful expectation. So more often than not, my expectation is not met because I didn’t really choose for the universe to unfold a certain way. With intention, at least from what I have gathered, a person reaches deep into themselves to set an intention - and the world unfolds before them to offer those possibilities as a reality that they can choose. Expectation, on the other hand, is a hope that the world will unfold as you wish it would. Deciding that something ‘should’ or ‘will’ happen and then just going along and keeping an eye on it, becoming frustrated when it doesn’t happen as anticipated is much different from being the puppeteer and actively guiding that something down the path to make your world happen as you intended. 

I see the distinction. And I’ve been trying to acknowledge when I am actively setting an intention. Finding a job, for instance. I’ve been telling myself that I am competent and would be a great employee in a number of different jobs. But I keep becoming disheartened and frustrated when the places I’m really interested in working for either don’t get back to me or ‘go another way’. Becoming disheartened is the issue. How do I maintain my internal self-worth and not feel beaten down? I’m suspecting if I set my intention, rather than just expecting to get a call back because I ‘should’, I might be getting more responses and more positive results.

But I’m not sure how to shift that. When I’m setting expectations, sometimes I’m having a hard time even acknowledging that’s what they are. When I expect something and I demand that it happen, my mind distorts this forceful, false confidence and considers it honest intention. Agh.

So today I will work on recognizing my constant expectation-setting and try to set more deliberate intentions. And of course, improving my confidence by believing I am more than able to set correct and powerful intentions. Ah, easier said than done.