I Had a Bad Day

Wednesday was a bad day. Or, at least, Wednesday morning was bad.

If you’ve been reading my blog you may already know I have a serious self confidence problem. Its not new, I know I have it, and usually I can deal with it, but sometimes it gets the better of me. Wednesday was one of those days.

My wife made a suggestion to me with something I have been dealing with. (I’m trying to get our money back for an online purchase I made.) I told her I had my plan of how to deal with it, but she disagreed with my plan, and suggested I try something else…..and I had a total meltdown.

That’s all.

I really don’t know why I lost it; it certainly wasn’t just my wife’s suggestion. Maybe it was all the accumulated stress of the last 6 months or so. I do really have a lot going on, or NOT going on, as the case may be.

The details are unimportant, but under normal circumstances I’d be pretty stressed just dealing with my new military career. Add a global pandemic (which has put the education for that career on hold), all the isolation resulting from the pandemic, and then on THAT add a heat wave. There are the dozens of “tiny, everyday, little things” that get heaped on top, and the result is me, a bit on the edge. Something about her suggestion triggered an emotional landslide that swept me up, and for about 30min I was a wreck.

To most I expect that I come across as a pretty happy guy, and generally imperturbable, but people who really know me know that I’m a tremendously emotional person. I had some outbursts in my teens that didn’t go well, and I’ve learned an iron-like control over my “negative” emotions. If you’re watching closely, and know what you’re looking for, you can tell when I’m exerting that control, but most people miss it.

Until something like Wednesday happens, and it all wells up and bursts out.

Its not the anger, or the fear that is the worst part, its the frustration. When my self confidence takes a hit, and the fear starts to overwhelm me, I try my best to acknowledge it, let it happen, and let it pass through me, without reacting to it. Be mindful. I couldn’t get the technique to work though, and the frustration of THAT set me off. It hit like a tidal wave, and I was done.

Suddenly the plan I had was stupid, and never going to work. It was a failure, just like so many other things I’ve tried in life, and therefore: I was a failure. But…..

….I knew I was over reacting. I knew her suggestions were good ones, and that I was being silly. I knew I shouldn’t be reacting this way, it was just my self confidence taking a hit, its happened loads of times; but since I couldn’t stop myself I must be a failure.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Feedback loop.

My wife has seen these outbursts before, and helped me through it. We had a talk, and I tried my best to let my control go and just let the emotions happen, and after a while things were better.

These over reactions are not a usual thing for me, but they are a normal thing. Bottling things up isn’t healthy, but it happens all the same. I know it would be better if I didn’t, but since its unlikely my personality is going to change all that much, these outbursts will continue to happen as a balance.

Its just human.