bad mood blues

Disclaimer: I’m venting; I’m not physically violent or suicidal; this too shall pass.

So I’m feeling angry right now, and this is something that happens much more frequently than I’d like. Small things too easily make me upset and angry, and my method of “dealing” with them seems to consist largely of
1. Overreacting
2. Redirecting as much negative feeling away from other people and at myself instead
3. Subsequently concluding all sorts of unreasonable negative things about myself and/or the world
4. Draining energy supressing violent impulses that I wish I never had in the first place
5. Crying because I feel drained and confused and unhappy

I have an exceptional ability to find an angle on nearly any situation which somehow puts myself at fault. I’m not sure if the problem is that I *actually* blame myself or that I instinctively try to convince myself it’s my fault without really believing it. In any case, I nearly always at least manage to conclude that I should have done something differently, and that I either suck at being a friend/girlfriend, suck at dealing with life, am an annoying and selfish person, or …well, you get the idea.

I think the first thing I’d try to change would be to constrain myself to only thinking about and dealing with the situation at hand – what can I do differently next time? How can I constructively convey my frustration to someone else if they’ve upset me? Logically, this should be a more reasonable approach than trying to figure out more generally whether I’m selfish or a hypocrite, and what I should do about it if I am.

But everytime I try to think I get tangled up in circles and knots. I dislike it when I “take my anger out on someone else” – but at the same time if someone has made me angry I want to be able to communicate this to them instead of bottling it up. The scariest part of the whole process is that I end up feeling like I don’t actually know what I believe or want (in both specific and general senses). This is highly problematic for me, even though I’ve been reassured that nearly everyone goes through some form of “identity crisis” and many people don’t figure out who they are and what they want from life until much later in life (if ever). I’m scared of never having a strong sense of identity or place in the world. Not knowing what I’m doing with my life can be paralyzing: how can I make choices about what classes to take if I don’t know what I want to major in? How can I figure out what I want to major in if I don’t know what I’m most interested in or what kind of career I’d like? At some point the solution is to just make the choices and hope for the best. But that doesn’t stop me from being angry at not being able to figure it out.

I’m burnt out, but the world goes on and I with it – it’s a sunny day, it’s Friday, and I’ll once again put these concerns on the back burner until they boil over again.

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