I just read this article and think it is so true! As a teacher, I see students who struggle to make friends, are left behind… and no matter how great their grades are, things just aren’t right if they don’t make friends!

This article is great and I will find a way to release my anger. I recognised myself in this article big time. I get angry, it simmers and comes out all wrong. It tires me out to be this angry at so many things. So I have to find a way to release. I’m thinking of some kind of karate or kickboxing class. Not only will it help with the anger, it will help me stay in better shape!

Oh and I love the part about the singing loudly in a car… I do that all the time when I need a release! What do you guys do with anger?

And the topic at tonight’s meeting was….ANGER.

I am not a violent woman but I have anger “issues.” A lot of us women have anger “issues” – we just don’t know it. That’s because we don’t know how angry we are. For me, I didn’t really even know what anger was until I was told I was angry.

I learned there is obvious, apparent anger – like when your girlfriend brings over her little dog and it makes a deposit on the area rug in your bedroom and you don’t see it and you are barefoot and then next thing you know…

Then there is the anger that rises like yeast. It simmers as a resentment for weeks, months or even decades. It is deep inside you, where it is dark. What started as just a grain of anger begins to bubble up and froth. You mix it with a bunch of other ingredients – jealousy, indignation, pride – knead it over and over and over and the next thing you know you have this big icky blob that sticks to anything it comes in contact with – your boss, kids, partner or even your dog.

(Ok. Enough with the bread analogy. I’m getting hungry.)

Seriously, many of us women never learned to do anger, especially if you are like me, raised by a mother who never burned a bra or protested the war. I was taught  that ladies do not get angry. We dismiss verbal barbs – “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.”

What does anger have to do with depression? Everything. My depression is easily triggered by anger turned inward. I get mad at myself for letting a guy treat me bad. I get mad at my boss. I get mad that there are only are a couple of  women parked in the executive parking lot.

What do I do with that anger? I play it over and over in my head. I think of the things I should have said or done. I think of ways to get even. Then I think what a loser I am for not actually doing or saying the things now rattling around in my head.

That’s anger. I finally dealt with mine with a baseball bat. My therapist wanted me to use a whiffle bat and I tried. When you’re talking 40+ years of anger a whiffle bat is kind of lame. So I got myself a metal bat and headed to a junkyard. I took a Sharpie and wrote the names of the people who had really hurt me on the hood of an old green truck. Then I went to town. Smashing windshields and headlights. Kicking tires with my steel toed boots. Swinging over and over again until I could swing no more.

Of course, this felt really good at the time but the next day I could barely move. Every muscle, EVERY MUSCLE, ached and throbbed. So, here is my ladylike way of dealing with anger now: I get in the car, roll up the windows, find a road with little traffic, turn on the stereo and scream along with Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know.

Or I jump into my pool, dunk underwater and scream. Or I go to the gym and torture one of those squishy medicine balls by raising it above my head and slamming it into the floor over and over and over.

(Wow! I’m feeling better just writing about doing this!)

All I am saying is, if you have depression, find your anger. It is there. You may not look angry or feel angry. But it is there.

Get rid of it or it will get rid of you.

I’ve recently read this article that said that people who kept busy were happier. Is it happiness really or do you just not have time to question anything? To wonder what your life could be or should be?  Should we wonder about this anyway and are we complicating our life way too much when we wonder about these things.

I went to see a great movie yesterday. The movie is documentary I had seen mentionned on Oprah a while back. It is titled: Babies. It’s a very simple film, with minimal dialogue when the director follows the first year of life of four babies. The babies come from the US, Africa, Mongolia and Japan. So basically, just watching babies grow in their environment. It is a great film, so relaxing and I hightly recommend it.

As I watched the mother from Africa, taking care of her babies and breastfeeding often two of them at a time, I wondered how happy she was? Does she have time to wonder about a life that would be different, easier, better? Does she simply enjoy what she has? I have a feeling she does not ask herself as many questions as I ask myself. She is probably way too busy for that… and maybe that makes her happier. Maybe it’s all those questions I keep asking myself that make my life difficult.

I have tried, for the last few days, to really live one day at a time. That does not mean I don’t plan activities with friends in advance, but I am trying to not worry about what life will be like in the next years. To simply try to focus on here and now. It’s not easy but I’m trying. Things are not as they should be, but I don’t really know HOW they should be so I can’t really explain it.

So I’m working on taking care of myself, my daughter, my home and trying not to think of so many things and ask myself so many questions

I just found this really good article about how to fight fairly and communicate with your spouse. I thought I would share this!

A Couple’s Guide to Fighting

It is amazing how much I can talk and still have trouble communicating. I am extremely bad at communicating my needs and wants. It may come from the fact that I don’t even know what I want! I just hate that people assume they know what I want all the time.

I try to communicate with people the best I can. But how do you tell people what you need so that they understand. And what if they never do? What do you do then? I am always oscillating between trying so hard not to hurt anyone’s feelings and blowing up because I don’t feel heard.

I am currently reading Eat Pray Love, and I just finished the first section of the book where she goes to Italy in search of pleasure. What is that exactly? Just like the woman in the book, I think I am at a point in my life where I am trying to figure that out. I just don’t have the money to go to Italy for months an figure it out. So I’ll have to keep going and figure this out while living my life and doing what I have to do.

Hopefully once I figure it out, I’ll be able to express myself better. This may help my various relationships immensely!

I almost ruined my own day yesterday. Yep, me, no one else. Although it was initially other people I was mad at. I was hurt because D. forgot to tell me about something he had next week. Sounds stupid to get hurt over that, but he often forgets to tell me about stuff like that and it makes me feel left out. But my reaction was WAY over the top. I got mad. I turned this hurt, this feeling of being left out and not being important into pure anger, seeking revenge. This is a part of me I DO NOT LIKE!

As I took a walk this morning, I listened to this podcast about happiness and it talked about having two kinds of emotions: one out of love and one out of fear. All the emotions we control by trying to understand others and ourselves are out of love. We control our emotions and do not let them take over out of fear. All others, like jealousy, seeking revenge etc. are out of fear. Out of fear that we are not enough, out of fear that we have something to prove to the world.

I am getting better at controlling my emotions and not letting them take over, but I’m far from perfect. Yesterday, I was far from controlling my emotions. They were controlling me. And all it did was affect ME. Yeah it was not fun for the other people around me, of course. But I almost ruined MY day by letting my emotions control me.

I don’t like when D. forgets to tell me about things. It does hurt me. It does make me feel left out. And I am right to tell him so and he should be careful with that. But I cannot control what he does. I cannot control anything but my emotions. So, I’ll keep working on this. Working on controlling my emotions, which in turn, will control my reactions.

I have decided to try and write what I am most grateful about as much as possible. This is all in an effort to find happiness and be more positive in life….

I am grateful for D. Things seem a lot better. We still have a lot of work ahead of us but he is teaching me patience and acceptance and I am grateful for it. I am also grateful for his patience and his help.

I am grateful for my mother, who thinks of me all the time and does all that she can to understand and accept me as I am.

I am grateful for my friends who are always there for me, to help or just to listen. I am very lucky to have them in my life.

I am grateful for my teaching degree. It allows me to have possibilities in terms of work at all times.

I am grateful for my little appartment. It is cozy and feels safe and I feel at peace, most of the time, here.

I am grateful for my daughter who amazes me every day and teaches me to be the best person I can be. I am her example and I strive to be the best mom and woman I can be through her eyes.

and I am grateful for my truck. Sounds silly, but not only is it a reliable mode of transportation, it allowed me to go get a dishwasher yesterday! Oh and I am grateful I no longer have to wash dishes by hand

After reading the following article I wondered, where is this society going? People think more and more of themselves and I really wonder what’s going to happen to us when we grow old. I have great friends and I try to foster that in my daughter. I also try to teach her to do things for others and most of all, to value family…. But I seem to be in a minority… When I teach, I look around and see students with Ipods in their ears, not talking to one another. It’s awful. Our kids are shuffled from one structured activity to another, never developping the social skills necessary. They simply follow the set of rules of the instructor.

Is this why our elderly barely get visits? Is this why there are more and more cases or bullying and ADHD? I wonder where this society is going and where I’m going if I continue to try to think of others and not just think of myself… and am I raising my daughter wrong? Will she have to adapt in a world that will make her unhappy because everbody only thinks of themselves? Will she grow up just as frustrated as I am with people today? I wonder….

College Students Failing Empathy Test

College students today are significantly less empathic than students of the 80′s or 90′s, according to a new study by the University of Michigan. The 30-year longitudinal study of nearly 14,000 students found a 40% drop in empathy from the late 70′s, with the sharpest decline occurring after the year 2000.

Why is this important? Because empathy helps us connect as a society. It’s our glue and grease. Without it we’re less collaborative and more violent, polarized and disrespectful. People do things like refuse to take the census (12% of the US population said they wouldn’t or probably wouldn’t complete the census – of that 12% nearly half were under 30). Obviously personal relationships are also more challenging and less nourishing.

 

Today’s kids are not defective. In fact I think that if those 70′s students took the test today many would be less empathic now than they were then. There are aspects of our society that we need to consider and adjust – namely our ever-increasing dependence on technology and an emphasis on the self over society.

In research that I conducted for my book on Generation Y I found that an over-emphasis on the self and constant messages of “don’t settle” and “you can do anything” often backfired. Obviously, if you’re highly focused on yourself there’s less energy for others. Additionally, many of the young adults I interviewed were anxious or angry. Anxious that their choices weren’t good enough, or angry that they weren’t as central at work or in their peer relationships as they were to their parents and teachers.

Technology used to facilitate and orchestrate existing relationships is fabulous – but it’s a lousy substitute for face-to-face intimacy. The average college student has over 400 Facebook friends – but how many of those know what’s really in her heart? You can only feel loved to the extent that you show others who you really are – all else is superficial admiration. Time online is time spent away from real human contact – where mirror neurons fire and empathy and intimacy is born.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/kyarrow/detail??blogid=152&entry_id=64588#commentform#ixzz0pptmMudx

I really like this author and cannot wait to read her book. I like the idea to make happiness an actual project and that’s what I’m trying to do. This specific article has you think about the obstacles to happiness. My main obstacles are clearly identified: trying to please everyone so that I end up not being myself and being unhappy, stress (over money, over what people think, over my future etc…), and my relationship that needs to be more clearly defined… Whether you are happy or not, this is an article worth reading!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-project/201005/happiness-question-whats-obstacle-your-happiness

May 27, 2010, Happiness

Happiness Question: What’s an obstacle to your happiness?

I am seriously guilty of this. I too often argue for the sake of being right but never actually gain anything from the argument. Me and D. often leave arguments both frustrated. I will work at being happy and not being right. I will try to let go of arguments and try to listen more… in all my life’s situations! This article found on http://charlottekamman.com/ really made me think and I will try to apply this as much as I can!