It doesn't work this way for everybody, nor is there a reason why it should.

[avevale_intelligencer]

So this is just my personal experience here. My thoughts are not your thoughts, my mileage is not your mileage, my oil pressure light is not...you get the idea. This post is descriptive, not prescriptive, and there are no universal truths contained herein that I know of.

It's often stated as if it *were* a universal truth that anger is a healthy thing, that we should all be totally honest about our feelings because that "gets them out" and we'll all feel better, that if we let everyone know exactly what we're feeling about everything the streams will run the purer and we shouldn't bottle things up because that will make us ill. As a confirmed bottler (and ill person; go figure), I can say with absolute confidence that every time I have followed this advice and expressed my negative feelings honestly;

a) I have felt worse;
b) everyone around me has felt worse;
c) situations that were simple have become complicated;
d) situations that were complicated have become actively unpleasant;
e) it's taken a great deal of time and effort on everyone's part just to clear up the mess I made and get us all back to some kind of modus vivendi.

Every time. No exceptions. Being relatively sane, the only conclusion I can come to is that honestly expressing my negative emotions is something I should never ever do. Whether this is because I don't do it right, or because my negative emotions are just so toxic that they're not like other people's, or possibly because I have a psychic septic tank while others are connected to the main drain, I don't know.

The problem, of course, is that emotion trumps reason for me as I believe it does for most people, and sometimes I can't help it. At that point I can only apologise for mucking up other people's lives with stuff that should have stayed decently inside where it could do no harm to anyone else, and ask them as far as possible to ignore it, and try my best not to do it again.

So that's what I will do.

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

And thus we discern the vital social role of the "best friend"^TM: The one person^* to whom, in a moment of crisis, you can vent your true feelings in the confidence that they will *not* allow said feelings to go any further and thereby make anyone feel worse, or any situation get more complicated or more unpleasant; and who will avoid the need for any clearing up of mess *by anybody*, by simply not remembering a word of what you said the following day. The application of liberal quantities of alchohol (to both participants) may be beneficial for that final detail in particular.

OK, so there may in fact need to be some literal clearing up of physical mess, but that seems to be a fair trade IMHO.

^*(Sometimes, if you're really lucky, you'll have more than one person who can fulfil this role. And sometimes, if you're really *un*lucky, you'll have no such person at all. =:o\ )