Anger

A component of this thing I'm dealing with is feeling angry so often at such slight provocation. I constantly feel slighted, devalued, abandoned; these feelings generally do have some basis in actual events (i.e. a friend does cancel plans) but none in reality (i.e. the friendship was not actually a lie culminating in wholesale rejection.) But I feel hurt, and my brain blows that hurt out of proportion, turning the normal bumps and bruises of life into mortal wounds. And then fight-or-flight kicks in, and for better or worse, my instinct is to attack where I feel I've been attacked. (And oh I have such capacity for rage, for cold rudeness, for coming up with exactly the kinds of sneering accusations that would indeed be perfect for ending a friendship.) I know enough to not actually blow up at people, but not enough to stop being angry/not get angry in the first place. So I seethe.

And then eventually I do see the friend again, but I'm still seething, and I don't know if you know this but it is actually very hard to have a normal conversation with someone when you are secretly hysterical w/ rage against them. So just at the moment when I most need friendship, I am least capable of engaging in it (and also least capable of believing that anyone actually feels it for me.)

Ugh. I would like to finish this post off with some kind of action plan or epiphany, but I don't have one. This is going to be a long struggle, and I don't even know what my weapons are.