Managing Anger
I live a relatively peaceful life. Man Wonderful and I are very happy and pretty content.
Occasionally we allow ourselves to be treated badly by other adults. That sounds dodgy - I don't mean in a sado-masochistic context - let me explain.
If we are asked to help someone out, more often than not we say 'yes, of course we can help you'.
We often don't even stop to think: we are nice people, friendly people.
It may inconvenience us, but you know, it's helping them.
Sometimes it gets really wearing. We are tired, trying to do our usual things, managing our own lives too.
And - like happened today - helping out can wear a bit thin. What turned from 'could you help for 1/2 an hour' to 'we haven't even had our meal or been to the shop!'
It's cup-of-sugar syndrome.
Someone asks to borrow a cup of sugar.
Fine.
They ask to borrow an egg.
Sure.
Could they borrow some flour and milk.
Um..yes, here.
And what happens is they are at home making pancakes while you are at home looking at an empty larder.
To change this we need to be stronger.
'Could you help for 1/2 an hour?'
Yes - but it can only be half an hour.
Or
'Could you help for 1/2 an hour?'
Not today, no.
Managing situations better, saying no more often..these don't make us bad people.
These make us better at managing anger.
FMxx
Learning to say no is really difficult if your first instinct is always to say yes; and for many nice people being helpful is just ingrained, don't you think? For me it's just paying it forward - I help someone, usually older, now in the hope that someone else will help me when I'm old and need a bit of muscle or someone to stand up for me. But as you say, it can get too much and there's nothing worse than putting yourself through feeling used and getting angry, which only hurts you, not the person making you feel that way. I need to do this more myself, and be more open about the reasons rather than making excuses. 'No, that's not convenient' is a perfectly good and complete answer I think. Note to self: you don't have to explain yourself when you're asked to do someone a favour.
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