Posted by noa on June 3, 2003, at 20:40:49
In reply to Mildly Sociopathic, posted by kara lynne on June 3, 2003, at 1:06:52
Kara,
You do not sound psychotic at all!
The lifestyle and social world of your "boyfriend" sounds utterly unappealing to me, too! It sounds shallow and plastic. Ugh.
I would also be annoyed at being eyed by the clerks, and I can just imagine that kind of scenario where I am already on edge and then something sets me off, like the bitter dog lady.
Yes, you sound stressed and on edge, but nothing close to psychotic.
Today, I also was feeling like I was not holding it together well enough--kind of acting out with my own bitchiness at work. Feeling like I am "losing it" in the sense of one more stupid annoying thing could trigger me to do something impulsive like just walk out and quit my job on the spot. Out of proportion to the moment, you know. But I feel like my resources are stretched, I have very little patience left for the changes, the stresses, the stupid control freak power strugges that my boss seems to try to set up all the time and which are so good at pushing my (at the moment hair-trigger) buttons.
But we aren't psychotic, m'dear. We're just feeling "on the verge" as they say. Sometimes it helps to think of the scenes in the movie "Network" where they lean out the window and scream at the top of their lungs, "I"M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!".
Anyway, I have at times in my life acted all bitchy to total strangers as a displacement of my anger. I feel bad for them after the fact. I'm not sure that I feel bad for your dog-hating dog owner, though, LOL. Once I was in a women's clothing store, perusing the racks. It was one of those discount stores with long racks, close together, also the racks are rather tall, so the aisles feel "close". Anyway, there was a couple there, man and woman, and a 5-ish little girl who was whining and whining. It seemed perfectly obvious to me that since there were two adults there, one of them should have taken the kid outside to wait, since everyone knows how awfully boring and tortuous it can be to accompany your mom as she slowly looks at hundreds of dresses and suits, etc. But it wasn't obvious to them, unfortunately. To make it worse, they were actually GOADING her to whine more!! Yep. She was whiny, so they said that if she didn't "behave" they wouldn't take her to or give her a birthday party. This made her really upset and she'd start to cry and whine more. They kept feeding her unhappiness by goading her with this idea of no birthday party. Even when she quieted down for a bit, they actually brought it up again!! At that point, I just couldn't bear it anymore and I said something to them. I don't remember exactly what I said but it had something to do with not setting her up, and it was too much to expect her to go through all the racks and why doesn't he take her out and give her a break, and can't they see they're making it worse by teasing her, etc. They were pissed at me and told me to mind my own business. I told them that I usually am very good at minding my own business but it was no longer their own private business because they were carrying on this stuff in a very public way and practically on top of me and it is very hard to shop with this going on and I don't blame the little girl I think she is just tired, what can you expect, etc. etc.
I don't regret that little eruption of mine. It pisses me off again just thinking about how they acted. Not only was I infringed up with this annoying family scene, but I also guess that I identified with the little girl and the way they kept setting her up and seemed to enjoy teasing her. What they were saying was not helping as a behavior strategy--it was just provoking her more. That infuriated me and their assumption that they can foist their bad parenting behavior on other people in the store---AARRGGGHHH.
poster:noa
thread:231001
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030517/msgs/231187.html