Why polite girls are suffering inside
“Seriously?” I said as my eyebrows nearly hitting my hairline.
“Yeah, they were supposed to call you. We never got our shipment of vaccines, so we can’t do his Covid shot.” She said with a sympathetic look.
I took a breath. But I got him early from school! I rearranged my entire afternoon! We made plans to stay home this weekend in case he felt crappy! I got a confirmation phone call! They checked me IN for godsake!!!
“I totally get it. It’s not your fault. Thanks for telling us, we’ll go downstairs and sort it out.” I said.
Downstairs the woman at the front desk took responsibility.
“Ohhh yeah okay. That was on me. And I even checked you IN! I should have caught it.” Her fun purple hair a mismatch for the apology on her face.
“That’s okay, it happens. Could we reschedule…”
I proceeded to make a new appointment to get my toddler his vaccine a week later.
I got back in the car. Recalculating my afternoon and the weekend ahead as I pulled out of the parking lot. Traffic was jammed.
I could feel the annoyance, the frustration, the impatience, the irritation all scratching at my insides, filling my chest with hot lava.
The next 30 seconds provided approximately 79 opportunities to live up to the reputation of being a Masshole.1 I’m typically actually a pretty kind driver… but as I witnessed myself getting more and more impatient, I realized:
The only reason I was feeling so edgy was because I still had leftover emotions from the interaction at the doctor’s office. And the next thought I caught myself thinking was illuminating:
Why do I have to do everything right and everyone else can fuck up and be an irresponsible asshole?!
Ahh…. there it is. Resentment! Resentment for always doing it ‘right’ and being the one left to feel like crap. It felt like being taken advantage of.
You see, I KNOW it’s RIGHT to treat people kindly. I personally VALUE kindness quite highly. So I’m not typically the person whose a bitch to the human who happens to be on the other side of something going wrong.
But I AM still someone who experiences feeling really fucking annoyed. And when that happens OVER and OVER… well… the feeling just builds.
And here is where I think good girls get wronged: not having the tools and skills to process that emotion through their body.
Because when you’re taught to be kind to other people, you’re taught to SWALLOW your emotions - to act kindly DESPITE them.
Excellent. I’m all for it. But what then?! Without proper knowledge of what to DO with the roiling frustration inside you, it’ll fester. And that’s what turns good kind people into a powder keg of emotion.
It seems to me that this is part of why everyone who wonders “I’m going everything RIGHT - why don’t I FEEL good/happy/content/joyful in my life?!?!?!?!?!” are so confounded.
You ARE doing everything right. You’re creating a kind generous gracious world on the outside. And we NEED that. So please, keep going. But in order for that to be sustainable, you gotta take care of your insides.
You gotta release the emotion out of your body so it doesn’t build up.
For me, what I did in this scenario, as to really NAME all the things I was feeling, then grip the steering wheel and clench all my muscles and hold my breath — all for 30 seconds (again I was in traffic so was safe doing so!). Then I took a sharp inhale and a smooooooth exhale out. This got the emotion out of my body.
Then I turned on Spotify and sang out loud, which brought me from an activated state to a relaxed state due to the vibration of my singing voice stimulating my vagus nerve2.
I put my blinker on. We turned right. A few hundred yards later I pulled over in front of the ice cream shop.
“Hey kiddo, you wanna get some ice cream today?”
“CHOCOLATE?!” He squealed.
“Yep, let’s go get some.”
And we had a lovely freaking time.
Massholes are people with Massachusetts license plates who have no regard for others on the road.
the nerve responsible for turning on your rest and digest nervous system