DailyBlog: What Makes Me Angry?

*** The first three books in my six-part dystopian series have officially made their way out into the world! Check them out!
For the sake of blogging, self-exploration, and contemplation, I’ve been slowly making my way through answering questions from this list

Today’s Question: What makes you angry? Why?

Am I supposed to pick just one thing!? If I wrote about all of the things, this would be the length of about one hundred novels! Lol.

Okay, I’ll attempt to become a bit more serious here. I’ll shift the question from ‘what makes me angry’ to ‘What is something that is sure to provoke your anger no matter what?’

INVALIDATION.

Say it with me again slowly, folks. I n v a l i d a t i o n . 

There is nothing that grinds my gears faster than being treated as if my thoughts / feelings / emotions / hobbies / general autonomy is ‘silly’ or ‘wrong.’ Unfortunately, I grew up as the black sheep of my family, so to speak. My interests, hobbies, and general beliefs  were different from my other family members, and for a multitude of other reasons that I don’t feel like getting into with this post, I felt like I was constantly invalidated. This continued into my adult life, again, the reasons aren’t something I want to go into detail with right now.

I’m not obsessed with being right. I’m not interested in arguing opinions when it’s obvious we will never agree, but what I am very, very interested in, is approaching any conversation about differences of opinions, feelings, or viewpoints with a mindfulness toward the other person. I try VERY hard when discussing disagreements, whether it’s a disagreement I’m having or a disagreement between two other people, to make sure that the person feels heard and validated even if I don’t agree with them. I still want to make sure that I acknowledge that their thoughts / feelings come from somewhere. I want to make sure that they don’t feel belittled. In my opinion, causing someone to feel powerless in that way is a very cruel form of manipulation used for the purpose of stroking your own insecure ego.

Even as an adult, when I have nightmares, regardless of the varying details, the theme is often the same; it’s people invalidating me in one form or another. It’s definitely a button of mine, and something I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to ‘get over’ per se. I can stay calm and level-headed in many situations, but if you want to piss me off and become the straw that breaks the camel’s back, that’s the way to do it.