Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(46)

“More annoyance.”

“But what’s the emotion under it?” he persisted.

“I don’t know. Anger?”

“What does it feel like?”

    “Can’t you just tell me?”

“Keep going. Are there any images that elicit the feeling?”

I had no idea what Dan was talking about. “Musical notes?” I asked, searching.

“Is there a feeling?”

“Frustration.”

“Because, why?”

“Because my intention was to listen to music, and now I can’t.”

“Anything else?”

“Stupid?” I asked. “Useless?”

“Helpless?”

“Yes!”

“And what does that feel like?”

“Sad?”

“Sit with that.”

“Helpless and sad,” I agreed, “but then where does the anger come in?”

“Sad is your internal reaction, which turns to anger because anger sets you in kinetic motion to avoid the sadness of sitting there and not listening to music, and knowing your plans have been thwarted. Your anger is your way to avoid sadness.”

“Hold on. Let me write that down.” I didn’t have a pen.

“You were a helpless little girl who had parents that left you alone too much. When something doesn’t go your way, you get angry because you feel that helplessness.”

“So, what is my exercise to stop this behavior?”

“Identification. Awareness. Modification. Or, if you like acronyms—IAM.” Dan was the one who liked acronyms, so I had no choice but to start liking them too. My life had become filled with acronyms and wheels.

    “You identify the internal emotion you are feeling when something upsets you or doesn’t go your way. You stop, take a breath, and become aware of it. Then you simply modify your behavior—and/or your reaction. You may find that after you give it some space, you may not want to react at all.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about people doing that.”

“Are you ever able to sit back when you’ve heard a story more than once, or know the person you’re speaking to is wrong about something, but you withhold?” Dan asked.

Dan was talking about impulse control. He may as well have been speaking Portuguese.

“Does impulse control go with empathy? Because I don’t have that one either.”

I came to understand that motion had been cemented in my life at a time when I needed it to survive, and over time it became the only way I knew. It was my oxygen. I didn’t know how not to move fast, or how not to state my opinion, or how to just observe something rather than insert myself.

“But all that action doesn’t coincide with my sleep schedule,” I pointed out. “How is it that I can’t stop moving, but I also want to hibernate and withdraw? I can sleep for twenty hours straight, well…if I take a Xanax.”

“Because you’re exhausted.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, that was a dumb question.” This was a stimulating conversation. Things were clicking into place. “Well, this explains why I can’t shut the fuck up.”

    “Well…”

“The other day, I was on my way into the airport when I heard about Trump undoing a ban on some terrible fertilizer that enlarges children’s brains—the company who makes it donated one million dollars to his inaugural committee.”

“Okay…”

“When I walked into the lounge, I headed straight to the little section that plays Fox News, hoping to find someone I could excoriate for continuing to support Trump. I can’t go on like this.”

“Well, that particular issue isn’t an unreasonable thing to have anger about.”

“Okay, fine, but I don’t want to be filled with such vitriol for Trump supporters. I want to be able to listen, and not always insert myself when there are things I disagree with. Not just with Trump supporters. With everything.”

Now that I had identified the genesis of my anger, I could better articulate what I wanted so badly to get out of this therapy experience: I wanted to learn how to be quiet.

My plan after ending my Netflix show was to travel the country and speak to people who had points of view and experiences different from my own. To understand why people continued to support Donald Trump. To do something—besides sitting around on my soapbox and complaining. I was getting so much more out of therapy with Dan than anything else I had ever done in my life. I was being heard, and I didn’t even have to yell.

“I’d like to order a scoop of quiet determination,” I told Dan. “I’ve only ever had the loud kind. I want to listen more and talk less. Rectitude without the self-righteousness.”

    Dan told me to be reasonable with myself. To know that you don’t break habits overnight, and that being aware of your bad habits is half the battle. It’s downhill after you identify what your bad habits are.

He told me not to be a perfectionist about it. I had to slow down and go through the process of change. Identification. Awareness. Modification.

“Just so you know, I’m not a perfectionist. Whatever the opposite of a perfectionist is—that’s what I am. Is there a word for that?”