Venting

[jay]

A couple of days ago, I looked at a graph, had a half-hour of angst over some implications, vented in an LJ entry, shook it off and went on to work, focussed on other things. I nearly disabled comments... instead, spent most of my energy over the past two days replying to comments and working out the aftereffects with various partners.

A meta-level comment: I periodically see something that I perceive as negatively reflecting on myself, become depressed, and then rebound. The "down" period is usually minutes-to-hours... I don't generally sit alone at home bashing myself. And I know that I'm not worthless, or completely without some virtues... whatever I may feel when I'm in one of those self-critical periods.

Posting during those periods, however, has led to unnecessary drama on several occasions (either here or on alt.poly) over the past five years. I think I should begin disabling comments when I'm venting at myself...

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Something I've been learning the hard way over the last couple of months is not to discuss my feelings/emotions while I'm still processing them. I've made some very hurtful statements that end up not even in the least reflecting how I really feel about the situation, but because I'm new at dealing with intense emotions, I can run through a whole gamut of feelings as a reaction before I settle on what clicks in my brain as my real feelings (and it ends up usually agreeing with what my logical side tells me makes sense). This has caused the wasted expense of a lot of energy. I've tried to set a subconscious "governor" on my mouth, and am working on actively thinking about engaging it, especially when I feel the rush accompanied by an intense emotional reaction. I'm not perfect yet (far from it), but I'm improving. I think the idea of making totally private LJ posts as an outlet in your case is a great idea. Maybe you don't even have to do it on LJ for fear of mis-marking a post and having others read it. Keep a password-protected text document somewhere. Use a paper journal. Whatever...

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Oh, can I ever sympathize with that! Both WRT expression-while-processing (which can lead to slightly-inconsistent reactions as processing continues) and massive energy expenditures.