Friday, December 1

Merry, Ho Ho

Time for the mad rush which is Christmas.

My mother and I have started the weekly shopping trips. At 70 years old, she boasts of 14 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren and shops for every single one... along with their significant others. She's definitely "showing the love."

I'm still learning to love. I have a wonderful book of meditations I read every morning with the intention of getting my day off to the appropriate start. It reminds me of things I should already know, but find myself forgetting.

My Jessica made mention of one such point yesterday... Fear creates anger. Fussiness, being a grump, crankiness... whatever form it takes, often stems from something much deeper. Human nature often makes us reactive to anger, rather than taking the time to understand the source or the real problem. Being reactive, of course, just adds "fuel to the fire."

But, if we take the time to try and understand the fear associated with the anger, there won't be any brushfires to put out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dead on again MizMell! My new (4 yrs married) husband and I have discussed this at length. I am particularly guilty of allowing my fear to morph into anger. Any vulnerable emotion can go this route. Learning to appropriately identify the true emotion before it morphs to anger, has helped 10-fold. "I'm afraid" "I'm hurting physically" "I'm struggling" all before the reactive anger, makes a world of difference. And it takes conscience effort to break the cycle of allowing vulnerable emotions to erupt through anger.

:-)Great insight, MizMell!

3T

Puck said...

one thing I tell my clients is that there are only two root emotions: fear and love. Everything positive comes out of love and everything negative comes from fear.

In 10 years, I've never figured out a contradiction to that.