Latest / Many Things with Steph Libby / It could be worse (and why that's not helping)

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It could be worse (and why that's not helping) · Many Things with Steph Libby

0:02
Hello.
0:02
Hello.
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Welcome back to Solitary Creature.
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I'm Steph, and I'm documenting the ups and downs of my self growth journey towards living a more mindful, intentional, and fulfilling life.
0:14
Last week when I was talking about body image and weight loss, there was a saying that I talked about hating it could be worse.
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I just couldn't get this phrase out of my head this week, and I was really curious why it bothers me so much.
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I have such a visceral reaction to it.
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It makes me angry.
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It makes me frustrated almost instantly, even out of context.
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Just the saying itself strikes such a deep chord with me, and I couldn't figure out why that is.
0:41
People say it all the time at work, among my friend and family.
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So I've been trying to figure out where this reaction comes from.
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I'm trying to be better about really examining my behavior and my reactions to things, just really paying more attention to them.
0:56
Especially when they are recurring reactions because some of them are harmless, but I fear others might be holding me back or stunting my growth because I've just become so used to having that reaction that I take for granted why I have that reaction in the first place.
1:12
Because the saying fills me with so much anger and frustration, and because I'm really trying hard to work on my anger, I thought this would be a good one to talk about.
1:22
So first off, why am I so angry? Anger is a really strange emotion for me because I've felt all sorts of shades of anger in my life.
1:31
Of course, frustration, disappointment, but it's only in the last few years that I really.
I've been feeling what I would call rage, like true rage, not a hyperbolic melodramatic, where I'm calling simple frustration rage.
I'm talking pure, unadulterated rage.
Like when I literally see red, my vision blurs, my body becomes hot.
I feel like my eyes could pop outta my head, and I reach a point where I'm not sure I can control my actions and I need.
But sometimes violent outbursts to get it outta my system, even just a tiny bit.
And when that happens, I almost immediately start crying.
Partly from shame.
Partly from embarrassment.
It's not a temper tantrum.
I literally feel like a cartoon character with steam coming outta my ears and my body turns into a bottle rocket.
I know my rage and anger started.
Building about a year or two ago, maybe even a little longer.
But a lot of it has started with my relationships and particularly the relationship I was in at the time.
Being lied to feeling used, feeling taken for granted, and feeling like you're not getting any of your needs met.
We'll do that.
It made me start to question why this person wanted to be with me, and then why was I putting up with it and giving chance after chance.
Which then caused me to be angry at myself, not just at this other person.
And my friends and family started calling attention to the choices I was making, and that made me embarrassed and I felt stupid.
So then my anger just grew and grew, my resentments festered into anger.
It's not that I've never felt anger before, but my anger and frustrations used to feel.
More momentary and very specific to something.
But now my anger has evolved into something that is more constant.
My anger is more persistent.
It's become a real problem, and I feel like I'm always a little bit on edge.
It's like my anger is riding sidecar to my life.
It's never not close by.
It's always within reach.
It is the emotion that I feel the the most proximity to.
So it's become the emotion that I almost always dive into as soon as something happens to me.
Whatever it is, I feel anger before I feel almost anything else, which is a really scary and uncomfortable position to be in for someone who has never thought of themselves as an angry person.
It's just the anger is, it's always at my fingertips and anything can set me off.
And the worst part is that because I'm not great at speaking up for myself all the time.
Um, I'd keep this anger in and would build and build, and I finally explode, but nothing would really change.
This whole anger cycle starts right back up until I explode again.
And then the explosions became so much more frequent because nothing was ever getting resolved.
There was all this residual anger, so it would just keep spilling over sooner and sooner and sooner until I was just angry all the time.
And so I'm still angry a lot of the time.
I'm a tightly wound person regardless, so I feel like I'm a, I'm a great breeding ground for anger, and because I have so much un result anger bubbling under the surface, it really doesn't take much to set me off.
Now, my reactions and anger are hugely disproportionate to the trigger.
Um, my anger is, my anger is just so.
Unregulated.
I just, it feels like my anger controls me and I don't control it.
I know when it's gonna pop up.
But yeah, I'm always still surprised when it shows up and I don't know how to resolve and work through some of the anger that I have.
And I don't know, I just feel like my resentments and anger.
I have completely rewired my brain and commandeered my emotional response system.
It's so embedded into my everyday existence Now, as a result, my patience is razor thin, and I used to be the most patient person on the planet patient and diplomatic used to be how people would always describe me, like bosses, friends.
Those were two words that like always came up.
But I feel like I am a completely different person now.
I don't recognize this angry person.
Anger is such a foreign emotion to me because it's not really one of the feelings that I would, um, gravitate towards.
Most frequently.
So anger has transformed me in the worst ways, and I'm having a hard time letting it go.
Like I, I never realized how difficult it was to work through anger and to work through resentment.
And that once anger is there and it's very prevalent, it's really easy.
It just kinda like multiplies like a virus So when I hear it could be worse, I literally wanna smash the person's face in.
So I know anger is definitely at work there, but why does it bother me so much? How can a commonplace everyday saying that it's used so often that it's almost lost all meaning trigger my anger so easily.
The first reason it bothers me is because it's dismissive, right? I know it's supposed to feel like a silver lining.
That helps put my situation in perspective, but it just feels really dismissive and my feelings have been dismissed my entire life.
My mom used to say to me all the time, you're just too sensitive.
Being too sensitive and it could be worse.
Feel like cousins.
It invalidates me and my experience and my feelings.
When someone says it to me, it feels like what they're really saying is your feelings don't matter.
Someone else's does.
Even if that's not what they mean by it.
That's what I'm hearing.
Being too sensitive is another saying that has completely ruined me because I think it has helped shape me into being a people pleaser.
It's taught me to always put my emotions on the back burner and then I shouldn't trust my emotions or gut feeling because I'm too sensitive.
So when I'm feeling might just be an overreaction, it's taught me to.
Trust what other people tell me about my feelings more and to value how they interpret my feelings more than I value.
My own interpretation of my feelings, it's made me feel like I have too many emotions, so I tamp them down.
I wouldn't speak up for myself because someone's just going to tell me that I'm too sensitive anyway, so why bother? So I didn't speak up in relationships when.
Say any of my exes didn't pull their weight when I thought they were making bad decisions.
And when I did talk about my feelings or what I thought, it was so foreign to me that I don't think I was really making sense.
I don't think I was articulating myself well.
I think I would put my foot in my mouth, um, because I wasn't really used to talking about.
My emotions.
I was used to thinking about my emotions, but I, I'm really not great at speaking my mind and speaking my peace to someone's face in the moment.
I was so caught up in thinking what other people think of my feelings and what I'm saying that I wasn't asking myself.
Okay, but is what I'm saying, accurate to how I'm feeling? Am am I justified in feeling this way? Instead, it would just all be about, am I making sense? Does this person get it? It, it was like.
Am I putting too much on 'em? Am I saying it the right way? Am I being considerate enough? What if they think that what I'm saying doesn't hold any truth? What if like what I'm saying is just an overreaction? Like I was thinking all those things.
I wasn't, it was just all about the other person and not about how I feel about my own feelings.
my mom telling me that I'm too sensitive eventually turned into.
Self-consciousness, and I have a lot of problems with self-esteem and my confidence, which I know are rooted in feeling like I just didn't matter.
As a kid, I was a burden.
My feelings were burdensome.
I had too many of 'em.
They didn't have time for 'em.
You know, I'm just, I'm too reactive, I'm too sensitive, all that stuff.
So.
I know as an adult that my being sensitive is actually one of the best things about me because I value empathy and emotional availability.
But now it's like I've course corrected so hard right into codependency where being a sensitive, empathetic person gets used against me Or sometimes I just become a victim of my own sensitivity or I cave because I don't wanna rock the boat or seem like I'm blowing things out of proportion.
but when I hear it could be worse at work.
It definitely feels dismissive.
I'm trying to explain that I'm feeling overwhelmed or that there's too much work coming in to reasonably manage or a project going off the rails, and my boss will just say to me, oh, it could be worse with a shrug.
And yes, of course this isn't the end of the world, but it's something difficult.
I'm trying to work through on that given day or week and instead of being offered help or a solution, I'm just kind of told to.
You know, suck it up.
So I hate it because it's not productive to me.
It doesn't help solve my problem.
It just deprioritizes me.
It tells me that I need to shelve my complaint, but if I tell myself or someone else tells me it could be worse all the time, then when does something I'm upset about matter? When does something.
Indeed become bad enough that someone needs to care about it.
It's like, okay, it could be worse.
Sure, but can't I want to make it better.
Can't.
I want to solve the problem and in order to solve problems or move through them, I feel I really have to sit in the emotions, sit in the disappointment, sit in the confusion.
Otherwise, I'm not examining why this thing I'm going through feel so bad or unjust or unfair.
Should I just be complacent because things could be worse? It also makes me feel guilty and selfish.
How I feel about something doesn't matter, and I'm told over and over again that it could be worse.
It makes me feel like I'm being self-centered and close-minded that like I think my problems are bigger than anyone else's, which is not true.
They're just my problems and I'm immediately impacted by my problems, my life, my surroundings, and I have to move through my problems every day.
I can't just sit there and ignore them.
I also hate it could be worse because it doesn't feel true.
Sure, things could always be worse, but does that mean I can't be upset by it? Does that mean that like things have to be the absolute worst in order for you to be able to acknowledge that things suck? It also feels like a slippery slope.
My whole life, people have been telling me I'm too sensitive and.
Look where it's gotten me with every relationship I've been in.
No matter how bad it gets, I would just keep telling myself, well, it could be worse.
Friendships, familial relationships.
Romantic relationships, work, relationships, everything.
And in the case of romantic relationships, then my friends and family who have been saying it could be worse to literally everything else in my life would turn to me and be like, you gotta walk away.
You gotta end this.
And I'd be thinking to myself, so everything else in my life has a possibility to be worse, and I should be thankful for what I have and what I get.
But in this one specific instance, I'm supposed to challenge that thought that has been deeply rooted in me for years.
that is what made it hard to walk away, frankly, earlier in all of my relationships because no matter how bad it got, I didn't trust my own emotions.
I didn't trust how I felt about things and.
Also, I just thought it could be worse.
We're fighting, but he is not hitting me, so it could be worse.
He's playing video games all the time and I feel ignored, but he is not a cheater.
It could be worse.
He still makes me laugh.
It could be worse.
I've said a million things like this in all my romantic relationships.
I think we should just take.
It could be worse out of our vocabulary altogether, because I don't think it's serving us the way we think it is, or at least it's not serving me.
It could be worse.
Feels a lot like settling.
It feels like giving up.
It feels a lot like accepting things that don't make me happy.
I've dedicated my life to believing it could be worse, and it has gotten me.
Nowhere.
In an Al-Anon and a lot of the healing work I've been doing, I'm learning a lot about and or thinking where two things can be true at the same time, things could be worse, but this also feels awful and that thinking feels a little more true to me.
It's still hard to reconcile and move through, but I think.
Black and white thinking yes, no thinking is so detrimental.
And I think that's where it could be worse.
Falls in for me and or thinking is at least validating.
It allows me to feel my feelings and I am a highly sensitive person.
That's really not gonna change to a.
Huge degree.
I'm always gonna be sensitive.
I'm always gonna have a lot of emotions.
I'm just learning how to cope with and share those feelings in new ways that are more conducive and limit the amount of times someone's gonna shut me down and I'm getting pick here with who I share which emotions with, because my mom, for instance, is never gonna be able to handle certain conversations around certain emotions.
I have to accept that about her.
I can't change her, and she does not wanna change.
So instead of being in this constant battle with her, I've just decided there are some topics that I am just not gonna talk to her about.
There are certain feelings I'm just not gonna share with her.
And that's a way to keep my feelings safe, but also to not invite the criticism of my feelings into my life because.
It is just not necessary.
I am learning to change my expectations for people.
If I have known someone for a few years, I know how they're capable of disappointing me.
I know what they're willing to give.
I know what they excel in as a friend or a partner and what they don't.
And while some of that can change like a little bit, some of it won't.
Just like, I am not gonna change to a vast degree for someone else.
I am who I am to a certain extent, and I can't force 'em to change.
They can't force me to change, but what? But I can change my expectations of somebody.
And when I change my expectations of someone, that's me trying to manage my disappointment.
But at the same time, I also need to start changing their hierarchy in my life and also their access to me.
I have some friends who give me nothing.
We see each other maybe once a year.
We talk on and off.
I still love them dearly, and if they ever really needed me, I'd be on the first flight out to them, but they don't give me much otherwise.
I know they put our conversation on mute.
I know that I'm not their number one priority, so they don't need to be my number one priority either.
Taylor Swift was on, um, the New Heights podcast, I think back in August, and she said something that resonated with a lot of people, including me, and she said, you should think of your energy as if it's expensive, as if it's a luxury item.
Not everyone can afford it.
Not everyone has invested in you in order to be able to have the capital for you to care about this I guess that's kind of how I'm trying to live my life now, and I think it'll help me with my anger because I do think a lot of my anger comes from giving people more access and investment than what I get from them, and that needs to stop.
It doesn't mean that every thing is quid pro quo, but there needs to be reciprocity.
It doesn't mean I add to the problem.
It doesn't mean.
That I don't still give, but it does mean I probably need to pull back.
And a large part of that is because I'm severely codependent.
So keep in mind that the limits of what I'm willing to give to someone who is giving me nothing is not a normal amount.
Me pulling back is really just me giving a normal amount of attention that your average person would probably be giving normally.
Um, so me pulling back doesn't mean I'm giving nothing.
It just means I'm giving less and being more mindful about what I'm giving to who and why, and is that a safe decision for me? Am I managing my own disappointment? Because like I just can't keep continuing to be like a victim all the time because I can't be a victim of my anger.
I can't be a victim of my expectations.
Like it's just, it's too hard to have to deal with that all the time.
So what I can do is manage what I'm giving to people and manage what I'm expecting, return for giving that to them and just kind of go from there.
this episode is probably like a little bit shorter this week.
Last week's episode was really long, but this was something that was just like on top of mine today.
I know it didn't necessarily fall into like my worth of the week thing that I am usually doing, but I think as this journey goes on, I'm just learning to kind of go with the flow a little bit more and speak what's on my mind and what feels authentic and real and natural to talk about.
And I just couldn't get this saying out of my head.
The past week, I was really thinking about it a lot because when I was recording the episode last week, I just kept thinking like, yeah, why? Why does this phrase bother you so much? Even when I was just mentioning it on last week's podcast, with no real context, it was just like.
An ad lib.
I guess I, it was even just hearing myself say it, it like gave me like one of those twitch, like, gimme like a twitch.
It's just so instantaneous that like, even when I'm, when I'm not even hearing it from somebody, it annoys me.,
And I think it's healthy to look closer at things that probably do feel very commonplace and probably feel, I think we take for granted, a lot of the sayings and a lot of the ways that we think, and I think the best way to grow is to challenge those ways of thinking that have become second nature to us.
Because if we're not paying close attention to those things, those are the things that I think end up running our lives and we end up falling into these patterns and these ruts and asking ourselves like how we got there.
But a lot of it I think, is that we just don't analyze that.
We don't question enough.
We just kind of go through the motions and it could be worse.
It's just one of those things that people just say it doesn't mean anything anymore, and we just say it to kind of like, almost like fill dead air.
But we also put a lot of stock in it.
Because we say it all the time, like anytime it works, someone says something's like, well, that's clients for you or, and it's like the same thing as, it could be worse.
It's just this thing where it's just.
We'll see what we can do.
And so they just like saying that don't mean anything, but they're often said to us as though they have a lot of meaning, and I think in this instance, like it could be worse, carries a lot of meaning for me.
I would not have thought it was that deep.
I wouldn't have thought that it bothered me so much or why it bothered me so much.
Unless I took a closer look at it, and I think that's a big part of this whole journey is just being mindful.
I think that's the true practice of mindfulness is actually taking a closer look at these everyday mundane things and going like, why do I do that? Do I enjoy doing that? Is this adding to my life? Is this adding to my worry? I think that's what true transformation is.
I think that's what real mindfulness is.
I think that's what a real mindful, intentional practice is, is like really looking closer at some of those things that we just take for granted and don't often think about.
But I think those are the things that probably shape us the most because they're so ingrained in us.
Like we don't even know, um, why we do some of the things we do because we just don't think about it.
It's just something we just started doing or just something that we started believing.
I think until you question some of those things and get into the habit, just getting into the habit of questioning them is a skill in and of itself, because it's not easy to like recognize something.
As needing to be questioned when it's something you just do without thinking.
But anyway, that is the show this week.
We're gonna keep it nice and short, as always, you can find me on Instagram at Solitary Creature Pod, reach out, let me know if there are other phrases that, um.
Annoy you as much as it could be worse did for me.
I would love to know what your, what your trigger phrases are.
Alright, well I'll catch you guys back here next week.
Thanks.
Bye.