Annoyance Day: Here's a List of Things That Are Annoying Me and You're On It

“Did I mention I’m annoyed?”

I was on my regular evening call with Fran. It was a Friday. “Yes, Fran. I noticed.” After thirteen years of friendship, I don’t miss much. She was, indeed, annoyed. By this friend and that. By this thing someone had done or said, that thing someone had not done or not said. By people in general. By life. There was quite a list. Like any of us, Fran gets frustrated from time to time, but it was rare for her to be quite so annoyed at quite so many things all at once.

I invited her to take advantage of how she was feeling by throwing anything and everything that was annoying her into the pot. This and that. Him and her. Everything and everyone. Noting that my name was conspicuously absent from the list, I told her I was feeling left out. “Aren’t you annoyed at me?” It turned out she was, so we got that out into the open too.

I didn’t try to fix things or dismiss how she was feeling. I didn’t offer my point of view, rationalise why maybe that person had done what they did, or why things perhaps weren’t as bad as she was making them out to be. That could come later, if needed. Right now, it wasn’t about helping Fran find her way out. It was about being with her where she was. My intuition was borne out the following week when she thanked me for how I’d handled things on Annoyance Day, as she named it.

“You didn’t tell me to get over it and move on, or just let it go. You sat in the shit with me.”

I laughed at that. “I didn’t sit delicately at the edge, either. I invited you to throw it all over me too!”

Sitting beside her in the mess is an analogy Fran’s used several times, and it’s one I’ve taken to heart. The following is from the epilogue to our book High Tide Low Tide. Fran is talking about some of her darkest times.

[Marty] did not reach down a hand to pull me up from my dark hole. He came down and sat with me while I began rethreading, bit by bit, what could be mended. .... To him it wasn’t about getting me to climb out. It was about being with me in all of it.

That Friday evening, things weren’t that bleak. Fran wasn’t furious, or desperate, or suicidal. She was simply annoyed. Pissed. (Pissed off, as we’d say in the UK.) It would have been easy for me to try and placate her. Debate or cajole her out of how she was feeling. I might have succeeded. More likely, I’d have added to her catalogue of annoyances. Allowing her to be in the middle of all she was feeling, without judging her for it or pushing for her to put it behind her, gave Fran permission to own her emotions and experience them for what they were. Afterwards, we acknowledged how well it fit in with our mantra Feel it. Claim it. Love it. Let it go. Here’s another excerpt from our book:

It can be challenging to handle powerful emotions, especially when they seem to come out of nowhere. Rather than allowing our emotions full rein, or trying to deny them, we find it helps to accept what we feel, take whatever meaning we can from the experience, and then release our attachment to it so we can move on.

All four steps are important, but it’s easy to rush through the first one, especially where the emotions are unwelcome. The ultimate goal may be to let go, but if we don’t allow ourselves to feel what we’re feeling we’re cheating ourselves of the moment’s potential. It’s an approach worth considering. I’m happy to report that in our case, Fran was able to move through her annoyances and emerge the other side. There will be other Annoyance Days, I’m sure. For her. For me too. We know how to approach them, though, both individually and as friends. There’s strength and comfort in knowing that.

Over to You

What do you think of how Fran and I handled things on this occasion? How would you respond to a friend who came to you with a big list of annoyances? How would you want your friend to respond if you were feeling that way? What helps — and doesn’t help — in moments like that? We’d love to hear from you, either in the comments below or via our contact page.

 

Photo by 傅甬 华 at Unsplash.

 

All the Things I Need to Hear You Say: An Exercise in Letting Go

What you want to hear from others is what you need to tell yourself.

— Pia Savannah

This post was inspired by a recent conversation with Fran. She told me about some issues she was having with a friend. She kept running things over in her mind and was finding it hard to find resolution or let things go. We’re similar in that way. We both need time to process things internally, especially if it involves connections with friends and loved ones. Fran said she was thinking of writing a letter to her friend; not to send, but to get things out of her head and onto paper. It reminded me of a situation I’d been in, years ago. I was having some difficulties at the time with a friend. The friendship was fundamentally sound, but I was frustrated about what was going on between us. Like Fran was doing, I found myself churning the same thoughts and feelings over and over without getting any clarity or being able to move past it.

I don’t remember all the details, but I do recall, precisely, what I did and how much it helped me. I was out walking near my home, frustrations running though my head as they had been doing for some time. I found myself thinking about Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and how almost all our issues and difficulties can be traced to our unmet needs. What needs of mine were not being met in this friendship at that time? What would it take to meet those needs? NVC is based on a few key principles. First, we are motivated by our feelings and needs. Second, it’s not the responsibility of other people to meet our needs. And third, our needs can be met in different ways. The last one is especially relevant because we tend to assume that this person or that, this relationship or that, “should” be meeting our needs. (I put should in quotes because it’s a very judgment-loaded word. You can read more about my aversion to the word here.)

I realised that two key needs that were unmet in this friendship were my need for attention and my need for recognition. It wasn’t that I felt unappreciated. I knew I was. Nevertheless, these needs were going unmet because my friend wouldn’t or couldn’t acknowledge me in the way I needed them to. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t really about them at all. It was about me and, in particular, my expectations of what our friendship should be delivering.

In that moment, I knew what to do. I turned my phone’s voice recorder on and, as I continued walking, I recorded the words I needed to hear my friend say to me. It took five minutes, maybe ten. I played the recording back several times over the next few days. I may have copied the words into my journal, I can’t remember now. But I do remember that the exercise helped me. That might seem odd. How could telling myself the words I wanted to hear from my friend make a difference? It helped because although my friend would never have used those exact words, I don’t believe they would have disowned or contradicted them. I wasn’t making it up or fantasising. I was expressing what was there, in the terms I needed to hear. And this went further than just this one moment with this one friend. These were words I needed to hear, period. It didn’t matter who spoke them. Pia Savannah expressed it perfectly in the title of an article subtitled How to unlink your confidence from external validation. What you want to hear from others is what you need to tell yourself.

Getting back to my conversation with Fran, I described my “words I needed to hear from you” experience. She loved the idea, although she said she’d prefer to write it out as a letter to herself from her friend, rather than record it as I had. I suggested there are three letters she might write, representing different aspects of her relationship with her friend.

What I would like to say to my friend.

What I would like to hear from my friend.

What I think my friend would say to me.

Whether we write these letters or not, thinking about things in this way can help filter the turmoil of ideas, issues, and frustrations. Which of them are things we want to say to the other person but haven’t been able to? What needs of ours are going unmet in this relationship? How important is it that this person meets those needs? How might we have our needs met in other ways? What are my friend’s needs? Am I meeting those needs for them?

What about actually talking to the person, you might be thinking. Surely it would be better to tell them what you’re feeling, frustrations and unmet needs and all? How else is anything going to change if you don’t tell them? Don’t you and Fran talk about how important it is to be honest and open with each other? It’s true that NVC focuses on talking things over with the other person. The standard NVC conversation goes something like: “When you do or say [that], I feel [this], because my need for [such and such] isn’t being met.” This approach is legitimate where our boundaries aren’t being respected, or the other person is behaving — deliberately or otherwise — in ways that are hurtful or toxic. Telling them how you feel, and why, can be important for you, the other person, and the connection you share. I’m grateful to Fran and to other friends who’ve called me out when my behaviour has been disrespectful, unhelpful, or just plain inappropriate.

That’s not always what’s happening, though. Are they actually disrespecting us? Could it be that they’re doing their best, whilst also getting on with their own lives? It’s unhelpful — and unkind — to insist on our needs being met by someone when they’re too proccupied, exhausted, or poorly to take our issues on board. As my friend said to me on more than one occasion, “It’s not my job to make you feel good about yourself.” My frustration didn’t really have anything to do with them at all. I was projecting my expectations onto them, allowing myself to feel disregarded as a result when they didn’t provide what I wanted in the way I wanted it. It was a valuable experience in acceptance and letting go. I didn’t need my friend to say the words I needed to hear. Saying them to myself was enough. If anything, it was more valuable, because it allowed me to recognise my own worth, my own value. That was what I really needed.

Examining our expectations and needs, and looking for other ways to meet those needs, can go a long way to relieving the frustrations that can arise in any relationship. It allows us to celebrate the people in our lives and our connections with them for what they are, rather than stressing because they’re not something else.

 

Photo by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash.

 

Thoughts Whilst Out Walking

Fran’s words from a few days ago are still with me: “The truest response is letting go ...”

Yes... let go of pain, of joy, of aching, of delight ... Do not hold on to any of it. Let it rise, have its moment, and go, to be replaced by what arises in its stead ... externally and within you.

Offer minimal resistance to what arises ... Let it pass through you, joyously, gratefully ...

We cling, we hold on, from fear. Fear of losing what was never ours to begin with. Fear of daring to reach for what is within our grasp.

This moment is all that you will ever own. It is what you have brought into being, it is what you were brought into being to experience, herenow. You are the universe’s gift to itself in this moment. No other has been granted this gift. Accept it, take it in your hands, examine its shape, colours, textures. Allow it fully into your awareness ... And let it go again ...

Life is not a lesson, though you can choose to see it as such. Life is not a trial, though you are free to live yours as though it were.

Any gift worth the name comes without strings ... you are free to decline it, trample on it, pass it on to another, keep it under lock and key ... And so it is with life, with this moment.

Originally written October 2012

 

Even the Good Things: A Lesson in Letting Go

There are moments when everything stops.

I felt it yesterday after a week or more filled with activity and people and work and possibilities and doubts and anxieties and joys and new friends and old friends and smiles and conversations and sharing and a movie that touched me deeply.

After all of that there came a pause. Not an ending but a natural hiatus, like the moment between breathing in and breathing out that we fail to notice most of the time because we are too busy doing or saying or thinking about other things.

And I didn’t know what to do with it. The gap. The space. I told Fran I felt flat. And she said:

Embrace the flatness

That was it. Three words. She knew I didn’t need a lecture or a diagram or a two hour conversation. And she was right. And what came to me in that moment of being reminded (re-mind-ed) was something we have been working with over the years we have been friends.

FEEL IT. CLAIM IT. LOVE IT. LET IT GO.

It can be challenging to handle powerful emotions, especially when they seem to come out of nowhere. Rather than allowing our emotions free rein, or trying to deny them, we find it helps to accept what we feel, take whatever meaning we can from the experience, and then release our attachment to it so we can move on.

High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder

And so that’s what I did. (In this context, “Embrace” can stand for the first three parts: Feel, Claim, Love.) I felt what I had labelled as “flatness.” And found that it was not empty or still at all. At its “flat” surface emotions rose and fell back, shifting in and out of existence even as I became aware of them. It was a dynamic emotional silence like the kind of acoustic silence that is alive with ambient sound. I smiled.

I claimed it as mine. No one else was responsible or to blame. No one else in the history of the universe past, present or future had known, or knew, or would know this moment as I had the capacity to know it. This was mine. This was me.

And I loved it. Or rather I was aware of a rush of love that began with me and expanded out to all my friends, family, all the people in my life, all the events and connections between them and me and within them and between us all. A moment of acceptance. The kind that makes you sigh out loud.

And letting go? I recalled a poem I’d read aloud to Fran a few days before. It wasn’t new to us but some things are worth revisiting.

She Let Go, by Safire Rose
…
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort.
There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
…

And I let go. I let go of my expectations of what flatness ought to be. I let go of any judgment about what I was feeling or not feeling or doing or not doing. I let go of my attachment to even this moment of bliss. And I smiled again, hearing a friend’s words clearly in my mind:

Vikki: Even the good things I’ve got to let go?

Martin: Not the things, but the feels, yes. How else can the next feelings arrive if you’re holding on too tightly to the old ones? You don’t have to let go of them immediately, just don’t hold on too long. It’s mostly the bad things we hold on to too long.