Repeating the angsty teenager stage

You might know fight or flight, but many now too know that there's a more modern version 4 options survival mechanism: fight, flight, freeze and fawn. If you haven't actually experience anything that utterly triggers your natural instinct to use any of these 4 strategy for self preservation, you might even think that none of these actually exist and help to protect yourself. I once thought so too, at least I didn't realized that my natural instinct to fight was enough for me to function back then. What can I say, I'm a naturally feisty woman. 

However, my traumatic experiences totally changed the way that I carry out my self preservation - to mostly freeze. I often feel like a deer in headlight, and those traumatic experiences indeed felt like a 16-wheeler is coming at me at 100km/hr with no prior warning. Weirdly enough, all those experience where I felt like I had no means of protecting myself all comes from my late-teen/early 20s time. That's because it was at those age that I was told that it's my responsibility to "make people to open up" to what I was proposing or that I need to learn to hold my tongue. Problem was, those were half truths that I need to learn the hard way. 

The evolution starts like this - I spent my high school years trying to dominate my way to positions that I'm proud of, namely presidents of the librarian board and wudo, as well as being the funding director of interact club. I learned from my previous head of librarian that there are more tactful ways to get support and buy-ins than to force them to comply to my orders. Of course, he never told me to bite my tongue, but showed me how people are open to contribute when they have intrinsic motivation like if it's their idea that is in the making. That in a way is opening my mind too. It's a lesson on leadership that I still hold dearly today. 

But now, here's the problem. His personality is naturally a peace-keeper, calm and collected; while for me, all these things doesn't come naturally to me and I get discouraged easily with the slightest indifference that I sense from people. It doesn't help too that I score on the lower side for my agreeableness. I get irritable when things doesn't add up or make sense to me. I am critical about ideas and concepts, I'll scrutinize every little inconsistency that I have questions about. I actually score quite high on openness, but due to my disagreeable nature, I felt misunderstood that most people think that I'm just a dictator that wants things my way. No, I want to understand, and I don't know how to appreciate your ideas when I am troubled with questions in my head. His ways of doing things gives me a new perspective to look at people and I deeply appreciate that. Unfortunately, we are often limited at perspectives and I do need more help for me to understand somebody's perspective in order for me to not get frustrated at them. 

So, in the end of the day, I got the message was that: 

1) you can't get things done if make enemies everywhere

2) if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything

3) if people don't listen to you, the problem is on the way that I said things

And no, I did not get the memo that some adults have issues and will project their own issue on you even if you have done nothing wrong. 

Thus I went through a lot of my early adulthood, running into trouble with adults who exhibit many abusive, questionable behavior and poor values in great positions. I've fawned because I knew that fight won't do me any good in a place where their orders are absolute, I've froze because I was being screamed at or publicly reprimanded where I struggle to understand where did I go wrong. During that time I had effectively silenced myself, my anger when I do sense that things are wrong but I endured it. It took me months of therapy to understand that all my feeling of anger is just. 

I feel a lot of anger these days. It's as though all those anger is finally coming out. I am somewhat bitter about life and how people who are just so undeserving of great position, that could use that and harm people are where they are. I am angry at a system that tolerates and allow that to happen. Partially, I don't like how critical I am about everything, because I scrutinize myself and everyone around me the same, it's hard to be understanding and I spend all those times being angry. But I understand that this is too a process of me finding a balance all over again. So heck, I will be an angsty teenager again until I find a way to see strength over weaknesses again. Growing up is also learning to work with yourself, you can't force yourself to grow when you are not ready to move to the next step yet.