Bad Girl

I've never been good at being disciplined.For reals. All my life growing up I avoided doing anything bad so I didn't get in trouble. Obviously, humans are mistake-bots so I still did plenty wrong, but I always tried to not be a disappointment...to get corrected, not disciplined.

I don't know why it affects me that way. I don't know why discipline feels like the world has ended. I let someone down. I let them down so badly they have a finger in my face saying "bad girl."  

What am I, a dog? A child? No one actually puts their finger in my face and says "bad girl, baaaaad girl."  But that's what it feels like. It feels dehumanizing. Complete and utter failure.  

Guess who felt like she was being disciplined yesterday and lost her cool? Yup, this girl.

It wasn't pretty. My coworker, who really didn't even do anything wrong, handled my complete loss of emotional stability rather well. He's married. The married guys tend to do better than the single ones.  

The worst part was the chain reaction. I got upset because I felt like he was telling me I was bad at my job - baaad girl - (he wasn't) and then I got upset that I was upset. So instead of just saying "this right here is upsetting me," I tried to hold it in.

Which, of course, made it that much worse. Within seconds I'm hyperventilating like a two-year-old and hating myself. I had to process why, what, how, when all evening to figure out what had gone wrong and how to better approach it in the future.

And it will be better in the future. Because I've learned how to assess myself. Sure the episode wasn't great (horribly embarrassing), but I learned something about myself that I'd never addressed before - my hatred for discipline.

I never consciously thought about how I avoid it, how I fear it. I never considered why I am this way. I'm still, honestly, not sure. One thing that pops up in my head is a teacher berating me in front of the whole class for having bad handwriting.  

Handwriting. Because that's a good reason to make an eleven-year-old girl feel like she's committed the worst crime in history.

If you do something wrong, you will be publicly shamed. Well that's a reason to avoid it.

And while I'm not a fan of what happened, I'm glad it gave me the chance to look inward and discover something new about myself.

So that's me, being painfully honest about being embarrassed and feeling stupid. Your turn.  What is something that can set you off? What's the thing from your youth that is a "trigger" to emotional upheaval?  

If you're brave enough to answer, comment below and let me know I'm not alone. If you'd rather keep it to yourself - more power to you, but I hope you'll consider it, and then consider why it impacts you that way.

Either way, let's take an opportunity to grow. Stretch out those feathers. Fly a little higher.

Thank you for listening, dear swan.
All my love,
Kelsey Introspective Swan