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Supermarket shelves

white knight
Community Champion
Community Champion

We as humans have control over many things. And we have no control over other things. I can vividly recall words yelled at me as a child "Tony....have some patience". These words were justified in one sense..I'd woken up at 3am on Christmas day and opened up all my presents and in the process woken up everyone else.

My problem was, I didnt know how to find patience and for many years I was tormented by this. How do I find it? Do I develop it? Do I study for it? What I didnt know as a child and in early adulthood that anxiety had a lot to account for my lack of being able to wait. So anxious, Christmas morning early wake up was uncontrollable. No words aimed at my behaviour would have made any difference...medical intervention was the only way.Fast forward my later adult life and now I realise, being an anxious person I was going to hit a brick wall eventually be it marriage breakdown, work related conflict or other crisis.Those traumatic events were triggers that exploded my illness I didnt know I had

What does this mean? We read almost daily someone we have compassion about,write about a situation they have found themselves in, say a work situation. This happened, then this, then that, leading to that happening. Often a situation of injustice in the mind of the confused who is the victim. So why did this person get involved in this particular situation of trauma and not someone else? I'm suggesting that in some situations of hype or disagreement, those with a mental illness might find themselves falling into such a conflict easier. Why? A lot of reasons depending on the individual. But those with a mental illness can have traits like sensitivity leading to over reaction, withholding anger due to abuse, less wise due to poor mental growth or enduring depression due to pride etc etc.

Things like patience, tolerance, wit, etc do not arrive naturally in some of us and we will not develop these important qualities by just being told to get them. They are not purchasable on supermarket shelves. But some are obtainable. They can be developed by means of therapy, learning and maturity through aging. Aging gives up wisdom through experience, tolerance through acceptance learned from years of human gatherings. Wit is one that would be harder to achieve.

So, if you find yourself in crisis after crisis, you think your life is full of bad luck and incidences. You might have an underlying illness. You are unlikely to find stability unless you get professional help.

Tony WK

16 Replies 16

Today I attended a large hardware store and fell into s queue.

The lady at the front getting served was ordering a cubby house so this process took a long time eg delivery, delivery instructions etc.

There was 4 of us waiting. Over the next 20 minutes all 3 left in a huff including one that threw some obscenities.

Finally the buyer left and I was next- the 3 that had left were now behind me.

It seems I have grown some patience!

TonyWK

Hi TonyWK

I have been on a mission to start taking life less seriously as I have been....and its working slowly but surely 🙂 The more relaxed I am the greater my patience is

Being in that queue would have been 'hard yakka' for myself. Your posts are inspirational TonyWK

Paul

Guest_1643
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member

Hi Tony

I'm so grateful for this lovely thread. You've given so much insight, in such an interesting way too - it's so helpful and you probably won't know how many people read and gain from your thoughts!!!

We need to work on ourselves sometimes and I think that means facing ourselves and being honest with ourselves.
I've always felt very connected to mindfulness and meditation which is something I've had to dive into to improve my own anxiety and tension. I also am very impatient and like to control things - to know 100 percent the outcome, and not leave anything to chance...

Through this journey, one perk is we get to know ourselves a bit better, which has lots of benefits....

Thank you again for this post. blessing us all with oodles of patience.

Hi sleepy

thankyou, That is so nice.

you might get benefit from this thread-

use google

beyondnlue topic anxiety, how I eliminated it

TonyWK

I mentioned in my first post about "patience" and how you cant buy it nor get education to improve it.

Lockdown is testing patience. Is any of you out of such patience? How have you survived?

My wife and I have started building a racing car set. We noticed that most owners of train sets and racing sets buy scale buildings, but we have found on the internet a mob from USA that you buy printouts on your computer and print a building then glue that to cardboard and assemble. Churches, general stores, fire stations etc. We've had a lot of fun together for a fraction of the price.

Anyone got other ideas they would like to share?

TonyWK

Succulent Queen
Community Member

Hi Tony, Thanks for sharing your thoughts so consistently. I always know Im going to take away a golden nugget or two from your writing.

A couple of things you wrote were very interesting and I was wondering if you could say more about the following, "witholding anger due to abuse" and

"enduring depression due to pride"

Would love to hear you expand on those:)

Hi SQ,

" But those with a mental illness can have traits like sensitivity leading to over reaction, withholding anger due to abuse, less wise due to poor mental growth or enduring depression due to pride etc etc."

Those two phrases were two examples of some people with a mental illness/s (plus "sensitivity leading to over reaction and less wise due to poor mental growth ") that some of us possess due to our illness and such traits cannot be rectified by selecting a remedy off a supermarket shelf.

"Due to mental abuse" I was referring to some of us that had inherited our illness from a parent with mental illness that led to abuse. EG a BPD parent and the negative effect on their child (not all of course). Mood swings of a bipolar parent- the same. Manipulation, emotional blackmail etc , yes, had that in my childhood.

"enduring depression due to pride" was referring to being a child of a parent with excessive control over the child. Suppression. That leads to depression and other spinoffs like lack of self esteem and confidence.

As a 17yo airman in the Air Force I was constantly told to "grow up", how does a 17yo person do that? Is the box of maturity biscuits next to the cereal? So those phrases were a few real life symptoms of some of us (and many others caused by MI) that separates us from the mainstream of 'normality'.

I sometimes dont elaborate as much as I should as I'm worried about character limits and waffling on. So I'm glad I have the opportunity to do so now.

Any further questions of if you'd like to keep on this topic by all means ask.

TonyWK