- I let my temper get the best of me in particular situations.
- Currently, I am working on controlling my temper through deep breathing and making more time for myself.
- My desire to give in to what other people want, which is a woman who will never say anything about how hard it is to be the head of the household in all aspects, the go-to-girl, and the listener; so basically my stubbornness.
- It probably started subconsciously in my 2’s.
- Relaxed and calm
Right now I am not as bad as I have been. I am starting to calm down with regard to being so pissed off all the time at home. Dale is trying very hard to keep his own temper in check too, because through our many various fights I have pointed out on several occasions that most of what we're going through is a by-product of the irresponsible choices he has made over his life and more so in the last 3 years that we have been together (in the context of our relationship alone).
My Data:
Week 1 of flying off my grid
Antecedent: Dale made the comment that I am not nice to him.
Behavior: I told him that I’m sorry that it is hard to be nice to him when his only thing is to pay the house bills and pay them on time but he waits until the last minute, sometimes beyond, and willingly puts my name and credit at risk.
Thoughts: This all while texting/screaming on the phone while I’m at my job on the work floor or held up in the bathroom because he decides to start this when I’m on my half-hour lunch break.
Consequence: A Fight
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Antecedent: Dale makes the comment that I do not do anything for him.
Behavior: Listing all the things I have done for him in the over 3 years we’ve been together, then telling him I don’t think he’s a man, listing why I don’t think he is one, listing what a real one is and telling him that I know this because I have had to become one since our son has been born.
Thoughts: This again all starts on my lunch break and continues while I’m on the work floor until he goes to bed. Only this time when I went to sleep when I got home I slept on my keys so that he couldn’t take my car the next day, because we only have one car since they took his away for too many points on his vehicle's plate and his 3 pending DUI’s. He flipped and I said, “I thought I didn’t do anything for you.”
Consequence: A Fight
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Antecedent: My dog pisses on my carpet and he is 13 years old and no it is not because he is too old, it is because he is a pain in my ass. He is a well taken care of a dog who goes out all day long and who gets fed plenty but when he isn’t getting the attention he feels he deserves, because I have a kid now, he acts out.
Behavior: Screaming at him that he is an asshole and why does he have to keep doing this.
Thoughts: I don’t want to get mad but am I supposed to just let him continue to piss on my house because he wants to be a brat. This is the definition of irony, pissing on what I have worked so hard to achieve because it’s all just what, material things right? Money means nothing; it too can just be pissed away.
Consequence: Screaming at the dog and cleaning up his mess.
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Antecedent: Guy I work with confides in me that he was having an affair with his wife for the past 5 months with a girl he really fell for since his wife refuses to do her wifely duties anymore and is only a mom. To which I listen for like the first few days to all the negative women bashing and life bashing he does because his wife found out when he was at a party with the other woman so he left the party and later found out so did the other woman only with another man.
Behavior: After listening to that much bitching and whining I said, “Seriously, you got what you deserved. If you can’t stand the heat don’t go into the f**king kitchen. All women are not whores, but you’re certainly not a man! You didn’t have to cheat, but you did, so suck it up and grow up.”
Thoughts: Why me?
Consequence: Me blowing up.
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Antecedent: My friend Michelle, who has a failed marriage as well, is in love with another married man, who takes advantage of her feelings for him but has made it clear he isn’t going to leave his wife and kids for her, keeps floundering back and forth on whether she should stop talking to him or not. Months of listening to this, because she is my son’s godmother, I get snippy and frank with her too.
Behavior: “As long as you give him the time of day you’re telling him that your still there whenever he wants or needs you despite how much you cry. Knock it off and quit or shut your damn mouth and stop blubbering about it.”
Thoughts: Why me?
Consequence: Me blowing up
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Antecedent: My pap claims I have no respect for my mother at Thanksgiving and that he would be surprised if I ever gave her any.
Behavior: “Seriously!?! I do and who do you think you are?” Then he came back with “What I’m not supposed to say what I think.” “Apparently I’m not,” I said in retort. To which he came back with “No, 'cause you’re a kid.”
Thoughts: This cant be my family, nor my life.
Consequence: With that, I left my uncle's place and did not spend Thanksgiving with my mom because that was uncalled for. Then a few days later I talk to my mom and she says how my pap is mad at me and I say “I don’t care” and she tells me to consider myself not having a grandfather anymore then I said, “whatever he hasn’t been around and still isn’t so that’s not that hard to do”. To which she goes back and forth with me and eventually concludes by saying “is this the way you’re going to raise my grandson”. I said, “yes, I will make sure he is never bullied in his life like I have been in mine and that he speaks his mind”. So she said that we should just go about my life without her in it too. (Later that same day we didn’t say we were sorry cause we each are not sorry at all but I told her she had mail at my house (her legal residence, yes is my house), and she said love you and I said yeah, love you too).
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Antecedent: I walk into a house full of smoke when I get home from work
Behavior: After turning off and unplugging the toaster oven, where the smoke was billowing from, I go into the living room and yell “Really!?! You’re aiming to burn the house down now?”
Thoughts: Why me!?!
Consequence: Dale gets up with an “Oh Shit”, smokes a cigarette, tries to tell me that I’m not perfect too, then goes back to sleep while I clean up the smoke-filled house and then stare at the ceiling deep breathing like a nut cause I can't fall asleep.
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My data:
Week 2 trying to
Antecedent: Michelle goes out drinking on her lunch with a co-worker and the co-worker drinks way too much and holds herself up in the bathroom cause Michelle to not get back to work. It becomes a big huge incident and she tells me about it and says not to say anything. However I was mad about the incident because it put Michelle in a shitty situation, so I made a bad judgment call and said something to one person and it got back to Michelle that I did and she got pissed at me.
Behavior: I calmly said I was sincerely sorry and I couldn’t say anything else except that and I hope she could forgive me. (Instead of instinctually yelling at her about the fact that she should have never went, to begin with.)
Thoughts: Why do I choose friends that don’t use their common sense? She let a wasted co-worker jeopardize her job and for what, nothing, because this co-worker wasn’t even a good friend to her.
Consequence: We hugged and made up.
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Antecedent: I ask my mother to come over and watch her grandson while I finish this school work
Behavior: I call her and ask her if she’s free and she does her usual “I don’t know, I’ll have to see how things go and how I feel, I’ll pencil you in.” then we say our pleasantries and hang up.
Thoughts: I can’t win!
Consequence: A depressed/disappointed feeling as opposed to an enraged feeling.
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Antecedent: My boss improperly excesses me and my fellow co-workers to another operation while there are still clerk employees on my machine doing my mail handler job. All while his boss, who told him to do the excessing, was handling the mail himself.
Behavior: So I stopped working and stood there watching them. When I was asked what I was doing, I said, “watching you guys so I know what times to report on my grievance”.
Thoughts: If postal management would simply comply with rules and not be idiotic then I wouldn’t want to go postal.
Consequence: I was taken in the office where I properly vented and was granted union time to write up my grievance.
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11-14 and so on..
Antecedent: any other incident that may have occurred
Behavior: I quit! Instead of listening or reacting or caring, I honestly said “screw it!” to myself and put my headphones on at work and just buried my head in my pillow at home.
Thoughts: While I know it isn’t the most responsible or mature thing to do, avoidance, I decided for my own health it was best.
Consequence: I felt depressed and disappointed instead of enraged.
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Analysis of My Data:
Each of these incidents are examples of times when I have lost my temper with people who are involved in my life on a regular basis and who shower the world with negative energy to the point that after a while of listening to it I snap. My friend Ed, who is no better than the ones listed above in the negative energy area, joked with me that since I have been in my relationship with Dale my tolerance for assholes has completely ceased. He said that before I used to just let stuff roll off me and not pay it much mind but now I just rip people a new one because I can’t stand all the bitching and crying and complaining. All of the negative energy has turned me into one of them because I consciously hear myself doing the same thing and so after discussing it at length with my therapist my avenues of change are too deep breath as much as I can even if I feel ridiculous and to take time out of my day to enjoy something, like my Starbucks.
My data definitely does show that I have a temper issue. Although it also shows that I have a less than desirable support system, which makes me want to cry, but I don’t, I exhale and move on. It also shows that I can get results from just breathing instead of blowing up, of course, I knew that already, I just blew up the case a person can only listen to so much crap before “going postal” occurs. It’s a good thing I can joke about all this in my retellings to people, at least then I can make people laugh with the series of unfortunate events that are my life.
What is Causing My Behavior: In Short Form...
When I was 7 my gram died and my mother watched her mother/best friend die before her eyes over a long battle with cancer and I watched my mother die inside. All the while my father started drinking heavily and beating on my mom and so we left only for my mom to get hooked up with another guy real quick cause my mom can’t be alone. We moved to a new school district, my dad was a drunken alcoholic drug addict and I had to go with it all. I got mixed up with the wrong kids who turned into my bullies, then my mom got onto the internet and met different guys and everyone was cheating on everyone and I was still going to school. The story continues but it’s a moot point, the idea has been established.
I haven’t had a support system, I don’t know what one is like, and due to my stubborn independent nature from taking care of myself for so long, I probably would run away from support if it was offered because again I wouldn’t know how to react. I at least know all of this through extensive self-reflection and analysis. (Which is more than I can say for most people.) I accept who I am and that because I have been running down the Rd. less traveled for most of my life I accept that the choices I make are no one's fault but my own now because along the way I could have done something different but I didn’t.
So what causes me to have a bad temper is my inability to deal with everyone else’s crap anymore because that is all I deal with and it is so exhausting, because it is all negative crap instead of happy crap. Who has happy crap anymore? My life is a sitcom that hasn’t been produced yet and that is why I act the way I do.
A healthy dose of blunt with an animated sarcastic punch is what I am now.
My behavioral implemented change is immersing myself in my sons love, try really hard to deep breath as much as possible, tune out what I can by walking away, reading when I get a split second, going to therapy every Monday, keeping my bucket list in front of me, dancing to my iPod if I can, and drinking my chai tea when I can afford it. While I know it is ultimately up to me to do what I need to in my life to make it all that it can be, I honestly can only do so much, and I do really think that I am. However, the other people in my life are not all people I can just throw out and ignore (no matter who much my mother's side of the family has perfected that technique and/or spread out throughout the country like my father's side has done in hopes that a yearly reunion will cover the “there for you” aspect) they are people that are vital parts of my life because I just can't pursue alone right now. (I’m strong but not that strong and I’m simply not ready for alone yet.) So it is my choice to keep them a vital part.
(I know this is long, but I am a wordy person. I’m sorry. Also, I know this is not in the format of the example you posted, but this is how I keep a diary. Temper is the only thing I can think that I want to change and am currently working on, and to me, it doesn’t fit into a grid format or with charts. So at the risk of a docked grade, I see no data that I could chart for you. I’m honest and I try and that’s all I can do right now, and I am ok with that.)