Why does this bother me so much?

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Okay, maybe I wasn't specific enough.

Pretty much all of those.



Sad? Yes. Frustrated? Yeah, I'd say so. Frightened? Definitely. But angry, no way in hell, at least not at him. I think I hated myself a lot more, for not being able to help my friends when they were miserable.



Rage... definitely not. I was way past that stage at that point. When a mutual friend of ours told me how she felt about the situation, I felt really bad and wanted to apologize, but she wouldn't take any apologies. She was definitely convinced that I was no good, would never change my ways, was only capable of hurting others and bombarding people with my own emotional baggage, and was overall, no friend to anyone, and she most certainly conveyed those feelings. The other three emotions, however... I was definitely feeling those.

Just to let you know... self-hatred and frustration are both forms of anger. Depression usually has all sorts of unacknowledged anger in it. So I think we can allow that you do experience various types of anger. That's not surprising, it's just that it's helpful to identify and know what's going on.

Experiencing anger does not make you a bad person. Actually, it makes you pretty effing normal. Even the Dalai Lama admits he gets angry.

What's the emotion "way past" rage?

Not getting what we want, or getting what we definitely DON'T want, are usually the triggers for experiencing anger, whether it's at someone else or ourselves. How we physically manifest that will vary, depending on our personalities.

Now, for all those examples I pretty much put words in your mouth. You spit a couple out, but added none of your own. Do you think you could give me a new situation, say from the last week, and tell me what you were feeling and how that manifested? It doesn't have to be a biggie, just something that gave you a very clear emotional hit.

Donkey, as always you have great insight into life and give great advice. I enjoy reading your posts.

Just a few days ago, I was at a party with a bunch of relatives, including my father. He was obviously somewhat inebriated, but I guess not enough that it would be incredibly noticeable. I was still wary of what he might do, and was pretty sure that he would do something extremely stupid and embarrass the entire family in the process. I was even more pissed when my older sister, who had, like myself, worried about my little sisters for quite a while, told me not only that I shouldn't be fretting about the situation, but that she seemingly was also giving up on trying to help out, saying that it was up to them and my father to make their situation better. I was pissed at her nearly the entire time, especially after my little sisters told me that my dad had driven them to the party whilst intoxicated. According to them, he came dangerously close to the edge of the road. It still pisses me off that they're being expected to handle the situation themselves. It's infuriating, to say the least.

I get this all the time. I must be more social, I must be less sarcastic, I need to network, I need to stop offending people. All of my life I have been attacked for being myself. I would be more social, except that I know as soon as I start enjoying myself and get comfortable, I'll start slinging inadvertent insults.

I have a fantastic job.. I go around the world looking for missing/kidnapped persons in war zones. Sort of like CSI meets Cold Case meets Saving Private Ryan. And it pays VERY well and is extremely interesting. I have a wonderful, recently acquired wife who is the most social intelligent person I have ever met. She is very pretty, very sweet, and simply wants to be treated with the kind of respect that she gives to me and others. I have a fantastic little step daughter who is more socially skilled than I am. I have another child on the way. I have a big house in a great neighborhood in a vacation resort town. I only work six months a year..and I still make more money than most people that I know. I am in great physical shape and most people age me 10 years younger than I am.

And I'm miserable.

My boss wants to promote me..which means I have to be social. He loves my work and wants me to take over his operations so he can expand. But I would have to be social. It's normally OK to decline a position, but he can't move on to what he wants to do unless I can take his place. He's given me six months to try, but I still keep letting him down. He's the closest thing I have to a friend, and I keep hosing him because I can't socialize. Which endangers my wife and children because I won't be able to support them if we can't keep expanding. This has happened throughout my life, I do a great job and people want to promote me, I turn them down and it starts getting hostile.

My poor lovely wife is constantly crying because of some mean thing I say. We can't have friends over because I embarrass her or insult her friends, which leaves her a social recluse. She keeps asking me to change and be social and stop insulting her and her friends. She's not being over sensitive, I actually do insult her and anyone that comes to our house. I insult my co-workers. I insult my family. Why can't she understand how much I love her, and that my sarcasm is an attempt at humor? She must have thought it was funny at some point, I used to make her laugh all the time.

It is so mentally exhausting to constantly do social math. So I come home, and don't say anything. I don't do anything. I just sit. Miserable.

I wouldn't expect anyone to feel sorry for me. My ADD is curable with meds, but my AS is not. I can't do anything about it and these really great people are depending on me.

I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for me, I'm an extremely lucky guy. I keep feeling that I have totally screwed up my poor wife's life, and I have probably screwed up my unborn child's life as well.

That sounds like the most interesting job I've heard of and dangerous too. Wow.

If you know that you insult people when trying to be funny, are you able to stop trying to use humor? Of course that would be changing who you are and I don't really believe in that, I tend to think people should be who they are and accepted for who they are.

As far as your wife, try to remember that the crying may be due to hormones more than anything. Pregnant women cry at the drop of a hat, they can't help it. Everything is hypersensitive. That could be part of the problem. Have you tried writing her a letter or email to explain things like you did here? Reading it might help her understand you better and find ways to make it easier. The part you wrote about her is very loving, I'm sure she'd like to read it.

Okay, you want one that really gave me an extreme emotion? Last week, I called my older brother, who hadn't picked up his phone the last few times I called him. Unlike the other times, in which I called and he didn't answer, he picked up the phone. I told him about how everyone was worried because he didn't answer calls from me and my sisters, but he was clearly annoyed, scolding me for even thinking that he would take the time out of his busy schedule to call me back when I didn't leave a message. I told him how I was feeling (which is basically everything I wrote on this thread, particularly the resentment towards my uncle and the lack of self-confidence in socializing), and he told me that I was being a lazy, self-pitying s**thead who wouldn't get up off his ass and try to improve his current situation. Like before, he insinuated that it was my fault that I was depressed, and that perhaps I wanted to feel like a miserable pile of s**t. He told me that the way I was going, I was going to end up depressed, sour and bitter, thinking that there was nothing wrong with me and that society had caused me to feel this way. The whole time I just wanted to hang up on him, but I didn't. I endured his preachy ranting, and after I finally hung up, I felt angry and frustrated. How could he just treat me like that? He acted as though I were putting on an act for attention, rather than being legitimately depressed. People, including my counselor, and my cousin (who lately has been the only person I could rely on to listen to me), have even acknowledged that depression is a trap, in that it is extremely difficult to get out of and cannot simply be broken through by putting a smile on your face and skipping down the street. I cried throughout the entire phone conversation, feeling insulted by him, as though he was under the impression that I would just suddenly wake up if he got extremely pissed and yelled.
The same sort of thing happens when I talk to my older sister on the phone, only she's not as blatantly irate. However, she is just as disrespectful and arrogant, it seems. Whenever I tell her that I lack the confidence necessary to go up and talk to people, she just tells me, "You gain confidence by talking to people," as if I'm supposed to just suddenly feel like getting up and talking to people. I can't just do that. Last week, I was at an ice cream stand, with many people in abundance. I knew they were the sort of people that wouldn't be caught dead fraternizing with me. I looked around, stared at the menu for at least half an hour, trying to figure out what I was going to order, mumbling and singing softly to myself. A few times, I caught myself and realized what I was doing, but at that point, I decided it wouldn't matter what I did, they still wouldn't want me around them. One guy even looked at me in a nervous way, turning his head quickly as if I were some lunatic who wanted to kidnap his children. Maybe you're seeing why I feel this way now?