Dealing with my emotions almost 3 years out!

    Living a good majority of my adult life morbidly obese, I always stuffed my emotions down with food, especially at night I would eat so much I would sedate myself for bed. Shocking stuff I know.

    Fast forward to now, almost 3 years post op and I find myself more in tune with my feelings , but I also find myself growing more and more confrontational. Today the construction crew behind my lot cut my tv cable/internet. The cable company came out and confirmed this but said the crew claimed they didn't' know what he was talking about. Cable guy left saying he couldn't do anything and assumed that they would fix it and to call back tomorrow if they had not. This did not sit well with me, pre op I would have ordered a pizza, watched DVD's and eat myself into a sleep coma and woke up in the afternoon and re called the cable company.

  Today I went outside and asked one of the guys on the crew what they were going to do about my cable. The kid I talked to could not have been cooler, he was going to find out for me. This is when his "boss" stepped in and told me he knew nothing about the cable and that I needed to talk to the guy on the other side of the site who was "in charge". The cool kid said he would go get him for me. The other guy starts berating the kid, telling him he has no time to do this. I told him to stop being a dick!!! What did you say? I said "you heard me". He starts glaring at me. I said, "dude you can look at me all day if you want, glaring back at him. We exchanged shoulder shrugs while we locked eyes and I ended up saying "well you know where I live!!

     After I went inside I re called the cable company and told them I confronted the crew on their behalf and wondered if they should not have been the ones to do this. Well they ended coming back out with 4 trucks and put a new "temp" line up for me.

   My point of this story isn't that I was in the "right" or "wrong" or I ended up getting what I wanted, there are always two sides to every story, and I obviously felt I was right. My point is stuff like this, let's face it, threatening to fight someone, seems to be coming more common place in my life. This concerns me and am starting to wonder if I'm getting to comfortable telling people what I think. Maybe I need some balance?

Hey Mike. Good for you for standing up for what was right. You're right, in that perhaps you need some balance. There's a fine line between being assertive and aggressive. I think that, when we're obese, we tend to think our opinion isn't worth fighting for, and keep our mouths shut a lot of the time, when we should be standing up for ourselves and what we think.

maybe look into some assertiveness training? You don't seem like an angry guy to me, anger management is perhaps not what you need, (although, if there is no assertiveness training around, anger management might be the way to go).

I think that we sometimes need to balance telling people what we think with maintaining a peaceful existence.

Sounds to me like your weight loss has made you realize you are "worth it"......that you can stand up for yourself..and come out of the shadows

 

I bet you felt great afterward.....seeing those cable trucks repairing the problem.......proud of yourself

Sounds to me like you handled the situation calmly and firmly...which is perfect....doesnt sound to me like you were over aggressive....just sounds like you arent going to take any **** anymore

 

 

I have to agree with the others who posted. To me, this sounds more like a case of "I'm not going to sit back and let the world run me over" than a case of "I'm being overly aggressive". 

I'm a big fan of self-reflection. Print this post out, come back to it in a few days, see how you feel about it then. :)

I'm going to agree with the others.

Although it is possible you are truly more aggressive now than in the past - you're likely dumping any estrogen in your body, just as women do - as opposed to storing it in fat - and therefore losing any dampening effect on aggression ... I would suggest that the others are right.

 

Instead of cowering in shame at how awful a person you must be because you're fat, you are now confident enough to actually voice objection. Holy crow! How did THAT happen?

But Monica is also right when she points out that there is a skill to demonstrating that confidence and airing that anger. There is a way to do it that will not create conflict - and this skill can be learned. There are many people who can remain calm while confronting, and I envy them. To think clearly while arguing is a wonderful trait, and I wish I had it.

 

Working on that as your next project for the new you might be the way to go ... congrats, BTW on your weightloss!

If you feel like you were more off than you wanted to be, you might want to look into adding another emotional outlet like deep breathing, using humor, relaxation techniques. Etc

as long as you dealt appropriately with the workers, you are okay to express your emotions instead of "stuffing them". If you feel like you crossed your personal line, then maybe therapy or read a book to learn different ways to express your emotions etc.  Only you can judge how you felt at the time.  Good luck. 

 

Darlin I don't think this is a case of Dick waving and posturing i think for once you've realized you don't need to stuff down what you're feeling and instead  just speaking your mind and saying your peace. I think if you start pushing folks around in the grocery line then we have to talk but for actual wrong doing that you're taking a stand on, i think you're within your rights!

 

*hugs*

Thanks for all the feedback. The dumping estrogen was particularly interesting. Got me to thinking that maybe my testosterone was super low when I was so big? By the way I'm typing this on my phone as my cable is out again today. Oh no!!! I'm feeling the rage again! Mike SMASH!!! Just kidding.

  Just a little update, cable is back up, ha ha. Got me thinking down this road, but I had to go to the ER a couple times because my back was hurting from moving. I bought a new house by the way, Yay me!! Pain moved to my testes and doctor thought maybe I had torsion but concluded I had a infection in one of my testes tubes. Maybe my hormones are all out of whack.

I don't think you were just standing up for yourself, yo saw how the subordinate was treated by this dickhead..and acted like any woman would have.

 

Confident~!!!