I'm an emotional person, to say the least. Whenever I get upset about something, I usually end up crying about it. Crying is one of the main ways I process my emotions and get sh*t out, instead of letting it bottle up. When I was a teenager and younger, I was definitely the person who wanted to bottle up my emotions and just never deal with them. Bottling up my emotions ACTUALLY ended with me blowing up every once in a while or having a huge breakdown.
Processing my feelings as they come is a healthier approach for me in handling my emotions AND it allows me to communicate when I'm upset with my friends shortly after the fact.
Sometimes, I'll confront one of my friends about how their actions made me feel like garbage and they'll go off about how I shouldn't feel this way and they're doing all they can to be a good friend. This dialogue is frustrating because I'm not saying they're a bad friend or a bad person. All I'm saying is they hurt my feelings and I would like for them to acknowledge it and try to avoid it in the future, if possible.
Another example, I have this other friend who doesn't listen to me at ALL when I talk to them. Sometimes, they will seem to register what I'm saying and connect with me, but two weeks later, they won't remember ever having talked about it. We went out together after getting back from winter break and they never stopped talking about themselves the whole time. Whenever I talked, it seemed like an interruption in their monologue. They wouldn't even acknowledge what I said and their actions hurt my feelings. How can someone say they care about me, yet treat me like that? They only wanted me to hear THEIR side of the story, without retaining any information about me.
People that refuse to acknowledge that they've hurt my feelings and say I have no right to feel how I'm feeling are not people that I want to be my friends. I want friends who recognize my feelings, even if they don't agree with them. I can't do anything to change my feelings! All I can do is accept them and tell my friends when they've hurt my feelings. When people try to change how I feel by saying I shouldn't be upset or saying I'm overreacting, it shows how little respect they have for me. Why would I want to be friends with someone like that?
