Tag: mental-health

Overcompensating

Sharon Douglas, BCCLeave a comment

Have you ever totally botched something and then tried to make it right by fixing it? I’m sure we all have.

Recently, I had the opportunity to botch something then I set out to fix it! In trying to fix it, I actually made it worse. I was trying too hard to make amends. Instead of taking time to reflect over the situation, I seemed to go full steam ahead with what I thought was a perfect solution. However, no one else felt that way, it was not the direction the others would have gone in and I was told quite abruptly that what I was intending was not needed! The person in charge would take care of it. Wow!

In our minds we are thinking we are making things right but in fact we make things worse. When will we learn to leave things alone? And let it be?

We are overcompensating for the underlying problem. We are taking excessive measures in an attempt to correct or make amends with the person or things of which we have botched!

Sometimes it is a weakness or problem which we are overcompensating for. We might over compensate for our fear of water or fear of the future. We over compensate for being short by becoming a clown. You are overcompensating for something you see as being a deficit. But it’s not.

The things we put in our heads about ourselves and others are just false truths and we overcompensate for them. The advise I give myself when I seem to be in my fix it mode is to stop and reflect. I ask myself the following questions: What are your doing? Why are you doing it? Is it your need or their need? Are you overcompensating for something?

Reflection on oneself and our actions is a good start to overcompensating. What are my inadequacies?

Anger

Sharon Douglas, BCCLeave a comment
Anger is an emotion of self-protection. It may involve an effort to prevent injury or specify a boundary. It is also a common response to having been threatened, hurt, or scared, or to the person who caused it. Anger can escalate to rage when the threat is extreme or when assertions of “Don’t!” or “Stop!” are not respected.
– Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (Emotions and Trauma: Anger and Rage).**
Lately, I have been feeling anger or angry in certain situations.  Let I say I find anger to be a healthy emotion because it has a deeper side to it or one worth looking into.  As the above quote suggests, it is about self-protection as I feel threatened or someone has backed me into a corner.  However, you are only backed into a corner if you allow someone or something to push you there.  We are our own enemies sometimes.  Not by choice but because we don’t have the equipment to understand what we are going through.
Anger is healthy.  It is a very deep seeded emotion which is triggered by outside sources.  The man in the grocery store pushes in front of you and you feel rage.  The man becomes the trigger point to your rage of having your boundaries violated.
Most of us don’t want to share our anger, we stifle it as if our anger is dirty.  It is not.  Use your anger in a positive way.  Channel your anger/rage into looking for the source of it.
Drawing your anger can be very therapeutic as well. When running my bereavement groups, I would have the participants take crayons and paper to draw their anger.  Some would draw so hard with the crayon it would break.  Such a beautiful thing.
Don’t be afraid of your anger and don’t let it control you, use it in the way you need to, to bring yourself to a place of peace and calm.
**You can find the full article in the below link: