Retreat! Retreat!

I have been thinking a lot lately about emotions. Or more specifically, how I seem to be ruled by my emotions. Let me give you an example: I can come into work feeling perfectly chirpy, having listened to some great music on my way in. Then the moment something goes wrong at work I’m down again, wondering why I’m doing this job. And then my boss will say something nice to me and I’m back up again, thinking about what a great boss I have and everything is right with the world. Honestly, it’s exhausting being me, you know!

Recently I have just wanted to retreat from the world. Run away and hide under my duvet. I have been ignoring calls, texts and emails. I have avoided talking in any depth to people. I smile and say everything’s fine, then slope off back home and have a bit of a cry. Or just curl up in a corner feeling nothing but relief that I don’t have to talk to anyone for another day. The only exception to this rule is Mr. Razzler; I could spend all day with him and be perfectly content.

But I’m not depressed. I don’t even feel overly anxious most of the time. But maybe that’s because I’m so used to being anxious that it has become my normality…? I do feel very tired, lethargic and, as I have already mentioned, very up and down emotionally. I keep waiting for myself to snap out of it. I mean, Mr. Razzler’s mum died a month ago, the funeral is over and done with, we haven’t had too much family nastiness recently – come on girl, liven up! I haven’t even had any direct nastiness, I have just heard about it. It’s Mr. Razzler who has had to deal with it all, not me, and he seems to be doing fine. Am I weak? Am I unstable? How do I learn to ignore my emotions and just get on with life?

And then I had a conversation yesterday with Guru (my step-mum). The main point of her comments to me was that I should stop being so bloody hard on myself! (Ah, we’re back to that are we?) Being an emotionally-driven person is how I’m wired, there’s nothing wrong with that, and actually it has its good points. Hmm, interesting. And I’m not weak, but I am vulnerable, as people are when nasty things are said about them (maybe it’s a bit like being bullied at school? Food for thought). She thinks that the reason I am having a hard time getting over this is because my emotions dwell so deep within me and I have great difficulty communicating them. They get stuck inside, and my introvert tendencies mean I pull away from the world and then the thoughts become even more locked up inside. I’m telling you, people, I’d make a really good hermit!

You know, as an aside, one way that Mr. Razzler and I are different is in our communication techniques. He speaks very briefly, sometimes too briefly, which means that people have to decipher what he means. I waffle, especially when talking about my own “inner” thoughts. It’s like my thoughts are in cloud format inside my head and I just can’t seem to make them clear when they come out of my mouth. And being a perfectionist means that I can’t be happy until I have expressed myself to my satisfaction. We are both introverts and both have difficulty expressing certain thoughts. But he is often content to let that be and I am not. Thus, the end result for me tends to lean towards babbling, complete with impatient sighs from Mr. Razzler. It’s funny how I can be pretty good at interpreting other people’s thoughts and feelings, but terrible at interpreting my own.

Anyhoo… back to the point. What was the point? Ah yes, emotions. And to stop being hard on myself. To recognise… to recognise what? Not entirely sure, if I’m honest. I have the idea in my head to explore this theme more, and try to work out the place of feelings in my life. To work out how my ever-changing emotions fit with my belief in the never-changing God. Shall we see what babbling nonsense I spout in tomorrow’s post?

PS. I will attempt some more outward-looking posts, I promise, so that you don’t get bored to tears with 30 days of introspective analysis.

Thinking & Communication

I’m very sorry to those of you who enjoy my rambling thoughts for the lack thereof recently. Those who are irritated by the rambling thoughts – I promise I’m not offended.

I have been pondering things as usual (when don’t I?) but I haven’t been able to make them take a coherent form, so I didn’t want to blog about them. I’m a hideous perfectionist so if something is not communicated effectively enough then I get irritated. With myself and others.

This need for precise communication – where does it come from? Poor Mr. Razzler. I like to talk about the new ideas and concepts that pop into my mind. I like him to engage with me on these matters. Now, Mr. Razzler is a very practically minded sort of person. I love this about him. He can change fuses and other such useful things! We have very different personalities. I infuriate him on a regular basis because of my lack of observation skills. He’ll say, “Did you see what I did in the kitchen?” And my response is usually something along the lines of, “We have a kitchen?” He looks at me like I’ve suddenly grown another head.

However, I’m very observant when it comes to people. I notice subtle changes in expresion, body movements, etc. I notice how other people communicate and how they best understand communication, so I can often tailor my own communication to fit their needs.

But… and here’s where it gets complicated… I often struggle to verbally communicate the thoughts swishing round my own head. I can talk to someone about their own thoughts, and I can often understand where they’re coming from and help them with certain issues. But I can’t talk about myself! I get tongue-tied very easily. Mr. Razzler has pointed out (with relative frequency) that I often repeat myself. I know the reason for this. I think about everything before I talk. I have formed my thoughts precisely in my head. And am therefore often frustrated because they don’t come out of my mouth in the same way that they were when they were nestled snugly in my mind. I worry that I haven’t expressed myself adequately and the other person will therefore be left with an inadequate expression of my thoughts. I can’t bear that so I try again. And again. I’m working on this.

New thought. I’ve just been to lunch with 3 of my colleagues. I have worked out that they are all Sensing types. That’s Myers-Briggs who are unfamiliar with what that means. I am an iNtuitive type. Concepts, ideas, big picture stuff comes naturally to me. Details do not. My brain automatically takes leaps in thought; I’m not a linear thinker. You’d think, then, that S types would be very precise communicators. Not so. It’s like they sometimes get hung up on the details at the expense of the overall theme of the discussion. So… Topic A impacts on B and C. But my S friends are busy discussing A, and forget that A impacts both B and C. I often have to point this out to them. I find myself getting bored with just talking about A. I want to make the leap to B, C and beyond, with a potential detour around X!

I have to remind myself that being an N type is not better than being an S. Both are equally valuable. I must be careful to not get impatient with people simply because they think and communicate differently to me. I can be a perfectionist with myself, but I really should be more easygoing with other people.

People, or merely Potential Risk?

OK, OK… I eat my words. Last night was excellent.

The lecture was given by a guy called Peter Mandaville, and he was very good. He went into a lot of issues, many of which I agree with. One of which being that our country defines Muslim communities purely in terms of their potential threat to our society. The potential risk of radicalism. The outcome of this is that our country sees the only role that Muslim communities can play is that of preventing radicalism. Limited? Yes.

Even issues of integration. I spoke to a woman who works for the German government and she said that their country is very concerned with ensuring that Muslim communities are fully integrated into German society. Very good. But it begs the question: why do we want these communities to become integrated? Is it because we are concerned for their welfare, and want them to be able to flourish in our society? Or is it actually because the more integrated they are the less chance there is of people going over to the ‘dark side’ of radicalism?

I also spoke to two representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain, who fully agree that what our society is doing is further marginalising our Muslim communities. Looking at them purely through the lens of terrorism, limits the role they can play in society and surely just gives them the impression that we do not see them as real people, but purely as agents of their religion, which we do not understand and make no effort to understand.

One thing that the MCB is doing is sending Muslim men and women into state schools to talk to children and teenagers to give them hope that they can have a bright future. The men I spoke to believe that it is lack of hope, despair that pulls people towards radicalism - they only turn to terrorism when they feel they have no other choice left to them.

Our stance on terrorism, in my humble opinion, is short-sighted at best, and totally counter-productive at worst. We need to re-evaluate the way we look at our communities, re-think our understanding of Islam, and try to bash out a better way of dealing with this issue, that does not further marginalise the communities who have chosen to live in our society.