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Wise Words of a Prim & Proper Lady
“Blow it out your ass!”
While sitting in a car in the midst of a traffic jam, a driver behind them was laying into the horn without letup as if that would clear the road & allow passage. Finally, an aging lady of proper breeding with all the seals of approval from “Good Housekeeping” & the other accrediting associations could stand it no longer, rolled down her window, stuck her head out, & proclaimed loudly, “Blow it out your ass!” to the driver leaning on his horn behind them.
A feeling to do likewise comes over me regularly as I hear about all the insanity passing for politics, leadership decisions, & international agreements. Mere rationality has become rare. Like the main character in the film “Network” leaning out his window & screaming “I’m not going to take this anymore!”, I, too, often want to let it all out so as not to melt down otherwise.
From my own experience & that of many of my psychotherapy clients, students, & workshop participants, I completely disagree with the research supposedly showing that the volcano theory of emotional release is not valid. I know how I feel when I shout, cuss, or otherwise blow up, usually at myself, for something stupid that I have done, or increasingly, forgotten to do. The blast of venom from within is blown out, Vesuvius cools, & rationality resettles my nerves. Without such blowouts, I would have eaten myself from within with ulcers, high blood pressure, or mental illness ages ago.
Living alone greatly facilitates such venting, something I want no one else to have to endure. When I lived with others, they would invariably get drawn into the situation assuming the attack was directed at them & their shortcomings.
I’m far from perfect & know that I have hurt many people throughout my life. The bulk of those I have hurt, however, have been victims of misunderstandings created by awkward circumstances where I was having a disagreement with a part of myself & had allowed it to jump off the table, spill into someone else’s space, or even bite somebody else in a tender place.
