You say it wasn’t the “real you” who said that. So who was it?
Stress is ever-present in our lives. No one is exempt from the external pressures of life, and even when everything on the outside is going just fine, there are always the inner demons of negative thoughts, low moods, internal struggles, irrational anxieties, depleted energies, and general overwhelm — among other perturbations. There are days when we feel like we’re going to explode from it all. And there are days when we do.
“So I said, ‘No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ and all of a sudden he went crazy. He started screaming about how unsupportive I am, how he should never have married me, how he can’t stand living with me, and how he’s going to meet with the Rav because he wants a divorce! I had no idea what had just happened. I thought we were having a normal conversation!
“At first I stood there speechless, but then I burst into tears and ran to the bedroom. He slammed the door and left the house. I honestly thought our marriage was over. But then a couple of hours later, he came back with flowers in his hand. He told me how sorry he was for what he had said. He said he didn’t mean any of it — he was just so stressed from everything that had been going on. Well, you know what? I don’t care how stressed he was. He said horrible things to me that I can never forget.”
When we’re stressed out, we can say and do things that are not consistent with our own self-image. “That wasn’t the real me — I’m really a very nice person. It’s just that I was so stressed.” There is a view in psychology that we all have a “shadow self,” a part of ourselves that we prefer not to identify with, a part that may not be nice at all. Unfortunately, as long as we disown our inner monsters, we’re actually like drunk drivers who eschew responsibility for killing others on the road. “It wasn’t me, officer — I was drunk.” Okay. And who is it that got drunk, then? Lack of ownership means lack of power to change.
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