Some Might Say It’s Wrong to Be Angry

Posted on by Astrid

Some might say it’s wrong to be angry. I was actually told when I was in fourth grade that I was “angry too quickly”. What my parents and the professionals meant is that my expression of my emotions, whether I was actually feeling angry or not, was wrong given the situation.

That’s not the same. An emotional expression isn’t the same as the emotion that someone is actually feeling.

Besides, I strongly disagree with the idea that emotions can be “right” or “wrong” even given the circumstances. I have always felt that the idea behind dialectical behavior therapy of deciphering whether an emotion you’re feeling is justified in that situation or not, and, if not, acting opposite, is incredibly invalidating.

It’s never wrong to feel angry. Or sad. Or happy for that matter. Yes, it can be wrong to express your emotions in a certain way, such as when you become disproportionately aggressive. Even then, your emotions aren’t wrong. And, at least in my case, the emotion I’m actually feeling isn’t usually anger.

Like, when, last week, I became physically aggressive towards a staff by trying to hit him, I wasn’t angry. I was panicking because the staff was restraining me for the relatively minor offense of trying to grab a small object that he thought I was going to throw to the ground. That assumption may’ve been correct, but that doesn’t mean my feeling of utter panic when grabbed by both arms, was wrong. For what it’s worth, I feel that restraining someone for fear of them damaging an easily replacable object, is out of proportion.

It’s easy to say that people are wrong for being angry, when in reality you can’t know what’s in their minds, so whether they actually feel anger at all. It’s also easy to think that a person trying to throw objects is disturbing the peace for the other people around so you, as a staff member, are justified to do whatever it takes to prevent them. However, just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s right.

I’m sharing this post with Missy’s MAD Challenge for this week. The prompt is the phrase “Some might say it’s wrong to…”.

Shame and Guilt: How to Deal With Difficult Emotions #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today for my letter S post in the #AtoZChallenge, I want to talk about how to cope with hard-to-deal-with emotions such as shame and guilt.

First, what are shame and guilt? Shame is a complex emotion that usually arises when you think you’ve failed. Shame is not really focused on the specific action that causes you to feel bad about yourself, but rather it is focused on your identity. As a result, shame can cause you to feel inadequate or worthless.

Guilt, on the other hand, is an emotional response to thinking you’ve done something wrong. It, unlike shame, is linked to the specific mistake you made and it as a result often prompts you to try to rectify it.

Put simply, shame is an emotion that prompts people to hide, whereas guilt prompts people towards justice.

How do you deal with shame and guilt? First, identify what shame feels like for you. For instance, where do you feel it in your body?

Then, identify your shame triggers. Shame and guilt are both triggered by specific events. However, shame often leads us to feel like we as people are flawed, rather than us having simply made a mistake. As such, we often lose sight of the specific situations that trigger us to feel shame. Try to identify these.

Then, identify and challenge the specific thoughts that cause you to feel like you’re altogether bad. Shame can be helpful in pointing out ways in which you’ve failed, but these mistakes do not make you a failure as a person.

Finally, right the wrong. Do what it takes to rectify the mistake you made that caused you to feel shame. For example, if you’ve damaged another person’s stuff, buy new stuff or give them money or whatever. At the very least, apologize. And do the work necessary to prevent you making the same mistake again. Going into hiding out of shame doesn’t do any good. Admitting your guilt and making amends does.

There are other difficult emotions I could’ve mentioned here, such as bitterness and anger (except that these don’t start with the letter S). These are in a similar way related to each other that shame and guilt are: while bitterness leads people to inaction, anger leads people to fight for what they believe in. Anger, of course, can turn to the extreme of rage and then be inappropriate, but in general it’s healthier to be angry rather than bitter. In every situation, it is recommended to watch for all-or-nothing thinking that can lead you towards hopelessness and self-defeat.

Positive Psychology: The Science of Optimal Wellbeing #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. For my letter P post in the #AtoZChallenge, I want to talk about positive psychology. Positive psychology, first developed by Martin Seligman at the beginning of this century, is focused on optimal wellbeing as opposed to overcoming mental health problems. After all, according to Seligman, curing the negative (such as depression or anxiety) does not produce the positive. As such, though positive psychology also focuses on interventions, its aim is to maximize people’s happiness rather than merely curing mental problems.

What are the main ideas behind positive psychology? First are the three types of happiness. These are hierarchical in order. Lowest on the ladder is the Pleasant Life. This refers to daily pleasures and indulgences. For example, I enjoyed a BBQ yesterday. Next up is the Good Life, which is achieved when people are engaged in their daily activities. This form of happiness is focused more on longer-term goals. For example, engagement might look like being passionate about your work, cultivating healthy relationships or pursuing hobbies. Highest up then is the Meaningful Life, which is achieved when people use their strengths and character traits to serve a cause greater than them.

I for one find myself mostly at the lowest point if even that. Occasionally, I try to work towards longer-term goals, but this easily gets overwhelming.

Next, positive psychology looks at the pillars behind happiness. These are summarized as the acronym PERMA or PERMAH. These stand for:


  • Positive emotions.
  • Engagement in activities: being truly present when doing something.

  • Relationships that are meaningful and intentionally investing in them.

  • Meaning in life: focus on a cause greater than yourself.

  • Accomplishment: achieving goals that are important to you.

  • Health, particularly physical health. This one is the most recent addition to the acronym. For physical health, research shows that three things in particular help: physical activity, healthy eating and sleep.

Like I said, in order to lead a Meaningful Life, people utilize their strengths and virtues. However, it may be hard to discover what your strengths are. To find these, researchers have developed the VIA (Virtues in Action) strengths survey. For some reason, I couldn’t register in order to take the survey.

Gratitude and grit are two more concepts in positive psychology. Grit is a focus on long-term goals. This is what keeps people going when they have temporary setbacks. Gratitude can also help people focus on the things they do have rather than the things they don’t.

Overall, though I know that positive psychology is actually science-based, it does leave me wondering how well people can actually influence their happiness. Positive psychology, though it might help people who aren’t struggling with their mental health in any major way, won’t cure significant mental distress. In this sense, the reverse of what Seligman said about curing the negative not producing the positive, is also true.

Overcoming Negative Emotions #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m really struggling and honestly, even though it’s past 10PM, I haven’t even completely decided on a topic for my letter O post in the #AtoZChallenge. I did a quick Google search for personal growth topics and the only one with an O I found, didn’t even have an O as its main first letter. It was “Overcoming fear and anxiety”. Then I realized that “obstacle” starts with an O so if we’re rebranding it as “Overcoming obstacles to mental health”, the main word does start with an O. Let’s go!

The topic of overcoming negative emotions and moods that are obstacles to mental health, ties in with many other general self-help topics. After all, many things that help people overcome mild to moderate symptoms of anxiety and depression, also help people feel better overall. These things include:


  • Mindfulness: being aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions without judgment.

  • Gratitude: focusing on the things you do have rather than the things you don’t.

  • Physical activity, including something as simple as a walk, but also running and other more intense exercise.

  • Healthy and balanced eating habits (yes, that includes the occasional treat!).

  • Making sure you get enough proper quality sleep.

  • Spiritual or religious practices, such as prayer, spells or meditation.

  • Contributing to your community.

  • Distracting yourself by engaging in a hobby, such as reading or crafts.

More specific practices that could help according to some are sitting with feelings, putting your problems into perspective by thinking that it could be worse, and forcing yourself to smile. Yes, I seriously got these from a handout in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a therapy approach applied to an increasing number of mental health issues. You’d be right if you thought I don’t think highly of these ideas. That is, I either focused on the wrong aspect of the teaching and the bigger picture was different, or these people are indeed horribly invalidating.

One thing that I did get from DBT that might make a tiny little bit of sense, is opposite acting (hey, another O). This means that you do the opposite of the immediate impulse your feelings and thoughts trigger. For example, if you are feeling depressed and your impulse is to lie in bed and isolate, DBT instructs you to actually go out and meet people. This is probably where the forcing yourself to smile comes in. Facing your fears is also a way of acting opposite to the emotion and this is, when done gradually, actually effective in treating mild to moderate anxiety.

Book Review: Will You Help Me? by Maggie Hartley

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. As regular readers of this blog will know, I love memoirs. I particularly love books about fostering and special education. I however hadn’t read such a book in a few months, but last week, I decided to buy Will You Help Me? by foster care memoirist Maggie Hartley. Here’s my review.

Book Description

‘Please help me,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Will you help me?’

Six-year-old Ralph has only been in the care system for three days and has already been rejected by three different foster carers. After hitting a teacher at his school and causing mayhem since he arrived four months ago, staff are unable to get a hold of his mum and her partner.

Social Services are called and when Ralph turns up at Maggie’s house, she knows immediately it’s going to be a challenge. Within a couple of hours, Ralph has trashed Maggie’s house and spit on her face. After a nightmare first day though, Maggie notices that Ralph is limping and a hospital check reveals broken limbs and several injuries that are months and years old. Can Maggie help this troubled little boy who has been rejected by everyone in his life find his forever home?

From Britain’s most-loved foster carer, a new powerful true story of abuse, family and hope.

My Review

Most foster care memoirs I’ve read are on the predictable side and this one isn’t terribly twisty either. However, it’s less predictable than other memoirs I’ve read.

This book also made me feel a rollercoaster of emotions. I could relate to Ralph in some ways and this made me root for him even more than I otherwise would have. The book describes Ralph being restrained (in a cuddly way) several times. This triggered me, because I too have experienced being physically restrained. It was, however, good to feel the feels when it’s someone else being talked about.

This book reminds me of the time I read Who Will Love Me Now?, also by Maggie Hartley, which I (reviewed in 2020. I think I love both books equally.

Behind My Anger #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

SoCS Badge 2019-2020

Many people think I’m angry a lot. It was written in my reports from psychologists as early as age 8 and maybe even younger. I do sound angry sometimes, but behind that anger are many other emotions. I mean, I rarely feel genuinely angry, but I express many strong emotions as rage, irritability or other forms of anger.

I don’t blame other people for not seeing it. I see anger a lot when others claim there isn’t any. But it’s hard for me to look beyond (my perceptions of) people’s surface expressions. When it feels as though an angry person stands in front of me, or worse yet, behind me, I shrink inwardly, but react outwardly. This is really hard for others to comprehend, but I have the same feelings as everybody else. So do you, even if it appears I only see anger. We all need to look beyond what seems to be in front of us.

This post was written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, for which the prompt today is “in front” and/or “behind”. Linda’s also doing #JusJoJan again, which stands for Just Jot It! January. I will write a post when the prompt appeals to me, but I do really hope to be blogging regularly this month (and the rest of 2025).

“Feeling Blue” Makes No Sense

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m a little late participating in this week’s Sunday Confessionals, as rather than Sunday, it’s Monday night. However, as someone who only “sees” color as it’s presented to me synesthetically, I felt the prompt of “feeling blue” appealed to me.

Blue, as I see it, is not a sad color at all. As such, “feeling blue” has never truly had its intended connotation to me. Blue is the color of clear skies (at least, in our perception). I associate it with inward-directed energy. As such, blue is the color of the letter T, which represents “Thinking” in the MBTI. It might be associated with introspection, but it’s definitely not associated with depression. I’d choose grey for that instead.

I am not a color-to-emotion synesthete, although if I want to, I can describe the feel various colors have to me. Red is angry, as one might expect. Yellow, on the other hand, isn’t as upbeat as most people associate the color to be. I would describe it, depending on its shade, as slightly content in a light shade to optimistic in sunflower yellow. Give me green as the representative of joy anytime. And purple, and especially lilac, is authentic, even though there’s no purple letter in that word.

What do you think? Do colors have emotional meanings to you?

Play Therapy #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

I had my first play therapy session on Wednesday. That is, I used to have play therapy when I was in elementary school. That was nearly 30 years ago though. Yikes, how time flies!

Anyway, I only had four sessions back then before the school holiday and apparently those were either enough or my parents didn’t consent to more play therapy. Not that they were paying, but oh well. My parents were very reluctant to agree to these first sessions anyway, because they were suspicious of anyone in the helping profession, including the play therapist. I wonder why, since the goal of therapy was that I not get angry as quickly anymore. I back then denied getting angry much at all. However, I did play with toy weapons all the time, threw out the purple-haired dollhouse figurines because people don’t have purple hair and tried to overflow the water tray. That might have been telling. Or not, since I don’t know whose initiative the toy weapons were.

I hated play therapy though, because I had to go to it during my favorite subject in school, biology. I wonder honestly what the point was.

Same now. I was initially told, back in February when I had the intake interview for therapy with two different therapists, that the type of therapy I’d get was called something like “differentiation therapy”. I filled in what I thought this meant and behaved in a way that I thought was consistent with this. I thought that the goal is to learn to identify different feelings, so this Wednesday I constantly named the attributes of the objects I played with. The therapist did note that I was adamant about which types of play-doh I liked or didn’t like, but she didn’t write anything about me constantly saying, for example, that the PlayMobil® figurine was giving its companion its left rather than right hand, etc.

I’m pretty sure I was trying to show off with this behavior. I’m now scared she’s going to think I’m far more capable of identifying feelings than I am. Or think I am. Or whatever. I hope we’ll get something out of play therapy this time around, unlike back in 1996 when I was ten.

This post was written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (#SoCS), for which the prompt is “school”. I interpreted it loosely, because I really wanted to write about play therapy. I’m going to write an actual post on my first session later.

Aphantasia and Alexithymia #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to the #AtoZChallenge for 2024, letter A. I don’t have a theme, but I thought I’d do a repeat of what I did several years ago (I think it was in 2019), sharing posts on topics relevant to myself. I might still go off on a tangent every now and again. Awareness posts are one of my strengths and I’ve covered autism more than enough, so today I thought I’d cover two subjects I’m still relatively new to myself: aphantasia and alexithymia.

Aphantasia is also known as “mental blindness”, although it can be related to any of the senses. It’s an inability to form a mental image of something (or to imagine a sound, smell, whatever). As it turns out, most people can see relatively vivid images in their mind’s eye when they think of an object or person even when said object or person isn’t with them right then. They can also picture a scene, such as a beach scene, in their mind’s eye. I, however, can only picture objects and people very vaguely if at all, even when they’re things I used to be able to see in real life when I still had some sight.

Moreover, like I said, aphantasia can affect the other senses too. This was what made me realize I probably do in fact have aphantasia and am not just a blind person who has forgotten what it’s like to be able to see. After all, when doing a meditation practice that, for instance, tells me to imagine a beach scene, including hearing the waves crashing against the beach, seagulls making their sounds in the distance, feeling the sand between my toes, etc., I can’t. And it’s not for lack of trying. I mean, I remember once, many years ago, one of the child alters creating an inner beach by writing its description out here on the blog. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t actually effective.

Aphantasia is related to a phenomenon I did hear about several years ago, called alexithymia. This is the inability to recognize, identify and describe one’s own emotions. I remember getting a questionnaire on this at my last autism assessment in 2017, but was in denial about how significantly alexithymic I am in fact, because I, unlike the stereotype of alexithymia, don’t consider deep, emotional discussions a waste of time. In other words, I am not unwilling to describe my own feelings, but merely unable.

Neither alexithymia nor aphantasia are classified as disorders in their own right. They often co-occur with autism, which of course isn’t necessarily a disorder either but is classified as such and is, in my case, certainly disabling. Then again, so is my inability to identify my own emotions.

February 2024 Reflections #WBOYC

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m sharing this past month’s reflections again, as it’s the last day of the month. February is often a hard month for me and this year was no exception. I honestly feel quite hopeless as I write this post, even though I probably should be feeling cautiously optimistic. Let’s dive in. As usual, I’m linking up with #WBOYC.

During the first few weeks of the month, I shared some more concretely about things I wish would change about my care here at my current care home, only to be told nothing will change until after the summer at least. This caused me quite a bit of despair, honestly.

The contrast couldn’t be greater when I did experience exactly one near-perfect day last week and saw nothing about it in the staff’s records. When telling my staff about this, I got advised that maybe reading the log notes might not be a good idea after all. WTF?

It also looks like my staff are using my current mistrust, and the fact that I’ll likely develop trust in my staff very slowly, as an excuse not to have to improve my care. After all, yesterday my assigned staff said my level of trust is currently zero so any improvement is to be celebrated when I was calling him out on ways in which he and his coworkers are expecting too much of me.

Today, I had the intake interview for therapy at my care agency’s practice. I probably portrayed myself as an attention-seeking, childish, purposefully-dependent monster. The therapist who asked me the questions (there were two in the room, plus my home’s behavior specialist), kept repeating how feeling isn’t dangerous.

At one point, I was talking about how I sometimes trigger myself by looking up idealized care situations. She was like: “But you don’t need full-time one-on-one.”. I know. Then she went on to tell me that sometimes she feels bored and lonely when she’s at home alone, but nothing bad happens so she can stay home alone. She also told me I’m an adult. This somehow majorly triggered me and now I feel bad for being triggered because doesn’t that prove my former psychologist’s point of view? You know, the one who diagnosed me with dependent personality disorder and told me I needed a good kick in the behind to live independently?

Yet things did happen. I dropped my meds. I dropped glass on the floor. I fell of a kitchen stool. The housing association came by and told me I needed to pull away the weeds out of my backdoor path. And a thousand other things. None of these are serious things, except that I had no idea how to handle them so spiraled into panic. And there’s no point teaching me how to handle every tiny little situation that could go wrong. And for the record, sitting with the feelings won’t solve the problems either. Calling for help rather than spiraling into panic might have, but that didn’t seem to be her point. Besides, I cannot do that when I’m in a panic.

She did say that she doesn’t make decisions about my independence, but I feel very strongly like I am being asked to be the strong, independent, intellectual part of myself again.

The therapists ended up recommending a form of play therapy, but the play therapist who comes to the main institution is male and I’ll be alone with him. That’s not an option for me, honestly. They are going to look into finding me a female therapist. I hope they will, as the rest of what they recommended, though I did agree to go forward with it and have my first appt on April 3, seems a bit off. They recommended psychoeducation on emotions, which seemed to me a bit like dialectical behavior therapy light (I’d mentioned I’d done DBT unsuccessfully). They’ll also help me identify my triggers and make a timeline of significant life events or something. I’m not sure what relevance that would have, but oh well.

Currently, I’m trying to talk myself into being positive. This care home clearly won’t improve, so either I improve or my life stays the same. Which is mediocre. I do have my good days, but I’m pretty sure the staff are going to agree at the next team meeting that the staff’s less optimal care approach should be the default.

On my good days this past month, I did craft some earrings, a polymer clay unicorn and bird’s nest, as well as make delicious homemade chocolate fudge. This was awesome!