I don't know about you, but I am drained to my core. I am tired deep in my bones, to the point where I just want to lay on the floor in the fetal position in the dark. Weep and wail until I am spent, because I am tired of walking away from conversations wondering what the fuck just happened. I am tired of being self-aware and self-reflective to the point of rumination, constantly trying to figure out why interactions with certain people are so impossibly difficult and draining.
Then on the other hand, conversations with others just seem to flow so naturally I start trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong because after all, I am the common denominator in these interactions. One conversation with one person goes wrong and another conversation with a different person seems to go right.
Same me. Different outcome. There has to be something that I'm missing. This leads to analysis paralysis, right? Why is it? When I talk with some people, it's so much fun and you laugh, you smile, you share, joke, and the time just seems to fly by. With this other person over here.
When you're done, your shoulders are radiating heat to the point where they're burning. You felt like you've been holding your shoulders so tight to the point where they ache, and then your head is pounding, and your mind is spinning and you feel dizzy.
And look, y'all, I'm not kidding about the physical pain. I spent probably around a thousand dollars on chiropractic care trying to unfuck my neck from tension.
This happened after a culmination of repeated encounters with a particularly toxic person that I worked with. My neck hurt so bad, I considered calling an ambulance. What I'm learning here is that apparently some people are so toxic they can give you the equivalent of whiplash without laying a hand on you.
If you can imagine, it's like Spock doing a mind meld and a Vulcan neck pinch. Just with his mind.
Encounters like this with these toxic people can sometimes trap you in a loop where you spend time replaying every word, pause, reaction, facial expression, and micro movement, trying to figure out what you did wrong.
Sometimes it feels like, it's a true, what the fuck just happened? Hallmark mystery of the weak moment. I have to put on my Jessica Fletcher hat to investigate the crime scene of the Toxic Thanksgiving dinner from hell.
If you're picking up what I'm putting down here, then this podcast is for you. Because we've all been asking the same questions lately. What the hell is going on with everybody?
Here's what I've learned over the past few years. It's led me to start doing research and I've come across a term called emotional immaturity. And after reading about it and thinking about it, I realized that I think we just all expected that as people grow older.
They would become emotionally mature.
So, it's something that is an invisible expectation until it isn't. You go into conversations thinking that you're gonna be dealing with a reasonably mature person. And then that rug gets pulled right out from under your ass, and by the time you figure out something isn't quite right, you're trapped engaging with someone who needs to center themselves and receive constant attention to feed their self-worth.
And suddenly you realize you're playing by a completely. Different set of rules or that they're playing by no rules and that's when it clicks, the emotional heavy lifting has been falling on you. because instinctively when you get around certain people, you feel like you have to start watching your tone, leading with gratitude and platitudes, and managing your reactions for the sake of your peace because you don't wanna trigger anyone and then have to deal with their cleanup on aisle six moment.
But here's what makes this whole thing insidious. We know it's not our job to manage other people's emotions. We should be free to communicate our truth with empathy.
Without the intention of inflicting harm on others, that should be enough, but apparently, it's not. If you're well intentioned, this is hard to do day in and day out. It's a devastating energy drain. So, to restore your peace, we end up feeling as though we need to apologize for things that we shouldn't have to apologize for.
We shut down and we stay shut down just to survive the day. We're constantly translating and accommodating doing all the heavy lifting. When we finally express our frustration and annoyance or exhaustion to these toxic folks, all of a sudden, we become the villain. Somehow. We are the ones who need to do better.
Meanwhile, the people causing all this energy drain and throwing all these tantrums, they get to behave however they want. They don't self-reflect or seek to grow. They continue to play by those same old rules and those same old, tired games without taking any responsibility for their impact on others.
That's what I call audacity, the breathtaking nerve of people who expect you to manage their emotions while dismissing yours, who demand your energy, your time, your intelligence without consideration of how it impacts you, and then they tend to play victim when you set up boundaries and protect yourself.
The sheer audacity of acting like their needs, feelings, and desires matter more than everyone else's.
So, what's going on here at Rage Against the Audacity? First of all, this isn't therapy. This isn't self-help telling you to communicate better or to just set better boundaries. To me, that's victim blaming, disguised as advice.
What? This is what we are doing here. We're doing validation. We're doing recognition. This is finally, finally, a space where your frustration makes sense, where wanting basic reciprocity in relationships doesn't make you difficult, where your anger just might be justified.
Look, I'm gonna tell you what no one else will. Your frustration is valid. You are allowed to be human. You're going to make mistakes, but somehow emotionally mature people are held to a different standard. We do the work of self-reflection. We take accountability, and we accept responsibility for our part in communication breakdowns.
We shouldn't have to be perfect to survive normal conversational interactions.
So here at Rage Against the Audacity, we're going to stop pretending that your anger isn't justified.
Let's walk through this mess and see what we can discover.
If you're tired of being told to manage your tone while others speak however they want. If you're exhausted by the increase in adult sized toddler style tantrums, then welcome, your home.
This is Rage against the Audacity. Let's figure this out together.