Today's ODAT says:
'... every time I feel someone has offended or injured me, at least part of my unhappiness is due to the way I reacted.'
Not part of my unhappiness: all of my unhappiness is down to my response to a situation.
No one else is in charge of me but me. No one else reaches into my mind and yanks. No one makes me feel anything. No one presses my buttons. I'm the button-owner and the button-presser. No one triggers me. I trigger me. No one hurts, upsets, or offends me. I hurt, upset, and offend me. I'm not offended: I'm offensive; I'm on the attack, defending my ego, rolling around on the floor using my pain as a weapon to pass you the pass-the-parcel exploding bomb of insuperable, literally insufferable guilt. J'accuse, and it's you, it, them, all the pronouns but me that are in the dock.
Why? Because when I'm sick, down, and unhappy, and it's your fault, I'm off the hook, and I still get to keep my specialness, my individuality, my personality, my persona, my fake existence as a separate being but without the intolerable price of culpability. Victimhood is delicious.
Why? Because when I'm sick, down, and unhappy, and it's your fault, I'm off the hook, and I still get to keep my specialness, my individuality, my personality, my persona, my fake existence as a separate being but without the intolerable price of culpability. Victimhood is delicious.
If I'm unhappy, I did it. If I'm unhappy, I'm doing it to myself right now.
It's not my childhood, genetics, conditions, circumstances, the past, 'trauma', 'people, places, and things', 'the alcoholic', 'my qualifier', 'my motivator', my 'family of origin', 'life being lifey', my star sign, him, her, them, the government, the state, western society, the mass media, social media, this ideology, that ideology, this group of people, that group of people, 'all that is going on in the world', viruses, bacteria, the time of the year, the weather, the climate, my own past self, the past in general, the future, fate, luck, destiny, chance, kismet, karma, my star sign, my Myers–Briggs, what I had for dinner, my joints, the central heating, evil spirits, angels, God, or you.
What I am believing, thinking, and doing right now is producing what I am feeling right now: feeling is the corollary of these things, the other side of those three coins, the palpable edge of those performances, and, not being a lunatic or an imbecile, I have agency over those, with instruction, practice, and God.