Shoot that poison apple through my heart.... no, wait. File that poison apple away for later.

We all know that feeling right? You're stressed. You feel like you're being jolted from one thing to another and it seems never ending and you feel like you don't have a second to yourself and DAMMIT you just feel overwhelmed.

And then.

Just when you think you're at breaking point it hits.

A nasty rebuke from your boss.
A snarky email from a friend / partner  / family member.
A rude stranger on the train.
An unhelpful person in your professional life.

BAM.

It's on. You're indignant. You're furious. You're enraged. You think 'HOW FUCKING DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME CAN'T YOU SEE I'M UP TO MY EYEBALLS / ABOUT TO POP  / CRAZY STRESSED, DON'T YOU SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING TO ME YOU INSUFFERABLE BUFFOON WHY IS THE WORLD SO UNKIND ETCETERA'.

I like to call these little babies 'poison apples'. A psychologist coined this little anecdote for me years ago. He may have gotten it from somewhere else, hell, it may be a known turn of phrase in psychological circles (though the internet doesn't seem to think so, I checked).

These things come up in life, yes, when you're stressed, yes, when you think you can't handle anything more happening in your life, and yes, when things going wrong. Sometimes they are malicious. But most often, they aren't (because they can't see. They don't know. They didn't realise the world was being so unkind to you).

I used to complain bitterly to my psychologist about things that people did that I perceived as unkind / unfair / downright wrong. On and on I would go, decrying other people's deplorable behaviour and the negative impact it had on me.

So here's what he said (and I'm paraphrasing here):

These things  that people say and do to you are like poison apples. They are bad for you, undoubtedly. The are nasty to receive. They might even be given by someone who KNOWS that the apple is poisonous. But you are the one who chooses to eat the apple. You are the one taking the first bite. You could give the apple back. You could put the apple in the bin. You could even put the apple aside until later and decide what to do with it at a later time. 

Food for thought, isn't it (haha, apple, haha, food). I was forced to think about this today, as I received a rather unpleasant email from a friend. I honestly thought I was seconds away from losing at her, ending our friendship, telling her what an idiot she was being.

But then, I remembered this analogy. Sure, I was angry. Sure,  I had a massive rant to my husband. Sure, I was upset. But after I gathered my rage, I filed the email away in  my 'personal' file and thought - yeah, with everything I've got on my plate at the moment, I'm just going to have to put that poison apple away and decide how to deal with it later. I don't have to take a bite, and if I do, I'm not sure I'll like to outcome.

As an aside, my friend sent me an email before I'd had a chance to respond the original, saying that she was sorry and regretted sending it. By then, my head was clearer. Not only was I less angry, but I was more equipped to get to the root cause of her original email - are you angry at me? is something personal going on with you? how can we fix this? or are you just having a shitty day, like I am? 

Do you ever feel like someone is handing you a poison apple and you have to take a bite and react NOW?

image from illeander.deviantart.com