Life & Style | People
Notes to self: Stop seeing red
Globetrotting writer Gaby Doman reflects on the everyday ups and downs of being a modern woman
- Gaby Doman
- Published: 00:00 February 11, 2012
I remember an anger-management counselling session I had in Dubai once. The session was for a feature on the frustrations of being an expat, which I felt affected a lot of people I know. In truth, it affected me more than anyone else. Barely a day went by when I wouldn't get annoyed by a taxi driver or someone loitering three inches from me in a shop while I tried to browse.
I've never been particularly patient, but in Dubai my fuse grew shorter and shorter until it was barely a stub of a thing. I turned it around; the counselling showed me that my frustration came from not being able to make myself understood — whether that's through language or cultural barriers, or from the fact that I'm simply not very good at conveying my feelings.
Either way, I started to see that it was the way I reacted to people rather than their behaviour that was the problem. Sure, it's annoying when after waiting 20 minutes for a cab, the driver refuses to take you to Al Qusais, but who does it benefit when you get angry?
I started to pick my battles a bit better and took up yoga and other sports. Pretty soon I'd lost my feisty reputation and people would tell me that they couldn't imagine me getting angry about anything. I felt yoga had changed my life, and I wanted to tell everyone about it — I even taught it for a while in Cambodia.
But now a familiar feeling is taking over again. This year has been stressful. I don't want to keep writing about all the ways it has been testing, but it seems to get more dramatic every week. Last week I found out my best friends in Bangkok are leaving. They're my Bangkok family and I feel as though any happiness I've had here is down to them. When I found out, I tried to be positive and happy for them, but in my head, I was screaming in a guttural way, "NO. NO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I DEMAND you stay." Hopefully, from the outside I think I seemed calm and vaguely supportive.
I think this, combined with the other stresses of the year, has taken its toll, and I feel myself getting stressed by small things; such as traffic jams making me late or boys letting me down (you'd think I'd be used to it by now). A couple of people have started to joke about my temper. This morning, I slammed the door of a taxi (cab drivers seem to be my nemesis) after he was the fourth in a row who told me he wouldn't go where I had to. As I did so, I heard gasps from the Thai market vendors behind me.
Getting angry simply isn't acceptable in Thailand, where face-saving is everything and sabai sabai (relax) pretty much sums up the country's mood. I'd made a cultural faux pas and only served to make myself feel worse — ignorant and angry. Not a combination to feel proud of.
So it's time to take control. Slamming a door isn't the end of the world, but I think giving in to anger is a dangerous game. I've been neglecting my yoga this past year because I took up weight training and preferred the physical results it achieved to the gentle stretches of yoga. But I guess it's just as important to keep your mind in shape too.
I'm planning to rediscover yoga, take some time to meditate, get a good night's sleep and book a holiday to Bali (thankfully, I have just won a return flight to anywhere in South East Asia). After all, losing control of your life isn't an excuse to get back into bad habits when it could so easily be a change to get stronger, happier and healthier.
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