I’m letting people who hurt me in the past live rent free in my mind.
One episode involves a former landlord that tried to run me over in an intersection with no traffic cameras.
Another one involves a manager that fired me for informing that one of his favorites yelled during night shift and ignored alarms to talk. He fired me the next day, used the exit interview to tell me everything I didn’t do right (but kept quiet about his favorites, even though I did the job like them), still had the utmost confidence on his favorites, accused me of being lazy and instead of simply firing me and keeping neutral he chose to take it personal, proceeded to try to scare me insinuating I wouldn’t work for his system again, when that failed, tried to humiliate me and then fired me. This was in an non union hospital.
When I think about it I get angry. Id like not to be so thin skinned, but here I am.
All the people who are saying “therapy” are spot on. It doesn’t mean something is wrong with you, or that you weren’t wronged, or even that you shouldn’t be angry. You’ve had some upsetting shit happen to you that you’re having trouble processing.
Just getting a neutral third party who you trust (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT) to seriously listen to you and help you figure out how to break out of cycles that are distressing is a huge advantage that is hard to replicate by yourself. If you don’t click with the first one (or two or three) that you talk to, dump them until you find someone you like.
Don’t put it off and let it fester. The more time your brain spends being angry the better it gets at it. That’s not necessarily you being thin-skinned, that’s your brain doing what it thinks it needs to do to stay safe. If you aren’t careful it’s very easy to spiral into being bitter and irritable about everything.