The other day, I was picking up the child I babysit. As I was sitting in my parked car an older parent started to yell at me from their car. Hearing the muffled sounds of distress, I rolled down my window and the parent begins to scream at me again. I am bewildered. I haven’t done anything wrong. Yet, I can feel the anxiety boiling in my stomach. For every claim against me, the ball of terror is growing.
As I am driving back, I can’t stop thinking about it. What could I have done differently? What should I have said to him? Was I really doing nothing wrong? I thought even more about it, I can't let it go. I thought why out of all the other parents and people there did he choose to yell at me. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was me. I had been in a car. All I had to do was roll up my window, but I didn’t. I let him yell at me, I let him make me upset, and I let him attack me.
I realized I actually do this a lot and I’m not the only one. Once that anxiety kicks in it’s like BOOM! You’re done. No more functioning adult.
It would have been so easy for me to push the button and roll up my window on him, but I didn’t because instead of remembering that he can’t hurt me, he can’t make anyone else hurt me, and that he is no better or different from me, I worried that he could. I’m not the only one that does this. I’m not the only one that panics when someone yells at me. And here’s the thing you don’t have to.
You don’t have to let them yell at you. Not anyone. Not your boss, or your significant other, or your ex-significant other, or your parents or your friends, or even random strangers in a school parking lot. None of us have to let them. He yelled at me, picked me because I let him. You are just as good as the other person. I am just as good as the other person. That is the chief reason I let people yell at me. I think they might have something that will actually help me, or something useful, or that they might actually be right. But the truth is they are never right, the second they start raising their voice, they lose that credibility. No matter what they say after that they are wrong. I’d rather have the anxiety of never knowing than let someone else win. We don’t have to let them win. We can all roll up the window.
