Tuning out the screaming
Kris often tells a story of his high school baseball coach. Actually, he tells a lot of stories about the guy. Enough that there might have been more than one coach, and I just blur them all together.
The most entertaining of the stories is the one that ends with his coach commenting to Kris, "McQueen, I time you running to first base with a calendar."
But, the one relevant to me at the moment is the one where he talks about the coach's yelling. When the coach became frustrated (usually because the team wasn't winning, as in not-winning so well, they were on a losing streak that stretched across half the county), the coach would start yelling. As Kris puts it, he was mad from the beginning.
Eventually, where that "eventually" amounted to the second day of practice, all the players would ignore the coach. Let him scream, no one's listening.
I recently experienced much the situation. A message I received contained LOTS and LOTS of CAPITAL LETTERS, indicating annoyance, perhaps anger, directed at me.
My first reaction was complete stress. My heart rate shot up, my limbs flooded with adrenalin, my blood pressure jumped. My second reaction was one of, well, resignation. The issues being YELLED SO LOUDLY weren't any I COULD FIX, nor were they that much of A BIG DEAL.
The whole thing kinda annoyed me. The best thing was that it helped me make a decision to end my relationship with the sender of the message. I'd been unable to decide for a while now if the relationship was worth saving. With the YELLING message, I've decided it's not, and have begun the split.
I should have learned how to tune out the noise sooner.