On Not Passing Disorder Forward

One of the harder things I keep having to learn is this: just because something restless or hurtful rises in me does not mean it should be handed to someone else.

Sometimes that looks obvious. A sharp tone. A quick message. An answer given before I have really thought about what I am feeling. Sometimes it is quieter than that. Sometimes it is sarcasm. Sometimes it is the urge to repeat something negative. Sometimes it is the temptation to pass along gossip because some part of me wants release more than it wants honesty.

I know that impulse well enough to mistrust it, especially when I feel overwhelmed, unseen, or hurt in a way that makes some part of me want to strike back in a smaller way and tell myself it is justified.

But I know what it is to live near anger that was never really dealt with before it was passed on. I know what it is to receive someone else’s pain in the form of tone, tension, and words that were never properly weighed before they were given away. Because I know that feeling, I do not want to become a person who spreads hurt simply because I have felt hurt.

So I try to pause. I take space when I can. I wait before I answer. I try to ask whether what I am about to say is true, necessary, and honest, or whether I only want someone else to carry a little of what I am feeling.

That pause matters more than I can always see in the moment. It has kept me from speaking in the wrong tone. It has kept me from saying things before I understood what I was really reacting to. It has kept me from mistaking the need to discharge emotion for the need to tell the truth.

I still get this wrong sometimes. There are things I regret because I spoke too quickly, or because I let the timing and tone do harm I did not fully mean to do. But even that regret has taught me something. Not every feeling should be given immediate expression. Not every unsettled part of me needs to be put onto someone else.

Sometimes mercy begins there, not in pretending peace and not in swallowing what is real, but in refusing to pass along what I have not yet made honest.