Hello Rich!

Thank you for your helpful feedback! Yes, like you I feel harmony and energetic well-being when I am alone. Overall being with others has become relaxed and I don't typically feel the need to make anyone see anything or argue anyone's reality. However, I am finding these micro-aggressions directed at me or my kids quite painful - the energy is like if you imagine a small child proudly holding up their artwork for a group of "loved ones" and the group bursting into laughter because of the way the child drew the picture - they think it's just normal banter, but the child feels humiliated and wrong, while they get a laugh at the other's expense. This is what brings on the fight response and the urge to make the other hear me.

You are right to point to the importance of being in these feelings without needing to fix it and letting that fiery energy of anger burn into self-illumination rather than be disbursed through external measures. My response can sometimes be biting - matching the sharpness I feel coming from them back to them, and that is not very effective. I like what you said here..."find the essence of the energy of the situation and call out that instead of the surface emotion." I find this after the fact, but in the meantime, I usually have created more messiness before I get there. =) In a way this feels like a shift in relating as in the past I would avoid or appease (as you mention in your other post) - its a positive in a way that I am feeling and acting on the fight response...just need to make it conscious and work with it differently.

Thanks so much for engaging this with me.