Delayed reactions

There’s actually quite a lot of admin work waiting to be cleared.. but here I am blogging..

It seems that I’m suddenly surrounded with people who are in the throes of emotional turmoil. Two have romantic issues, one is being bullied by a colleague and one student burst into tears when I asked her about her home financial situation.

My encounter with the student was rather telling. When she burst into tears, I had really wanted to comfort her by patting her or leaning over. Instead, I went into automatic pilot mode of objectivity. Immediately, I started listing out the reasons she should not feel ashamed. I adjusted my tone of voice to ‘comforting’ and I did my best to use reason to calm her down. The same thing happened when someone close to me had a major quarrel with her partner. The first thing I did was to let my reason take over.

It’s a marvelous mechanism, to always be able to remain calm in a crisis.. yet last night I could not sleep. I wonder if my emotional mechanisms are a little stunted or numbed.

It’s odd. People who meet me expect my drama-mama mode to flare up and think that I will behave hysterically during disagreements. But I never do. I just have a delayed emotional fall-out. I’m thankful.. yet I wonder if it’s entirely healthy.

Hmm.