Break the Cycle

Trigger/Factor: Cattiness

Anyone who has been following mood's contest knows this word by heart now. And the only reason I've been watching is because hey, my journal has been getting hits and links courtesy of some of the participants. I know for sure that Pia Veleno has been linking my journal in her journal dedicated for the contest. Hence, new readership...maybe. I admit I also adore the idea of this contest, and had I been in this round, I'd have deftly ignored all the publicity hounding, childishly bickering, insensitive motherfuckers who bring the Livejournal mentality of pettiness to Writing.com. Gee, I'm not pissed about this, am I? Well, since I am, let's take a look at cattiness and how it affects me.

I do realize I should not let cattiness affect me as it does. However, between being a moderator and constantly being employed by companies who place me with mostly female co-workers, I deal with pretty much daily exposure to cattiness. It was even worse when I lived in that shitass apartment in Miami with three female roommates. I am serious when I say it took every shred of willpower I could find to not go on drugs to ease the pain. It was that bad. For me, petty arguments can both trigger anger (as it has done here) or exacerbate it. To trigger it, I have to stumble upon it. To exacerbate it, I must be immersed in it. This is the easiest trigger to handle for sure. However, as a factor in the development of my anger, it is the most difficult to handle.

Now exactly how does it affect my anger? SImple. It raises my blood pressure and my hackles. It irritates me beyond belief to see adults fight like children over stupid shit like journal entries or people not doing their job. To me, it's that own person's fault, and only they have to deal with the consequences. There is no need for anyone else to instigate a fight over something in which they have no involvement, which is how most cattiness begins. I know I tend to keep myself from participating in this type of behavior, but I am not afraid to pull out the big guns if I need to. In my opinion, cattiness should be counted as harassment both here on the site and in general. I feel it is unnecessary and extremely detrimental to a location, be it a website or a workplace. It hurts relations among members/employees/customers/whomever and decreases productivity. It also hurts the quality of work in any given location. Need I list anymore reasons for catty behavior to piss me off as it does? But yeah. It physically affects me. Besides my blood pressure, I get headaches, adrenaline surges (which translates into repressed physical violence), tightness in the stomach and decreased control of my voice. When I'm angry due to exposure to catty behavior, I have a damn difficult time controlling my voice. With other triggers/factors, I'm not inclined to raise my voice. With cattiness, however, I tend to experience a greater urge to yell. Folks, when I yell, I sound like a demon. I have scared the shit out of several co-workers when I yell. I am loud, my pitch dips to masculine levels, and my ability to project my voice is magnified. Normally, I speak fairly softly (must be the Dutch blood), but in the face of catty behavior, my voice is bust-your-eardrums loud. It doesn't help that I tend to yell in rooms with little to absorb the sound, so on a particularly bad day, I can even generate an echo. If you happen to be standing next to me, you can tell if I'm about to yell. My voice trembles, and I occassionally stutter. That said, you better be ready to dive for cover, unless of course you want to go deaf.

All in all, cattiness is a difficult trigger and factor for me to really cope with, and I'm not sure what to do. I have contemplated demotion and take my yellow case back so I don't have to listen to mods fucking bitch all 365 fucking days a year. I personally feel mod cattiness should be punished with no-holds-barred demotion, but then there would only be a handful of mods for a huge site. But there are reasons that I refuse to quit: newsletters, rating changes, answering questions, shit like that. As well, I just can't walk out of a job when two bitches start talking smack in which they have no direct involvement. So what is a girl supposed to do? Kill these scores of bitches? I don't want to only see mi amor during conjugal visits, thanks. Still, this is a huge problem for me, and I need to find a solution other than avoidance to handle this malady.