I've always struggled with friendships. I learned much later in life this was due to a mental health diagnosis that came with social anxiety among other factors that make it difficult for me to create and sustain meaningful connections with people. Interesting things happen when you force yourself to believe you are normal. I wanted to badly to normalize myself I had a habit of constantly attending social meetup events while I lived in NYC. I don't actually have a lot of friends to show for it but I did develop some tools to help me survive in social situations which I share in [[My Social Anxiety Cheat Sheet for Mingling|this cheat sheet]]. I also have a strange relationship with anger. Fortunately it's never been something that translates to violence or any kind of physical or verbal aggression but I had always thought I was just someone who had anger management issues. Later in life I learned all of this was the indirect result of overwhelming myself by trying to do things in a way my brain was not set up to do. In [[The Colorblind Chameleons Problem]], I describe a puzzle that has no prescribed solution to help us explore anger and dealing with people who are given to anger. Check out the side bar under this section for other articles I've written. ![[Partials#^eaec46]]