[lovethesun]

I have a neighbor who confronted me on something that is petty. She kept repeating herself as though trying to get me to apologize. I did not apologize. I just walked away to keep from saying something to her that I'd really regret. This neighbor is of a different race than me and quite honestly I think there is some prejudice against me on her part......a "us vs. them" attitude, which I do not deserve. Now I keep repeating the confrontation in my head, thinking about what I would have, could have, should have said and it's driving me crazy. How can I move past this anger and forget about it?

I would suggest to come to the realization that your neighbor does not have the ability to control your emotions. Thus, she does not have the power that you seem to be giving her.

The only person who can truly validate or invalidate you is you.

[Frankbtl]

Hi lovethesun, under the circumstances at the time......." I just walked away to keep from saying something to her that I'd really regret"...........I'd say that you did exactly the right thing!!
Less "beating yourself up", instead try to be real proud of yourself for that!!!
You detached yourself from her unreasonable behaviour towards you, and the risk of it "taking you somewhere you didn't want to go", you didn't get sucked into it. Good on you!!!
Now if you can think of anything you can say to "smooth over" the situation with her, or for next time you see her, assuming she might be calmer then..........then that's great, but if you can't or it's not that kind of a situation hold onto that detachment/of not letting her antagonize negative feelings in yourself as far as you can.......she isn't worth it.
And with that.........any distance you can keep from her, without it impacting on your life, might be good, do you think???

And I may be blowing this so far out of proportion here, and please ignore me if I am........but if you're starting to spot signs of racial harassment there........please be documenting and reporting it, there is never any excuse for that to be happening.
Again, maybe I'm reading far too much into it, but..........



Alison

[Cris80pitt]

Well, stay cool. Just tell to yourself, it is not worth it

[ManOfConstantSorrow]

We all have unpleasant encounters from time to time, and we all replay these unpleasant scenes in our heads and get angrier at the other and ourselves. It does no good except waste energy and make ourselves miserable. Try and look at it as if it was happening to someone else, so you feel less insulted, threatened or violated, and therefore less prone to fear/flight emotions.

Was it a valid complaint - in which case the right thing to do would be to make amends. Like it or not, we have to live with our neighbours. Was the complaint false - best leave it perhaps, with luck it will blow over, especially as you said it was trivial.

He,he....I come up with the best responses afterwards in the car also! Sometimes I wish I could say just a minute let me go sit in my car for a moment. I'll be back with a brillant reply in a couple minutes. She is the one with the problem +u can't fix her. U did great. U didn't escalate it. IMHO pat yourself on the back. Don't waste more time on her. U've got more important things to do.