Sulking

The past couple weeks have been stressful for me, and I'm probably blowing them out of proportion, but I don't handle things well. I have the sense that I'm dragging people down with me when I feel like this. I felt incredibly horrible last night because of this.

I have a tendency to loom over things that are bothering me when I'm all by myself. Usually, I don't have this problem at work because there's so much going on, but I did last night. It was awkwardly slow for a Saturday night, which I think caused my problem to arise.

I switched my schedule last night with one of my coworkers so I could work with Olga, so when she was busy doing other things--when we're normally hanging around each other and working together--I was left to sulk over whatever was bothering me. I had a list of things that were stressing me out at that moment: finding a new job, leaving the one I'm at sometime soon, losing the friends I made at Burlington, finding a way to further my Russian education (I found it to total $399 for a 7-month class at Mercyhurst), figuring out how to pay my $399 bill for a checkup my insurance wouldn't cover. They probably all sound like trivial things to anyone else, but to me they're things that matter a lot.

When Olga was finally done with what she was doing, she came back to a sullen Rachel, and she couldn't figure out why. I wanted to be mad at her because I switched my schedule just to work with her and she was hardly around, and I wanted to be mad because she said she'd go over the Russian with me and didn't, but that's really not what it was about. I was just stressed out about all the aforementioned things. She just happened to get the brunt of it. Unfortunately, I made her feel like it was her fault that I felt the way I did, and she spent the remainder of the night apologizing to me. It should have been the other way around.

I ended up feeling even worse the rest of the night because I dragged someone else down just because I felt crappy. I couldn't deal with it, so I sat down and wrote her a long e-mail at 12:30 last night apologizing for making her feel the way I did. This warranted a phone call while I was at Tam's bridal shower today. It was bad timing, but I'm glad I got that call. The air was cleared, and now we both feel a little better.

What's so bad about all this is that I do it so often. I bring the people I care about down just because I'm feeling like crap. My husband has to deal with this so much, and every time I do it, I feel even worse than I did before. I can't understand why I continue being so destructive. I need a healthier outlet.

The fact that my social life has been more active in recent months than in years has helped a great deal, but when I'm not out with friends or enjoying myself, things are coming to mind that cause me to get stressed out. I'm just wondering if there's any way for me to divert my attention elsewhere when I'm by myself. I don't want to continue to feel the way I do or drag anymore people down. I care too much about them to allow it to happen anymore.
Any suggestions?