thinking how these platitudes cheese us off
Well I would not want to hear the denial of the situation for starters. I would also not want to hear the blame - that the situation is my fault either.
When my mother finally admitted that my father had sexually abused me (after ten years of denial). Please note that she was there when it happened. She then immediately laughed at me and asked me when was I going to get over it? So platitudes used to compound the circumstances and abuse are off the list for me as well.
I guess it is about context and the time of the content. If the intent of the platitude is to be kind then I don't take it in as much, however if the platitude is to further silence me, curtail my activism or to stop knowledge being transmitted to the next generation then I am not happy about that. I often ignore people, particularly if they are unlikely to listen to me.
So the intent of the person is important to me as well.
Some people have made rather unfortunate comments to me but when I look and see the intent, then I wait until a quiet time, and explain that I know that they meant well but perhaps there is a better way of expressing it. People seem to genuinely be appreciative of my efforts, if I do it with kindness, and acknowledgment that they were trying to respond to something that they may never have thought about or been involved in knowing about before. Sometimes I don't mention it and the person moves in a different way - each situation is different.
If a person says something and doesn't have a social agenda or a cultural agenda of silencing or dismissing, on the whole, (if given a quiet moment without an audience) they will consider what you said and ask questions until you understand why what was said was not okay.(We might need to make a little room for those that are humiliated at what they said and might need some time to calm down from feeling so bad about what they said.)
There are ways of saying things to people without being dismissive and offensive.
The sandwich technique works well. I see you dealt with situation A and that is hard and good on you for giving it ago. Okay you might need a little bit of finesse in situation B but, hey, we are all learning and changing or I've done that one too. Situation C was handled very well, that was a most astute strategy dealing with a scared, unhelpful and annoying person with out engaging in their favourite mode of conflict.
There are many, many ways to handle people and point things out. Intent, time, context, content and the current situations in a person's life (and your own ability to handle situations) will mean you express this in different ways at different times.
ms spock
