Stress Comparisons To 'normals'

[Deleted member 1860]

I'm working on safety. I was doing well for awhile until a toxic person invaded my ultimate safe place. I'm low contact with this person, hopefully no contact at some point. But for now it is what it is and I figure I can try to work on my safety while this threat is around. I just hope I'm not playing with fire!

 

[TLight]

Amen Sharky!

Solara...I know, the toxic people. Mind screw us again and our sense of safety disappears. I just went through that too.

 

[maddog]

I am not proud to admit that I struggle sometimes to have compassion, or even to have basic politeness, for people who complain loud and long about what are, by my admittedly judgmental reckonings, fairly trivial things. I feel a lot of mixed emotions about my reactions, sometimes guilt and shame, sometimes determined righteousness, mostly just a lot of confusion and a sense of alienation from the "normal" world which seems so full of concerns and stressors and worries that mean so little to me.

I think that when I am particularly struggling and/or wallowing in my own self pity, I tend to react with resentful negativity and harsh reactivity to others, and these are the times I feel justifiable guilt and remorse, though sometimes not until a reasonable time later. At other times, I really do truly believe that seemingly many people complain and whinge about ridiculously material and trivial things, and I feel much more comfortable in feeling dismissive of that, even though I do try to be prosocial and appropriate in my interactions with them.

I think that we all only know what we've learned and experienced, and so I think that the sorts of things that people stress and complain about, are a fair indication of the sorts of things they have had cause to stress and complain about in their lives. In that sense, I am partly happy for those who whinge about trivialities, because it means they don't know true hardship and have developed a stress tolerance to match what they have experienced. And I by no means have a mortgage on justifiable stress and complaining, as there are many in the world whose lot in life has been worse than mine and who would view my regular stressors as trivial and minor as a result, which is my point I guess.

Of course, that's what I believe in principle, and in the clear rational light of hindsight, and don't always feel at the time when it can feel insufferably insulting and rejecting to hear that the world is ending because the brand new iphone is going to be a week later in our local stores than in the U.S.

I think that at the end of the day, what makes me saddest about all of this is how much it seems to make me feel acutely aware of how different I am from most people around me. It's not that I desire to be a conformist or a sheep at heart, only that I have spent my entire life looking in from the outside, and wondering why, and wishing it wasn't so. While I don't, in a literal sense, wish I felt stressed and upset about the delayed arrival of my new iphone, I do wish that I could feel and experience the world in the way that others seem to, even if only for a day, and if stressing about my iphone and not whether or not I will be able to catch the train without a panic attack is some sort of indicator of healing, then maybe, I have to say, I'd welcome it... just for a little while.

Maddog

 

[CrazyHorse]

Hi TLight,

From what you discribe here, I do not see it as a lack of compassion on your side. I see it as you setting this guy, who is acting inappropatly, straight! Good for you :-)

 

[sharky]

Maddog... I could feel and relate to every single word you said in that post. You don't know how thankful I am, that you were able to accurately describe that word by word. This might sounds weird, but if you don't mind I am going to copy and paste that and save it to wordpad on my computer so that I can look back on it whenever I feel that I am alone, because that is something that really really gets to me at times. I have never seen something someone else wrote and was able to relate to it on such a level. That was something that has always weighed so heavily on my brain, and I could never explain it.

... And even if I could, who was I going to explain it to? People in my life? They're a part of the problem, in that aspect. And most of the time I forget that this website exists and is there for me to use as an outlet such as the way you just did.

I just... I am thanking you unconditionally for writing that. I feel as though I was finally able to exhale the breath I have been holding in for a long, long time.

 

[TLight]

Sharky, I'm glad you felt some connection and relief.

Maddog. I too have jumped to conclusions, but I don't regret setting firm boundaries still at these times. Perhaps the person will learn that their words need to be thought out.

This has happened to me recently, I'm working with a client who has regularly disregarded my requests to respond to my questions and comments regarding a project we are working on together. I have set boundaries with him before and he still insists on disregarding these and causing me to rework work I've already performed, simply because he didn't feel like reading the document and responding to my questions in a timely manner, hence putting more pressure upon me at the last minute as he finally decided he needed to actually read what I wrote.

As a technical report writer, I bid a job, estimate the hours, and have them sign a contract. Then I track my times and bill my hours monthly. This man said at our last meeting......'so how many hours have you really spent on this'. I was in no way in self pity at the time and took several days pondering this question before taking any action.

I just composed an email saying how unprofessional and disrespectful I felt this comment was and I sent him the last bill and resigned from the project. I stated again I bill for the hours I have worked.

He came back saying he is again fully blindsided and made the statement, "well I really meant that I thought you spent more time on it". Well, I don't believe that and feel good that I've removed myself from yet another disrespectful interaction. I think of how I communicate and if this is what was what I truly meant, I believe I would have explained that at the time it was said. Again, I think he is making excuses for his poor behavior.

Perhaps I am wrong, but every time I bring up the document to work on, I feel anger and I am more into using my emotions now as my guidance system and I am going to honor those emotions and protect myself from abuse.

 

[sharky]

TLight, I think you were well in your boundaries to do so. And based on what you wrote, it does sound like they were trying to make excuses for what they said. A lot of people do that, instead of just expressing their own true feelings behind their actions. I feel that if people started to do that more, we would all be seeing eye-to-eye a lot more often.

 

[twopenny]

I completely have a problem with being compassionate - although it does depend what mood I'm in, and how I feel about the person involved (sometimes how I feel about them on a given day). It doesn't even always have to be trivial stuff.

Example - hub told me today about somebody's pet dying - normally my reaction would be compassionate. Because I wasn't in the best mood, and the person involved is somebody who I don't like, and who blanks me completely whenever she's within about 20 feet of me, my reaction was 'So?'.

You can imagine how sympathetic I can sometimes be when it's somebody stressing about getting to the supermarket before it shuts, or that their online grocery order has arrived with fish fingers instead of sponge fingers...

TLight - while I think what he said was ambiguous, and could be read either way, if it's stressing you, it's not worth it. Trusting your instincts is the best thing you can do in any situation like that (one day I may actually learn to follow my instincts when they scream out to walk away from a client).

sharky, there's a person I know who reminds me of the ankle person... a while ago now, a I was part of a big group of people having dinner - the restaurant wasn't coping well that night, because there were another couple of big groups in, so the food was late (they gave us a discount on the bill as an apology). However, there was an issue with a couple of us regarding blood sugar - or I should say with one of us (me) who has low blood sugar, and one who was using a 'drop in blood sugar' to gain attention, because she wasn't the centre of attention (I'm reliably informed by some people at her end of the table - I was at the other end, thankfully, because I'd likely have gone postal at her).

Anyway, my blood sugar dipped (my low blood sugar is from two periods when I didn't really eat - the first time when I was small and not really interested in food, the second when I couldn't afford food). I realised what was happening, then asked hub to please get me something with sugar in it quickly (I realised I couldn't have stood up) - he did, that was that, shortly after I was fine. The person sitting next to me had no idea I'd had a problem. She the person in question) said that her blood sugar had dropped and she needed to eat - somebody at the table immediately offered her his full-sugar (untouched) drink, but she refused, and started tantrum-ing and crying. Her other half, decided not to talk to the staff about the delay, but expected hub to do it for him. And then he stormed out leaving her weeping and complaining (loudly) about how she needed food or she was going to pass out, etc, etc.

Now yes, logically, it could all fit in, and it could have been a blood sugar drop making her unreasonable, because it does affect people differently (I just shake, wobble, fall over). But because it was somebody I didn't like anyway, because I'd managed to deal with no fuss, and because several people told me, independently that it was an attention thing, and that she has no problems with blood sugar, I have zero sympathy for her, and determined to avoid wherever possible. Also, bit of a crying wolf thing - the chances of me believing anything from her in the future, pretty low.

I do have sympathy over her other half storming out, sort of, although if hub had done that to me, I'd have been annoyed not upset.:x3: