Hmmmmm!
Some honesty from me!
When I saw this thread it looked and seemed bolder and brighter than any of the other threads on the whole of that page. It stood so far out that it was almost waving a flag at me. And here is the honesty, it felt like a red flag to a bull, and I wanted to dig my hooves in and charge at that reg flag as defiantly as I could. I wanted to charge it down and deny it's (the threads), intentions!
However, I mentally and emotinally stood back and waited to assimilate my feelings ( I feel first think much later), now I am self aware concerning this I try to be adult and stand back first!
I pondered! Why did that thread wave a red flag at me?......And my honest answer is because it was a trigger. It triggered the negative internal chatter I have about myself. You know, I am pathetic, stupid, on the pity pot, all the feelings associated with self-pity and my own self-hatred. So that thread was tapping into my negative thought patterns, and it was as if it was only addressed to me, rather than the whole forum. As if Anthony was only addressing me - I am sure others' have felt the same, it's part of our negative thinking right?
Today, I can see what Anthony is suggesting. However, I guess the complexities that we all have in every day life concerning communicating our thoughts and ideas are that although many of us use the same words we can speak a different language. I mean, words are emotive aren't they? Some words we identify with, and others' we don't some are like a red flag to a bull! And I guess that recognising this is Okay!
At the end of the day if we are all brutally honest of course we want sympathy, it is part of feeling validated; feeling like the pain that you have suffered is real and is as terrible as it feels at times. We may also shun sympathy because it again taps into our negative thought patterns concerning ourselves. Receiving sympathy can reinforce the negative chatter we hold concerning who we are and how we are dealing with our pain (like we don't deserve it or it makes us feel more pathetic?)
So if we accept that by merely being here on the forum we are all highlighting that we have sympathy for ourselves and each other.
The key part of this, I feel, is that we have to be constructive with our sympathy. We have to use each other as a sounding board to bounce ideas off concerning how we can combat how we are feeling rather than just validating each others' pain. Don't we validate the pain of each person we respond to by answering their posts and trying to give them a different perspective anyway?
The forum is made up of many ingerdients, empathy, insight, compassion, understanding, support, knowledge and all of these come with a pinch of sympathy, I guess a little to much of this ingredient and the whole thing will be spoiled.
Spirit x
