Why Can't Some Of Us Talk On The Forum?

[illusionist]

Well I really, really hope that if I ever get to the stage that I post on here when I am at the depths of desperation ( which I have been, outside of here), that I am given a heavily booted #rse and given straight forward, sound advice. Anything other than that, would send me to my grave. My way would probably send someone to their grave. We really do, as individuals, need to pick out what is beneficial to us, and ignore the rest...I mean really block it out.
I just hope that, if ever I do reach that point, that those folks are around to do what I need....same as you hope that the kind of people you need, will be around for you.

 

[Ronin]

I think part of the issue may be all of us being from all walks of life, ethnicities, nationalities. With that alone would come just reading feelings differently, we're all different individuals and the ways we express emotions are different by where we're from... and then trauma jumps in, and then PTSD jumps in, and then current issues jump in and sometimes it all just won't mix. It's nothing against anyone concretely, just being compatible in this way and super incompatible in that way... and that's fine, we have common goals here and what matters in the end of the day is to make it to another day.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I do realize that I'm one of those strong personalities. And yes, just this morning I told someone to "get over it" but it was in her LONG standing assumption that the world needs to be fair to her. Post after post after post and she can't accept the fact that life isn't fair and sometimes you're dealt a truck load of sh!t. If you've seen a year's worth of posts where someone tries to fight against a simple fact, then yes, it is time for the tough love and being in your face blunt. It doesn't do someone any good to tell them that its not fair and that they should fight against something that can't be won.

(It does help to remember that many of us follow these posts and remember what was said in previous posts, so what you see is oftentimes a reaction to an overall picture and not just what was said in that particular post.)

Am I this blunt with everyone? No, I am not. Every post is different just as we are all different. Sometimes people need to be coddled and sometimes straight up advice is better. If you know what you want, ASK for it in your initial post! (Nobody here is a mind reader, and if you don't ask for what you want, then TBH, who's fault is it that you're not getting what you need?)

I've been called out for my pity parties more than once. Of course I hated it at the time, but it was a good kick in the arse that I needed to move forward. I've thrown fits and have been called on it. I've fought back after having an overreaction. Would I want others to stop calling me out? No. It takes all types. If you prefer a "softer" environment, there are indeed plenty of other mental health forums on the internet. (Not saying you need to leave, rather you can't change this environment, you can only change yourself and your reactions.)

 

[joeylittle]

Is this the post you are referring to? Can You Really Heal From Childhood Abuses?, and the subsequent replies, which include

It will take a lifetime of therapy to get over that. I'll be dead before I finish.

I'm going to assume that you're just having a pity party moment right now? Which is fine if so... we all go through those. But if not... then I think you're wrong, you're mindset is far from healing and that makes you right, in that nothing for you will change until you make it change, so you could be dead before you're finished if you never really give 100% of yourself to the process.

I remember this thread, and I remember after it you were really hung up on the idea of "pity party" and pretty much labelled yourself like that in most subsequent threads.

Look, it's the internet. Everyone's different. People will always push back hardest on threads that are rooted in "I can't do it anymore". I believe it's just the nature of a group response to a shared illness - none of us wants that to be true, for any of us. So it's anything from "please be kinder to yourself" to "if you think you can't, you can't, so stop it".

And the, when the OP digs in and tries providing evidence of why they can't do it, anyone with an hour of CBT under their belt will charge in both guns blazing. Why? Because they give a shit.

I avoid sending someone any straight sympathy (love, hugs, shoulder pats) until I really know them, because for some (including me), that can actually make me tailspin. But I'm not the only person - I see MOST posts - displaying empathy, identification - in a "yes, but - " or "yes, and -" fashion.

It's engagement. And yes, there are the types of posts that feel like attacks. You've got an opportunity there to practice not taking on someone elses' emotional state, because that's what's really happening there.

I do not see "cliques". I do see groups, people who communicate easier with others, and tend to post on each others' threads. Chat can get cliquey, but it's chat.

 

[wyrd_dragon]

Thanks for writing this - I feel the same. I tend to give, rather than ask for, support here, because I feel as someone who is disabled by her CPTSD, as someone with several co-morbid chronic illnesses, as a queer, kinked, pansexual, feminist person who is very aware of the way society, ableism and mental health stigma acts on people, the way i see some commenters behaving... I don't want to open myself up to that kind of harsh bootstraps mentality when I know for certain that it's damaging for me and for others.

I've already found my way through all of that self-blaming, 'life isn't fair' bootstraps bullshit to get myself to a better place. People deserve attention and empathy, and being told you're having a 'pity party' by other sufferers who think what works for them will work for you with no understanding that we all have different traumas and different intersections of trauma and other issues, eto or come from different class, ethnic, social, cultural backgrounds with differing levels of support... that doesn't help. That's victim blaming and ableist (for many of us).

CBT isn't good for everyone. My abusers used similar methods on me, so I need empathy, support, understanding, and encouragement. If I get 'bootstraps! BOOTSTRAPS!' and people saying things that equate to 'you're making yourself sick' I'll just go silent and offer to others the empathy I can't seem to get.

I've seen kids in abusive situations treated like this on this forum. I've seen folks who clearly are still having to live with ableist, abusive families and have no support treated like this. I've seen a lot of vulnerable, hurting people get advised (by staff and well known members) to just suck it up and stop catastrophizing

I'm an intersectional feminist and an activist - especially for people with mental illness and disability. I know life isn't fair. I DO NOT just accept that that means we don't try to expect better of ourselves and others. That doesn't mean that's something we have to just accept as a 'fact' and never attempt to change.

I expect better from myself. I expect better from my community, and it's sad to see so many people feel scared to open up anywhere but their diaries because of this stuff.

I've been considering asking if I could start a thread or forum that's feminist/intersectional and attempts to avoid ableism/mental health stigma and victim blaming. Then maybe we can have our 'pity party' and others can choose to go bootstrap their bootstraps elsewhere :(

(I am really really super frightened I'll get administrated for this comment, but hey I'm trying).

 

[joeylittle]

I need empathy, support, understanding, and encouragement.

@DeathRay, you haven't broken any rules with your post - so don't worry about that. And I just want to say that - for me - now that I know the above, I understand how to respond to you if I ever see an opportunity. But I wouldn't have known that except for this post.

I've think I've started a total of three, maybe four threads on the forum. And they were really specific. I'm too full of shame and self-loathing to know how to post asking for support. You're not actually alone in what you're saying, and its not just marginalized people that can feel this way - I'm staff and I feel this way.

I expect better from myself. I expect better from my community, and it's sad to see so many people feel scared to open up anywhere but their diaries because of this stuff.

It's not always being scared of the community. It's just as likely it's being scared, period. And, like @moonbeam said, thinking about what you want to get from others is a really effective way of framing what you write about, and what you ask for.

 

[Anarchy]

Our individual initiations (that no one in their right mind would choose to go through) which got us membership of this not so little but very exclusive club...

really were life changing events, which shattered our personal world views. Even those of us who have had trauma from our earliest days, have still had the experience of realizing that we are not "normal" (whatever "normal" might mean - the DSM and ICD both conspicuously avoid attempting to answer that question).

I think that part of what we sometimes see, is people desperately and angrily trying to cling to a fragment of the wreckage of their former personal certainty, in the face of that being sunk too.

Sometimes the harsh answer could be the correct one; for example:

• a lot of the posts by new members in the supporters forum show signs of co dependent beliefs and behaviours - is it wrong to point that out (or co dependant to do so?)?

• We all need to establish our personal safety and self care - but if we are risking bubblizing ourselves, I'd certainly want to know.

Other times there probably is no correct answer, only shades of more or less confusion and uncertainty. There are multiple paradigms for grouping and interpreting "symptoms", all of these are mental constructs / meta models, which at best, only very approximately represent reality (the same is true in the "harder" sciences, although less extreme than psychology / psychiatry, in many areas, their understandings are far from exact. One of the harder sciences, Geology, has even undergone a radical paradigm shift during my lifetime).

A lot of the "evidence" is biased; drugs companies are very good at funding trials into their new potions. No one is good at funding trials into yoga, mindfulness, fish oil... they therefore remain "unproven".

Unfortunately drugs do not teach coping skills, and often have dangerous side effects, but do earn dividends and pay kickbacks for corrupt policy makers (yeah, I know, redundancy).

Many of the diagnoses are skewed - See the vid I've attached of prof Gabriella Balf talking about this - if the diagnosis is not of a certain level of disorder - the hospital and clinician may not get paid, so it is little wonder what will be diagnosed.

We need to be open minded, but still remain sufficeintly sceptical and critical that our brains don't fall out through the openness.

We all experience cognitive distortions - I'm not going to say "suffer" because some of them can be pleasant - depressed people actually have a less distorted view of reality than none depressed people do. Personally I'd prefer to keep the distortions than be more objective but depressed. The mainstream is full of distorted thinking, look at all of the sacred cows of the mainstream which are identified as abusive here https://www.myptsd.com/threads/kick-abusers-out-of-your-life-unless-they-are.50874/


Hopefully we'll end up coming out of this as more aware, more compassionate, more resiliant people, with better boundaries. Being angry or snappy in trying to defend a sinking piece of wreckage from our old world view, isn't necessarily going to get us there.

Here's Gabriella Balf, pointing out some of the paradigms and some of the BS

There's also a blog post with links to the other presentations at that conference (they're all good) https://in2uract.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/nea-bpd-conference-videos-from-2005-through-2013/

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

The way I go about it, is I read every post on my threads with a lot of attention (well okay sometimes my attention could be better. :P). But I try to give all of them the same amount of attention.

Then, just as with everything else in life, I focus on what resonates most with me, for the problem that I had described. Which resonates most with me when it comes to healing myself and helping me get forward with my problem. Sometimes I even see threads on the forum that aren't my own but help me out a lot, like recently the one about H'oponopono.

I think it is important that you focus on what helps. Don't focus on what doesn't help. Forget about that. For your brain to change, it will need to shift from one place to another, and focus is an important part of it. Embrace what helps you and let go of what doesn't. :hug:

 

[Anarchy]

Embrace what helps you and let go of what doesn't. :hug:

Bruce Lee and Radise

 

[J_trustno1]

@Notsowild : Join the group. I used to be an active member on forum chat and it used to be so much fun when I joined the forum but not anymore. I have decided to maintain distance because it was affecting my mental health as well as physical health. I have been attacked in the forum chat and at some of my threads that I decided to stop chatting. I am now thinking of doing the same with threads and never post anything or what I feel anymore because there is no point in opening your heart and being honest when you are going to have everyone run over you. We've had enough of this growing up and we don't need this anymore. I am not saying that I am perfect but I will no longer tolerate ill behavior of other members on the forum and for privacy reasons I will not disclose who they are.

I hope you feel good soon. You are welcome to PM me anytime you like if you needed someone to listen to. I welcome everyone to message as long as they remain respectful :)

 

[risingsun]

Because some people judge harshly, delivering their responses in a way that comes off as an attack, rather than a constructive, kind way and it is tolerated. Yet those same people if judged regarding their own lives and experiences would flip out if they received the same treatment.

Mathew 7:2. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.


This is a forum for support and guidance. We have enough judgment in our lives and come for solace and support. Maybe more moderating of responses should come as a result because words can truly push people off the edge, especially those with PTSD.

And of course this would be responded with "well people take things the wrong way and its interpreted in the wrong way,"
but come on already! Direct cruelty is just that and it is highly noticeable across cultures, regions, what have you.

Again, I stand by this:

“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”
― Tennessee Williams

 

[illusionist]

But are we going to change our thought processes if someone isn't honest enough to give us a different perspective?......to make us question our own thinking?
I for one am open to that as I know my thinking isn't always right. I am here to rid myself of the worst of Ptsd, and know the only way I am going to do that is through sheer and utter honesty of folks that know I have it ( that's you lot, and my partner). My partner has done his bit, in as far as what he does know about my past and I have come on leaps and bounds by his basic questioning about my way of thinking....I have learned to respect that.....I no longer see him questioning me, but my thought processes. And you know, by stepping back and thinking, I have almost always come to a conclusion.......it's me, it's not him. I personally need logic thrown at me.