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So, I'm in this anxiety group on LiveJournal and I read/post quite regularly. Something happened this morning and I'm bothered by it. I mean, this is REALLY bothering me. The situation is that this girl basically told a story about how she bought a present for her boyfriend and while she was on webcam with him and she was telling him about it, he didn't smile and they ended up fighting over his lack of positive emotion. She ended the post with "someone please tell me I'm justified to be crying right now". Amid about twenty-five responses, one person more or less said that no, she shouldn't be crying, because she's massively overreacting and her boyfriend had even said that the reason he didn't smile/laugh was because he had just come home from working a ridiculously long shift and was dead tired. The original poster then said this:
vivalameghan wrote in (panic_anxiety,
I don't think the best thing for me to do right now is post to this community. Everyone has helped me so much, but I take advice very personally sometimes and I'm overly sensitive and feel like people attack me sometimes and I just feel somewhat stupid. I know this is childish of me but it's just hard to do this right now. I'll be starting therapy this week.
Good luck to all of you.
This kind of ticked me off because I'm a really honest person and what the girl said in response to her post wasn't mean or cruel at all: it was honest and constructive, whatever else it was besides. So I wrote this in return:
Look, you have to learn that in a community like this, people are NOT going to tell you what you want to hear because it temporarily makes you feel a bit better about yourself - they're going to tell you what you NEED to hear, harsh or not, because it helps you in the long run. If you just want to make posts and have twenty people say "AWW POOR YOU", metaphorically pat you on the back, and not say anything constructive that you can work from, this is NOT the community to come to. Wouldn't you much rather have a friend who tells you a truth that you need to hear than one who makes you feel better for a few hours but doesn't help you at all? Life isn't like that. People are going to be honest with you in real life whether you want it to not. If you want to leave, fine, that's your choice, but let me tell you something: leaving this community isn't going to stop people from telling you the truth. Your therapist is going to tell you the truth and it's going to hurt: are you just going to find another therapist who appeases you by giving you sympathy but no constructive criticism that you can build experience from? All you're doing by leaving is losing a support network who is here to help you and who I've seen leave dozens of positive and constructive comments on your posts just because you can't handle the truth. Sorry if this makes you feel bad, but this IS the truth, and someone is always going to be there to tell it.
This is really bothering me and I don't know why. Was I too harsh on her? We have the same disorder and I can't understand why a person would rather be appeased temporarily than hear the truth. I don't feel like I'm being unsympathetic and I don't think the girl was being mean by telling her something that she needed to hear: that she was overreacting and being ridiculous. Was I out of line?
vivalameghan wrote in (panic_anxiety,
I don't think the best thing for me to do right now is post to this community. Everyone has helped me so much, but I take advice very personally sometimes and I'm overly sensitive and feel like people attack me sometimes and I just feel somewhat stupid. I know this is childish of me but it's just hard to do this right now. I'll be starting therapy this week.
Good luck to all of you.
This kind of ticked me off because I'm a really honest person and what the girl said in response to her post wasn't mean or cruel at all: it was honest and constructive, whatever else it was besides. So I wrote this in return:
Look, you have to learn that in a community like this, people are NOT going to tell you what you want to hear because it temporarily makes you feel a bit better about yourself - they're going to tell you what you NEED to hear, harsh or not, because it helps you in the long run. If you just want to make posts and have twenty people say "AWW POOR YOU", metaphorically pat you on the back, and not say anything constructive that you can work from, this is NOT the community to come to. Wouldn't you much rather have a friend who tells you a truth that you need to hear than one who makes you feel better for a few hours but doesn't help you at all? Life isn't like that. People are going to be honest with you in real life whether you want it to not. If you want to leave, fine, that's your choice, but let me tell you something: leaving this community isn't going to stop people from telling you the truth. Your therapist is going to tell you the truth and it's going to hurt: are you just going to find another therapist who appeases you by giving you sympathy but no constructive criticism that you can build experience from? All you're doing by leaving is losing a support network who is here to help you and who I've seen leave dozens of positive and constructive comments on your posts just because you can't handle the truth. Sorry if this makes you feel bad, but this IS the truth, and someone is always going to be there to tell it.
This is really bothering me and I don't know why. Was I too harsh on her? We have the same disorder and I can't understand why a person would rather be appeased temporarily than hear the truth. I don't feel like I'm being unsympathetic and I don't think the girl was being mean by telling her something that she needed to hear: that she was overreacting and being ridiculous. Was I out of line?