One time I made the mistake of trying to relate to somebody with many allergies by comparing it to how I was raised vegetarian. Wow I’ve never made somebody so offended in my life. I really fucked up and I am never going to relate to anyone again.
Letting one bad experience change the entire way you interact with the world is giving that one person who was offended an insane amount of power over you and your life
My wife is a one-upper when it comes to trauma. Unless I was legally dead and came back to life, she’ll always win.
You think that’s bad? I was legally dead, and DID NOT come back to life. Fuckin’ amateurs.
I think everyone secretly yearns for the opportunity to reenact that tired old movie cliché where someone half-heartedly says “yeah, I know how you feel” which causes the other person to angrily respond “NO, YOU DON’T KNOW HOW I FEEL, YOU CAN’T KNOW HOW I FEEL” and for the first person to sheepishly agree and apologise for the presumption.
It makes every character who has ever said that seem like an insufferable cunt, and in real life it’s a thousand times worse. It sounds more like you fear that someone is trying to crib some of your weirdly-beloved pain as though it’s currency, and to wear it on themselves like the spoils of a war you just lost. The difference between thinking that, and thinking “this person wants to be with me in this moment and share the burden”, is so slight that it’s easily-missed, so I don’t necessarily fault people for the mistake. But you can literally just choose to go with option B in future, and in doing so improve your overall mental health and general vibe.
“I have it worse”
and
“Naaah bro that’s not that weird / dumb I do that too”
Are very close sentiments at face value and it can take a fair amount of finesse to get something to read as the second one.
Training to be a peer recovery mental health specialist helped a lot if any of you are interested in learning some better techniques. It’s mostly timing and choosing the right parts of the story to tell.
Where can I find an entire country of people like this? Autist’s Paradise, right there.
Support groups and group therapy. Identifying with someone else’s experiences through your own relatable experiences is a reaffirming connection.
It’s helped me a lot navigating the Autistic tendency to get lost in the mechanics of the story. Now I try to end my contribution with reconnection to the original experience, emphasizing the validation, and returning control of the conversation.
Now I try to end my contribution with reconnection to the original experience, emphasizing the validation, and returning control of the conversation.
This is something I’ve only just figured out how to do! I still need a lot of practice with it, my handoff is awkward and stilted and doesn’t always work, but I’m a little proud that I can still learn new coping mechanisms and strategies even at this comparatively later stage of my life.
When did you learn this particular skill? Did you have guidance from someone close to you, or did you figure it out on your own?
Group therapy. It’s very intimidating to start, since you’re joining a group of people that already know the ropes. It took a while for me to join in and share, but it didn’t matter. I personally learned far more from observation than sharing my personal experiences. I’m in my 40s, if that helps.
