GAH!

[hummingwolf]

A few days ago, I was feeling frustrated by the impossibility of communication with certain people in my life, and felt the need to vent a bit. So I wrote this post, with, by my count, six basically positive comments, two negative, and one neutral. Of the two negative comments, one was in reference to food left out by a housemate to rot--not sure which housemate, which frustrated me because I would have loved to have spoken with them directly. To the best of my knowledge, none of the housemates has a LiveJournal. Which leaves one and only one negative comment anyone on LJ could possibly even think was in reference to them.

Look--if you are my friend, if you know that I have a high opinion of you, why would you read

"You think nobody notices what your real obsession is? Dream on, honey. People become what they focus on, and what you're focusing on isn't pretty. You haven't yet become the thing you hate, but you are closer to it now than you were a year ago."

and think it applied to you? I can understand having a paranoid attitude, and having as your first reaction to a negative the thought that it was a negative reference to you. I can understand that a first reaction is something over which you have little to no control. I get that. But afterwards, when you have time to think, anything you believe after that is your choice. Why would you choose to believe negative things about yourself?

The post was never meant as "One of those posts about people on my friends list--let's see if they can guess who I mean, ha ha!" It's not about you at all. It was a journal post. This is my only journal, and I had a really desperate need to say a few things I could not, for one reason or another, actually say to the people I wanted to talk to. Even the positive things aren't always things you can say directly to people, or at least they're not things I could say directly to the people I wanted most to speak to that morning. I felt if I couldn't say them to someone, somewhere, I would explode.

It wasn't about you. It was only a page in somebody's diary.


All this reminds me that pronoia really needs to get more active.

Comments

[sophy.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to tell you to shut your yap. I am feeling frustrated that I seem to be misunderstood in what I'm trying to say, but I do appreciate other people's perspectives and good discussion.

Okay, when I say I can't just change my feelings I mean in a sort of presto-snap-my-fingers-it's-gone kind of way. For me, feelings are a process and they change over time and I think about them very hard and work through them. But I feel like people here are telling me I have complete control over my feelings in the moment, and that's simply not true.
If something makes me feel anxious, it makes me feel anxious. And I'll express that anxiety if I want or need to. It doesn't mean I'll continue to feel anxious forever or harp and stew on that anxiety. It's usually a momentary feeling and it passes.

In a lot of ways, you are preaching to the choir, here. I'm all about being positive and looking on the bright side and nurturing what's good about myself and about the world at large.
But that doesn't mean I stop seeing the reality of the darker side of things and working on that, either. All of that still exists and, if ignored, will just grow bigger.
So, yes, sometimes I get sad or angry or frustrated or anxious or scared. And I let myself feel those things, too. Because they're important feelings, as well. And they are often cues for things that need change.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Okay, when I say I can't just change my feelings I mean in a sort of presto-snap-my-fingers-it's-gone kind of way

But nobody said it was easy; we said it was possible. You seemed to be saying that your feelings weren't under your control at all. That's a dangerous belief to have--which I say not out of some feeling of superiority, but because I actually made that mistake.

But I feel like people here are telling me I have complete control over my feelings in the moment, and that's simply not true

Yes, I understand that. But after you feel, you have the choice to think. Like, after the original post, when you realized that your initial feelings that you might be targeted weren't realistic. When you thought about it, you could see how your feelings were your reaction to the post, and not something coming from the post itself. That's how you get power over your emotions, you see? You make a habit of checking your perceptions, and when you start to see differently, you start to feel differently. It's not easy--believe me, I know how hard it can be to stop and think! I'm still working on breaking the emotional habits of a lifetime, and I don't always do all that well some days. But learning that I am the only person in the whole wide world who is responsible for my emotions is the thing that kept me alive when I'd desperately wanted to die.

[sophy.livejournal.com]

You seemed to be saying that your feelings weren't under your control at all.

I absolutley do not believe that.
A feeling hits, and it is what it is in that moment. And sometimes it's a feeling to be nurtured and allowed to exist and pass. And sometimes it's a feeling to work on and work through and work harder not to keep feeling.
But in the moment that it's felt - it just is. That's my point.
I actually feel like I have a pretty good handle on my feelings and emotional responses. I'm human just like everyone else, of course, but a lot of what you keep telling me is stuff I already know and do.

And after letting myself sit with it for a few days, I feel like maybe this is needed as extra explanation:
Why I reacted so strongly to your post was because, intended or not, it seemed very much like the kind of post that is actually quite a bit meme around LJ. That meme is to purposefully post a bunch of comments directed at people on your friend's list (or just people in your life in general which can include people on your friend's list) - some of which are negative, some of which are positive-seeming but are basically saying something along the lines of "I love you, but you suck in the following ways..." and some of which are actually positive.
And then the people on this person's friend's list are supposed to guess which comments, if any, are about them. These posts are passive-aggressive, cowardly, and cruel in my opinion. And they have hurt a lot of people's feelings and ended a lot of friendships and are just generally very uncool.

I now know that your post wasn't meant to be that. But without some kind of clarifier - it very much seemed like it.
And so I did read it in a manner of "uh-oh, am I in there?" because usually when I see a post like that, I'm meant to think that way about it.

I hope that makes sense.

It wasn't me chosing to believe something negative about myself. It was me wondering if someone else was thinking something negative about me. That's a HUGE difference.
So I had what was an initial response to something that felt very much like these other experiences.
And I've said over and over again, now, the feeling of anxiety I personally felt reading the post actually was very brief. But I wanted to express it to you in order to share how a post like that can affect people.
Because I believe that's the only way we can really understand how our actions affect one another - communication.

[nalidoll.livejournal.com]

But I feel like people here are telling me I have complete control over my feelings in the moment, and that's simply not true.

What I am saying is that as long as you don't believe you have control over your emotions, you won't.


It is a Choice.