Thanks,everyone, for your replies and encouragement. Venting definitely helps sometimes (even if it's something as whiny as this. lol), and it is good to hear that I'm not alone
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fool Zero
Hi Beyond77, I know very little about Facebook (and don't much care to learn more), so I'll only respond to the rest of your post. Posts, actually -- I went back and looked at what you wrote earlier (before my time here) in My Type-A personality is ruining my life, In one hell of a pickle..., and Was I in the wrong here?
It sounds to me as if you're convinced that there's something wrong with you that other people are all reacting to, and that you're the only one who can't see it. To keep this discussion from getting too convoluted, I'm going to be referring to this as "The Perception" for short.
From here, it looks as if you've been mostly looking to other people to tell you what kind of person you are, what kind of person you need to be, and how to go about getting from one to the other. I'd expect that you'd get widely different answers from those who choose to answer at all; that quite a few would figure it was none of their business what kind of person you are and perhaps be mildly annoyed that you're even asking; and that some, like the co-workers you described earlier, would take it as an invitation to project their own issues onto you.
It seems to me that most of the responses you don't like that you seem to be getting from others, are actually an illusion -- meaningless answers to a nonsense question, artifacts of The Perception. People may be uncomfortable around you because they see you trying too hard to be who they want you to be and they don't want the responsibility for telling you who to be.
I'm not telling you to give up The Perception; I suspect you'd miss it if you did. I think it would work better for you to start by finding something more interesting to replace it with.
Good luck (if that's a factor here)  |
FoolZero,
I think you've definitely hit the nail on the head here--the only thing I would say differently is that I would LOVE to be able to give up "The Perception", because it obviously causes me a lot of stress and heartache. I probably wouldn't miss it one bit
And you're also right that the situations I described in my past posts seemed to have strengthened the power of The Perception to me. Logically, I can see myself as a fairly good person, but one that's human all the same; no worse than your average person, really. But emotionally, that's a different story.
For some reason--and as you read in my posts, that was a very intense situation, to say the least--I began to wonder if what these people were saying/implying was true, that only someone who was "evil", childish, fake, and selfish under the surface would do something like make the call I did. After all, if a bunch of people say/imply something, and some people agree with them, it logically must be true, right? A bunch of people can say things like that and it takes over my perceptions and tends to become the "truth". But, I tend to forget in the heat of the moment that there may be others who would say just the opposite. I can also look at someone and not use black/white thinking when honestly describing them (for example, I couldn't say about anyone I've spoke of as "they're just bad people" because it isn't true), but I can't seem to extend the same thinking to myself.
I would love to have a stronger sense of self-perception, which I consider different from self-esteem/self-worth. Most people can go around knowing who they are and not allow others' thoughts to change how they see themselves, even if they hurt--and I would give anything to know the "secret" to it all.
