I have PM's from some who felt not welcome.....very wonderful people. Maybe some people are just miss understood & we didn't take the opportunity to get to know them. I have noticed that there are several people who are feeling the way you describe......I have followed their posts & am not exactly sure what is going on or what is making them feel uncomfortable. I couldn't read anything into the posts....so not sure where the feelings are coming from....maybe a mis-interpretation on their part...maybe a little oversensitive...maybe just part of their illness.all I know is that they have their reasons....(feelings may have come from PM's they have received that I am not familiar with).

I think there is really a fine line between posting supportive things which are simple hugs & "sorry you are feeling that way" & taking a RISK by pointing out our thinking on the subject .....or pointing out another way of looking at the situation. When we take the risk of responding with more that just hugz, there is always the chance that our response may not be taken in the caring manner in which we meant it. Hopefully the person even though they may feel hurt will understand that we didn't realize that it would be taken that way & that we really didn't know them well enough to know how their feelings would be hurt. Hopefully they will be able to explain themselves so we can learn & get to know them better so as not to make the same mistake again. There may even be the chance that with some time, our response will be better understood by them after the initial reading.

This is a complex forum to post in anyway because we don't really know the internal thinkings, & how someone will take what we post. What may be a little jab to someone may be a major attacking comment to someone else because we don't know their background. It depends on how personally people take things. We need to be sensitive on both sides. When posting, we need to understand that there will be other ways of looking at what we say & be able to learn from the ideas we receive back that there is another way of looking at the situation. We need to be able to forgive a response that may have come across as hurtful with a nice explaination of why, forgive & hope that they will learn more about their communication skills in the future. When responding, we need to understand that people may be sensitive to what we say & we should be willing to learn how to respond to them in the future so as not to hurt them again & again. It is understandable that we may make a response that is an oops to someone.....but to learn about them & not continue to hurt is the communication skill we need to strive for.

I know when dealing with my Mother when she was alive, I could say the simplest thing & she would take it so personally that she wouldn't talk to me for months. I didn't feel sorry for what I said because I meant it.....it was her problem for taking it the way she did.....however in the future from then, I would be more careful about what I said.....learning more about her thinking & taking her feelings into consideration from then on. Didn't mean that I wouldn't make a different mistake in the future.....only not the same one.....it is a continual learning process.

I think this learning process is part of this site being helpful. It is a growth process on all sides about being sensitive. We are learning about others & also able to work on our communications skills. Learning can take different forms....what we say can be reinforced by possitive acceptance of others, or it can be responded to with information as to why we shouldn't have responded that way. I know that I can be hurt by a response, & it also hurts when I take alot of time thinking through & researching a response & its taken wrong or ignored. We all have so much going on in our minds & lives & there are many things we are sensitive to that we may not even know until they hit.

We are all complex people here & hopefully we can learn the ability of being sensitive & still be able to grow on both sides of the fence.

Debbie