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Old Jul 03, 2011, 08:07 PM
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Member Since: Mar 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 44HkDugW View Post
My mother and sister do this thing that drives me nuts. When I try to explain to others what it is, I have to resort to giving a number of examples of it as I don't know what it's called. They all get it from the examples, but I'd really like to know if it has a name. I've been searching the net and that brought me here, so here goes...of course, to tell you, I have to resort to an example, lol.

I.E. if I say I hate the color blue, they will accuse me of criticizing them. They take what I say and then think something like...well if he hates blue then he must hate my blue dresses. And if he hates my blue dresses, he must think I look ghastly in them. How dare he tell me I look ghastly in those blue dresses. And then they ask me "Why are you always criticizing me??? "

another example...I can express an opinion about something not related to either of them, say, comment on a dress in a store window. If I say 'who ever made this has no taste,' and they thought differently, they claim I've criticized them (or vice versa). When, again, I point out that I did not criticize them, they'll say something like "well I liked the dress, so if you thought whoever made it was tasteless, then you think I'm tasteless, too."
Yeah, I really don't get this thing with taking everything personally or this notion that to disagree with what someone says or does or likes is to somehow disagree with that someone's very existence. I find it somewhat annoying (to the extent that I even experience that particular emotion) when people get upset over what they think someone else said instead of what that someone actually said (almost as if they weren't listening to what was said, which is disrespectful to the speaker). It's a variation on this silliness that is reader-centric reading (i.e. the written word only means what the reader says it means and the author's meaning is irrelevant).

Quote:
Get it? Great, now what's that called?
Doug
I have no idea what it's called.
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