Quote:
Originally Posted by shezbut
hamster-bamster,
I don't think that BrunetteBabe looks at the situation as though everyone is getting together and making up positive compliments for her. Of, course, BrunetteBabe, please do correct me if I'm wrong! 
It sounds to me as though someone will say something like, "Oh, *Jane, your hair looks so pretty like that!" or "You're such a kind person, Jane. I really like you!" or "You have a great body." and so forth.
And the low self-esteem immediately cuts the compliments down. "They're just trying to be nice, to make me feel good. They really don't mean it." |
I see - so, it is not viewed as a malicious conspiracy, but as a benevolent conspiracy - to make her/you feel good.
People do that sometimes, once in a while, but in general are too preoccupied with own stuff to always be vigilant about making you feel good. Applying the 80/20 rule, you can assume that about 80% of compliments are genuine and the remaining 20% are to make you feel good.
Then, in order to simplify how you process the compliments, you can react to all of them as if they were all genuine - this way, you would mis-categorize only 20%, which is an OK margin of error for something that is so... not life-threatening.
Would that policy work?