Hello DocJohn, pleased to meet you!
just for discussion
I'm sorry but I'm not sure that I understand. Are you saying that all responses have to be in the vein of "how terrible for you, I'm so sorry and I hope you soon feel better".

Surely what people find "supportive" and the friendship behaviour that they value varies from one personality to another. You - I say this respectfully just for clarity - might want your friends to agree with you. I might want my friends to have more plural responses. Different personalities.

I was.... horrifying though this now seems.... mostly responding to threads spontaneously in the tone of "hmm, I'm pondering, this is how it seems to me, if you don't agree feel free to know that I may be wrong". People thanked me or moved their focus on more relevant comments: I noticed and adapted accordingly.

I do get that when I feel sad, then I don't want people to trample over me and to robustly give their opinions. If an OP asked for my post to be removed from their thread, or for me to stay off their thread that would be fine.

But what I find is that when people don't behave according to my needs in real life (which happens often!!!) then I learn something valuable about persuasion.

It horrifies me that there might be just one prescribed way to respond and the Good Guys get it, while the Bad Guys don't. Some people get a big kick out of enforcing, and that sucks if for some unaccountable reason you/ I/ he/ she don't fit into their system. Perhaps sometimes... I am pondering here, I've seen victims victimising other victims by controlling in this fashion.

Persuasiveness doesn't demand intimate knowledge of 400,000 forum members or the wisdom of Socrates (who?!), but in my experience it's the most valuable quality of good moderation! Respect.

I don't expect you to write an essay, or justify, or anything like that. But I am uncomfortable with the dynamic that everyone has to be constrained by the exact same style of responding, or explicitly justify otherwise. It's evident that a majority of people do just want to vent and be empathised with. No judgement on that, but I'm not being willing to be a "parrot" of some prescribed behaviour which actually has no personal meaning for me.

I want to learn about difference. I want to stretch my comfort zone. I need to learn ways of dealing with discomfort. Learning requires working at being connected to who I am, and learning mutual respect, not parroting.

Perhaps my misunderstanding is partly because I am a trauma survivor and have only limited experiences of what is labelled as mental illness. The more I learn, the more open-minded I become. But I think - perhaps, because I'm no expert in relationships - that this is also a human thing.

Thanks for keeping this site on the web - not so that I can be "caringly supported" but so that I can learn about difference!

Don't worry. If I can't post as prescribed in public then I will just communicate with "consenting adults" in pm.

THANK YOU.
Saidso