something doesn't feel right

[IrmaJean]

Sometimes when emotions become strong it's best to step back and take a breath. We are limited in what we can do here. We can offer support, but if you are in immediate danger, a hospital is best, yes. I do hope you feel better.

[malign]

I don't know either, because you steadfastly refuse to say.

What can I do to help you today, benji?

[benji]

IrmaJean--Seems like you are telling me to shut up and go away because no one here can help me nor do they want to. I'm the idiot who isn't getting the hint.

malign--What am I refusing to say? I haven't refused to say anything.

[malign]

What can I do to help you today, benji?

[benji]

You want to know what my problem is? I was doing ok. Then everyone here suggested I get more sleep. And then I did. And now I can see more clearly how everything about me is wrong. It's oh so refreshing. I missed the self hatred. There's not even anything I can do about it. There is no place for me in the world, and yet I can't seem to disappear. I keep feeling wrong and bad and like I deserve to be hurt and the only way to get it to ease is to hurt myself like a pathetic idiot because that's how stupid I am. Are you happy? I'm stupid.

[IrmaJean]

It's not unusual to project our feelings, concerns, fears onto another person. I do it too sometimes. I am trying to be supportive. I apologize if it came across in any other way.

[benji]

I wasn't projecting.

[malign]

Well, at least you've given us something to talk about. That is all we can do here, is talk.

See, whether you told us or not, you had already hurt yourself. Telling us didn't suddenly make it real. All it did was give us the opportunity to help you with it.

However, I don't think you hurt yourself out of stupidity. If, say, I've never learned how to drive a car with a stick-shift, that's not because I'm stupid, it's because there's something I haven't learned how to do yet. You sound certain that there's no place for you in the world, but is it possible you just haven't tried enough places?

[benji]

Try harder. Excellent advice. Why didn't I think of that?

[malign]

Try differently. Not harder.

[benji]

oh, ok then. that's way better.

[malign]

I didn't actually say that I knew for sure how to help you, just that I would try.

If you need to, feel free to believe it was me that was too stupid to succeed.

[benji]

What is the point of this site if all anyone replies with are explanations about how they can't really help? There is no support here. You got the site name wrong. it should be "StandAroundAwkwardlyBewilderedAndHopePeopleGoAway.net" It's like everyone is defensive.

"I need help"

"Well, we can't help you if you don't tell us exactly how to help you"

"That seemed kind of hostile. I already felt like an outsider and now it seems even more likely that you don't want me here."

"You still aren't telling us what to do, and quit complaining just because people don't respond right away on a forum that says "urgent need.""

"[explains problom]"

"Well, the solution is to stop whining and try harder differently."

"That wasn't helpful."

"Well, we aren't terribly helpful here. Sorry."

[benji]

And now the shunning begins.

I'm very familiar with this dynamic, by the way. It was inevitible. Always is. Idiot fags with no self esteem are the worst sort of people. Avoid at all costs.

[LaLa]

Benji, I'm sorry you became "triggered" and disappointed . IJ and M tried to be supportive, but they didn't "match" your expectances - that happens . You can be sure they're sorry, too. We all have our limits - you know it, and yet sometimes become upset when encountering those limits in others - it's understandable. You might, sometimes (not when feeling as badly as now!), have a look at other threads in this "Urgent need" forum to see that sometimes it is really helpful. Maybe it would help to see the way those useful interactions/"talks" happened.

I'd like to explain the projection that was mentioned here: You see yourself as bothering, annoying, stupid - and you expect other to see you that way, too. I can see this process in this today's communication. Nobody here told you anything negative about you, nobody was ignoring you, ... but you "felt" all those negative things in the texts of IJ and M (and also in those who weren't responding - in their "silence"), although me, for instance, I really didn't. So each of us perceived the situation very differently - this means that the perception was based to a considerable extent on the person who was reading. I know IJ and M (for over 2,5 years) as very carring, kind, helpful, ... people, so when I read their posts here, I feel in their words the care and the effort to help, while you feel completely different things which are in concordance with your general expectations (- I can quote you: "I'm very familiar with this dynamic, by the way. It was inevitible. Always is.") - you expect people to refuse those who're in need, have low self-esteem or even hate themselves, ... so you see signs of these negative feelings in what people tell you, in case they don't tell you something really helpful.

May I generalize a bit? It's in the human nature that when we don't have our very important needs (related to deep feelings, need for love and care, ...) satisfied, we conclude that we're not worth it - that it's right because we are not "good enough", we are "stupid / bad / evil / funny / pathetic / ...". You can believe me - it's not from my own head (although my own experiences are in accordance with it) - this is a natural mechanism. Natural, but very harmful in most cases. When a child recevies the love, care, and appreciation (s)he needs, then (s)he becomes, usually (if anything differently bad doesn't happen), a person which has the basic needs satisfied, has a sufficent self-esteem (not depending on how much others like her/him), and isn't expecting others to jugde, recect, hate, ignore, ... her/him. However, I'd say the majority (-my personal guess) of people in the world isn't so lucky. We, in this community, are probably all "the type of people" who either had or still have a certain "level"/form of this problem. That's why it's easier to talk to us about self-esteem-related (and similar) issues - in case you remember we all know it, we all have or had some similar problems (just the concrete form and the concrete symptoms may sometimes differ even greatly). However, many of us - or I may at least talk now about the 3 of us here today (IJ, M and me) - have already much changed the attitude towards ourselves - that includes also that we are more understanding towards those help-seeking, very fragile persons with low self-esteem we used to be, so we have also a very similar attitude towards others who still struggle with the problems we used to struggle with. (Sorry for my complicated formulations...) When you realize this, I hope it will be easier to believe that for us, you can't be "an annoyance" or something similar. We have no reason to consider you stupid. We have no reason to avoid you. Maybe it could help to read some threads of other people here - to see how we treat others. Why should we treat you "worse"/badly??? I can understand that you may see a difference between the replies you received today and some replies others received when they posted in "Urgent need" - you might see them more useful, for istance. But the reasons for the differences include anything but "our lack of care for you"! Here are some of my thoughs in this context:

- When "talking" to others here, people might have been in a more suitable mood/state of mind than they are today - nobody can be helpfully inventive 24/7 . It's nobody's fault.

- When some other members posted here, they might have been in a different mood than you today and that state of mind might allow them to feel grateful also for the kind of support you received here today - they had other current needs than you - the "same" words were incidentally good for them but not for you. It's nobody's fault.

- When some other members posted here, they described a current problem and it was of the kind that those who replied knew what to say - a suggestion occurred to them in that particular context. It didn't happen here until you at least outlined your current problem. But as you formulated it only very generally, the "advise" could be also only very general. As you wasn't satisfied by it, you might explain your problem or your current need in more details - to allow others to come with a more detailed answer. Instead, you interpreted the "lack of usefulness" of the answer as "your fault" on one hand ("you're stupid, fun, ... not important to others, ...", so you don't deserve a better answer), and as "the fault of this entire site" on the other hand. I suppose you're doing the same also in your "off-line" life and it must be hurting you: You see yourself, as wel as the world, as inappropriate, not worth of effort, not worth of care... So you sometimes try not to care about anything (as you once said on your blog) because that seems safer. You try to distract yourself from all the problems by work - by something you're excellent in (so it can bring you the good feelings you miss in other areas of life). However, it can't work in a long-term perspective . It's great that you have "at least" your work. But the feelings you get from your success there, unfortunatelly, can't compensate for the lack of satisfaction in some other areas of life for a long time. That's what you probably feel and it hurts - we can relate to it, indeed. It may be seen as an analogy to physical pain: A pain usually tells you that something's wrong, you need help, care, and you need to be more careful to avoid the cause of pain in future. I see you try to change - you started therapy, came here, ... I see your impatience. Unfortunatelly, the only useful thing you can do with inpatience is to transform it into motivation - motivation to hang on, but also to try differetnly.

And here we are - "try differently". I know that the too general nature of the advise is frustrating. But it doesn't make it valueless! What about trying to take it and think abut it: What could be done differently? Where exactly are the problems? What could you try to change? - When you have this, then you may move towards "how"...

I hope it's not too much text, but mainly that it didn't upset you even more...

Maybe you could come here after some time, when feeling better, and read it all again - to see if you won't perceive it in a slightly different way.

Take care!

[benji]

You’ve always seemed helpful and have often provided well thought out replies. But I still feel very strongly that others on here couldn’t care less and are only annoyed by me. You can claim all you want that their intentions were otherwise, but that is not what I see and that is not how I feel when I read their comments. And maybe that’s me and not them, but it’s still what I feel and it still hurts very badly.

One thing I talked about in therapy recently was different subjective perspectives on a situation. My therapist was asking (as I was in a good mood at the time) if I could look back on the times when I was in a bad mood and see that my perceptions then were distorted. Of course I was supposed to say “yes, I can see where I was wrong then,” but that’s not what I said. What I said was that my view of the situation now is just as subjective as it was then. It is not more valid simply because it is positive.

Any logic you might try to use on me when I’m in a negative mood in an attempt to demonstrate that my interpretation of things is flawed—I can use very similar logic to show why my view isn’t. And that’s because both views are fundamentally subjective. So what can you do when you feel negative? The only thing I could think of was that, while you can argue any of the subjective things back and forth to no end, you can’t argue the underlying objective reality. And sometimes it is grounding to just list out the facts of a situation without attaching any emotion or value (positive or negative) to them. In that way, you don’t feel threatened by having some invalidating “happy” “positive” viewpoint forced on you, and you can gain a more clear perspective because sometimes you can let your emotions lead to a cascade of assumptions that eventually end up inconsistent with the underlying reality. (A negative viewpoint and a positive viewpoint can both simultaneously be consistent with an underlying reality, but the reason to go and look at the underlying reality again is to weed out the bits and pieces that you’ve been adding on that are actually inconsistent.) So it isn’t about trying to be happy or seeing the silver lining, or adjusting your view to be positive; it’s simply about making sure that your interpretation is at least consistent with reality.

So what is the reality here today? The reality is the words that were typed. It’s just the words. What people may or may not have meant by those words is open to subjective interpretation. If I read hostility in them, that’s consistent with reality—those words can be interpreted as hostile. If you see only caring in them, that’s still consistent with reality as those words can be interpreted in that way as well. No interpretation is more valid than the other though unless the conclusions drawn start to become inconsistent with objective reality. So I can’t, and I don’t have to, believe that they were caring and not frustrated and annoyed. That is my interpretation and it is valid. It’s only if I start to conclude that no one in the world likes me or wants me around and that I need to die/disappear that my negative view becomes inconsistent with the objective reality. From this situation, I can only conclude (subjectively) that there are some people here who have acted in a way that might indicate that they find me annoying. I’ve not interacted with every person in the world, so I can’t speak of them. And also, that people don’t like me means I should die isn’t an appropriate conclusion either. If they don’t like me, it might make me feel that way, but it does not mean I should die.

I feel like I’m talking myself into nonsense.

But back to the original problem. If people at any time felt they needed more information in order to offer supportive advice, they could always have asked. They could say “what’s going on?” instead of telling me I HAD to specifically state what I wanted from them and why I was even here, and then later get chastised for never just laying everything out for their hostile eyes to judge. Here’s another place where subjective interpretation can become inconsistent with reality—if I start remembering them as having said things that they didn’t, or forgotten they had said things that they did. I will read back through in a minute and see, but my recollection was not that listening ears and support were offered, but rather annoyance that I wasn’t conforming to some ideal way of presenting my problem.

I was having a hard time last night. I’m still not doing so great. I can’t shake the feeling that everything is wrong with me. I don’t even know what the trigger was this time. But coming here ended up being the opposite of helpful. And then I start to feel like it’s all my fault and I don’t even know anymore. It’s far too easy for me to let my thoughts get carried away right now, and then I just crumble into a non-functioning, self-destructive heap. Any slight hint that someone is annoyed with me just adds to it and makes it worse. Being hostile back helps keep too much of it from getting through. If I can convince myself that the people (I feel are) trying to hurt me are wrong and bad themselves, then they don’t have as much power to make me feel that way about myself. But if people try to convince me that those people weren’t bad after all, then that must mean that I am. And I’m worse than I ever thought.

[benji]

Looking at the first response again:

Just a thought, Benji, but maybe the next time you are feeling distressed, you can help us to help you by telling us what you need? For instance, you might have said, "I'm not okay right now. I need support." And then, "I needed support, but no one responded and now I feel hurt."

I'm not certain what you may have been feeling or needing, but it is okay to ask for things and to express yourself. Take care. I hope you feel better.

This really didn't read to me like an offer of support so much as a lecture on how to go about asking for support, followed by a brush off (I don't know what it was you wanted but whatever, I don't feel like bothering to ask). I think my interpretation was perfectly valid. And the thing is, I DID type "I'm not ok right now" and I did it in an urgent need thread, so for me, that implied a need for support. So the suggestion that I type "I'm not ok right now. I need support." makes me feel like she didn't even care enough to realize that thats exactly what I already said.

Then later, i get the suggestion to "try differently." Really? I need to try something else? I think that's a no brainer. But obviously I haven't been able to figure out what that "something else" is, so suggestions would have been helpful. As is, that was little more than a statement of "you're doing it wrong, that's why your life sucks." Please DO tell me more about how wrong I am. Never mind that my main problem is feeling like I'm always wrong.

Ok now i'm crying again. Today sucks.

[benji]

And now I'm getting a lecture about how I'm "too sensitive" and "get upset over anything." So that's my "real world" support system for you. Can I disappear already? There doesn't seem to be anywhere for me to go and be ok.

[LaLa]

Hi, benji, I'm sorry you're crying and feel so rejected .

Well, such an "imbroglio" as today can happen anytime. But it hurts more when one is in distress...

I'm glad you explained it thoroughly. I don't agree with this:

I feel like I’m talking myself into nonsense.

I see your point and I agree that the same reality may be seen in several different but valid ways. I even mentoned in my post something very smimlar: that the interpretation of the words depends on the person who reads. (And itn't so only in case of projections.)

I can see, and after your explanation (in your 2nd post, above this one) even more clearly, where you see the hostility and the lack of care. I can see it there, too, if I change my point of view. It reminds me optical illusions - pictures where you can see two different things, depending on "the way you are currently perceiveing". In principle, it's almost the same: the same sentences can have different meaning depending on the context - including the non-verbal context, including the one in the reader's mind. That's also why I haven't been arguing with you about what you've perceived.

And... no matter how unpleasant this today's experience was, maybe it could be somehow useful - that's also why I tried to somehow generalize it and discuss it. Because you'll probably encounter similar experiences in future, although in different forms. Maybe some principles might be identifed and some useful partial conclusions derived (?).

For instance, it led us to this:

If I can convince myself that the people (I feel are) trying to hurt me are wrong and bad themselves, then they don’t have as much power to make me feel that way about myself. But if people try to convince me that those people weren’t bad after all, then that must mean that I am. And I’m worse than I ever thought.

Yes, this is logical. It can be successfuly applied to some/many situations. But in this case, for instance, it doesn't seem very useful to me, because concluding that IJ and M are wrong and bad and keeping the conviction that they wanted to hurt you deprives you of potential help or support from them in the future, or even of potential friendship (altough only on-line). OK, you might not care, because there are also others. But... I'm just worrying that maybe you could do this more often and so it poses you problems, not only here and now.

For me, there is an alternative to what you described here, which is denying your assumption:

that must mean that I am

As you admit that there are different valid opinions and even perceptions of reality, then it shouldn't be hard to admit that - I'll try to simplify it, because I'm almost lost in words (mostly due to English...) "if A feels bad to you, but B says that A is not bad, then you must be either bad, or A must be bad" is not true, there is also this alternative: "Nobody is bad and nobody is trying to hurt, but the way A behaves is perceived as inappropriate to you, makes you feel bad, regardless of the good intentions of A" - you may belive or not B's opinion, but admiting that A may be also good, just didn't - in that particular situation (it's important to consider other cases, too) - choose the right way how to communicate with you. Why? Because we all can fail sometimes, and we do.

Psychologists say that people who can't accept/tolerate their own fails, mistakes, ... are often unable to accept others as failing and making mistakes. But in general, life it's much easier in we learn to be tolerant...

Oh, somebody posted while I was writing. I think I'll stop here...

[LaLa]

(So, it was you...)

I'm sorry your partner (I suppose it's him) is so insensitive towads you . And he generalizes so much!

Sorry, this is probably a bad thing to ask but... Well... I'll ask it this way: Have you discussed your relationship in therapy? And how does it seems to contribute to your problems? ... I'm asking in the context that... sometimes it's the current partner who's contributing too much to the suffering. I remember you described several interactions with your partner, mostly with very negative impacts on your mood. But maybe that's only because we share mostly the negative aspects. However, I have to wonder if you feel that the positive aspects in your case compensate for the negative-ones...

And also - I lack some info, so if you don't mind sharing: You talk about "partner" - does it mean you're not married? What about children? How long are you in this relationship and how did it influence your problems with self-esteem?

[benji]

Our relationship comes up in therapy from time to time. I can't tell if it's him or me. He has a tendancy to be too honest and say whatever he's thinking without caring what my reaction might be. He has his good points too, but I'm not inclined to "look on the bright side" at the moment.

Not married. We're both male. No children. 5 years. My self esteem is better than it was before him, but that's not saying much.

[LaLa]

Thanks for the info .

Only one comment occurred to me:

I can't tell if it's him or me.

I don't think that there are many cases when one could tell apart: "it's partner 1" / "it's partner 2". Yes, I asked because I wanted to know how you see it and because I was a bit worried that maybe he's the main problem - sometimes this happens and break-up is the best solution, but in probably most cases both partners have "a simlar number of positive and negative traits" and the relationship depends on how they "fit toghether", so... In any case, I cannot know/discern this (if he is a too big source of problems) just from anything you'd say (as I don't know him).

[LaLa]

Benji, may I have a suggestion?

This might be a way how this community might be therapeutical for you. This is not therapy, so the possibilities are limited, but there is one inspiration from some types of group therapy which we could try to use here: We don't know you in person and don't nothing about your interactions ith people in your everyday life, just that they often make you feel bad. But there is one thing we could do, similarly as in group therapy, because this is a group where you also interact with people and can get feedback from them. In "off-line" life, you don't have the possibility to discuss deeply the feelings and perceptions which you and others have of a particular problematic situation, but you can do it here - analyze a concrete situation and the reasons of the differences between the perspectives of you and others. I think that what we experienced here might be useful for this purpose, because:

- you have often (if not always) the feelings that people here ignore you or even hate (?) you, are hostile to you, ... - althought we don't have this feeling - and these feelings probably occur sometimes also in your "off-line" life (in case you are in needs for support, for instance), so it's not something very special for this community

- you have reacted in a similar way as this time also earlier - on your blog, when Mark ('malign') tried to write something helpful: by replying just "I'm not depressive", you only focused on the mistake he has made in his pressumptions (morever, it's a mistake that can easily occur when there are so many depressed people here...), but didn't seem to take anything from his words or even trying to "help him to help you better", as by providing more info - so there is a kind of pattern that sometimes occur in your communication and is preventing you from "better" relationships, even provides new "proofs" to your feeling of isolation and of being ignored by others.

- you said that all perceptions of reality are valid, they may be all subjectively true, and I agreed, but ... this is not "the whole truth" at all and it would be certainly useful and interesting to debate it more. I don't have time now, it's late at night here, but I'd like to discuss it sometimes later, if you're willing. One thing as intro: We cannot argue about what you felt and perceived, of course. But in case when what you felt and perceived was hurtful to you (and you experience this particular kind of hurt also in other situations, just maybe in some other forms, so it's not a meaningless exception) and when 3 other people have very different perceptions of the same situation - and those are of the kind that they wouldn't hurt you, then it might be useful to try to look at the situation from their perspective and see if you're able to change at least your current feelings about it.

I didn't talk with IJ or Mark about this, but I imagine they might feel a bit hurt, too - or at least disappointed, because they came here with good intentions and were trying to do what they could in those moments, but they received only your anger and accusations. It cannot be a pleasant feeling to fail (-they failed to help you and even made you feel worse - it must be frustrating)! I also imagine that they probably don't feel offended, because they understand that you were angry and had high expectations which they couldn't met (at least not at the moment) and your resulting frustration led to your, possibly hurtful, words.

I think that when I'm able to imagine this, you are able to do it, too. But for some reasons, you didn't - it seems you even didn't try to look at it from the alternative perspective (to yours) - the one which implies their positive attitudes. I can tell you from my own experience that it's often very useful to try to find positive motivations underlying people's behaviour, or, if it's impossible, then at least some circumstances which explain the negative attitude in a way that isn't too hurtful to me. It's not "lying to myself", it's just a matter of choice, of general attitude towards people and myself. When I used to hate myself and had a very negative self-image, I used to suppose that everybody had to hate me. I see something similar in your way of communicating with some people here. You said that imagining that they are good and whanted to help only makes you feel bad. So maybe I could try to show you that it doesn't have to be like this...

As I said, we may talk about it more sometimes. Now I have to go...

[benji]

I had no intentions of hurting anyone. I felt as though they were hurting me. So I reacted to that. Now I'm being told I'm the one who was wrong. If I don't react when people hurt me, it only hurts more. If I do react when people hurt me, then I am wrong for doing so. Of course you will say "but they weren't hurting you" but as I've explained, that's not how I saw it and I'd thought I had valid reason for seeing it that way, but nothing I think or percieve is ever right. Of course you will say "you could react, but you should have reacted differently." It's sort of difficult to not react in a not-so-calm way when your perception is that you are being attacked from all sides and everyone wants to hurt you and tell you how bad you are. When that's your perception, the thought of calmly telling them you feel hurt would be like, if someone was chopping off your arm and you tried to calmly tell them they were hurting you. The hurt is too big to react to calmly. But that's my own fault again because it was wrong for me to be hurting that big in the first place.

But whatever. I was wrong. I'm always wrong. Everything I do is wrong. Seems the only way I cannot hurt or bother other people is by just absorbing all the hurt myself and keeping my mouth shut. I can't stand myself. This is why I keep feeling like I need to not exist. Anytime i try to exist, I do it wrong. And now I get to feel guilty because I upset other people on top of everything. But it's my own fault again because I can't do anything right. I can't even be upset in the right way. Growing up, I used to get smacked everytime I'd cry. That's how this feels.

[malign]

Maybe there doesn't have to be a "wrong" viewpoint?

I mean, my suggesting that will be useless if you now feel that I'm telling you that you're wrong for feeling wrong, in which case we're never going to get anywhere.

But if you can stick with your own example, that there's an "objective" reality which can support a number, possibly infinite, of different subjective realities, then there's no particular reason to pick one as "right" and the others as "wrong". In fact, I would suggest that it would be difficult to define the objective reality that we intuitively expect to exist, because you'd never be able to detach the observer from the observed. Science has become fairly good at measuring single variables to considerable accuracy independently of observer, but the choice of what is important to observe is itself a subjective decision. On all sorts of levels, we create the reality that we already believe exists.

So if in fact there is a large number of subjective realities (viewpoints), and there's no value assigned to them a priori, is there any reason not to choose one that works better for ourselves? To me, that was what your therapist was trying to reach: it may be valuable to try to become aware of our viewpoint when it makes us feel happy, and contrast that with viewpoints that make us unhappy. Not because one's right and the others are wrong, but because one works better than the others. So I don't think you were "supposed" to say anything, in particular; he was just hoping that you might be able to abstract some tools from a working viewpoint, to use when you were feeling bad.