Tensions

[yvannairie]

I went and added some commentary on a post about communication (as you do) and now I'm sitting here struggling with my brain going "see? Speech is an action, therefore talking about your thoughts qualifies as acting on them"

Which is a really bad rabbit hole to go down when you have OCD and intense intrusive thoughts and a horrible pattern of blaming yourself on shit that was brought about by failures on both sides of the social equation. Because it's true that if people treat me like shit based on the way I talk to them, then that's entirely deserved, but at the same time, me saying "I sometimes think about how bad I am for my friends, how I'm always going to hurt them and how being my friend is an ordeal"... won't make it true, because things cannot be true just because I think them.

I don't know how to square the circle of communication being something you need to consciously do that isn't an action. Not all speech is even equal in this regard, because even I recognise that sometimes saying things that make others feel bad is not the same as being verbally violent with them, and the other way around. With speech, intent matters so much -- with a physical action, it either hurt the target or it didn't, but with speech you always need to consider whether something was intended to inform or to manipulate, whether it was proactive or reactive, whether it was truthful or misinformed, before you can even get to "did it cause harm"?

Comments

[shadaras]

Yeah, I feel like there's a huge intentionality thing that your brainweasels are trying to make you ignore?

Like, you can say 'There is a thought in my head that I should do X'. Saying that is not doing X, nor is it even necessarily stating an intent to do X. It might just be you expressing frustration that your brainweasels are trying to make you do X when you don't want to.

I also think that 'did this cause harm?' is a different axis than 'was this intended to cause harm?', but that's also its own can of worms sometimes.

[yvannairie]

I'm nice enough to assume that people don't mean harm with what they say, so I didn't really think of that -- or, I guess rather I can't judge because I've given up not causing harm even when I don't intend it so I apply the same standard to everyone.

IDK I'm so VERY sensitive and take everything so VERY personally (legit, another one of my go-to strategies is to point out how someone's behaviour towards themselves reflects their treatment of me -- some people feel worse about being shit to others than they feel about hurting themselves) that I try to give others the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. Intent, ideally, doesn't matter when addressing the consequences.

Bluh. I just know that when I unintentionally hurt people, I, at least, aim to take ownership of it even if it makes me feel like shut. I do not understand how people who don't do that cope with their fuckups.

[shadaras]

It's a good assumption to make! I tend to make it a lot of the time, too, unless there's clear evidence to disprove it.

<3 you mean the best, and you think others do too, and that shouldn't be a bad thing. It's just hard when the world assumes you've got thicker skin or more of a shell, and you really don't.

[yvannairie]

Yeah, thanks. It's something I'm still kind of learning to understand about myself -- I am not tough at all, I'm just very good at shrugging off the things that hurt me and walking with a broken leg if I have to. It's something that's hard to communicate to people who ignore their pain and pretend it doesn't exist. I know full well I'm hurting, and just because I'm not reacting anymore doesn't mean I've stopped hurting.

People are hard.