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Jul. 24th, 2009 01:18 amHonestly, in the highly unlikely event that anyone is reading this but me, know that this blog is unlikely to be updated on a regular basis, ever. My apologies. The following post was cross-posted from another forum.
This post was triggered by an argument I was involved in earlier tonight which left me feeling hurt, frustrated, and angry, so much so that I felt I had to remove myself from the room lest I completely lose my temper. Being a particularly analytical person, I felt compelled to analyze just why that conversation filled upset me so. And the crux of it was that I felt a particular way about a time in my life, and other posters insisted on telling me that I cared too much about this, or that I should seek counselling for my feelings, or that I shouldn't have cared even while that time was going on because life sucks anyway.
This catalyzed a reaction that has been taking some months to build. Any uses of "you" in this post are not directed at a particular person, but rather at a large group of people in my life who for one reason or another have tried to invalidate my experiences. The reason I became angry was this:
I have the right to feel whatever I feel. I have the right to my own perspectives, especially on my own experiences. Moreover, I have the right to express those perspectives. I have the right to feel, in other words, and I have the right to do it differently everyone else in the world if I so choose, or no one, or everyone in between. I have the right to my own emotions. How dare you try to tell me differently.
What made me so angry in the conversation--and to extend the topic, what makes me so angry in other situations in my life--is that some people seem to feel that they have the right to dismiss my feelings as somehow wrong. Apparently there's a wrong way to feel about what is, when you get right down to it, my own life!
This is something I've struggled with for years, because it's an attitude that is pervasive in my family, in my acquaintances, in my teachers, sometimes even in my friends. I cannot even begin to enumerate the number of times people I know have tried to tell me that whatever feeling I was having was somehow the wrong feeling to be having.
And the thing is, this attitude is repugnant to my person on a number of levels. On one level, you are trying to delegitimize my experience by saying that what I take out of a situation does not matter. By doing so, you try to silence my opinion by rendering my voice, based on my experiences, invalid. On another level, you are deeply disrespecting me as an individual and as a person; you are saying to me, "I do not care how you feel, what you think about this, because my views and experiences are more important than yours, and I am a more important person than you are."
And it's a damaging attitude as well. For years, I bought into some of what the people taking this tack were trying to tell me. It's not a worldview that sits well, thinking that I don't matter. It's left me with a tendency to try to be quiet on any subjects that I don't feel myself to be on totally rational ground on (and there are so many in which totally rational argument is not possible), as well as with a tendency to immediately barrage anyone who disagrees with me with citations proving that I am telling the truth.
With that in mind: I'm tired of putting up with it. I hope that some of the people I've talked to about it in other areas of my life will get the point and understand why I'm sensitive about this. I similarly hope that the posters from my earlier discussion, assuming that they see this, will understand why I became so offended by their arguments. But I'm not putting up with it anymore, and I will not sit quietly by and allow others to tell me that I am malingering by being hurt. Anyone who persists in telling me otherwise may join the horse they rode in on and get out of my life.
This post was triggered by an argument I was involved in earlier tonight which left me feeling hurt, frustrated, and angry, so much so that I felt I had to remove myself from the room lest I completely lose my temper. Being a particularly analytical person, I felt compelled to analyze just why that conversation filled upset me so. And the crux of it was that I felt a particular way about a time in my life, and other posters insisted on telling me that I cared too much about this, or that I should seek counselling for my feelings, or that I shouldn't have cared even while that time was going on because life sucks anyway.
This catalyzed a reaction that has been taking some months to build. Any uses of "you" in this post are not directed at a particular person, but rather at a large group of people in my life who for one reason or another have tried to invalidate my experiences. The reason I became angry was this:
I have the right to feel whatever I feel. I have the right to my own perspectives, especially on my own experiences. Moreover, I have the right to express those perspectives. I have the right to feel, in other words, and I have the right to do it differently everyone else in the world if I so choose, or no one, or everyone in between. I have the right to my own emotions. How dare you try to tell me differently.
What made me so angry in the conversation--and to extend the topic, what makes me so angry in other situations in my life--is that some people seem to feel that they have the right to dismiss my feelings as somehow wrong. Apparently there's a wrong way to feel about what is, when you get right down to it, my own life!
This is something I've struggled with for years, because it's an attitude that is pervasive in my family, in my acquaintances, in my teachers, sometimes even in my friends. I cannot even begin to enumerate the number of times people I know have tried to tell me that whatever feeling I was having was somehow the wrong feeling to be having.
And the thing is, this attitude is repugnant to my person on a number of levels. On one level, you are trying to delegitimize my experience by saying that what I take out of a situation does not matter. By doing so, you try to silence my opinion by rendering my voice, based on my experiences, invalid. On another level, you are deeply disrespecting me as an individual and as a person; you are saying to me, "I do not care how you feel, what you think about this, because my views and experiences are more important than yours, and I am a more important person than you are."
And it's a damaging attitude as well. For years, I bought into some of what the people taking this tack were trying to tell me. It's not a worldview that sits well, thinking that I don't matter. It's left me with a tendency to try to be quiet on any subjects that I don't feel myself to be on totally rational ground on (and there are so many in which totally rational argument is not possible), as well as with a tendency to immediately barrage anyone who disagrees with me with citations proving that I am telling the truth.
With that in mind: I'm tired of putting up with it. I hope that some of the people I've talked to about it in other areas of my life will get the point and understand why I'm sensitive about this. I similarly hope that the posters from my earlier discussion, assuming that they see this, will understand why I became so offended by their arguments. But I'm not putting up with it anymore, and I will not sit quietly by and allow others to tell me that I am malingering by being hurt. Anyone who persists in telling me otherwise may join the horse they rode in on and get out of my life.
