Dear Helcat,

You’re welcome and thank you for your kind words!

I find objective third party opinions very helpful, I often ask friends how they perceive situations.

It’s great that you’re open to feedback and ask trusted people for their view on the matter. That’s a very useful practice!

Your explanation makes sense. I can see now that Anita was sharing an overview of her thought process. That makes it less painful.

I am glad it helped you a little. Yes, I believe anita wanted to be transparent and so she over-shared, unwittingly.

So I’ve spent quite a lot of time studying your and anita’s interaction, and have noticed some patterns. I just want to say that what I am about to share, I am sharing in good faith. My intention is not to judge either you or anita, or take sides, but to give you my impression as an outside observer, and hopefully help in some way.

So what I’ve noticed is that there were plenty of interactions where both you and anita saw things clearly and responded from your true self. That’s when you got along well and had good and mutually respectful conversations.

But there were also situations in which either one of your or both of you reacted from a wound (and misinterpreted things, or overreacted), which then caused conflict.

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean.

An example of the situation where you saw things more clearly and anita refused to see it is when you warned her about treating some members harshly, e.g. when she addressed one member with the label “incel”, or when she accused another member for creating multiple accounts and lying. She strongly refused that she was disrespectful to anyone (“you keep repeating that I disrespect OPs when this is not the case“), and instead accused you of having a personal vendetta against her.

An example of the situation where anita had a good intention and you were too sensitive is when you believed that she was questioning the validity of your childhood trauma. The way she phrased her post was triggering for you, and you wouldn’t accept her explanation of why she didn’t mean anything bad.

An example of the situation where both of you were too sensitive and overreactive is when you thought that anita was talking about you on the thread School Bullying, when she wasn’t. You interrupted her conversation with another member, and asked her to stop referring to you and the disagreement she had with you. I’ve checked her post and she really wasn’t referring to you, but was talking about her mother’s bullying. I am pretty sure you’ve misread it.

But then anita – reacting from her own wound – escalated the conflict and accused you of cyberbullying and stalking. Which were definitely inappropriate accusations.

I think another example of such a situation, where both of you had an unbalanced reaction, was your first conflict, which happened in May, on the thread Attacked.

Anita was sharing about her progress with her mental health, but then you pressured her to admit that her anxiety is still high, and told her that her bar for happiness seems low. That wasn’t very kind… You later explained what you meant and that you wanted to encourage her to rise above her limitations. But even if so, that post of yours wasn’t very supportive.

Anita’s reaction to that post was severe. She stopped addressing you directly and instead addressed the rest of the community, show-casing you as an example of “how not to communicate”. Her tone was pretty condescending and belittling. In my opinion, that post was quite hurtful.

A few days later anita apologized for that, saying: “Dear Helcat: I apologize for expressing anger at you harshly and indirectly. I felt too hurt and too threatened to (1) be aware of my feelings,  and (2) to express my feelings clearly and directly.”

Following her apology, you apologized to her too for unwittingly causing her pain. You also explained where you were coming from when you “pressured” her about her anxiety. You two smoothed out the conflict (on May 18) and ended the exchange on a positive note.

This mutual apology is an example of both of you acting in good faith, with empathy and understanding for each other.

So this is the dynamic, i.e. the four types of interactions that I’ve noticed between you and anita. I’d love to hear your feedback and if you think there’s some truth in it.

A lot more could be said, but I wouldn’t want to push my opinion. If you found this helpful, I’d be happy to go into more detail.