Dear Anita,

I think that I understand your concern, you are concerned that parts of my replies to Ik09 have caused her harm. I greatly appreciate your motivation (and I greatly appreciate your participation in the forums).

Yes, my concern was that insisting that lk09 engages in histrionic behavior isn’t helpful and that it might cause her harm, e.g. that she might feel accused of something she isn’t doing, or that she might start questioning herself and thinking what if indeed she’s creating drama as a way to seek attention.

Because of everything she’s written so far on her threads, my impression was that she isn’t a drama queen, and that this was an incident where she felt harassed and attacked, and she was desperate to the point of “wanting to die”. That’s why she made those gestures.

I believe she didn’t do it on purpose, she even said she doesn’t remember what was going on in her head (I remember the actions of my body but I don’t remember what was going in my mind and what I was thinking regarding the action.) It seems it was an affective moment where her emotions took over and her rational brain switched off for a while. People can react like that when overwhelmed with strong emotions – they might do something stupid. That’s why it didn’t seem to me like something she would have planned in advance, but rather something that happened in the heat of the moment, as a result of her feeling desperate.

Because I am in the habit of reading your replies to OPs- if you state your thoughts and concerns to the OP in the ways that I suggested in my previous post to you, I will consider and take your input to heart.

You suggested I should have phrased my post with these words: ”I do not believe that you engage in histrionic behavior’, addressing lk09, and not you. But even if I have phrased it like that, it would be clear that I am expressing disagreement with an assumption that you made. Wouldn’t it feel equally hurtful to you, even if I didn’t address the post to you?

I will no longer address you or reply to you on any thread in which you are not the original poster. Take good care of yourself, and I wish you well.

Dear Anita, this seems like an overreaction – you appear offended and you don’t want to communicate with me any more unless I start my own thread. It seems there’s a wound there that I hit, where you feel rejected or wronged in some way. It wasn’t my intention to do that. But it appears it did cause you pain and a defensive reaction.