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Am I too sensitive? Being blocked on Facebook?

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  • #332881
    Brandy
    Participant

    Hi Janine,

    Sure, I didn’t want to be friends with her…

    So what if she had different expectations than you do about that? What if she wanted to be friends with you, had thoughts that you two would have a great connection, could read each other’s essays, walk to class together, or whatever? What if she stopped you one day with the sole purpose of establishing this connection with you, and you could sense this immediately, and it made you feel uncomfortable? How would you respond?

    “I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you next Tuesday”??

    Well, to some people that would sound like you shunning her, like you treating her “less than” or rudely.

    My point is this: If you are going to put people on the spot with the intention of striking up a new friendship with them, you’ve got to be able to handle it when it doesn’t work out the way you want. It’s entirely possible that this guy had no intention of hurting your feelings. If you can’t accept the way a person responds to you when you put them on the spot, then don’t put them on the spot. There are better, easier ways of making lasting friendships.

    B

    #332975
    ninibee
    Participant

    Oh, you have brought up something interesting Inky. I have always seen it as possible for me to be “on the spectrum”. It is good to know that it may be a slightly different difficulty for girls.  I have never had any real conversations about it with anyone though.

    It is interesting and exciting to think of becoming a normal girl, but it is hard to know what the “most normal girl” is. I could start paying more attention to other girls, but honestly I find them to be the most confusing.

    #333157
    Lara
    Participant

    Dear Janine, I would like to comment on your posts but I have a question first if you don’t mind: the guy you had the confrontation with, can you explain in what ways he treated you badly? Was it “only” the incident on the stairs when you greeted him or other incidents as well? And if so, what happened? Sorry if you allready wrote this before and I missed it.

     

    #333217
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Janine:

    I went back to your original post to see if I can offer anything useful. These are a few of my thoughts:

    You wanted “to make a connection” with this guy, a former classmate, so you said hi to him as you ran into him on the stairs of the student dormitory building that you shared at the time. You said hi and he either didn’t say hi back or he didn’t stop and have a short conversation with you.  Later you confronted him: “do you realize you treat people like sh**..?”, he said F** you, you said the same, and he told you that “he has the right to be selective about who he’s nice to”, and that nobody owes you their friendship, and he blocked you on Facebook.

    My input today: he does have the right to select his friends, but he doesn’t have the right to be rude to anyone. Question is: was he rude. If you said hi to him, if he heard you, he should have said hi in return, even if he was in a hurry, even if he doesn’t like you. It is rude to not return that hi.

    If he did return the Hi but continued down (or up) the stairs, and you were upset that he didn’t take time to have a short conversation with you following the exchange of hi, then he was not rude and is not responsible for you feeling upset, because.. indeed he doesn’t owe you a conversation.

    If in class, he and his friends purposefully ignored you, that is, wanted to hurt your feelings by intentionally and knowingly ignoring you, that is rude. If on the other hand, they were busy with what they were doing and didn’t have an intention to hurt your feelings, then they were not rude.

    During the confrontation, if he wasn’t rude to you and you accused him of treating people like sh**, then you were rude to him (to not be rude would have been to ask him an open ended question without an accusation being a part of the question), and the two of you were rude to each other when exchanging the f*** you-s.

    When you were on the stairs wanting to make a connection with this man, or in class wanting to make a connection with him and his friends, he and his friends can’t see what you are thinking and wanting. They are busy with their own thoughts and whatever task they are busy with. They can’t see your mind and heart.

    It does take social skills (aka interpersonal skills) so to figure out the things you brought up in your thread. It is something that can be taught and learned in a class setting, such as in an acting class where students do improvisations with the help and guidance of a drama teacher. It can also be taught in a therapy group setting, where the group therapist or counselor directs the interactions between the members of the group.

    I think it can be an excellent idea for you, to join a drama class and/ or group therapy.

    anita

    #333933
    ninibee
    Participant

    For those of you asking, “how did he treat you badly?”, I have another example I would like to bring up to try to illustrate some of my struggle and what it looks like for me.

    In that same dorm, I lived in a suite with 5 girls (each with our own room, shared a bathroom). Me and 2 other girls had lived there since fall quarter, and then partway through winter a new girl  moved in who was in the room directly next to me. She would chat and say hello to the other girls in my suite, but refused any social interaction with me whatsoever. A few times, I said hello and smiled, or tried to communicate about small things that needed to be addressed, like “do you know if maintenance has come yet today?” and she would just stare blankly as if I did not exist at all! If we were walking into the building at the same time, she would speed walk  to unlock the door first and then close it in front of me so I would have to unlock it again just to buy herself time to get away from me (this happened multiple times). This one time I was walking towards the library, and she noticed that we were going to cross paths, and she began talking loudly at her friend and turned around and walked away very quickly. There was another time I found myself standing next to her at the free-store on campus, and I said “oh hey” and she just stared blankly in front of her again. Around the same time, I noticed another girl on campus who just seemed rude to me out of the blue, which disappointed me because she was the head of a club I tried to join. Then I found out later they were best friends, and I thought “maybe that explains it”… It all happened too many times and too consistently that I don’t believe it was just coincidence.

    But the point is, it seemed obvious to me that she was treating me differently than others. It was isolating. Now, this is an extreme example, but really similar in a lot of ways to how this other person ended up treating me as well. These things left me feeling undeserving and ashamed of myself.  I didn’t want much other than to just have people be okay with me. Not best friends or study buddies, I just wanted to be treated like a person.  It’s hard enough when you share a space, have class together, and it’s generally a small campus. There’s so much to figure out as it is.

    #333953
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Janine:

    You wrote about one of your former roommates: “She.. refused any social interaction with me whatsoever.. she would just stare blankly as if I did not exist at all!“-

    – but you are doing jus that here on your thread, refusing any interaction with me. I posted a thoughtful third reply to you on this thread, addressing it to you by name, and yet, in your next post, right after mine (your most recent), you didn’t mention or respond to anything I wrote to you, as if I did not exist at all!

    Three other members responded to you, 2-3 times each, each addressed you by name, and yet you didn’t address any of your posts to any of the members who responded to you, as if they did not exist at all!

    So… see, well.. it is possible that you are ignoring people in your life, or are rude to them (just as you have done here, on your thread) and then when they ignore you in return, you complain that they are rude.

    anita

     

    #333959
    ninibee
    Participant

    anita,

    I do not know what to say. I am sorry. I did not figure out immediately that there was 2 pages on this thread. I did see and respond to the last post from Inky, and unfortunately with Brandy I did not specifically address them in my responses because I felt like I could also be talking generally to anyone. That may not have been the correct move. I can get better at addressing people specifically on the forum.

    I am also sorry that your first response to me fell to the back of my mind after Brandy.

    I don’t know how to stress that I do want things to be good, I want to do the right things. It is obvious that I am constantly making mistakes and not understanding things in all facets of my life. I am sorry if you, or anybody else has felt disrespected as a result.

    #333961
    ninibee
    Participant

    anita,

    I do not know what to say. I am sorry. I did not figure out immediately that there was 2 pages on this thread. I did see and respond to the last post from Inky, and unfortunately with Brandy I did not specifically address them in my responses because I felt like I could also be talking generally to anyone. That may not have been the correct move. I can get better at addressing people specifically on the forum.

    I am also sorry that your first response to me fell to the back of my mind after Brandy.

    I don’t know how to stress that I do want things to be good, I want to do the right things. It is obvious that I am constantly making mistakes and not understanding things in all facets of my life. I am sorry if you, or anybody else has felt disrespected as a result.

    #333969
    Brandy
    Participant

    Hi Janine,

    You did a very good job describing how that new suitemate treated you because I could almost feel the hurt myself while reading it. This must have been very disappointing and difficult for you. If it were me, I’m not sure I’d be able to live in that environment. Thank goodness you had your own bedroom.

    So this living situation you described, is this the suite you lived in last school year (fall 2018-spring 2019)?

    What year of college are you in now?

    Do you have any idea why this new suitemate would treat you this way? What do your instincts tell you?

    Yes, I think it’s logical to conclude that the reason the other girl on campus (the one who’s the head of the club) was rude to you is because her best friend (the new suitemate) may have told her something about you. Obviously, you don’t know that for sure but it’s plausible.

    What about the other girls in that suite? How did they treat you? Do you consider any of them your friends?

    What’s your current living situation this school year? Are you living with any of the same girls you lived with in that earlier suite?

    Sorry for all the questions. Last one: How did your peers treat you in elementary, middle, and high school?

    Maybe we TB members can figure out why this is happening to you and then come up with some ideas on how to improve your situation. What do you think?

    B

    #333975
    Exo
    Participant

    You are not being too sensitive. You are just experiencing human emotions. These emotions are perfectly valid. It is perfectly fine to feel that you have been discriminated against. I have felt that way many times. I have been called annoying, weird, and many other names. I have had my friends run away from me and I would run around chasing them in front of everybody. They thought it was funny.

    Over the years I have cared so much about what other people think. And to some degree, I still do. I still get a little awkward around people sometimes. I still get nervous thinking about taking my truck in for repairs. I worry if my family and friends will think I am a failure. And this is all normal.

    You are trying to protect the idea of how you see yourself. Who are you? How do you see yourself? How do you feel about yourself?

    Upon answering these questions, you will find many of the answers reflect on your own insecurities. You may say you are “this” good and “this” bad, but “these” opinions about yourself are all an illusion. These opinions of yourself have been drilled into your head for many years and now you believe them.

    Now is the time to thank this experience, cringe as much as you want by thinking about it, and let it go. You may think to yourself, “Okay, I guess I did try to get too chummy with somebody I hardly know. Maybe it wasn’t right of me to add him on Facebook. Maybe it wasn’t right for me to stop him while we were on our way to our dorms. Maybe I did make him feel uncomfortable.” Simply be okay with that idea, and let it go, even if you don’t fully agree with it.

    The truth is, people are going to be weird sometimes. Sometimes you’re going to run into people who you are just not compatible with. We’re all weird. We’re all kind of messed up. And that is okay.

    #334025
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear ninibee:

    I re-read your posts in your three threads this morning. In your second thread, Nov last year, you and I communicated very well. You addressed me by name every time and you were polite and gracious to me. I then made a mistake and posted an impatient post to you and you didnt reply to me on that thread. Next, on your current thread, Jan this year,  I made the same mistake on page 1 in my second reply to you. I was impatient, somewhat annoyed, and you didn’t respond to that second post or to my third.

    It was my mistake to post those two replies that turned you off to communicating with me. I will make sure that in this post I will be patient. If you do reply to me next, I will make sure that from this point on, I will answer you calmly and patiently every single time.

    The following is my input today, there is a lot there, so take all the time that you need to read it slowly, maybe over a few hours or days:

    1. The theme of people being nice and friendly to other people, but not to you: June last year you shared that your boyfriend didn’t want to go on dates with you, but before the relationship, he texted another woman, “CONSTANTLY asking her on cute days.. every day”. You felt very unwanted because he suggested dates to the other woman, but not to you.

    January this year you shared that this former co-tenant in your dormitory building “seemed so nice to everyone else”, but not to you. He posted on social media “a lot of altruistic posts about how much and how deeply he cares for the planet and people”, but he didn’t care for you. So you confronted him for being a hypocrite: “do you realize you treat people like sh** just the same?”

    You then shared about one of your former roommate in that dormitory building: “She would chat and say hello to the other girls in my suite, but refused any social interaction with me whatsoever”.

    The common theme is that these people wanted other people in their lives, were nice to others, but not to you. Having communicated with you earlier about your relationship with your mother, I figure that this theme gets activated in you again and again because your mother was nice to other people, but not to you. I am not sure about it but I am guessing. You can let me know if I am correct, or not.

    2. Your mother rejected you many times before you gave up connecting with her: She rejected you in very hurtful ways. I don’t know those ways, but I have no doubt that they were very, very hurtful. You tried to reach out to her again and again, wanting her approval, desperately needing her to see you as a good little person. But she never gave you that approval. As a result of her repeated and continuous rejections and disapproval, you eventually stopped trying, and you stayed away from her.

    At one point on you got confused (and we, daughters, often do get confused regarding our mothers, where do I start and where does she end; which part is me, which part is her), incorrectly thinking that it was you all along who rejected her. But in reality, she rejected you first, and many times before you finally gave up trying to connect with her and rejected her back.

    You wrote in your Nov thread regarding your mother: “I found her repulsive and often outright rejected her.. As a child, I often wished my parents would divorce and that my dad would re-marry someone else”- first she was repulsed by your efforts to connect with her; first she rejected you. After a whole lot of rejections, years of it, you finally gave up and rejected her back.

    Here is you giving up  on your mother: “I eventually just felt completely hopeless.. and I still see no  possibility for change. I have learned that I cannot keep going back to her”.

    3. You keep experiencing now what you experienced as a child/ teenager with your mother: for example, you ran into this young man on the stairs of the dormitory building, wanting “to make a connection” with him (similar to all the many,  many times you wanted to make a connection with your mother). This is what you wrote about his reaction: “he just seemed uncomfortable, like I was creeping him out, like I had trapped him by stopping him to say hi”-

    – I think this is how your mother reacted to you when you tried to make a connection with her, she seemed uncomfortable, like you were creeping her out, like you trapped her.

    You wrote later: “everyone is seemingly telling me I’ve done this horribly wrong? Should  I consider myself a predator? Should I walk around making sure I don’t talk to anyone because I will just make people uncomfortable and trapped? Should I make sure I understand myself to be unworthy of kind human interaction?”-

    -It is within the relationship with your mother that either you or her felt that one of you was the predator and one of you was prey, that one of you is making the other very uncomfortable, that one of you was trapping the other, that one of you is unworthy of kind human interaction. You keep re-experiencing your relationship with her, with other people who are either a bit unfriendly or very unfriendly.

    “I honestly try my best to stay out of people’s way as much as possible”, just as you tried to stay away from your mother’s way as much as possible: “I would stay in my room or the backyard, and only use the kitchen when I knew she was not around… Sometimes I even felt afraid to be I the backyard, because I did not want her to see me from the kitchen window. I felt very nervous and uncomfortable to be seen by her”.

    4. She rejected you when you felt good, when were happy and joyful: “I felt like I could not show any happiness… I felt like she did not like me enjoying myself. It was easier to be ashamed and feel bad about myself somehow”.

    5. She hurt you and then accused you of hurting her:  “I would tell her that I felt hurt by her. Her response to this was always something like ‘I hurt you? You hurt me! You need to stop hurting me”.

    But it was the other way around: she hurt you! That you were angry at her for hurting you is understandable: everyone gets angry when hurt, and very angry when deeply and repeatedly hurt. You were not the reason she was angry at you, you did nothing wrong to her. All you did was try to connect with her. When that failed and she rejected you so many times, you got angry; your anger at her being a natural consequence of her behavior.

    6. You still need a mother/ you still need a connection that will send you the message that you are a good person, worthy of kindness: “I often wish that some motherly woman would show up and take me home with her.. My fantasy mother.. I would not need to feel ashamed to go back to her for help or support… She is not capable as seeing me as ‘bad’  in any way.. When she introduces me, I am seen as good and  interesting. Her positive view of me helps me to be in the world”-

    – you needed your real life mother to approve of you as a good person, so that you can go out to the world with that good feeling, that you are a good person, deserving of affectonate and interesting interactions with people. But your real life mother shamed you for trying to connect with her, she disapproved of you, so this is what you took with you to the world: shame and disapproval, the bad feeling of  being bad, or wrong, uninteresting and undeserving.

    Sometimes you get angry at people, and that further makes you feel that you are wrong and undeserving, and when people get angry at you, that too enforces your feeling that you are indeed… bad, wrong and underserving.

    Your fantasy mother is different, she is the mother you needed but didnt have. You wrote:  “I am afraid I cannot find this, or that I am too old to receive this type of thing”-

    – you can find this fantasy mother, in a way. You can find someone who will get to know you well and approve of you. It will not be easy to find that person. The therapist you did see, he is not that person. Not yet, maybe he never  will be. A new psychotherapist, maybe a woman, a more empathetic therapist, more involved, more responsive, is what you need.

    It is a shame that even though your mother is well off, she did not give you what every child needs: a connection, approval. I agree, you can never find it in her or with her. But maybe she and your father can finance a good therapist for you who can give you that connection that you still need.

    Over time you will learn to be okay with your own anger, you will understand its valid message, what it means and what it doesn’t mean, and you will also not be devastated when people show the slightest criticism and disapproval of you.

    I will stop here and hopefully you will write back to me sometime, if and when you are ready to and if you want to.

    anita

     

     

    #334269
    ninibee
    Participant

    B,

    Thank you for all your questions.

    What year of college are you in now?

    The college sent me a letter rejecting my enrollment this past quarter, but I was about to start my junior year.

    Do you have any idea why this new suitemate would treat you this way? What do your instincts tell you?

    I did not have good instincts about why. I wondered sometimes if she heard me crying in my room and thought I was a freak or something. Once she was also rude to a guy who had a crush on me (ignored him when he said hi) who stopped by to my room. He said that sometimes girls are jealous and they don’t know how to handle it other than to be mean. I thought it was possible.

    What about the other girls in that suite? How did they treat you? Do you consider any of them your friends?

    There was really only one girl who was consistently nice to me and liked talking. I felt she had a soft spot for me, and I did my best to be nice to her as well.

    What’s your current living situation this school year? Are you living with any of the same girls you lived with in that earlier suite?

    I moved out and got an apartment with my boyfriend at the time (but he just moved out and we are no longer together) and so now it is just me.

     

    Sorry for all the questions. Last one: How did your peers treat you in elementary, middle, and high school?

    I’ve had trouble with my peers since the time I was a toddler (my mom says). Elementary school I often refused to talk to other kids, I was in a support group for students with anger management problems in 4th and 5th grade. I do not want to talk about elementary school very much. In middle school I had one close friend, but all her friends hated me and her mom blamed me for her negative changes in behavior. In high school, I stopped going to school but maintained a friendship with two boys who were very kind to me. One of the boys had a girlfriend who was in inpatient treatment for 4 months, and when she came out she cut off the friendship between me and the boys. After that I got a boyfriend (very troubled boy) and tried to fit into the “alternative” crowd, and feelings on me were mixed. A lot of the similar stuff with people finding me a creep and avoiding me. My boyfriend and I became close with an autistic boy a year older than us and we mostly had fun together.

    I hope this answers some questions.

     

    #334271
    ninibee
    Participant

    anita,

    Thank you for acknowledging that you sometimes feel annoyed and impatient, I worried at times that’s what was happening and I guess I just did not know how to handle it.

    You have made a lot of connections between my experience with my mom and my social interactions. I guess I have known they were related for some time, since it is a big part of certain approaches in therapy. But then I am sort of left with …”well, now what?”

    I am experiencing a big “now what?” in every aspect of my life right now it seems. The boyfriend I had has left me. I am not in college anymore.

    I can tell myself or feel like I have some idea of what I need, like you said… someone who will give me approval and a connection… I just do not know how that would happen. I sometimes write to an imaginary mother, but it just makes me cry and feel very alone.

    I am having trouble lately going between a motivation to make my life better, and then falling into an emptiness.

     

    #334309
    Brandy
    Participant

    Hi ninibee,

    Thanks so much for answering my questions. I have to work today so will need some time to respond.

    Hang in there. I hope you’re able to get your mind off everything for even a short time today. Getting outdoors, going for a walk may help some.

    B 🙂

    #334311
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear ninibee:

    You are welcome. “well, now what?”

    The answers I am suggesting to you:

    1. Start quality therapy with an empathetic, motherly type psychotherapist who is professional, competent, trustworthy and hard working. (Not so easy to find). She can be your fantasy mother for a while, before you no longer need a fantasy mother.

    2. In the context of your thread, if you tell me what you need from a fantasy-mother-type here, and if it suits me, maybe I can be that person for you here.  I already promised you that “I will make sure that from this point on, I will answer you calmly and patiently every single time”. So I will keep this promise for sure.

    anita

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