Comment by bflesch
19 days ago
I call that "you are the garbage bin for other people's emotions". And once you realize this process you can't unsee it and re-evaluate some relationships. If it is each side taking turns being the "emotional garbage bin" then it's a healthy relationship.
But if people only reach out to drop their toxic waste and leave you without the chance to get rid of your own toxic waste you feel not good afterwards. Like where you have conversations and then afterwards notice that you were not able to actually speak about any of your own problems and worries.
That's what I really like about the kids and their words of the year: They used "aura" and at first I thought what a bullshit term is that, but after a while I came to understand it. It's totally fine to listen to your stomach feelings, if someone's aura is negative or their vibes are off you don't need to give them a reason why you stop interacting, you just leave.
We've been trained to be helpful and nice to everyone but then wonder why we feel drained at the end of the day. It's because we're spending emotional bandwidth on people and things that don't give us any energy back.
The word "aura" for all of this is extremely nice. If you see a spooky person approaching you on the street at night you also don't need to explain to them what exactly put you off about them - you just switch sides.
I can only recommend to trust your feelings.
You're finding comforting explanations to allow you to act dismissively towards other people. I understand this is a strategy that is popular these days, but maybe consider how another fellow human will feel when you "don't give them a reason why you stop interacting, you just leave", and judge what they tell you as "toxic waste"; and how you might be the one to make it worse for them (and yourself). If you mentalize yourself into the other position, yours might appear arrogant and condecending if not psychologically violent from where you stand ("how's your aura looking?").
If you feel worn out after listening to other people, that's one way to avoid that, at the expense of human connection. There are other ways to not feel drained even after listening to the most horrible (or boring) stories that don't cut people (and thus yourself) off. You gain options, not lose any. You can learn to have more control over your own inner state without effort, and become more independent from what people around you are saying or doing, instead of turning your problem into their wrongdoing. Instead of having your world suddenly be full of energy vampires you need to protect yourself from.
> You're finding comforting explanations to allow you to act dismissively towards other people.
No, none of this is comforting. For some people it is a big step to not drop everything just because someone is waiting for the bus and wants to have a 15 minute phone call in order to de-stress their own day.
> If you feel worn out after listening to other people, that's one way to avoid that, at the expense of human connection.
Not every human connection is a net positive.
> You gain options, not lose any.
Please let me complete the options I already have before putting more options on my TODO list.
> You can learn to have more control over your own inner state without effort
That's ableism.
People are unique, and while I appreciate you taking the time to write these lines you might be coming from a very different place. To be a bit snarky, maybe you are more on the energy consumer side of things than on the energy producer side. People have a magic radar for others who make them feel heard, but there is a certain bandwidth and it's limits must be respected.
I don't see how something can be "ableism" that can be learned by anyone. You may not want to, which is totally fine, or you may not know how to, which is also fine, but to claim you couldn't do it without even trying is just yet another convenient and comforting display of avoidance.
It's OK not to want to be in connection with others whose behavior you don't agree with, but it's not necessary and from my perspective counter-productive for yourself and society as a whole to turn that into a permission to act in hostile ways against them, especially if you're not providing clear feedback. In fact, unless you provide that in an open way, they will not change their ways around you, so you're losing a lot of chances to influence people around you in situations where you simply cannot decide to avoid them altogether. You're not in control over which humans you interact with, and you're turning interactions into exchanges of aggression unnecessarily.
Says no one who has ever had to actually deal with people like this?
How would your mental health be if you listened to someone like Trump for even half your day?
No matter how much one meditates, they will still die if set on fire with gasoline.