mentally ill people
i'm been having a lot of trouble with mentally ill people over the past few years. recently it seems like i've been having trouble with almost everyone i even talk to. know why?
1. apparently mentally ill people LOVE LOVE LOVE to assume about what you've written/said. whether it's just a wrong assumption in general, or them assuming as an excuse to take offense at everything you write. instead of assumption, i could say "they twist your words to suit whatever mood they're in", ex. if they're feeling bad about themselves they'll assume you're attacking them.
because they're mentally ill, you can't explain your side of things. you can't show proof (3 quotes that back up your 1st quote, for example). if they misunderstood, you can't clarify what you mean. they simply don't listen. they usually ignore that stuff entirely and claim it still doesn't prove your point. that or they completely change the topic.
if a misunderstanding IS cleared up and you think "now they'll learn, now they'll stop assuming wrong shit when i talk", instead they still act as if they were right. usually they already had a mental plan of what they were going to do with you (=pick a fight, appear like a victim to their other friends) and they can't just turn that off to suit the new info/situation. sure, you were "right", they "misunderstood", but they're still angry at you (for something you didn't do) so they're going to pick a fight with you all the next times you talk together. even if you deserve it even LESS the next time! you're permanently blemished in their eyes, which gives them free reign to do/say/assume what they like.
as soon as you get on their bad side (which is VERY, EXTREMELY easy), you're out. you're yelled at, attacked, unfriended, blocked, whatever. this is especially true if your opinion or sense of humor doesn't match theirs exactly (no matter how nice you are about saying it). they also get offended if you try to give them sorely-needed advice on things to try for if they actually want to improve their lives - and they normally constantly complain about their lives.
i mean like:
1. you say you've hated your friend for 10 years now and you're constantly paying for them everywhere too. why not stop being friends?
2. literally all of your physical illnesses are caused by malnutrition and by generally eating the wrong foods. look, here's research saying so. why don't you try x diet to help yourself?
3. i don't agree with you, but interpreting book quotes is always just a matter of opinion, so it doesn't even matter if we don't agree.
4. if you're feeling like shit because of x, y, and z that are all inherent flaws in the country/government/culture, flaws which will never get any better, why not stop paying for TV, save up your money and move abroad instead? i've done it, i can help you.
5. i find this joke about people with disabilities funny. (hint: i'm even disabled myself)
cue rage. cue huge assumptions. cue "we can't be friends anymore!!!"
you know what's the biggest assumption i seem to get from mentally ill people these days? that i'm a rich, normal (straight, cis, white, employed, able-bodied, or whatever else they want to believe normal is) person with a loving family that always supported me. that i've never been depressed, and that when i write something (that's not fiction! when i'm just chatting to you!) i'm inserting tons of stuff in-between the lines.
of course none of that is true. but mentally ill people don't know, can't remember, and usually don't care about anything to do with you. they often then decide (=assume) you personify everything they weren't lucky enough to have, or something. they think "because you say x, you must be y".
i don't mind if you forget stuff i say or even forget about me (my memory isn't the best either!). but i do mind when all your assumptions are mean and wrong. this IS a cultural trait, and also a trait of mental illness. unhappy, angry, irrational, self-hating people do this kind of thing.
look. if i say, "that blind guy in that comic is funny!", that doesn't mean i think blindness in the real world is funny. if you ask me how your language skills are, and i say "you use many unnecessary words", that doesn't mean i'm saying "you don't have the right to use unnecessary words".
now. almost every english native speaker i meet nowadays is mentally ill, depressed and/or irrationally angry, and quick to assume. no, i mean it. this the growing conclusion i've reached over the past 6 years - after many interactions, after researching how diet affects mood and mental health, after growing up in an english-speaking country and then moving to non-english ones.
i don't normally have problems with this. yes, people from other places misunderstand me, but they simply ask for clarification or let i go entirely - instead of assuming. when it comes to mentally ill people and english-language natives, it's more like 9 out of 10 give me huge problems.
my conclusion? the english language propagates its culture, which is a culture of mental illness. though mental illness usually comes from diet (your own, or your parents' from before you were born), people now see diet almost as if it were a part of themselves - as if it were a physical trait, or their baby, or something.
they see mental illness, diet, even at times household economy as something you simply can't control or help - you can't even try another method. in fact, they think you can't try new things at all!! you also can't learn to not assume (it's "your fault" for writing bad, not "their fault" for assuming). they think nothing can be done for their entire lives so they just won't even try it. doesn't matter how old or young they are, it's already too late.
if they don't believe you about something, they won't even go do their own ressearch to double-check. they just claim you're wrong, maybe find one source backing them up (out of the 100 that back you up), and that's that.
i'm just so tired of this mentality. i don't want these people in my life. but it means that i effectively don't want an entire language in my life.
yes, i'm posting this after this kind of thing happened to me again. someone on LJ assumed, very wrongly, that i was making fun of a disorder they have - and unfriended me. despite that i've talked about how i too have (and have had) huge problems from birth, apparently they couldn't assume that that meant i was the kind of person who understood the pain of having birth defects. (this person, if it was the same i'm thinking of, also had very many problems that all clearly stemmed from malnutrition.)
also, some random canadian on twitter started attacking all that i wrote - after they misunderstood a (very clear) book quote. after showing more quotes from the same author that said the same thing in different words, eventually i said "well, interpreting quotes is just a thing of opinions, our opinions differ (i guess)". he said "my opinion isn't an 'opinion', it's fact".
these are crazy, mentally ill people. and they all come from (and usually live in) the same few countries. it's insane. i'm done. i quit.