One of my major problems with communication is that I can't really say what I'm thinking a lot of the time.
I am really scared of hurting people, whenever I think of criticizing them. Even minor criticisms. It makes me hurt and it makes me feel incredibly guilty; it's about as not-happy as I get, really, since I'm feeling whatever bad thing made me complain, AND whatever bad feeling the other person has as a reaction to that complaint, AND the guilt for making someone else feel bad, and they even manage to bounce off each other and usually grow exponentially when mixed together. As a result, I usually end up retracting or qualifying my words, or just not saying them in the first place, based off of the reactions/expected reactions I get.
But the thing is, if I never say something, the problem continues. Things usually don't just vanish on their own. And if I retract or qualify words so someone's not hurt by them...that person generally is no longer hurt because they think the words no longer apply to them. So nothing changes.
And the truth is, it's sometimes really necessary to say hurtful things. Like that girl on community, the one that WellesleyFML is having a shitstorm of posts over. She is rude. She is constantly abrasive, constantly accuses other people of being racist, sexist, etc. even when their words were obviously sarcastic or even completely innocent, constantly refuses to acknowledge any opinion but her own as valid, and expects everyone to bow down to her obvious correctness and superiority. She needed a wakeup call on it. (No, an anonymous forum isn't the right place to call her out on this--if you're going to hurt someone, you should at least have the decency to let them know who you are. But she still needed a wakeup call. I just wish, mostly because of the obvious hurt behind her 2 posts on community about it so far, that the call had come in a nicer/less rude and publicly cruel way.) And with Shelley and Alexis and Jen. They don't even know what they're doing, I don't think, but they're becoming rather exclusionary and it hurts. It'll hurt them to tell them that they're being bad friends, but it is necessary.
But I'm still caught in a catch 22 with these kinds of things. Either I say nothing and the situation remains bad--or I say something and let my statement stand and the situation gets at least temporarily worse, followed (hopefully but not necessarily) by improvement--or I say something, and things get so bad that I can't cope, and I retract words and qualify things until the original meaning is no longer noticeable, and the situation remains bad. The usual situations right now are 1 and 3. 2 is good--but the problem is, the second stage of it usually leads to 3 happening.
So, in order to get over this fear, I need to learn to deal with hurt better. And I need to learn not to feel so incredibly guilty every time I hurt someone's feelings a little. It is legit to say these kinds of things, right, when the situation becomes unbearable? I'm allowed to respect myself enough to try and keep my environment healthy for me? Right now, I'm working under the basic assumption that it's no longer okay to take care of myself if it means harming others. Like, it's not okay to tell this person off for making my life sad, if my words will make them sad. There is a basic flaw in this assumption, because it involves putting others way before myself, and I know I tell my friends not to do that too often.
So reminding myself that I don't need to feel guilty may help. Having someone else remind me might help more, because then it's proof that I'm not just convincing myself that the most self-serving path is the best one. But reminding myself will help, I think.
That's not the whole problem, though, though it is a big chunk of it. I also need to learn with the incoming pain of others, without letting it make me backtrack the hell out of the situation. I hate making others feel pain, but I need to learn to accept it when there is no better alternative. I will not surrender that hatred of it, because I think it's really gross to see nothing wrong with hurting others (sadomasochistic relationships aside--if pain is pleasure then the whole dynamic needs to be rethought), but I do need to be able to accept it as the best possible path sometimes.
Maybe seeing it like this will help. I can hurt someone a little now with a comment about their behavior. Or I can wait until I can't tolerate it anymore, and either slip into really passive aggressive behavior and hurt them through that without even telling them why, or I can explode at them. Either of the later options will involve a lot of hurting, not a little. So that little comment is the best possible option, as long as I remember that I'm only human and can't tolerate everything forever.
I haven't always (often....much of ever) applied this theory before because when something is a small problem that a comment could fix, it does still have the potential to go away on its own. They might have gotten tired of LoL over the semester; there seemed to be signs of as much last semester. Et cetera. But this hope doesn't work all of the time, and often by the time I've realized it's not going to work, it's too late for a comment to do much.
So. I have a choice between putting in a little comment that will cause a little pain--knowing that sometimes it will be unnecessary pain and other times it will prevent further hurt--or I can continue to wait until it hits a crisis point. I don't like these options, but I like the first one better than the second. I feel like overall, it's less total pain.
So I need to make myself speak up more. If something's bothering me--like, say, we've been talking about LoL for 15 minutes straight at dinner--I need to speak up and go, hey guys, interesting discussion, but what about those new pokemon? Did you know they have an adorable JELLYFISH one??? It looks like it's wearing a frilly lace skirt and I lurves it!!!!! And if that doesn't work, I can keep it up and go no seriously, let's talk about something new, what about that XXX Holic ending? And if that STILL doesn't work, I can go, guys, you're making it so Aynsley and I never get to be part of the conversation. What do you think about making cosplay swords? What's better for a hard outer coating for the foamy stuff, paper mache or plastery stuff? Or is it worth springing for something expensive like wonderflex?
That sounds fine to me. (I wish it was this easy to come up with conversation topics on the spot.)
And when we're hanging out, I can go, you know, that game you just finished sounded great, but do you guys want to watch a little anime for a while? What about this one? It has hot guys...I think...actually I know nothing about it, but people said it was good, let's give it a shot. And if that doesn't take...well, repeat the above. Keep getting more insistent until it DOES take. I can do that. That way, I'm not causing more pain than I have to, but I get the point across.
This does require me having a running list of possible activities and conversation topics in my head. That'll be a lot of work. But I think it's worth it. And hopefully, once I've done this a couple times, everyone else will start to pick it up too.
Okay. I feel like I have a way to cope with that situation.
And then other possible situations.
What do I do if someone says something that hurts me? Do I go, Alexis, those words made me feel sad. I don't like it when you call me scary, because I really don't want to be scary. (Note: example situation here, not real.) Please stop because I feel very hurt inside when you say that. Or, (another example situation) Shelley, I feel very unwanted when you sit in the room without talking to me. You are making me feel like you don't like me. Please, from now on, say something to me every five minutes so I feel wanted.
This type of 'Yo, you did something wrong and I am bleeding inside as a result' comments are harder for me. There isn't really a way to communicate the meaning without saying "You messed up, feel guilty about it so you don't do it again". The goal is to make someone feel bad, because that's the way that they won't repeat it. So...it's kind of a fail for me. XD
But. I think I need to, in these situations, compare the hurt I'd cause with the hurt I'd experience if it happened again. If the ratio is fairly even or the hurt I'd cause is greater, it's not worth mentioning. If the scale leans way towards the pain of my experience, though, it's worth causing a little to save a lot. I don't think these comments usually cause long-lasting pain--just immediate guilt. (Doesn't mean I'm good at dealing with it.) So it *should* be okay to just spit it out. In private. Somewhere without distractions.
It would be helpful if I knew the person would respond instead of closing off. Closing off means I think you're furious and/or really upset, and then I worry forever that I caused serious damage over something that wasn't really that big a deal after all, you know, it's okay if I'm lonely sometimes or if my ego gets bruised, it's not worth causing you so much hurt--and then usually the person's fine and I've worn myself out worrying over nothing. -.- But I can't make everyone talk things out with me instead of retreating to think. Nor would it be reasonable to.
I'll work on that one.