Ask vs. Guess Culture

Hm, interesting. I guess me with northern german heritage am very much more of an Ask-Person.

But this is missing an important part of the ask-aspects: You can put needs and issues onto peoples radar.

Like, someone recently just asked me if I have a kiln to sell. I very much don't have a kiln I don't need to sell and I had a good laugh about the request. But interestingly, someone else I know apparently knows how to setup kilns and he'd help if there was a kiln to sell and he's now talking to the other dude about kilns.

This is very much how things work in rural nothern germany or northern germany overall. You just ask around if you need something, people learn what you need, and suddenly someone is like "Yo, this friend of a brother of the owner of a goat my sister owns has this thing and you mentioned you could need it three years ago and he wants to get rid of it. Could he come over tomorrow?"

If you've learned anything in your 20-year mental health journey, I hope it would be that not everyone is exactly like you, nor needs the same things you need. It's remarkably self-centered to assume the prescription that's suited you is exactly right for everyone else, don't you think?

I've never heard these terms before, but I've known about this concept for a while and I've always used "implicit" and "explicit" as my descriptors for the two different approaches, which I feel have less negative connotations.

People overuse and overgeneralize the term "trauma" for sure. But it might be helpful to see real actual trauma as only one item in the larger set of "stuff from your past that impacts/has influence on you today, that you mostly aren't aware of, but that if you were aware/more aware of you'd be able to handle better."

The way our primary caregivers relate and respond to us when we're a) in our most rapid periods of development and b) completely dependent on them for everything absolutely has an influence on the way we turn out. How could it not?

So there's no such thing as Neutral/No Influence, there is only identifying what effects there are and learning how to lean either into or out of those influences on a situational basis. All of this definitely applies to childhood trauma, but it doesn't HAVE to be trauma for that logic to apply. Figuring that stuff out is a helpful part of maturing, and it doesn't have to be a critical or negative thing.

In many ways I've come to appreciate and love my parents even more as I've worked through the ways they raised me the best they could, given the resources they had, but in ways that I can now see preferable alternatives to.

I think it's the biggest "I Love You" in the world to self-consciously seek to grow beyond the limitations that were passed on to me, just like I want my little girl to outgrow the ones I consciously or unconsciously hand down to her.

> This all seemed ridiculous to us, so instead we drove the two hours, keeping our plan secret until we pulled up into our grandma’s driveway, so that no one could resist and thwart our plan. We had a lovely visit, and my mom later thanked us for making the drive. [...] This is guess culture — and it’s a lot of saying not really what you actually want, and it’s a lot of reading between the lines to try to figure out what people want.

Guess culture here also functions as a test of love or loyalty. They are nice, so they'll say "nah, you don't have to see grandma, it's a long drive..." but in their heart they hope you will make the effort because you love your grandma. If they tell you to see your grandma, your visit in their view (and your perception too) won't have quite the same meaning. There is suspicion you saw her because you were told, not because you really wanted to.