121–130 of 151 posts
Insanity is also assuming the electric fence that shocked you a hundred times is still turned on.
So no matter what you do it is wrong unless it works, then you are a genius. I am not sure how to use this advice.
This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago. I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I wri…
I'm autistic, and what you describe doing sounds impossible to me. I live in constant fear of inconveniencing others. I personally find it inconvenient when someone outside my close circle wants my time. It's expensive for me to perform socialness, so I tend to assume it's not free for others as well and avoid placing that burden on them.
Some fences are boundaries, not barriers and that's ok!
Not every fence needs to come down. Honor what serves you.
The article asks when the reader was annoyed by someone checking in and it answers, “never.” Not so for me, I truly dislike people checking in on me, including my family members. It makes me uncomfortable. I’m an introvert, and my condition is my own business. Now and then is okay but not frequently. I also don’t answer calls on my birthday. It’s MY birthday after all, it’s a day for just me.
if you check it, youre in the right and if the fence no longer works its a win situation
but if the fence still works you're not only experiencing the immediate pain, there will also be long term consequences to how you program yourself
For most of us, certainly including me, a lot of those electric fences are alive and well. They are powered by thoughts associated with pain. Anything that triggers those thoughts, triggers that pain. We are not even aware of how our thinking has been constrained. We just avoid the possibility of triggering the thought. A person constrained by such a fence is very obvious from the outside. We see the irrational ratio…
You're right, we see everyone else's fences perfectly while blind to our own. Here's what helped me most, when I hit a painful thought, I try to think about it as, "What are you protecting me from?" Usually it's something that happened once, often years ago. Next time you feel that electric fence, just notice it. Then take one tiny step towards it (Joe Hudson talks about this as emotional fluency). The fence will bee…
This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago. I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I wri…
I’ve had to stop telling anyone anything about where I’m going to be, where I’m working, or who I’m seeing or in a relationship with. Because people have gotten repeatedly stalked and attacked themselves in attempts to get to me, or ‘punish’ me for being happy.
I really wish it was paranoia or something I was imagining too.
> The fence isn't there. It never was. It's just the memory of some childhood rejection, some social rule someone made up, some fear that caring more makes you matter less. Chesterton's Fence would say that maybe there is a reason and you should tread carefully. Sometimes a relationship died because it should have. Maybe you feel uncomfortable messaging someone because they have given nonverbals that they don't like…
Chesterton's Fence applies to institutional/societal structures with unknown origins, not personal relationships where the history is known to you. The principle encourages understanding before removal, not perpetual inaction when reasons are already clear.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the app is a labor of love, and the article was from the heart. It does get dicey, when what we do is mixed with who we are. I have an app that is very useful to a lot of folks, but I don't really spend much time, talking about it, because it's frequently met with suspicion. I'm trying to figure out how to work around that.
Vaguely alluding to whatever it is you do as "too suspicious-sounding to talk about" surely isn't helping the matter.
Have a great day!
This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago. I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I wri…
> The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". Yes. I do this too and wish more people would. The qualifications, the "what have you been up to?"s -- such mind-numbingly boring conventions. Who wants to go through a "catchup" interview before talking about what's interesting. If that's the price, it's not worth it.