I appreciate the sentiment, but knowing that it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality except for the one thing we have somewhat in common, means that your comment is to me merely a representation of you and what you stand for. Which is great and beautiful, but it doesn't cross the bridge of being a meaningful comment on my end.
That's actually the exact problem I'm facing, so it's incredibly relevant.
A year ago, I was talking to the local Catholic priest (I was donating some religious statues that I had effectively inherited), and it came up in conversation that I was going through a rough time. He went in for a hug, and it felt so absolutely empty and disingenuous. I accepted it merely to avoid a scene, but it was absolutely not welcome or meaningful.
When I'm out in the city, I want to reach out to those people who put that they feel "100%" alone just like I do. I wrote in the article some of my thoughts and feelings on this, and some things I tried and didn't try.
But ultimately, that's the gap I want to bridge now. We have a thing in common. How do we go from there? (Not you and me, but me and a stranger who has the same problem as me that they want to solve.) What do I say next? What's the next thing we can do in that interaction, or maybe a later one if I ever see them again? This is my question to myself, what I'm wondering in this whole post.
> it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality except for the one thing we have somewhat in common, means that your comment is to me merely a representation of you and what you stand for. Which is great and beautiful, but it doesn't cross the bridge of being a meaningful comment on my end.
Man, well said. People who "over engage" are doing it out of a sense of kindness, but you're right that it feels hollow and is really just about them.
I think the solution to this is basically what you're doing. Build small connections via whatever engagement mechanism you can and let them organically grow into meaningful ones. Jumping from zero to pretending you have a meaningful connection is exactly why those gestures feel hollow. There is no shortcut, it takes time.
Sounds like you're making those initial connections with your signs, which I think is great.
Not a doctor or anything, but what happens if you check your assumptions about someone's actions being hollow or making it about them and consider that they actually want to support you and show you love or empathy as a possibility? Removing some of our own defensive layers might be a first step - though I understand how difficult that can be since we've been burned so many times and they layers are there for a reason!
I can assure you that there was nothing performative or hollow about my comment. OP said something that resonated with me, and so I shared my story in an attempt to bridge and find commonalities.
It's possible you are just projecting biases onto my comment. I'm not sure what "over-engaging" is, but you're free to ignore my comment if you feel that it was too personal or too long. I don't however, understand the contempt, or insinuations that I am attempting to take some kind of shortcut with personal connection.
You can connect quickly with strangers if both parties are receptive. And as I just mentioned to OP, I have made life-long friends from this site, who I have met multiple times in person. I reach out to people often, and people often reach out to me, over email.
That is why I shared my story and mentioned to OP that my inbox was open: to develop or at least explore a possible connection. This is as intentional as it gets with making connections, but your priors are causing you to misunderstand my intentions and paint my comment in an insultingly negative light.
> I can assure you that there was nothing performative or hollow about my comment. OP said something that resonated with me, and so I shared my story in an attempt to bridge and find commonalities.
Sorry, I didn't mean to say at all that what you're doing was somehow performative. By saying it feels "hollow", I mean that when you are on the receiving end of an action like this it often feels hollow because you have no relationship with the person. They are skipping several steps in the relationship development process from zero to "I want to engage with you on something that is deep and painful".
This may be totally fine for some people, but to me (and apparently to the person I was responding to) when it happens I feel like I am becoming some sort of symbolic prop to the person. It's uncomfortable. It doesn't feel like a human interaction at all.
My intention wasn't to cast doubt on your motivations, just to tell publicdebates that I understand the feeling he was describing.
Thank you. I understand where you're coming from. And I know interactions online can seem fleeting or meaningless. Personally I find meaning in connecting with strangers, even if once. I don't think we need to fully understand each other's internal experience in order to relate. I appreciate you clarifying your intent :)
Absolutely, happy to. And likewise! I'm sorry if what I said came off as judgemental or insulting. Not at all the intent, I assumed the motivation was nothing but kindness.
> knowing that it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality
That's not the point of empathy and not the point of my outreach. I don't need to know you precisely or be within a certain proximity in order to empathize with you.
> A year ago, I was talking to the local Catholic priest (I was donating some religious statues that I had effectively inherited), and it came up in conversation that I was going through a rough time. He went in for a hug, and it felt so absolutely empty and disingenuous.
For what it's worth, the man who did these things to me was a Catholic deacon, and the hypocrisy is blood-boiling. He would give very pleasant-sounding homilies about love, acceptance, patience and understanding, and then come home and savagely beat and torture me through physically painful punishments and extended periods of isolation. I would not go to a Catholic leader if you are looking for surefire genuinity. The institution attracts performative, power-seeking individuals.
> What do I say next? What's the next thing we can do in that interaction, or maybe a later one if I ever see them again?
It's a combination of bridging and bonding. Meeting individuals, like myself or a stranger on the street, and learning that you have something in common which provides substrate for conversation and communication through a shared experience, is bridging. Developing those relationships by building around that core is bonding.
We typically bond contextually: We both go to the same school or office and see each other daily, or we run into each other at the store each week, etc. I once ended up becoming best friends and living with someone who was my cashier at Trader Joes.
Instead of telling me our personalities and experiences have nothing to do with each other, we could discuss our experiences, find commonalities that are more than surface-level, and bond over those. I've met great people on this website. I've met some of them in person. Friends are all over the place, hiding in plain sight.
> For what it's worth, the man who did these things to me was a Catholic deacon, and the hypocrisy is blood-boiling. He would give very pleasant-sounding homilies about love, acceptance, patience and understanding, and then come home and savagely beat and torture me through physically painful punishments and extended periods of isolation.
Everyone in my family knows what happened. His temper was famous. They all downplayed or ignored it. That includes my mom. She was too busy doing drugs and going in and out of prison to give a shit that I was being abused. My dad was also a drug addict and a sexual abuser and has not been in my life for a very long time.
And my grandfather's siblings ignored it for reasons I can only imagine, since my grandfather would sometimes pin me to the ground and spit in my face while telling me that I should be grateful because what he did to me was nothing compared to what his father did to him.
Of course, now my mom pretends that living with her was always an option, and that remaining in my environment was my own choice. She is a major narcissist who victim blames, blames her children for everything and says horrible things to me.
I kid you not, like she used to remind me all the time that when I was a fetus inside of her, she fell once and landed on her back "to protect me" and that I'm the reason she has terrible back pain now, that's a sacrifice she made for me and I should be grateful, because it's basically my fault. As far as I am concerned, I do not love her and she is not allowed in my life. And anyway, as I mentioned elsewhere she's currently in prison for domestic abuse.
I no longer speak to anyone in my family outside of my sister because no one stood up for me. Even my sister downplays the seriousness of what happened.
My grandfather is now in his 80s and well-acquainted with the town's DA. There isn't a shot in hell that I can touch him. I do not know what he has done to other people, he was only ever this violent with me to my knowledge. My brother usually aided him in assaulting me and was not on the receiving end of violence. My grandfather was an award-winning boxer so it was quite a bit of violence.
Good questions. If we're going by Oxford's definition of "stop feeling angry or resentful", I think the PTSD is here to stay, along with other facets of my personality and life which will always remind me of my experiences. Past that, I have made peace with my life, because that's the thing I'll always have to grapple with. Otherwise, I would just be so bitter... Instead, I focus on how statistically lucky I am to still be alive.
But I have no intention of speaking to my father or grandfather ever again. As for my mother, I laid out clear terms for what it would take to begin communication with me again, and she responded about as narcissistically as you can imagine... So I have made my peace with that as well. She's in prison now and I have no plans to reach out to her while she's in there. She lied to me about the situation, lied to me about the case, and lied to me about the sentencing. So as far as I should know, she's not even in prison. I had to pay the local clerk of court for access to her court documents just to know the truth.
I think Christianity as a religion has evil roots. The character of Jesus is portrayed valiantly, but the character of God is frequently portrayed as nothing short of sociopathic and psychopathic.
I don't respect the religion at all, nor any Abrahamic religion, as it's built upon falsehoods that justify prejudiced, authoritarian behavior. These religions have been the basis for untold amounts of conflict, conquest and cultural destruction. People who understand these things and still seek positions in such institutions should not be trusted. And we know the Vatican in particular has quite a sordid history of protecting child abusers.
I agree, leaders in any capacity can abuse their position. Look no further than Boy Scouts of America for examples at scale.
And I personally went to a therapist who ended up in prison for fraud. I also went to a daycare that shut down after an investigation stemming from me coming home one day with lashes all over my face and tongue and no recollection of what happened.
Bad people are everywhere. At least we can try to avoid institutions built to justify abuse.
> I don't respect the religion at all, nor any Abrahamic religion, as it's built upon falsehoods that justify prejudiced, authoritarian behavior. These religions have been the basis for untold amounts of conflict, conquest and cultural destruction.
Many people claim that the Bible, the church, their faith, etc has helped them. What's your take on that? Do you feel that the bad has outweighed the good in terms of its effects on people? This is a tough one because people, if they're biased, look to examples that favor their view.
I would imagine that if more bad than good came out of religion, then that religion would eventually fade to nothing.
For every evil religious person I've met, I tend to know a few good and even awesome ones.
God is a great author to reference. The Bible is filled with enough atrocities and inconsistencies that it remains my number one recommendation for deprogramming Christians.
God told Abraham to kill his son as a test of fealty, then psyched him at the end:
Now, you could point out that many of the stories in Genesis, including the Garden of Eden, can actually be traced back to older works, such as the epic of Gilgamesh.
Some people, when confronted with Gen22, simply say
"wow, I want nothing to do with this religion",
and walk away.
Other's see the story and say "wow... how do Christian's get around this one?". And so volumes have been written on this story. There's a ton of rich theology there for folks who were wiling to look past the initial hurdle.
I.e. the argument that "look at this horrific story" only really works for a small subset of people who aren't willing to look into the theology of it.
Now, one could argue that people who find the theology of the story satisfying are somehow demented, but that's a different argument.
That's actually the exact problem I'm facing, so it's incredibly relevant.
A year ago, I was talking to the local Catholic priest (I was donating some religious statues that I had effectively inherited), and it came up in conversation that I was going through a rough time. He went in for a hug, and it felt so absolutely empty and disingenuous. I accepted it merely to avoid a scene, but it was absolutely not welcome or meaningful.
When I'm out in the city, I want to reach out to those people who put that they feel "100%" alone just like I do. I wrote in the article some of my thoughts and feelings on this, and some things I tried and didn't try.
But ultimately, that's the gap I want to bridge now. We have a thing in common. How do we go from there? (Not you and me, but me and a stranger who has the same problem as me that they want to solve.) What do I say next? What's the next thing we can do in that interaction, or maybe a later one if I ever see them again? This is my question to myself, what I'm wondering in this whole post.