Posted by Dinah on February 1, 2004, at 10:22:16
In reply to Re:Re: I think I'm showing my bad timing, posted by 64Bowtie on February 1, 2004, at 0:52:52
Ok, I'm going to try again. Because my intention really is rapprochement. Making myself vulnerable to my Sunday School teacher really made a huge difference in our relationship, so I'm going to try it here. Also, while my intention is to be civil, and I will try to be as civil as I can be, I will be more direct than is my wont. So I want you to realize that I am risking my PBC virginity for you, and I hope you realize what that means to me.
I didn't take debate in high school and am unfamiliar with debating terms. Also, I chose Ethics over Logic as my sole Philosophy elective, so using terminology from formal Logic probably won't mean much to me either. :( But I remember from my SAT prep that the opposite to the "absolute" everybody is nobody, and that not everybody is implying the opposite of "absolute" and is therefore a better multiple choice answer. My knowledge goes no farther, but I was attempting to be the very opposite of "absolute".
As I said before, your post on Admin struck a chord with me.
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20031120/msgs/296794.html
In it you sounded as if you felt like an outsider on the Psychological Board, and I very much empathise with the outsider feeling. And you also seem to attribute your feelings to a particular reason, that Psychological Board posters are interested only in therapist stories, while you are interested in Growth. That is an inference from what you wrote, and could of course be incorrect, in which case I apologize.
On Social ( http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040109/msgs/303073.html ), you wrote:
"If people important to us avoid us because we complain all the time, when they recognize the change, they will be more available and less avoidant when we don't complain anymore. It's no secret that we have a better concept of self when we relate well with people."
It is very true that relating well enhances self esteem, and that we would all prefer for others to be more available and less avoidant to us. And I'm sure you would agree that complaining is not the only source of avoidance and poor relations with others. Misunderstanding is another source.
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031221/msgs/293417.html
In this post, I inferred, and again I could be wrong and please tell me if I am, that you were curious that people didn't respond to what you considered to be a post that would evoke impassioned response. Your post to me, which didn't get a PBC, your post to JYL, which didn't get a PBC, and your post to Lar, which also didn't get a PBC, could also be seen as posts that had the intention of getting others to think in a different way through evoking a strong response. None of those posts broke the civility guidelines of this site, according to Dr. Bob. None merited a PBC. But all three of them resulted in a Please Do Not Post to Me, a request that could certainly be seen as others making themselves less available and more avoidant. Since you agree that having others be less available and more avoidant is undesirable (per your previous post), I was attempting to extend a hand to you in the form of greater understanding of where I, and possibly others are coming from.
Psychobabble is not a place that really responds well to passion inducing posts. Because of the civility guidelines in place, people aren't sure how they can respond. So the most logical civil response under the guidelines is to request that the passion inducing poster no longer post to them, or to simply skip over the posts of that poster. I'm quite certain that that is not your desired outcome.
And I am also trying to make myself understood to you. I, and many people with borderline traits or borderline personality disorder, come from what Marsha Linehan calls a chronically invalidating environment. This makes me particularly sensitive to what might be seen as invalidation as an adult, and particularly receptive to those approaches that contain a fair amount of validation.
When I see posts that seem to say that I'm not ready for change, or that I'm not interested in Growth, or that I should quit grumbling or complaining, or that the solution to my problems is to take responsibility to pull myself up by my bootstraps, or anything like that, I tend to feel that where I'm at now is not being validated. Marsha Linehan developed DBT because she realized that CBT caused chronically invalidated individuals to feel invalidated. So her DBT attempted to combine CBT principles with validation (and Eastern philosophy).
Your approach appears to be very direct and based on rationality. There are personality types that that approach may work very well with, but there are personality types who might feel invalidated by it. I am hoping that an understanding of this might help you feel more accepted here, because in your own words "when they recognize the change, they will be more available and less avoidant".
Now, I have put my head on the PBC block for you, and I hope you appreciate that my motivations are good and that I mean no disrespect to you or your approach. I am truly just trying to help, for whatever it's worth.
poster:Dinah
thread:307314
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040131/msgs/308075.html