Huh,
Didn't realise I'd been away from this thread for so long!!
It's part of the rhythm I move to, I think. I go into overwhelm, and just sink into stasis to try to cope, until I've finished processing all the backed-up system commands. Then I lurch into action again.
I get really annoyed with my Kobo or my PC when they do the same thing, so I can only imagine that it must be similarly annoying for people around me when I do it. The difference, though, is that I don't fling my Kobo against a wall in a fit of pique; so I wonder why some people are so willing to do the emotional equivalent to someone they've described as a friend?
I'm convinced it's an act of rationality to keep your distance from people. People are scary, brittle, destructive and petulant; people are blameful, scornful, projectile and violating. Should be housed in safari parks, where you can drive past their grazing with your windows firmly up.
In particular, I seem to attract a fairly strange species of human that interprets MI as an unexpressed cry to be Dominated and Instructed, and permission for them to get angry if I don't Do What I Am Told. As far as I'm concerned, I graduated from that particular class when I left my mother's house at the age of 15, but nobody else seems willing to see it that way. So a couple of weeks back, someone I thought I'd scored as a Friend declared himself as a Minder and Parent, and started to harangue me -- actually saying things like "How do you expect to improve your life when you don't do what I'm instructing you to?" Actually said that. Flabbergasting. Where the heck do these people come from?! Neither Venus nor Mars, I'm thinking. When I said, as gently as I could, that I didn't want nor need to be instructed, he just started screaming at me on the phone, telling me how crap my life is and how it'll never be worth anything. Screaming. As if he was entitled to.
Well, neither of those observations is news to me, but I hardly want to hear it screamed at me over a telephone. I hung up. And surprise surprise, I haven't heard from him again.
I can do the New Agey thing and assure myself that it was His Stuff that was speaking; I don't need to take it on. And I know that's absolutely true. But I'd really be grateful (if anyone reads this) to hear if others understand -- more grateful than I think I can express -- that I'm not actually scared of sticks and stones -- I've had more broken bones than anyone I personally know, and I've learnt that I heal quite quickly -- but words really can hurt me. Or at least, what really hurts is the spite behind the words and the doubt the words raise in me, like a spectre in an amateur production of Gilbert & Sullivan.
I'm damned if I know how I give out the message that I want or am willing to accept people telling me what to do. I'm convinced there are some people who equate MI with an inability to self-determine, and see it as an opportunity to insert their own egos and acquire what is essentially a psychic pet. I know absolutely from experience there are people out there like that. Lots of 'em. And when you say no to them, it's like a slap in their ego-face, and that's why they get angry. It's a hind-brain perceived-territory thing.
But how the heck do you head it off before their wheels have time to grind a rut? That's the bit I seem to have no facility with. I'd be really grateful to hear any thoughts.
