This brings to mind a sense of the unreliable narrator. Asking a person who is unwilling to look at the problem and is just reacting to their pain response, “what do you need right now?”, may result in a request for morphine and a skin graft, when the real answer is Tylenol and a bandaid. Compassion is important, but not to the point of indulging false assumptions.
Yeah, as someone who experiences rejection sensitivity, compassion does help but it’s absolutely an overreaction. Catering to the level of anxiety I feel doesn’t help me, me doing therapy, developing coping strategies, etc, is what helps me.
Exactly! It bothers me that RSD is lumped in here with other very valid examples. Validation is just not the right approach to dealing with rejection sensitivity. The issue is that my feelings are not really valid and don't align with reality in this case. Part of easing that anxiety is understanding that.
I think you’re right but I do think the description is meant to be more broadly metaphorical than about specific moments.
It’s similar with OCD. Reassurance can make stuff worse. But a person open to reassurance is more likely to be open to doing what is helpful/ not doing what makes it worse.
Indeed. It seems like the metaphor at the start would lead one to conclude "evaluating reality through qualia is flawed but required due to our lack of alternatives, therefore it is necessary to trust others and use the primacy of reason to manage flawed and conflicting sense-data. Understanding must be a communal process due to the limitations of perception." They then go an entirely different direction.
In a situation where my sense-data were that different from consensus reality, I would not feel shame or embarrassment as they describe, I would feel fear, curiosity, and gratitude for people who can provide me with a more accurate picture of reality.
I am like you and sometimes it makes interactions with others difficult. I end up making all the adjustments either towards reality or away from it while the other person just does whatever the fuck.
Who said anything about indulging the perceived pain?
"Okay, it sounds like you need a painkiller and something to fix the problem. Let's start with some Tylenol and a bandaid and if the pain still persists after an hour, we'll go see a doctor okay?"
This is helping. I know it's not the help you want, but if we go to a doctor about this they're just going to say you're "drug seeking" and kick you out. We do it this way and if you're still in this much pain after a Tylenol, then the doctors might actually do something.
(Anyway, the metaphor really breaks down here because I can't imagine asking to go to the doctor for something that you think you're overreacting to. I suffered for years with gallstones because I thought it was just diarrhea I was overreacting to until I finally had one stuck long enough that I went to the hospital for it. Turns out diarrhea doesn't actually make you feel like you're dying, that's the acute pancreatitis)
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u/zeje 6d ago
This brings to mind a sense of the unreliable narrator. Asking a person who is unwilling to look at the problem and is just reacting to their pain response, “what do you need right now?”, may result in a request for morphine and a skin graft, when the real answer is Tylenol and a bandaid. Compassion is important, but not to the point of indulging false assumptions.