If People Police Your Life Choices

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Clarissa

June 9, 2013

If people around you routinely criticize your life choices, condescend to you, and say things that offend you and hurt your feelings, the reaction of reasonable, normal person is to reevaluate her circle of acquaintances, demand respect, and break all ties with people who continue being disrespectful.

The reaction of a passive-aggressive, self-aggrandizing drama queen is to continue letting people do this to her while fuming with resentment.

P.S. I’m also dying to know how the linked blogger manages to be online pretty much 24/7 and meet all those crowds of horrible, insensitive, intrusive people. I barely manage to meet anybody new, let alone find the time to surround myself with folks who would have time and interest in parsing my life choices all day long.

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18 responses to “If People Police Your Life Choices”

musteryou

June 9, 2013

and what is particularly vexing is that these apes who complain about the smallest things are so dominant that when I complain about substantively large things — like people coming into my private space and directly persecuting me — listeners have imagined I am using hyperbole or exaggerated language. But this occurred, quite literally and physically and in the real sense.

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Wirbelwind

June 9, 2013

She meets them in her fantasies.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  June 9, 2013
  
  From what I understand, she doesn’t even work, outside of blogging. So if it’s not the workplace, what’s left? Friends? But you can choose to be friends with whomever you like. Who else? People in the street, at the grocery store? This all makes zero sense.
  
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  1. el
    
    June 9, 2013
    
    I think she means people on Internet, probably coming to her blog too, and relatives.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      June 9, 2013
      
      So all this is about blog trolls??? Jeez. . .
      
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  2. el
    
    June 9, 2013
    
    // From what I understand, she doesn’t even work, outside of blogging.
    
    Pension or disability reasons?
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      June 9, 2013
      
      I think disability.
      
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  3. Wirbelwind
    
    June 9, 2013
    
    To be honest I think Internet is the one place where you can comfortably ignore other people’s opinions. I honestly don’t know how anybody can be oppressed just by them.
    Especially when somebody is WRITING about them and sharing with the whole world.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      June 9, 2013
      
      I agree with you completely. When somebody leaves a comment I don’t like, I can simply ban them. And I don’t even follow the links to places that write about me if I suspect I will not like what is written.
      
      One has complete control over one’s own bog, and to feel victimized by the blog you actually moderate seems beyond bizarre.
      
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cliff arroyo

June 9, 2013

I think the person in question is addicted to disapproval and seeks it out.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  June 9, 2013
  
  I think you are right. This allows her to wallow self-righteously and derive a lot of pleasure from imagining herself as a persecuted victim.
  
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Lindsay

June 9, 2013

Sometimes the people who police your life choices are your relatives. You don’t get to pick them!

And while you can cut out obnoxious relatives, that’s a huge decision that might not be worth it always — say, you have a sibling with whom you’ve always fought, and who is always needling you about one thing or another, but you decide to keep them in your life because they have adorable kids and you want to be their beloved auntie. So you suck it up and take the good with the bad. It doesn’t mean the bad stuff doesn’t bother you, and you might very well take to your blog to vent about it!

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  June 9, 2013
  
  “So you suck it up and take the good with the bad.”
  
  – No, absolutely not! Never allow anybody to bully you under any pretext. This “sucking up” is an enormous mistake that will destroy you personally, psychologically, and emotionally. Nobody – and I repeat nobody – has the right to tell you things that hurt your feelings. If they keep doing so repeatedly, then they are being abusive. And they need to be put in their place.
  
  I know better than most what kind of damage abusive families can inflict but, believe me, the cycle of abuse needs to be broken at some point. Or it will pass on to the next generation. The adorable kids you mention will grow up damaged because they have seen this kind of abuse around them their entire lives and think it is the only way.
  
  Nobody has the right to cause us any discomfort.
  
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  1. Lindsay
    
    June 9, 2013
    
    That’s true.
    
    (Also, don’t worry, my comment is not referring to my life. I was just coming up with a hypothetical scenario in which someone might not want to cut ties 100% with a bullying relative. My parents and siblings don’t do anything like that. Just thought I would tell you because in your comment you seemed upset.)
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      June 9, 2013
      
      I saw the comment as referring to my life, to be honest. We all have our sore points. 🙂
      
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Shakti

June 9, 2013

Feh. I think this is one of the advantages of not consuming so much media: I can hardly get affronted by commercials if I don’t watch television, church signs if I’m oblivious and don’t go to church. I mean, I can, but having Adblock, being a recluse, and generally being oblivious to coded messages, cuts WAY down on this.

I think of this as one of the advantages of being high functioning and having autism. All this crap about people telling you to have certain feelings and then having feelings about them having feelings about your feelings is cut way down.. Just typing that made me exhausted. :p

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  June 9, 2013
  
  “I think of this as one of the advantages of being high functioning and having autism. All this crap about people telling you to have certain feelings and then having feelings about them having feelings about your feelings is cut way down.”
  
  – EXACTLY. And what a blessing! I’m completely oblivious to what people think about me and I don’t feel I’m missing out on anything positive as a result.
  
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musteryou

June 9, 2013

I think one of the reasons people can get all hurt and offended — and I include myself in this category in the past — is if one has the world view that other people are basically harbingers of a kind of universal morality. You watch them and listen to them because you want to address this universal morality, either by conforming to it or by trying to change it.

This turns out to be a singularly useless world view, above all because every passing stranger then takes on the appearance of being a universal policeman.

Much as this perspective is encouraged by certain schools of academic thought and by consumerism, it is masochistic. It correlates with the old epistemic dichotomy: “Subjectivity is only inside my head. What others think of me is necessarily objective.”

There’s a certain trivial truth to this statement on one level. And then, there is the common equivocation (logical error).

Of course, trivially, you are a subject and others, viewing you from the outside, will necessarily “objectify” you.

But a lot of people seem to equate the word “objective” with being morally truthful about something.

So a merely trivial statement of fact turns into: “I’m just all about me and have no moral compass, whereas others are very accurate in their perceptions and have the right to morally judge me. After all, they’re doing it FROM THE OUTSIDE.”

If one is caught up in this ridiculous world view, one will definitely take the views of trolls too seriously.

One has to learn to rethink how the world actually functions.

Shamanism is one way to achieve a different understanding, but this approach is painful and takes time.

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