My husband is sometimes too insightful on the level of ‘‘should probably keep his mouth shut.’’ Last night, as we were settling down for bed, we were talking about antisocial personality disorder, and since I have such high empathy I joked that maybe they could learn something about sociopaths by studying their exact opposite - me. And he said something to the effect of, ''Yeah, but the study would be confounded by the fact that your empathy is entirely driven by anxiety."
It was too late to get him to elaborate, but WTF.
If I had to guess, his argument is that my childhood conditioned me to be finely tuned to people’s emotional states since my life depended on responding to my parents’ emotional needs (and I know there is some evidence that adults who were abused as children have higher emotional intelligence than the average person) but AFAIC my husband basically just said, ''That one thing that gives you reassurance that you’re not a terrible person? It’s a self-interested coping mechanism, not real empathy."
Totally took the wind out of my sails. Am I really little more than just a collection of neuroses? I think he triggered an existential crisis, and having to deal with that will be punishment enough for him.
Also, two more of my husband’s cousins are pregnant and I’m so jealous it hurts, and fuck my SMIL for telling me not to be jealous, I’ll feel any damned way I please, thank you. As the immortal Bill Watterson said in his Calvin & Hobbes strip, ''There’s no feeling so bad you can’t add a little guilt and make it worse."
Oh, and on the subject of waiting an agonizingly long time for kids, it is really not necessary to ask me every week if there is any news on the adoption front. If there was, you’d hear about it.
(Husband texts me back: ''It was just an off the cuff remark with no thought into it.")
Oh, sweetheart. That’s not a criticism even if it feels like one. Almost all social skills start as self-interested coping mechanisms (if I share my school lunch the cool kids hang out with me!), but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t real, heartfelt, and genuinely transformative skills.
I am reminded of a coworker who had a pretty severe anxiety disorder and avoided even the mildest of confrontation. No matter what you asked him to do, he would say yes, and he would take on other people’s jobs/messes because it was less stressful for him than it would have been for him to ask them to take care of it themselves. This did make him very easy to work with, because he would take care of your stuff when you were sick, pick up the slack when someone was being lazy, etc. I talked with him numerous times about getting his anxiety treated (because ulcers), and one of his deep-seated fears was that he would become more “selfish”. One of the things he really valued about himself was that he was generous with his time and effort. In one of these conversations, I pointed out to him that if he treated his anxiety, and he no longer needed to clean up after other people, he could still choose to be generous. It was a lightbulb moment. He could stop eating his stomach out from the inside and also remain a good person!
I guess what I’m trying to say is that anxiety can cause you to develop positive traits (empathy, helpfulness), but those traits are yours and they are real. You get to keep them.
I’d go even further and say that almost all behaviors are founded in self-interest. This does not make them bad or useless or anything else, just human.
That’s a great story. And one I can relate to. I hope the guy did get help. My anxiety manifests itself differently at different times, both in terms of severity and symptoms, but I once worried myself into a hernia. Do not recommend. I don’t think my anxiety is all that bad right now, maybe mild to moderate, so it seemed weird timing for such a comment, but it was late and he was tired.
I think it’s hilarious that when Sr. Weasel pointed out my empathy was anxiety-driven, I had an anxiety response, effectively proving his point.
I am never going to be normal, but as long as I can make fun of myself I think I can deal. He chose to marry this particular collection of neuroses and now he’s stuck with me.
I think I’ve always believed/understood this but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it about my own self.
Good God, I can’t imagine WANTING to be the exception to that rule. Hearing it about myself strikes me as greatly comforting. The alternative would be SO MUCH PRESSURE…
Yeah, it’s not great to worry incessantly about being a good person and/or your motives for wanting to be a good person, and/or whether being a good person is a real thing, but it’s kind of a disease I have. I always say I have imposter syndrome, but for morality. I have a deep-seated fear of being found ethically lacking or heaven fucking forfend, ''doing the wrong thing." I know exactly where it comes from (my upbringing) but knowing doesn’t really change anything. My failures were always framed in ethical terms when I was growing up. I wasn’t raised very religious but I would imagine it’s a similar psychological impact, that behavior is a reflection of moral self-worth. There was no room for honest error.
Well, it used to be a lot worse. I’ve made some strides with it. I think I eventually figured out that I will always be doing the wrong thing from the perspective of a more enlightened being, and having to adjust my sense of right action in retrospect is a sign of evolution, not weakness. Or something.
Maybe I should embrace this newfound bit of wisdom that the whole morality thing is all bullshit anyway.
I was thinking cats would be too aloof to really party. But dipping cats in chocolate might liven things up (then letting the Bernese Mountain dogs in to lick the cats, then letting loose the polar bears to lick the cats).
I’m am just so completely sick and tired of the notion that ANYONE has ANY obligation to give ANY SPECIFIC GREETING WHATSOEVER, much less the goddam battle lines that have been drawn around “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Holidays”, and “Season’s Greetings”. (I thought stuff like Kwanzaa was supposed to give us alternatives to this crap.)
Christmas is one freaking day and a national holiday. If you see me at work, it is not Christmas; don’t expect any acknowledgment. New Year’s day is also a national holiday, so you’re never getting a Happy Holidays out of me either. Seasons? I live in Hawaii fer chrissake. There’s scorching, sweltering, really sweltering, and about four weeks a year where it’s kinda nice; we have seasons like we have NFL franchises. Besides that, is there any other observance in the nation where we’re expected to address it, as part of our daily life, over and over and over? Imagine if we had to do that for even one other national holiday, or even something innocuous like International Talk Like a Pirate Day or Star Wars day. That would get incredibly tiresome in a hurry.
And speaking of which, have any of you noticed that the Greater Christmas Season is incredibly freaking long? I mean, if it were just two days or forced merriment, or a week, or, even two weeks, I could see going along for tradition’s sake. But the EARLIEST it starts is the day after Thanksgiving, and it doesn’t completely end until the new year. At that point it’s not even so much a tedious formality as it is a cult mantra.
^^^ I agree completely except that I’m not working so I don’t even have that reason. Every year I dread this time of year and every year I am so happy when it’s over. And boo to the car companies that keep running their “cars for Christmas” ads until well past new year’s.
Technically, there are 12 days of Christmas; it lasts until Twelfth Night, ending with the Epiphany Celebration on January 6th. So those ads are still being run during Christmastide.
Oh, yes, I’m sure the biggest concern of those car companies is that they follow the proper orthodoxy of the correct church seasons… watch for Saint Swithun’s Day commercials:
"Hi, Swithy here, Bishop of Winchester in the 800’s, once again bringing the Saxons and the Angles together for a great financing deal on a new gently used or used to be gently new car… By Swithunus Episcopus… what savings!"
I went to visit my family over Christmas. There is a bathrobe there that has become mine, I use it whenever I am there. Because the house is cold, summer and winter. The bathrobe is really thick. And heavy. So thick and heavy that I was able to throw it in the washing machine without realizing my iPhone was in the pocket.
I have always known that the phone wouldn’t live forever. It’s very old. One reason I never replaced it is there is an issue with the number. It’s not registered to me and Verizon has consistently refused to transfer it to my name. Even though I had the permission of the account holder and the credentials. So I have known for a while now that the next time I got a new phone I would get a new number. This happened Tuesday.
I flew home Wednesday and got the new phone Wednesday night and activated it Thursday AM. We will cancel the old phone next week. I gave my regular clients and close friends the new number right away.
Yesterday I began notifying all my “lesser” contacts, sending e-mails to all contacts in my address book. One of these people is a guy that deals with the personal IT and automation tech for a very demanding very wealthy family. He sometimes needs to schedule my services and I’ve always been very responsive. But this person is not a good friend and only an occasional client.
He was included on a bulk e-mail I sent out last night. Saturday night. On a holiday weekend. And he calls me. And he’s in full client tech support mode. He’s like “ Calm down. Stay calm, breathe.” The phone incident happened 5 days ago and I’m not in any sort of panic, but OK. So I tell him the story of the phone with no SIM card that’s in a dead man’s name and he’s telling me that he will be able to get the number transferred to my name if I sent him the old account info. Because he knows how the system works, he does this for a living. He can see that I get to keep the number.
The whole thing was just weird. Because I’m not this person’s client and I didn’t ask for help. And I have already fully accepted changing the number and it’s not a big deal. I exchange regular text messages with about a dozen clients and friends. And I average one or two phone calls a day and 90% of them are from those same regulars. I do everything else via e-mail. And I already emailed about a thousand people with the new number.
I still need to notify my credit card carriers, etc but that not a big burden. Certainly much less of a burden than walking back the phone number change notices I already sent out.
So I think I’m going to need to tell him very nicely that I’m happy with having a new number. But he’s making me second guess my decision. Which I hardly ever do. Damn.
Stop second guessing. Even if this guy ‘knows the system’, I doubt he can get the number transferred to you (especially in any reasonably short amount of time, which you would presumably need to have happen also). You’ve done the hard work of the new number, and turning that freighter around is not worth your time or worry.
This isn’t really a rant as much as an amused observation. Every time I go to Starbucks and order a soy whatever flavor caught my interest, the barista always asks me if I want whipped cream. I know it’s because they’re trained to but makes me want to laugh. No, hon, there’s a reason I asked for soy and it’s not because I like the flavor.
If there is a rant in this I guess it would be for all those people who order a soy whatever and then ask for whipped cream. Stop that. You’re making it difficult for those of us who really can’t digest milk properly. (See also: people who claim “gluten intolerance” and then eat bread versus people who really do have celiac.)
