Rant.... I just need to rant... I'm sorry.

Do yo you want me to have a go at it @Former-Member. I'd love others to as well in case I'm way off the mark. I kind of went through something like this with my therapist today.

@Former-Member

I agree with @Former-Member, you're not a bad person. You have a great perspective, able to see bigger world issues, and you can recognise that there are plenty more people that have it worse. Some people though, can't see this. It doesn't make them any less of a person. They're just dealing with their own stuff.

I think arguments happen when there is a clash in perspectives. One person thinks their perspective prevails over the other, and vice versa, which is where things get stuck. The thing is, no one is wrong or right. People just have different perspectives, values, and opinions - and that's ok. Sometimes, I think it's helpful, 'to agree to disagree' on things. We can't force someone to see the way that we do.

I find it hard when I encounter someone with a different worldview. I also get annoyed with feelings of entitlement, but at the end of the day I can never know what's going on for someone else. What might seem like a little amount of money for one person, may seem like a lot for someone else. Perhaps its not even the amount of money, but the staw that breaks the camel's back.

ok I'll try. @Former-Member

i think it comes down to empathy and how we deal with emotions, two parts to this equation as I see it (like my mathematical thinking here 😝).

Empathy - being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. For some people it's really hard to even begin to understand what it's like if they haven't been exposed or know of someone's experiences before. For her she may have not any insight into how others live with medical costs let alone their day to day living realities with their health issue. Being an old bag now I know that empathy is gained by life experiences which grows with age. For an example I look back at how I supported one of my best friends when she was telling me about her MH issues she was having at the time. This was probably 20 years ago. I struggled to understand any of it as I had no way of relating to it. I think that I have always been compassionate and I hurt because she was but I couldn't give her the empathy that she needed so much. I'm so ashamed now as I can put myself in her shoes and what she was experiencing but at the time I said all the wrong things and minimised what she was going through. I've since apologised a lot.

Second part feelings. I'm going to be wobbly on this one because it's probably way out of my depth. Kind of from my therapist but through my lens and interpretation. Once our feelings get stirred up it's hard to logically think through anything. Being invalidated when you are feeling something strongly increases the feelings and therefore increases the chances of not reaching logical conclusions. My example is I am very much over reacting to the smallest things in a huge way. Once that thing and the emotions have passed I can understand that my reaction is disproportionate to the thing that happened to trigger me. Once my feelings are in control it doesn't matter how much you try and use logic I can't see it and it feels invalidating. It feels attacking and often intensifies my emotions. My therapist put it in terms of a two year old tantumming, it's no good telling them to stop because they're being unreasonable. You need to bring their feelings down so you can reason with them. Unfortunately my emotions run away like the two year old a lot. Yesterday I had something similar happen in that I was in full emotion. Someone suggested something fair and reasonable and I struggled with it a lot at the time. After I calmed I could see the logical reasonable point.

So what I'm kind of saying is that maybe a couple of things happened. Perhaps on another day over a coffee you and this girl may have been able to have a discussion over medical costs and she may have learned about what it's like to be in yours or others shoes more. It seems to me once she felt her feelings being invalidated she couldn't see past herself. It doesn't matter what the issue was or how reasonable or unreasonable it was she was past being able to see much.

For me personally I've been in both yours and her shoes for this so my empathy is there. Throw some feelings in and it could be fireworks.

Now, not only did you drag me out of hiding but I think this is my biggest post 😝😘💜

That's a huge step forward @Former-Member. You don't have to like what they say or change your opinion/belief value but putting yourself in someone else's shoes helps heaps sometimes, then you can show understanding of it. It doesn't have to change your position just the way things are discussed. You know I've got a couple of decades on you and I'm only just learning this stuff in the last two years so your way ahead of me already 😊Seems like you've got a lot sorted tonight. Kudos to you! 💜🤗💐

That's the tricky bit @Former-Member, you can't. You can only control your end. You can't make people see things no matter how hard you try, believe me I've tried. Again it's really recent history for me to understand this. I think you can only try to show understanding for others and put your point through without great emotion if you want to exchange ideas. But there is no way of knowing what the other person is taking in or if they are choosing not to. At that point you just have to decide to think that you are wasting your time and if it's worth agreeing to disagree and walk away. There are some situations where it will work well and others it won't. I'm not an expert in this at all. That one women's ed course I did last year was conflict resolution and that helped me understand it better. In that I learned that it's always best to look for a win-win situation where you both feel heard and you find ways to connect and solve any problems so that you are both satisfied with the outcome. But this is not always possible for a whole heap of reasons. Sometimes it's feelings that get in the way but there are other things too. It's tricky @Former-Member but you can only try. And I've been on the end of a couple of really tricky ones that I still struggle to let go of because I've felt unheard and thus not valued. But I had to accept I couldn't change it and it sucks. One of those scenarios is about to play out for me in a twist of fate. I might have to remember this conversation 😊