Quelklef

milk consumer

girly but not a girl

name-color: #C09


i'm not sure if i'm onto something or if i am just over-analyzing, but here are some examples:

  • the idea of reacting to negative emotion by "taking a positive viewpoint". this doesn't necessarily mean ignoring oneself, but it easily can; see the concept of toxic positivity

  • my perception is that canonical advice for difficulty sleeping revolves around how to get to sleep despite the roadblocks (ie, how to force it), skipping over any time spent observing the roadblocks

    in my head the words "melatonin supplements" and "exercise" have left mouth of the doctor I'm hypothetically speaking to before i'm even done describing what my issues are

  • i engaged with a group of people who were all struggling in one way or another with tasks. i noticed that everyone's goal seemed to be to find the structure/organization/trick that would finally let them complete all their tasks

    to the contrary, my reaction was that, hey, if you really are consistently failing to finish these tasks, then maybe this is good indication that these are not the tasks for you: you are failing because something in you is unhappy, and trying to force task completion is to ignore this unhappiness

  • "working through the pain" and more generally grind culture, treating number go up as an definitely good and ignoring potential alternatives

it feels to me almost like im wading around through a collective belief that pain and difficulty are things to be fixed, to be eradicated

but maybe this is a weird perception which is mine alone. (although i doubt it)

at the very least i will say that this perception is a privileged one to have. consider the example regarding sleep problems. if i have bad sleep for a while then i will be negatively affected but nothing in my life will seriously change; for instance i wont lose my job. hence i have the space to dig into the sleep problems. if it was crucial for me to be up at 6am every day, then there's just no time to not try to force myself to sleep

one more thing is that i feel like i see this narrative to ignore oneself particularly often regarding neurodivergent stuff. almost all ADHD advice i hear about gives me the ick because it feels like trying to learn a bag of tricks to "bend yourself into shape"

(and if you need to work forty hours to feed yourself, and ADHD stops you from doing that, then learning those tricks is literally life-crucial, which only doubles the horror of the dynamic.)

(also worth noting that for some people "bending oneself into shape" might actually be what is best for them, because for them ADHD is debilitating and comes with no real redeeming qualities)

edit: oh, related is that sometimes people seem to get offended or angry when i suggest these kinds of viewpoints? i expressed to a family member that yeah routines maybe dont work well for me and it seemed to upset her. i told another family member that in my ideal life, things i do and things i have to do (ie, responsibilities) would all also be things i want to do, and i would therefore have the pleasure of choosing to do them; this seemed to upset him?


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in reply to @Quelklef's post:

Horror is a strong word but i definitely feel the frustration and tension inherent in “shit i goes do to survive” and “shit i enjoy doing”. Was much worse when i worked in hospitality (bartending) vs now in software (loads of money), but it still exists.

“people seem to get offended or angry”

Yeah I’ve experienced that too. I think it challenges the Protestant Work Ethic, that life is hard and painful and that demonstrates your character.

life is hard and painful and that demonstrates your character.

yeah, this feels like it! there seems to be this sense that hardship is innately valuable regardless of if its necessary or really constructive

I do get that feeling too. "Ignore your discomfort, and go through it" seem to be the classical advice. At this point, I don't know when I am being lazy and when I am struggling. Maybe I am just not trying hard enough. Maybe I am trying too hard. I don't know. I feel confused. People on the internet tend to tell me to be gentle with myself while people around me tend to tell me to though it out. It's confusing.

as a people on the internet, i also offer to you the hardline perspective that laziness does not exist

(in case links to articles stress you out, like they do to me, or you don't want to read it for some other reason, the following quote summarizes it well: "If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing [context ...] I’ve yet to find [a case of laziness] that can’t be explained and empathized with")