For some reason, when people compliment me, it makes me want to punch stuff.
@twizzay Interesting stuff. I heard about not liking compliments, have a tiny bit of it too, but this reasoning is new to me.
Sounds a bit like the "i take all responsibility to myself, am never good enough" stuff, maybe?
huh, yeah, something like that.
To be totally honest, I struggled really bad with a few addictions in my younger years and kinda wrecked up my life at the time. My inability to overcome them when I finally wanted to made me bitter about myself, I guess.
and honestly, I still harbor intensely negative feelings about my ability to grow/develop at the rate that I want to.
In some ways, it's made me a bit more calloused. It's rare that someone says something to me that actually cuts deep enough to really leave a mark. I've cut deeper than most of the things people say about me. Which is fine, I guess.
Contrastingly, though, when someone offers something positive, and I find a part of myself believing it, I suppose there is something in me that kinda goes off. Like a little alarm saying 'if you choose to believe this, and get comfortable with the idea that you are “good”, then you'll never get any better than what you currently are' and that idea pisses me off.
@twizzay Would you say that the "inability to overcome" could be seen as trauma, in the sense of "feeling helpless in the face of a grave danger"?
It would fit well with what my (amateur) experiences with similar things are. Like affirmation tells you you can relax, but that is connected to the helplessness before? Your last paragraph sounds very much like that.
I wonder if specific affirmation, constricted to one topic and "up to now" being adequate would be any different?
Yeah, I would say that probably sums it up. Trauma from being jailed by my vices made me sensitive to the idea of 'no need to improve' due to a time when I couldn't improve no matte how hard I tried.
Mmm, something like "I am good at throwing candy bars to kids on this Halloween night”? Maybe?
lol yeah, I guess that doesn't bother me.
@admitsWrongIfProven
Honestly, it's whenever I think given compliments are somehow true about who I am/my character.
Whether it is genuine or half-hearted makes no difference. It's whether or not I believe it that seems to tick me off.
lol I gues that makes compliments kind of dangerous around me.
I generally don't outwardly express these feelings because I know people mean well. But, I do scoff about it later.
I guess Im not comfortable thinking positively about my character.
I don't really know why. I can rationalize it a bunch of ways, but in the end, it simply makes me frustrated.
I suppose, I don't believe I am a very good person? Or maybe it's just that I don't want to believe that I am a good person.