Not to brag but I’m a pretty confident person in my social circle. I’m funny, make people laugh etc. etc.
Basically, I am adored by everybody.
But there is something that I noticed about myself lately. Regularly people come up to me to chat and sometimes they compliment me. Now, complimenting isn’t a bad thing, obviously. But I just don’t feel anything when I receive them.
However I enjoy it when people talk good things about me when I’m not present. I, again, don’t feel anything when people talk shit about me when I’m not present. BUT I really enjoy it when people straight up come at me and say something bad at me. My mood increases and I spend the rest of my day happier.
Is this some kind of a defense/coping mechanism that I have unintentionally developed? I don’t see anything bad about this.
It’s also worthy to say that I spent the majority of my life isolated up until a few years ago. No compliments at all but nobody to say bad things either. Is this why I fail to appreciate compliments?
One can question whether complimenting is not a bad thing. Praising can create a non horizontal emotional dependency.
I feel like you might be onto it. If you actually care too much what other people are thinking of you, but are unhappy with yourself for how dependent that makes you (and maybe trying to deny or ignore it), then the direct experience of these compliments would be net negative. When people say bad things, your desire for emotional independence and your immediate urge to hold the comment at a distance are not in conflict, so there’s no problem.
Right. I didn’t to write too much in my initial comment here, but a search engine search with “do not rebuke or praise” should show more on this. I got this idea from a book I read. I have the paper book here, and in that chapter the old guy gives an example of praise, and asks how the young guy feels about it. The young guy answers that he find it feeling unpleasant cause “one is being talked down to”.
I find myself still in the habit of going for praise rather than just showing gratitude but I am more aware that praising can create this non horizontal structure where the person praising is kind of unintentionally sharing their world view as authoritative towards the other person and with that decreases freedom and horizontal relationships.
That’s interesting, I don’t usually think of gratitude as an alternative to praise, but I’m going to try to keep that in mind in the future. I definitely have felt that I come across as insincere or condescending at times when I give praise and it makes me very self-conscious to give or receive it, but gratitude is just more enjoyable for both parties.