Just One Thing (21 August 2016)

[cosmolinguist]

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Healthwork.

Work-work.

Communication of a sort which should, I can hope, result in less woe down the line. (For reasons which don't need explaining at this juncture, someone close to me has to periodically do something which makes me Definitely Upset. Their first impulse is to apologize to me each time. My model of meaningful apologies in general tends to require Not Doing The Thing Again, because the hurt -> react -> apologize -> repeat cycle is ... kind of not one I relish. So them apologizing makes me even less happy as I know it's a thing they'll do again. However, I figured out what elements of reassurance will make me less desperately unhappy about the thing, and that should help a lot going forward.)

[cosmolinguist]

I totally agree on apologies; I'm not as interested in someone's feelings as I am about the likelihood that their behavior will change.

I'm glad you found ways to get reassurance.

[shanaqui]

Good luck in the future re: the communication stuff. I agree with you that's how I assume apologies work, and it makes them meaningless if it just means 'I'm saying sorry so you'll forgive me, but I'm going to do it again'.

[azurelunatic]

Communication on this has been improving over the last while. I absolutely trust them that they regret that this thing upsets me, which is helpful in that I know it's not badly intended towards me. (We would be having entirely different conversations, or perhaps no conversations at all, if they were courting or enjoying my upsetness. We would be having different conversations if they were indifferent to my upsetness.) So that does help, to know that they're aware and working on long-term plans such that maybe it won't need to happen at some point in the future. But that leaves me still upset when it happens.

And now that I have a better look at exactly how my upset-reaction works, I can identify the essential elements to reassurance on this topic, and see which of those are compatible with the types of reassurance my friend can provide.

So, hopefully next time around we'll do better.

And hopefully there won't be too many more months of next times around.