weaponized snark
The next person who I hear tell someone else "your feelings are valid" or some other wishy-washy line of buzzwords instead of actually engaging a friend's feelings in a non-HR capacity is going to end up pondering the positive, empathetic peer-choice-orientation goal of a zebra-hoof-peer-face-encounter situation. :)
Believe it or not, this is not a subtoot. Just a frustration that came up in an outside conversation. I'm sure it's not the last you'll hear from me about it.
weaponized snark
@zebratron2084 When you want to validate the emotional content of a message without validating the factual claims being presented in the message, how would you suggest people proceed? I never want to suggest that people don't know what they're feeling, or that feelings themselves are bad or wrong, but a lot of times people -- myself included -- get their emotions knotted around things that aren't true, or at least are open to multiple framings.
weaponized snark
@zebratron2084 I don't want to say "you're not angry for a valid reason" to somebody who's angry, regardless of why they're angry; it's disempowering and it's belittling. But if the anger seems to be based on something I know isn't true, or at least has a lot more nuance than is being presented in the moment, it's not fair to expect me to sit there and passively absorb both the anger and the misstatements. If you have suggestions for how to handle that, I'm happy to hear them.
weaponized snark
@literorrery Honestly, I think my last exchange with Green pretty much defined it. That approach strikes me as... I know this is a sensitive concept for you, sis... humorless. Friends suddenly going humorless on me SCARES ME SHITLESS, and that approach we're discussing tends to come across as INTENSELY humorless and stuff, at least to me. I can't even breathe in that kind of social environ. And no, I don't have any advice to offer for fixing it. ;_;
weaponized snark
@literorrery When someone gets like that, I feel like I lose all contact to the real person, and get a blast door with a happy face painted on it instead. And in the face of a blast door, especially with a BIG CREEPY EMPTY HAPPY SYMPATHETIC FACE my first reaction is to close my own blast doors -- which are explosively booby-trapped for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion. x_x
I love you, sis. Just so that's clearly established. *hug*
weaponized snark
@literorrery I wish I could give you, like, hours of footage of Peggy effortlessly snapping me out of bad moods by gently satirizing them, because she's somehow managed to work up, like, a 95% success rate. I don't know how she does it, but she's incredible at _not_ making me feel like my face is being rubbed in something, or I'm being treated like an inmate. (This is *not* to say that *you* always or even usually did. I'm just trying to answer you accurately as I can.)