Do you lose respect for people when they show weakness/unhappiness?

Yes I definitely know some people like this. I don't really mean them in the question though.

I guess I mean the sense that people being unhappy is seen as like a sort of moping, is there any benefit it in it? Does anyone actually want to know?

And lately, since I've taken notice of this (since I lost my job and sig. other last fall and seen people's cautious, guarded sympathy for me), I've really taken to trying not to appear depressed, to put a bright spin on things that are happening now.

I really hope you mean "lost" as in split up and not death.

yeah Jel is pretty otm

How interesting. I know someone who I'm rapidly losing respect for, but it's more for a lack of ...honesty? in facing up to the bad stuff that happens. Like, if she never admits that she might have contributed to things going wrong, she can stay a victim and never do the work of changing or growing up. A very specific case, I know.

Apart from that, though, why in the world would someone's happiness be linked to respecting them?

Like, if she never admits that she might have contributed to things going wrong, she can stay a victim and never do the work of changing or growing up.

I broke up with a friend because of this but only after years of throwing emotional, financial, and logistical support down the bottomless pit of her unexamined despair. It's been years and I still get furious at her when I think about it (especially because I still run into her in various on-line places and she has not changed one iota and people that were our mutual friends are still making regular deposits into her First Personal Bank of Suck).

I think I would be more likely to lose respect for someone who didn't show signs of unhappiness or weakness occasionally.

well, i think it's an issue of negativity -- i tend to respect people who make the most of things, as opposed to those who are constantly and willfully negative about their circumstances.

I was raised in a family that keeps their negative feelings very VERY close to the vest and brought up to believe that sadness was for children and people who didn't have enough work to do. So it took me some time and some intentional mental reprogramming to get over the idea that sadness was, in fact, a serious character flaw and indicative of fundamental weakness. I'm much happier for it now, and hopefully I am a much better friend and companion. My family still keeps things on a nice, smiling superficial level, honest emotions-wise, though.

wow, that's really interesting. "sadness is for people who don't have enough work to do"

Depression as a luxury of the upper class kind of thing.

True facts: my mom was very likely diagnosably clinically depressed during a good chunk of my childhood, bless her heart.

that's a really tough set of rules to grow up with. things have changed so much in the era of pill-popping prognoses, huh?

Oooh Jenny, that's interesting. You could be sad in my family, but the only person allowed to show anger was my dad, and he wasn't particularly good at getting angry without breaking something. So learning to weather aggression and expressed anger, and return serve on both, is my personal to-do list.

I kind of like negative people, but funny ones, with bite. Not really so much mopers. But "have fun with" is not the same as "respect" -- some people are WAY more fun than others, but that's only one part of what they have to offer.

i lose respect for people if they cry in public. Unless they have some serious misfortune, like they get a waiver if someone has died or whatever.

that seems a little harsh. i've cried in public when something really serious has happened, even if it wasn't someone dying.

well not just death, but "or whatever", serious shit.

i don't think any less of other people who show it, unless they're a whining crybaby who does it all the time, in which case i'm not their friend, but i'd def think less of myself if i did it. if i'm unhappy it's private, you know? not for public consumption. and yeah, absolutely a sign of weakness.

i place great value on emotional self-sufficiency, basically, it's something i'm v good at.

Bah, I cry all the time! As a kid, if I thought I was going to cry in public, I'd slap myself in the face as a distraction. But at some point it stopped seeming like a weakness for others to exploit, or maybe I just stopped giving a shit.

soo. unhappiness = weakness = shame.

i think it's important to make the distinction between this being someone's normal state of mind or whether there's fair cause- Lex OTM.

it just seems emotionally incontinent, to let it out in public. that said it's not as if i cry in private either.

and why would you ever publicise how easy it is to hurt you?

OK I don't do it all the time or anything but I've definitely cried in public and seen others do the same and not lost any respect for them. Sometimes shit is upsetting and you just can't help it! Actually, it completely breaks my heart when I see someone crying in public. I always want to go see if they're ok.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/crying%20in%20the%20club/anotherbundie/Image030.jpg

Emotionally incontinent is probably a good way to describe me. I.e. if I'm going to cry, there's fuck all I can do about it, I don't actually understand how people stop themselves from crying, I just can't do it, I basically have to hide in the bathroom until it stops.

Erm, not that this actually happens on anything like a regular basis - probably not for years e.g. had row with ex-gf in a pub in about 2002-ish, had to hide in toilet cubicle until stupid leaking eyes dried up.

Last time I cried in public was when I saw a woman get hit by an SUV. Usually I am able to keep things contained until I can get to a bathroom or other safe space.

The thing is, a lot of times when I cry, especially in a public place, it's less because I'm sad and more because I'm angry or frustration or otherwise emotionally overwhelmed. Like I wasn't sad (that came later after I thought about it more) to see the woman get hit by a car, but I was shocked and horrified and surprised in a bad way.

uh, yeah. i think there should be a balance between emotional incontinence and emotional sterility.

btw i like that SUV was a crucial part of the story, not just "car"

i'm genuinely proud of the fact that i haven't cried, in public or in private, since 2001

I wish I found it easier to cry. There've been many times when I've felt a good cry would sort me out, but it's just not happening.

The thing is, a lot of times when I cry, especially in a public place, it's less because I'm sad and more because I'm angry or frustration or otherwise emotionally overwhelmed.

Whenever I feel tempted to cry in public, it is definitely from anger/frustration issues.

;_;

Whenever I feel tempted to cry in public, it is definitely from anger/frustration issues

Oh yeah, I'm with you, just feeling overwhelmed rather than sad. The closest I've come to tears recently was when I was teaching a class and it was going really badly.

OMG HI!!!

:-)

I've missed you.

hi! i wish that friend troubles weren't the reason for me popping back up on ilx! it is kind of lols. i have also been missing y'all and wld like to hang out here more again :)

hi rrrobyn

I'm the opposite--I actually gain respect for them. But my sister completely freezes these people out.

i've got a friend like that. he's deep in this pit of despair to the point that whenever other people have problems that are really super-serious, like heartbreaking troubles, he can't empathize with them because he feels as though his troubles (which boil down to, "i am really super-depressed and it manifests itself in me being super-depressing to be around, oh why can't i meet a girl who will fix me, every girl i meet doesn't want to be around me for some reason.") are so much worse than troubles anyone else might have and he doesn't know why his friends aren't hanging out with him as much these days.

it gets to the point where i'll be out to breakfast with him and he will just stare glumly at his plate and not even look at the server who comes to take our order, and he'll just speak softly and mutter into his lap, "french toast, i guess..." and the server can't hear him and he'll either speak up too loudly, almost rudely, or i'll have to tell the server what he wanted.

Rrrrrrrrrobyn, I am barely holding back from calling out person as self-absorbed/self-centered. She IS, though, and I've suggested that maybe she'd be happier if she framed some things as being about other people and just reached out to her friends, and her response is always, "Why would I want to do THAT??" So I've stopped trying.

Omar, that person sounds INFURIATING.

he drives me nuts. he's an excellent dude (and a vv good cook, which is a skill that would be attractive to women imo), but his overall excellence is trumped by the fact that he's basically an IRL eeyore.

he's caught up in this circle where his depression feeds itself and can't see a way to get out of it. i've told him (and this is easier said than done) that he should just get some therapy or go on medication if he's feeling that low and can't help himself in any way, but he waves it off.

I have known someone like this. I know it looks like a bigtime dead end, and I don't know what to suggest. In my experience, shit got a lot worse before it got better, which made the depressive times seem kind of minor in comparison...but when shit FINALLY got better, it just got better and better and better. I mean, there IS life after moping, but ya gotta CHOOSE it, as you know (and yr friend refuses to admit).

Yeah after a certain point w/IRL Eeyores (and I was one at age 17!) it's like, "eh, you're on your own with all this."

I mean as far as coming up with a solution.

when i've gone out with him i almost feel as though i have to defer to and respect his depressive state rather than try to drag him up into a good mood, if that makes any sense. he's so resistant to the notion that his problems aren't all that bad and are in fact completely common. but they're made worse by his state. he doesn't actually live in l.a., he lives on the east coast, but he comes out here pretty often. i think the fact he works at home doesn't help either, tbh.

I am loving the phrase "real-life Eeyore".

I suggest bullying him into having fun, as long as he's going to be willfully mopey. I have this feeling that if you treat the depression/self-pity as something to be respected, it might just reinforce his projection of it as SERIOUS and UNAVOIDABLE.

I don't mean bully him meanly, but like, a bit of games-mistress heartiness, like "RIGHT, GET IN THAT RESTAURANT AND SIT DOWN AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE COMPLAINTS."

<3

I mean, you can be sad or happy, but if your friends invite you out and you want to continue to have friends, you'd better at least contribute something.

If you want the kind of friends who come over for a contemplative tea once in a while and otherwise leave you in mopey solitude so you can pretend the world revolves around your troubles, move to the countryside.

or become a goth

When I was depressioed it was so GREAT when friends invited me out! And I figured the best course of action was just not to say anything but to be glad for a change of scenery. And it's amazing how much that works, just being around people you like, even if you aren't in a place to interface with any social graces.

agreed 100%

Yeah! I mean, I'm not saying you should FAKE it and not tell anyone if something is really wrong! But when it's just a bit of "can't get out of own head" stuff, you might as well be open to a little lightness and perspective where you can find it.

of course you can't be like, 'hey maybe it'd cheer you up to come to lunch w/the three of us – but don't say anything, bcz yr a real downer."

lol!

but yeah, this kind of behaviour (esp when escalated to a fight) bewilders me and kind of puts me in a state of shock, but i always think, well, maybe i have something to learn from this, maybe putting myself in their place is a good thing in the great scheme of things, maybe it's humbling and helpful to being a whole, emphathetic person?

but while at such points feeling "bad at emotions" (despite these situations causing me to feel physically ill and sad and frustrated), i then also think: how can i do all the things i want to do in life, most of which are about trying to change the world (small steps but yknow), tbh, when energy gets sucked away by individuals who appear not to be interested in what i consider to be the most important, overarching issue? which is not one's constant state of hurt but how to see everything as out to get us - how does that attitude create anything new or beautiful or move anything forward? so i am often left with "but don't you see??" in my head yet unable to express it because, really, it sounds like a different language to those who are stuck in these particular patterns. (which is not to say that i don't have issues and patterns! don't we all?) blaargh.

(it is also kind of annoying because i have soooo much work to do and this is distracting me. and i he's gonna be like, let's hug, it's fine, etc. and that is a cycle i'm not so interested in but find hard to extricate self from...)

(i forgot to edit that 2nd paragraph re: how constant state of hurt is also about how everything appears out to get you when in that state, how it doesn't exactly help to see the world that way)

Yeah!! I just can't stand the small-mindedness, sometimes. I know, for people who don't know me in RL, that I'm a big bitch on ILX but it's cos I have to sit at a desk all day without a lot of exercise for my brain, we all know that, right?

But the truly paranoid, and those who hamstring themselves and deny it...and then complain and complain bitterly about how they can't get ahead...everyone is stealing their ideas...no one is as good as them, or as pretty, or as "cool"...yet they don't do anything to BE good, or pretty, or cool...it's not INHERENT, you know. It's earned, everything people believe about you has to be EARNED.

I mean good or bad!

You're a big bitch on ILX? This is not true, no joeks.

oh thank god for you laurels and ilx and my friends who help me see the light on this one!

Rrrobyn, Omar etc: I have spent the last year battling my way out of clinical depression. At its nadir, I was the "real-life Eeyore" whom you describe. It is only in retrospect that I can be a bit lighthearted about my desperate state b/c CD is a thing which consumes you so gradually that, by the time your disposition reaches such a comical level, you don't possess the wherewithal to laugh at yourself b/c of your state of complete resignation. And yeah, the self-absorption gets totally ridic b/c such is your emotional disconnect that it almost completely clouds your ability to empathize with anything or anyone. When CD gets to this point, it becomes a sharp paradox that becomes especially difficult to navigate your way out of: you NEED to acknowledge that your problem is MEDICAL, FIXABLE & NOT something you can repair or find your way out of by yourself, but such is your level of apathy/self-loathing that you're just going to be cynical and fatalistic about the possibility of betterment.

You or someone else need to firmly impress upon your friends that they need to see a doctor & be persistent about recovery. If their experience is anything like mine, once they take a tiny step toward fixing the problem & get a taste of psychological normalcy (a relative term, admittedly), the motivation for taking the appropriate steps to get back on one's feet pretty much takes care of itself. I wish someone in my life had intervened forcibly much earlier on, but I was so reclusive and such a miserable bastard that I made it especially hard for them to do so. What I wouldn't give to have the last three or four years of my life back, especially now that I am aware that the whole time, the problem was a simple, correctable chemical imbalance & not some inherent personality flaw.

i feel like it is at least partly that, yes! and he knows it! but this is also part of why the fight of yesterday happened - because i suggested, as i have done before, kindly, not in any holier-than-thou or this'll-solve-all-yr-problems way, that he was all wrapped up in his issues/himself and that he should talk to a professional to gain perspective on it, maybe take meds if it comes to that. which he shot down due to issues of money and time and etc. it makes it hard to remain friends with someone who has potential to be so amazing yet won't/can't seek the solutions that are out there. sigh.

yeah my friend has shot down many efforts at tough love, but i think there's hope if only because i think when he comes out to the west coast he has a better time (he's from here and seems to be in a better mood here, despite it still being a miserable mood), and it always cheers him to know that several female friends of mine have spoken of him in, "hey if only he lived here i'd go out with that guy," which i think makes him feel a little better (while still looking at it darkly, cf. "well by the time i move there they'll all have boyfriends...."

xpost: It took two years of my girlfriend impressing on me that I needed to see a doctor before I actually did it. Yes, it was really silly of me not to have done so earlier than I did, but when you're a bit arrogant & thick-headed to start, it is all the more difficult to suss out "admitting weakness" from "curing an illness." In hindsight, it seems as ridiculous as refusing surgery for appendicitis or something, its just that the emotional component makes it seem more complex than it actually, likely is. Good luck, at any rate. Don't give up on your friend! (lol I have now become an advocate for miserable bastards everywhere)

I knnowww, I knnooooowwwwww. Medical help is a big problem w/o insurance, and medical studies w free anti-depressants did more harm than good b/c none of them really had the patient's interests at heart. It's tough. The turning point is obv different for everyone, and it's SO COMPLETELY just up to them to perceive it.

I just tried to be a good example at enjoying life and doing stuff, you know? Hand-holding will only get you so far, even if you do it to the Nth degree.

xpost to Omar - Just to underline this cold, clinical fact: If your friend's problem is rooted in a chemical imbalance, there will likely be no change of scenery that can itself fix the problem. You need to start by addressing the serotonin issue & then leverage that into the whole lifestyle, setting, diet, exercise assortment of possible long-term adjustments. It is a pretty tried & true matter of course & vastly less complicated than trying to "fix yourself" from scratch. Just sayin..

Laural: money/insurance was also an issue for me & I HATE asking for charity, & the worse off I became, the less money I was making, so yeah.. it is a slippery slope. Family is key here. If there is anyone who can help pony up for the expenses, of course it would be a worthwhile investment. Medicaid is also available for such things, I believe, although, admittedly, it would likely be a bureaucratic nightmare. Socialize medicine people! A move to Canada perhaps?...

rrrobyn, omar, et al. You're awesome friends. I wish that when I was seriously depressed that I had someone to encourage me to "get better." Most of my friends just pretended it wasn't there, and when I was miserable to be around, they weren't around. I think encouragement to get out and have "external stimulus" is important. In retrospect, sometimes it did me good, and sometimes it just reinforced the depression. I don't know whether it's different for people who "get it" at some point during adulthood vs. people who "get it" once they hit adolescence (like me), and thus, end up equating "normal" with being a dumb kid who doesn't "know any better." I do remember that I truly believed that I knew what was really going on and how things/people worked, what they really were (I wasn't bipolar/schizo, so I didn't believe that they were really alien lizard creatures disguised as people) and the normal people just didn't know, that they were somehow delusional. But also, that their delusions were healthy, and my "real knowledge" was dysfunctional.

By the time I finally got on medication, I'd been clinically depressed for half my life. But, what Pillbox said, it's a chemical thing, and once the chemical balance gets normalized, the need for behavioral changes are obvious to the person. However, that also takes time, depending on how ingrained the previous patterns were.

Most of my friends just pretended it wasn't there, and when I was miserable to be around, they weren't around. - yes, such trials certainly do put into stark relief who genuinely has your back in life. Also, this goes back to the original thread question: if emotions make you uncomfortable, being around someone w/ CD is really going to make you squirm. So I really don't blame a lot of my friends for backing off b/c they really just didn't understand what was happening. And yeah, you guys are awesome for sticking it out w/ yr crew!

Sometimes it kinda helps that I'm a complete retard, I've had a few friends in the past that were, you know, not waving but drowning and all their other friends were freaking out and not dealing but by sheer dint of not really realising things have really escalated that badly, I can be pretty okay with people, I think.

I think part of it, is that the friends get to a point where they feel helpless, like there isn't really anything they can do - that it's really up to the depressed person to make the effort to take care of themselves. I finally got on meds when I had a majorly stressful thing happen and I literally couldn't sleep more than 3 hours straight, and when I was awake all I'd do was alternate between anxious worrying and imagining how that thing was going to make my life even worse.

yall i feel for u and ur friends, i think u should all treat yrselves to something nice tonight, like a good dinner, cuz life is hard, and u deserve nice things

<3 u max

xp Laurel - yeah the health insurance thing - that is, not having it - is hard. I was fortunate that my parents were paying for mine, largely because my mom had this major "what if you get pregnant?" anxiety. Seriously, when I was in college, and I would act like something was wrong when my mom called, her first response was always, "You're not pregnant, are you?" It really stung during the period I was depressed I didn't have a boyfriend.

my best friend is basically the most depressio person i've met - so negative and poor-me all the time, but she redeems herself by being also the funniest person i know, and flies in the face of most depressio stereotypes by always having time to listen to my problems, and always being super supportive of whatever good shit is happening to me.

i mean, there have been times when i've just felt drained by being her friend... but then i remember how 3yrs ago when she was at absolute rock bottom and pretty fucked up, she let me come live with her, share her tiny tiny room and bed for 3 months after i broke up with my ex and had to move out and was myself a total wreck, and she still managed to emotionally support me through one of the hardest times in my own life (and not the first time she's been there for me in such an urgent way) so i'm in it for life with her, no matter how miserable-bastardy she gets.

there will be a quiz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tG75lZQHZQ

pretty much at the point of giving up on this friendship as it currently exists (too much). or just needing a serious break.
feel a bit like a weak jerk for thinking that but the whole thing is making me not be me. and tnose who know me here know i'm not a jerk lacking empathy, for real, but i am a survivalist, tbh, and i don't like being dragged down (or, for that matter, dragging anyone else down!) but might have to just cut ties on this one for a while as it's basically pummeling my psyche and i kinda need all that for, yknow, living (and slow return to ilx, haha)

i wish you the best of luck, rrrrobyn! eat smoked meat sandwiches to help your brain.

Yay, rrrrobyn is coming back!

Why did you leave? People we thought were our friends always leave ILX, no matter what we say or do, it's like we're not good enough for them, ILX is so lonely all the time. Sigh.