More To Ignore
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 22, 2010
Ignoring problems is supposed to be bad for you; the only thing we love more in this society than money and fried foods is unbridled confrontation. Sometimes, however, not paying attention to life’s annoyances is the best option for dealing with the nasty little tricks your mind likes to play with you. Until life’s problems go away—which they won’t—you can train your self to stop paying attention to them (and the over-reactive voices in your head). Instead, focus on other important things, like getting paid and eating onion rings.
-Dr. Lastname
My biggest frustration on a daily basis is having someone ask me a question and then either get angry in response to the answer or the fact that a decision has already been made and then ignore the answer they asked for. My wife will ask “do you mind if I do/go/be “x,” and if I answer “yes I mind” then she’s angry and usually proceeds with what she’d already scheduled anyway. Just today my sister asked if the coffee I was holding was warm enough. I said yes, and she then proceeded to take the cup from my hand and run to the microwave with it. OK, so maybe her intentions were good…but why the hell did she ask me, when my answer didn’t matter? Because this seems to happen to me ALL the time, by MANY different people, I’m getting to the point that I don’t even want to be around other people. Should I just shut up and quit even answering questions, or start answering with what I know they want to hear? Giving honest answers is clearly NOT working for me. Can you shed some light on what I’m doing wrong here? And more importantly, what do I do about it?
Nobody likes to feel ignored—at least by people we like and particularly by the ones we love—but some people are particularly sensitive to it.
They feel it as a kind of peace-destroying personal injury that injects them with a festering dislike of their fellow human beings. This leads to a desire to learn wilderness skills or get a solo gig on a space station.
You’re the kind of person whom being ignored gets to, and if I asked you to change, you couldn’t help but ignore my request, even if you tried not to.
