Follow-up to personal story

(Perhaps one of many: who knows)

There’s this really cheap psychological trick that probably every counsellor learns on their first day of training, which is about showing the other person that you hear them, that you believe what they say, that you empathize with them, and which is assumed (I presume) will make the other person feel instantly better.

I imagine the trick must work sometimes, perhaps even often, and especially with women: we often hear that the problem with women and mental health is that they don’t feel “heard” or “cared for” or “loved” or “validated”.

I am a woman, but I have long suspected (long before covid) that my brain has some traits that are more resemblant to a man’s. (Of course this doesn’t make some brains better than others). Also, as I think I established in the original personal story, I am not your lockdown good victim; I am a very bad victim (being a bad victim is normally good in the A&H — see gender, race, EVEN COVID, etc.—, except when it’s about lockdowns. If it’s about lockdowns you must be a good victim or else you are a right-wing denialist).

So this shit doesn’t work for me.

I cannot tell you how many of the busibodies and how many in the “caring” gang (the “Covid do-gooders” I referred to in the last post) tried to use this trick on me:

I can feel your pain.

I see that you are struggling.

This must be a difficult time for you.

This is a challenging time for everybody.

Etc., etc.

But you know what? Because I’m not a good victim, the trick doesn’t work on me. I don’t need to be shown that someone “listens”: I need to be allowed to live my life without restrictions. I don’t need someone to “validate” for me the idea that lockdowns are enormously damaging: I have known that since last March and reality “validates” this “belief” for me every day.

This disconcerts them. This sends them into a panic. What — we studied this trick in the Mental health first aid course and in the “Being caring towards others” workshop, we were reassured it was foolproof, and now it doesn’t work? What’s wrong with this trick? What’s wrong with this person? It’s probably the person, isn’t it?

Dear busibody, dear “caring” scientist: your clichéd phrases don’t show me that you “listen” or that you “care”. Even less so that you are a “caring” person. What they show is that you have, indeed, a basic reading comprehension of English and an IQ of over 70 allowing you to understand and to some extent process that you read.

Which actually, in the current times, is perhaps not something to sneer at.