That was a lovely interaction you had. A really great example of people just "getting it."
Like I was saying to a friend about sympathizing with someone else's grief, "If you've never been there, there aren't any right words. If you have, no other words are necessary." When I lost my mom, people would either respond with sympathy, with awkward sympathy, or they'd say "God, that sucks. I lost my father/mother/sister/important person X years ago, and it was really hard." And when they revealed that, I was like "Oh, then you get it. Good. Thank you."
My skepticism about people goes down a lot when I find out that they or someone close to them has major issues with physical or mental health. It means I can assume a baseline level of familiarity with things, instead of having to run everything through a translator going both ways. This isn't an "I hate and mistrust people" thing, it's an "I'm never sure how much WORK people are going to be" thing. And when you have a limited number of spoons, how much work people are to be around is a major issue!
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That was a lovely interaction you had. A really great example of people just "getting it."
Like I was saying to a friend about sympathizing with someone else's grief, "If you've never been there, there aren't any right words. If you have, no other words are necessary." When I lost my mom, people would either respond with sympathy, with awkward sympathy, or they'd say "God, that sucks. I lost my father/mother/sister/important person X years ago, and it was really hard." And when they revealed that, I was like "Oh, then you get it. Good. Thank you."
My skepticism about people goes down a lot when I find out that they or someone close to them has major issues with physical or mental health. It means I can assume a baseline level of familiarity with things, instead of having to run everything through a translator going both ways. This isn't an "I hate and mistrust people" thing, it's an "I'm never sure how much WORK people are going to be" thing. And when you have a limited number of spoons, how much work people are to be around is a major issue!