Hi Isawthelight and CharlieHungerford,
It is tough to feel confident -especially when one is a highly emotional person. I continue to experience this difficulty with simply forgiving others when I feel slighted or judged by them. It hurts. And this means that it is hard to accept their point of view.
To be able to step out of feeling (hurt) enough to be able to accept the other person's attitude would be everything. It is acquiring this so-called 'Third Opinion' or the opinion of the "impartial observer" that is quite challenging. You can know your feelings and thoughts to be irrational and yet still be stuck feeling them and reacting to them -and therefore, 'knowing' does not equate to 'believing' such feelings/thoughts to be irrational.
I am looking into Mindfulness and how it is that this cultivates the ability to step out of our feelings (thoughts) enough to actually choose the better response to a challenging situation. I would like to understand it and compare it to what I have been inclined to do. .... in the meantime, I am practising Mindfulness and trying to do it in situations, because I've heard such promising things about it.
One idea that I do have regarding feeling judged and slighted by others, is that if I believed that others' (negative?) reactions towards me are simply a symptom of the same dis-eased mental state that I have ...what effect would this have on me? How would I feel about being judged and slighted now, if I believed that other peoples' reactions come from their own lack of emotional control? .....You may think that such a perception of others is a bit delusional, and that I am flattering my self that I am in fact not so different from anyone else. ..And yet, what if I am not so different to anyone else?
The truth of the matter is that perhaps half of the time, the social phobic's perception that others are judging them is actually in keeping with what is truly going on. Our problem is that we are very sensitive and therefore more concerned with what others think of us. Yet, this is an insecurity that everyone shares, even if they have less sensitivity. And, we could not feel shame nor get negatively judged as we sometimes truly are by others, unless we are in fact similar enough to others. People judge harshly people with whom the inner emotional difference creating the observed outer reality is in fact fairly small. What I mean is that small differences on an emotional level have the tendency to seem- and in fact become- bigger differences on the outside. And yet, the difference between the ordinary person with the average insecurity and sensitivity about being accepted by others and the socially phobic person -on the level that means anything, ie: an emotional inner level, is small. We pay quite a lot for a small difference -we suffer from prejudice and rejection, and in turn get more sensitized and fearful of such things. And, yet again, the difference is small.
So, therefore, why not include such an observation within one's perception of themselves and others? Why not say that people who judge me -and even simply those with whom I PERCEIVE to have been slighted by- why not believe that they are like me? Even if it is 'wrong' to believe that others have as big a problem with emotional control as me, with being as highly reactive as me, and with worrying about what others think of them as much as me -if I treated them as versions of me: how would this make me feel about them?
To make a basic connection between the bully and the victim -this would dissolve all my feelings of inferiority. I would recognise in others' judgements of me, the same impulsive lack of control and preoccupation with social graces and appearances, that I suffer from.
In short, seeing my self in others is fail-safe: it can only have a positive outcome, just as a connection between my self and others is always maintained.
Now, this of course is an ideal. -seeing no separation at all between me and others is ideal. It's not so easy in practise. However, simply thinking this way, taking such an idea to be the truth, has the effect of dissolving any hurt feelings or worries about my self.
The only thing is that a person would have to get over the shame of being different. They'd have to come to believe in the notion that the 'big separation' between them and others, is nonetheless founded on a 'small inner difference'. ( -by the way: this perspective on things is actually the complete truth and the only possibility!!!! ) In this way, what happens on the outside does not deceive them -it becomes illusory, and the inner reality of little difference between others becomes what is real. So when people judge us negatively, we could see through this big gap they create between us, knowing that others try to separate themselves from something ugly or undesirable but which is also closer to them than they would like to admit. And so they do not admit it -they hide it behind judgements and a belief of separation.
Well, all the above is very well and true. I still don't yet understand just how to get to believe such things. -but, 'Mindfulness' seems a good method.
:lol: so i think you should just leave it this time and if it happens again either say sommat to her face or email your boss or whoever to let em know what happened