Posted by fuzzymind on March 1, 2003, at 8:46:56
In reply to Re: Smile! It can't be that bad!, posted by snowden on February 17, 2003, at 20:00:53
> Perhaps I didn't realize that the rest of the world was continuously grinning like an idiot...
>
> I guess I must look pretty bad to have people make that remark, huh? Yet I don't see the general population smiling and being perfect...
>
> Then again, maybe it's just me! :)I haven't smiled since I was in grade school. Then the perpetual frown took over. Even depressed people smile, don't they? I don't rmemeber anyone els in high school not ever smiling. In college, I saw one other person who looked like walking doom and gloom...another Asian guy whose face was frozen in anxiety and depression like mine. Another time, a pizza delivery guy came to my door looked like that. Very rude also....now I know how I must look to others when I don't mean to.
I nhigh school , a principal once asked why I looked so gloomy. I made a dumbass reply that I was trying to match the weather. He smirked a bit, but never followed up. No other teacher ever talked to me about my mood. Mother fruckers.
I also find smiling traumatic. In college, my redneck football player roomate got a package from his mom, and I smiled. THen this redneck psycho starts screaming at me saying " What's the matter, doesn't your mom give you love and attention by sending you packages!!!" Well she gave me tons of packages, but that eruption has always bothered me becasue I never said anything back...I think imay have even agreed with him while I was in shock. His basketball player friend was also in the room, and he gave me weird looks. I still don't know what I did wrong. But this happeend one other time with this redneck psycho, when he received a letter from his mom, and he did the same thing when I smiled. I smiled both times becsue I was glad for him, but he mistook it for mockery. I wish I could have told him off and told him he was jealous becasue he didn't have real parents and his mother didn't love him enough to tell him who his father was, and his drunken loser stepfather didn't think of him as a real son, and that is why he was a jealous drunken racist psycho. These insults still haunt me. SOmetimes I will spend the entire day reliving those moments over and over again. All because of a smile . Damned if you do, damned if you don't
Empathising...seeing things in the other person's eyes...a CBT technique, hasn't worked for me. I know why people do the things they do, but the trauma doesn't go away. My dumb bitch former shrink wondered why it didn't work. Well I don't know...it just doesn't. Control freak I guess. I can't let any slights go unpunished, even 15 plus years after the fact. Reminds me of how powerless I was. What a waste of 125 dollars an hour. Aren't shrinks supposed to give you some self- talk techniques or life changing words of wisdom to help you break out of this madness?SMile? DOubt I will ever again
poster:fuzzymind
thread:201197
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030203/msgs/204985.html