What Bothers You About Others is What Bothers You About YOURSELF... Really?

There's a certain piece of psychological "wisdom" that holds that whenever something about another person really bothers us, it's because that particularly characteristic about/in ourselves really bothers us.

Whereas I am sure that might be true in certain very general ways, I have always really struggled with this notion.

For example... the fact that I am really bothered by people who are cruel to animals, then is supposed to mean that I am bothered by my own cruelty to animals? I can only describe that as "patent bullshit," from where I am sitting!

I am also bothered by people with really "short fuses" who just go off on others in a rage without thinking about what they are doing first... which also is very far removed from my own demeanor... although it does match my dad's behavior from when I was a kid.

So why am I even bringing this up?

Just trying to illustrate — perhaps — that a lot of truisms might be very popular, but that doesn't necessarily make them very accurate or representative of most people's lives and behaviors.

And, quite often, we also uncover that many popular truisms are more about getting us to pause and think about what we're doing, rather than to serve as actual guidelines to behavior.

Maybe that's a good and right thing! I do know that if I ever get "impulsive" rather than stopping to think things through, typically it results in the worst possible outcome.

That said, I still suggest that we don't take too many of these truisms at face value because it often turns out that they don't really apply, in their strictest interpretations... and their original intent was mostly to serve as "cautionary analogies" for a small and pretty specific group of people, but somehow they were broadly adopted.

I see similar things happen with psychological terminology, which gets used as lots and lots of people suddenly see themselves as "expert" enough to make sweeping statements.

One of the most common I run into is someone declaring that someone else is "a narcisissist." If we were to believe everyone who makes such a declaration 10-15% of the world would be afflicted with something that only clinically exists in maybe 2% of people!

So do take these things with a grain of salt!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

How about YOU? Do you ever realize that you are trying to apply a generalization that actually ISN'T appropriate? Why do you think people fall into this trap/behavior? Does it make things better for them, or does it just cause confusion? Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210709 23:52 PDT
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