Quote:
Originally Posted by Smiley  Question for you: Do you find this lack of trust arises only in the area of receiving compliments, or do you experience a general lack of trust of others? |
Good question. I think my lack of trust lies only within the area of receving compliments. For the most part, I'm a very trusting person, often giving people the benefit of the doubt.
Here's an example...
I don't have great hair, skin or looks. I don't buy really expensive clothes just to fit in. For the most part I'm okay with my appearance, I know there's certain things about myself that are in my power to change, and other things that are beyond my power to change. I don't have antlers or anything, but I'll never be a model of physical beauty. It's something I know and deal with everyday, not a big deal.
However, when someone says to me, 'I like your hair today!", I think that...
A) My hair probably looks terrible, and they are in some way picking on me
-or-
B) My hair probably looks terrible, and they are saying it out of pitty
-or-
C) Evidently, 99% of the time my hair looks terrible and today it just happens to look half way decent - great! (sarcastically)
It goes beyond beauty-related compliments. I'm a Business Intelligence consultant in the IT industry. I was the team-lead on my last project, and the project pretty much failed. Some of the reasons it failed were way out of my control, but there were a few key items that I could have handled *much* better. So when someone says that I did a great job on that project, how can I believe that? They're probably just saying that to flatter me, because I messed up big time.
I'm just now remembering this... I had an annual review for work a few months ago. I remember my husband coaching me for the review, telling me that I need to be polite and say "thank you" and/or "that means a lot to me" if/when my managers complimented my work. They ended up giving many compliments. I was polite but even a few monthls later I can't trust the compliments they gave me. I keep wondering if they really know how well I'm doing - don't they see my mistakes? Don't they see that I'm not the expert they think I am? (For some reason they think I'm really great with a particular technology that we deal with, but I'm not, I'm just a hack).
But having to repeat "thank you, that means a lot to me" all the time definitely helps.
One last example. I have a really nice necklace. I
know it's nice. It's a very pretty light blue moonstone pendent that I bought from overstock.com. Because I'm confident that it
really is nice, I can trust that people are giving me their honest opinion when they say "I really like your necklace!".
It's like I
know the status of my appearance and workmanship, so when someone gives me a compliment and it doesn't match what I know to be true, then I don't believe them. But I think the problem is that I don't necesarily
know everything. Maybe my opinions are skewed.