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Originally Posted by Mnemosyne  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. |
Hmm Mnemosyne, in
NLP we have something called a meta-program, which is just a simple way of understanding how different people work.
In one, some people sort by self, some sort by others. A simple example is how would somebody know when they've done a good job? Is it when they're told by others even though they don't feel like they have, or is it when they know inside even though no one else seems to think so.
You seem to sort by self, which isn't a bad thing. A lot of artists do, imagine Van Gogh when he painted his 'weird' masterpieces and no-one at the time would buy.
I think it's healthy in a way to be able to tell when someone's genuinely being nice and when a compliment's just a few words. You do seem to have strayed beyond the cynical line a little bit
Here's something you can think about, right now. Remember a compliment someone paid you, something nice, and ask yourself 'how could that be true?', and really consider the many answers to that question;
how could that compliment be true if it really was? P.S. You can do a few more if you want
