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Originally Posted by Lychee  I meant trusting them with your emotions, thoughts, and especially if you feel that the relationship with this person has potential and are more free with the information you share. But at times people will turn out to be someone you don't expect in that case you have no one to blame but yourself for your blunder if they ever use that information against you and you end up being hurt by it. |
When you say hurt, I'd also ask what exactly is being hurt in this case? If it's emotional hurt then it's true that opening up and telling someone something about yourself can allow them to use it in insulting you. However you can realize that you basically control how hurt you are by what someone does. I think a big issue that introverts face is taking things too personally. I previously believed that I
should take offense if anyone had a mean/negative intention behind doing something to me, such as someone making a personal attack to try and make me feel bad. Because otherwise, if I let it pass I'd be allowing them to walk all over me.
But after awhile, around the time I was adapting to the subjective reality mindset I realized that it is actually never in your best interest to take anything personally. Why? Because anything that anyone does to you doesn't really have much to do with
you at all. They're pretty much expressing some need from within themself and it's actually in your better interest to understand this about people's actions. You can still use their reactions to look at your behaviors objectively and improve them for your own benefit. Basically, distinguish your own behaviors, actions, beliefs from the true
you, which is untouchable. Then you can react rationally to situations, use them to improve, and realize that
you can't ever really be hurt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lychee
Letting go of peoples' reactions. I've been trying to try that on for size today and it's going ok. I feel "lighter" if that makes any sense. I don't feel burdened (at least, not as much as before) by what people perceive my intentions or my actions to mean in response to something they say to me. I just don't care at some level, but a part of me wants to care. Without caring can you ever feel pain? Without pain can you ever truly understand and be appreciative of the good?
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Yes
I've always wondered about the whole thing of needing "badness" to provide the necessary contrast to "goodness." It's a sound theory but I've found it to be completely bogus in experience. While pain or something horrible happening can be very useful to provide perspective, you can achieve perspective just fine in other ways.
About people's reactions.. only care about peoples' reactions in regards to the context of the situation. Look at it as feedback, feedback that you can use to improve how you act in the future for whatever result you'd like to have with others. Just make sure not to misuse this feedback by using it to make judgements on yourself or others since that's more or less wasting it.
I think the whole "not caring" about something just means to not care about it in regards to how it could possibly affect you in a bad way. Why? Because at least from my experience as an introvert, we generally way way WAY overexaggerrate the negative consequences of doing something. Know that your ego can't be hurt if you understand it can't be hurt, that right there will take out a lot of the perceived negative consequences. And for the rest, looking at the possible outcomes rationally and realizing that regardless of what you might think, you
can handle every single possible outcome. Only thing is, if you attach your ego to anything changeable, then it's hard to believe this. After some time you can develop the perspective of being able to want something with a passion, but at the same time be perfectly fine with not getting it. There is no attachment to outcomes, only a preference.