NigelW Posted May 25, 2014 Posted May 25, 2014 I began journalling for the first time since returning to college. I found the phrase "everything will be alright" ENRAGING. It was often something my father would say whenever something devastating would happen in my family. Things such as divorce, psychotic episodes, moving (yearly), dropping out of high school, dropping out of university, dropping out of college, and being bullied at school. I feel such anger at this phrase. I've noticed that my initial response to positive people is skepticism and I've been shamed for being skeptical towards them. "Skepticism is a lack of information!". Fucking hell. When I was a kid I remember even acting out and screaming at him. He STILL said, "everything is going to be OK." Fucking madness! No matter what I do, it's OK. My mother was quite similar. "Wait until your dad gets home!", "You kids are out of control!". Parenting is a verb, from what I understand, and they suuuuuuucked at it. Wow. It's no wonder I chose to play World of Warcraft and drop out of high school. The worst part about that is the time spent playing WoW was AT MY MOTHERS PLACE. She would continually say "where is your father?", "your father should take care of you kids!". So. I was modelled some pretty crazy shit. I suppose I am looking for someone to agree with me and tell me that it is in fact crazy and not say, for once in my life, "you just lack information". (I feel really sad here).
MysterionMuffles Posted May 25, 2014 Posted May 25, 2014 it's just an empty phrase that masks a lie with a sugar coated promise of nothing sorry to read of your experience. Some irresponsible mother she must have been to say crap like that.
Wiltin Posted May 26, 2014 Posted May 26, 2014 Anytime someone says "everything will be okay," they are avoiding something that is most certainly NOT okay in the present moment. An opposite equivalence would be if when something great happens (your child is born, you get a promotion etc), and your father said "everything will turn to shit."
MysterionMuffles Posted May 26, 2014 Posted May 26, 2014 yeah i used to bullshit people saying "we'll laugh about this months from now" just to obsolve myself of the responsibility of dealing with a problem here and now. Accepting that it's there and there needs to be something done about it.
NigelW Posted May 26, 2014 Author Posted May 26, 2014 Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I am lost for words
Ovi Posted May 26, 2014 Posted May 26, 2014 "Everything will be ok, because [insert reasoning here]" may be a great thing to say to somebody who is having trouble, or yourself, if the reasoning that supports it is valid. It means you found a solution to a problem. On it's own, it's just an empty statement with no real value, often used by people who want to ignore problems hoping they will magically go away. And don't get me started on the "Positivity Police", the kind of people for which any display of a "negative" emotion is offensive or harmful (especially when men do it, I notice, but that's another subject). Authentic feelings like being sad, angry or scared are necessary and healthy, in the right context. "Authentic" in this case refers to if the feeling is appropriate to the situation: it's healthy to be sad when you've suffered a loss or went trough a harrowing experience in our past. It's called grieving. Suppressing it is not healthy. getting angry when being confronted with a present immediate danger or aggression is healthy - it's what gives us the drive to fight and survive and overcome. being scared helps us prevent / avoid problems we see arising in the future (only fools are fearless) I think people who go to others who are experiencing one of the above feelings and tell them "It's going to be ok" or some other diluted meaningless drivel in an attempt to "cheer them up" or "calm them down" are doing it because: they want to make themselves feel better, not the other person, because they are so emotionally unstable that even being around healthy justified sadness, anger or fear makes them uneasy. So they just want to put a stop to the other person's feelings. Or they are misguided fools who were taught that everyone should be positive all the time and if they aren't they are breaking some kind of unwritten law. So they are taking it upon themselves to enforce that law. Just as a note: not all sadness, anger or fear is healthy. For example sadness is healthy only when associated with past events, being sad about future or events or ones that are in play right now is a harmful emotion. Instead of feeling sorry you should do something about it. So sadness is healthy only regarding the past, anger - the present and fear - the future. And anyway, how we feel is just part of the equation. What really matters is what we do.
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