[ SECRET POST #2449 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2449 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 041 secrets from Secret Submission Post #350.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know. I did say over-identification, and I don't think it's necessarily rational. But at the same time, I do think... I don't know, it's not unheard of to really identify with a fictional character or really feel a deep personal connection to a book or a work of fiction or something, is it? Sometimes you just feel really passionate about things, almost like you own them. Sometimes certain things or people or whatever just really matter to you, for whatever reason. And when that's the case with a romantic relationship, this kind of things happens. I don't think it's that extraordinary.

[bored_bitch]

I just don't get it.

I don't "own" things unless they're actually mine.

[(Anonymous)]

you should work on your empathy

[bored_bitch]

It sounds like more of an unnecessary burden to empathize with feeling ownership over something that was never rightfully yours, to begin with.

So I think I'll pass.

[insanenoodlyguy]

I don't think not sperging out over ships means you lack empathy.

[(Anonymous)]

you don't have to HAVE the emotion yourself in order to EMPATHIZE with it. i don't do it either but i can UNDERSTAND it and empathize with some one who is strongly attached, even if I'VE never gotten the same attachment. how is this hard?

[veronica_rich]

Trust me, empathy is not what the OP needs. The swift metaphorical kick up the ass they got? Yes, that.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes people just feel what they feel. People aren't rational 24/7. If they were, the world would be a better place :P

[(Anonymous)]

It's not ownership, but a sense of ownership. Like the way that people have a relationship with a sports team, you know? If you're a smart sports fan, you know that you don't really own the team, and you're really just rooting for laundry, but that doesn't stop you from having an emotional connection to the sports team and feeling things in response to what happens to them. Or you could even argue it's the same thing with the way that people feel about companies they work for, or states they belong to, or all kind of things.

Because we are human beings. We are not totally rational. We get invested in things. Maybe you don't feel that way, but, I mean, at the very least, can you understand how someone would feel that way?

[(Anonymous)]

you're really just rooting for laundry

I love this phrasing.

[bored_bitch]

I feel connections to things, but they aren't me. I get emotionally invested, but at the end of the day, they don't equate to who I am, so attack of them means little to nothing.

For instance, some of my games were a MAJOR coping device when I was going through shit growing up, and I have a ton of fondness for them and even took inspiration away from them, but they still don't equal out to being "me" or belonging to me.

I just think it's silly.

[(Anonymous)]

People should just stop trying to explain other peoples' feelings to you, as it seems like you're a proud sociopath who literally can't empathize with other human beings. Enjoy that life. Sounds fulfilling as hell.

[(Anonymous)]

yes good patronize and vilify an actual psychological disorder, you sound like a way better person!!!

[bored_bitch]

I can empathize with things, but they're actually important. Like abuse, and being too poor to pay the bills, and things like that.
When to get pissed off, and when it's irrational and dumb.

I've been told this is why I'm good to come to for advice. Because I don't complicate shit with pointless overemotional reactions instead of rational thinking.

Being a sociopath would imply that I'm actively trying to harm people, which I'm not doing.

But my life is going pretty well, and my relationships with my friends and my family and my husband are really good, so I can't complain. Whatevs.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, plenty of sociopaths don't hurt people. It's basically just a lack of empathy. Not saying you are one, at all! But you don't necessarily need to hurt people to be one.

I don't really see what you don't understand. Just because you don't relate in that way to characters doesn't mean that other people don't? It's pretty simple. It comes down to this: 'Other people think differently from me'.

[insanenoodlyguy]

I'm pretty sure Bored_bitch understands emotion.

She just can't fathom why anybody'd get this emotional about this sort of thing (please correct me if I' wrong b_b)

[(Anonymous)]

Sociopaths are capable of emotion too. I'm not internet-diagnosing either, but it's not like anyone's saying she's INCAPABLE of it, just has a massive disconnect and doesn't care or feel empathy. I feel tons of emotions and I might not feel the same things about the same stuff some people do but I can UNDERSTAND and EMPATHIZE that their experience is different than mine and their feelings are completely valid and make sense to them and that's okay. B_B DOES seems incapable of this, or simply unwilling. If not a sociopath then just kind of an ass.

[(Anonymous)]

On the contrary, as an anon who has investment in this fight (and who has overinvested in fictional characters as a coping mechanism in the past), bored_bitch seems sane, capable of empathy and notsociopathic in the least. Blunt maybe, but not sociopathic. In fact, the person in this argument claiming that anyone who can't completely understand unhealthy overidentification is mentally abnormal is perhaps the one who is mentally abnormal.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

I think some level of identification with things is fairly common. And I don't think that some level of identification is necessarily harmful or abnormal. Certainly to the level that OP does it, it's harmful, but I don't think that getting at least a little defensive about things you really identify with is all that strange. And the thing that's been kind of difficult or confusing in this conversation is that b_b does not seem to acknowledge the validity of any kind of identification at all.

That said, I don't think b_b is sociopathic, and I think the person saying that is kind of out of line.

[nyxelestia]

That's pretty much how I understand it.

Yes, I know that some people get extremely emotionally invested in their characters, and I could probably even give you the series of events and circumstances that lead to it...but I can't comprehend it myself. For me, the best comparison is the way most people might look at a spree-shooter/killer - we know what happened, and we can often pinpoint how or why (i.e. mental disorders, life conditions, environment, circumstances, etc). But we can't actually fathom it or comprehend it for ourselves, or empathize with them.

(Before anyone tries it, I'm not trying to imply that emotional fans and spree killers are on the same plane in any capacity - that level of emotional disconnect is just the best analogy I could come up with on the spot. I understand fans a hell of a lot more than I understand school shooters; it's just that while they are drastically different in terms of scale, the style of understanding is pretty much the same.)

But then, I've been called a sociopath before. I'd believe it if it weren't for the fact my initial reaction to seeing someone struggling with anything is to start throwing solutions at them until they accept one or tell me to shut up. Oddly enough, many people have told me that my lack of emotionalism has made me easy to talk to and seek advice from - because I already have to put other people's emotions into lists and flowcharts in my head in order to understand them, it's easy for me to lay out other people's emotions and thought-processes in a way that's helpful to them. (If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to become a shrink or counselor of some sort, I could probably afford the school fees to go and become one.)

[(Anonymous)]

You said it. That's...a terrible analogy...

[nyxelestia]

Only one I could think of on the spot. *shrugs* In my defense, I was sitting in my school library right where there was a shooting just last semester, and this week's school newspaper lead article was talking about changes in school security in the aftermath of the shooting, so it was kind of on my mind at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

It probably is silly, from a certain point of view. It can matter a great deal, from another.

I don't know. I don't think there's anything else I can say to explain it. Congratulations on your extraordinary sense of self-possession, I guess.

[(Anonymous)]

but HER life is soooo much more important and wonderful than all of us lowly fandom people who dare care about things we didn't create ourselves! we connect to things that are just SOOO trivial!