Asklemmy

43905 readers

1039 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

I don't enjoy it when people compliment me. Why could it be? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by Quintus@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Not to brag but I'm a pretty confident person in my social circle. I'm funny, make people laugh etc. etc.

Basically, I am adored by everybody.

But there is something that I noticed about myself lately. Regularly people come up to me to chat and sometimes they compliment me. Now, complimenting isn't a bad thing, obviously. But I just don't feel anything when I receive them.

However I enjoy it when people talk good things about me when I'm not present. I, again, don't feel anything when people talk shit about me when I'm not present. BUT I really enjoy it when people straight up come at me and say something bad at me. My mood increases and I spend the rest of my day happier.

Is this some kind of a defense/coping mechanism that I have unintentionally developed? I don't see anything bad about this.

It's also worthy to say that I spent the majority of my life isolated up until a few years ago. No compliments at all but nobody to say bad things either. Is this why I fail to appreciate compliments?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] thezeesystem@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

From my own past and trauma, in my personal experience it's because my parents, family, ex friends/ partners that whenever they complimented me it's always because it's not true but instead they used it to manipulate me into doing something.

So whenever someone compliments me my brain automatically suspects there trying to harm me, even if I know that's not rational.

[–] Quintus@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

While I did not go through any kind of things that you have, though I did meet a few people who tried to use my own abilities against me in order to feel above me, sometimes I do suspect if the compliments I'm getting are genuine or not. I just toss those kind of thoughts away immediately. Most of the time it doesn't even come to suspecting the compliments. I disregard them.