According to psychology, the urge to immediately fix a partner’s or friend’s distress instead of just sitting with them in it isn't empathy; it is your own low frustration tolerance. When someone you love is hurting, and you instantly jump into problem-solving mode, offering unsolicited advice or trying to find a silver lining, you are often trying to soothe your own secondary anxiety. You aren't rescuing them from their pain; you are rescuing yourself from the discomfort of witnessing a vulnerability you don't know how to hold.
“I would've defended it to anyone who said, "I'm concerned about you."”
“You don't ever say to yourself,
"Look, I've got an eating disorder," but you know you're, like,
making a list of everything you put”
discord really the place where u can make ur name literally anything and ppl will call u that. ur name could be doorhandle and ppl will hop in vc talkin bout “yo doorhandle u gonna get on the game” 😭
I'm crying this might actually be the worst performance i’ve ever seen. He’s literally just playing music videos from youtube… zero effort, just pure laziness. #coachella
https://t.co/WSxKrbMCM1
For almost two months, I was convinced my friend group had a separate group chat without me.
Plans would get mentioned casually, “oh yeah, like we said earlier”, and I’d just stand there like 🙂 earlier where? If I walked into the room and they stopped laughing, my brain immediately titled it: Season 2: The Quiet Exile. I started analyzing delivery times, inside jokes, who viewed my stories but didn’t reply. Every late response felt intentional. Every “we forgot to tell you” felt strategic.
One night I finally joked, “So what’s the name of the secret group chat?”
They all looked confused.
Turns out there was another group chat, but it was for planning a surprise birthday thing for me. The reason they’d go quiet? They were terrible at lying. The “earlier” conversations? About work, not me. The late replies? Two of them had just started new jobs and one was going through a breakup.
Meanwhile, I had already mentally written a betrayal arc, drafted my villain origin speech, and emotionally distanced myself for protection.
The stupidest part? Nobody was excluding me.
I was just overprotecting myself from a threat that didn’t exist.
That’s when I realized, sometimes the only person putting me on the outside… is me.