Vlog CCLXXVIII

There's nothing more painful than when people do their glib, know-it-all trick on others. I've had that so many times, on my way out of the forest of confusion. Whereas you turned to books that could point you in the right direction, I resorted to experimentalism. I'd had extremely nasty things done to me, and my whole digestive system had collapsed so that I couldn't eat very much or anything solid without my stomach swelling like a balloon. From this evidence alone, I knew something terrible had happened to me. People would glibly pass by whilst saying that I was overreacting or that I ought to snap out of it. I was so confused that I thought maybe they were right, so I began my own experiments. I began addressing some of these others with a bit of the condescension and hostility that had been directed at me. It didn't take much to make them react. It's amazing how sensitive some people can be -- way, way more reactive than I. I'd been extremely stoical, throughout the abuse and long recovery period.
But the severity of my circumstances had not been caused by me or even by my capacity for stoically bearing up. In reality, I had come from a very severe culture and high intensity situation, and my level of emotional attunement to the culture I had entered was not refined or exacting enough. I did not have any sense of what was normal behavior in the new culture and wasn't able to observe the different sorts of people that populated it, or to read between the lines enough.
Also my capacity to respond with adequate emotional attunement had been damaged by my father's personality and his extreme rages, which had caused me to expect that I would only be in danger if someone were directly raging at me. In fact the opposite was true, and I was being subtly but consistently undermined.
The people who kept saying that what I needed was more stoicism were in fact out of their minds, because it was my very capacity for stoical persistence that had led me to be able to endure a hostile situation to the point that my organic system was breaking down. Additional idiots were those who said I was too socially sensitive. The opposite was again true, since I'd had no exposure to contemporary Western culture before the age of 15, so I really wasn't able to ascertain clearly whether somebody insulting me subtly or was being genuine and straight-up. Therefore I could hardly have taken offence at something I was unable to ascertain in the first instance.
It has taken me decades to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and nobody helped me. Even those I thought would logically be allies backstabbed me and ran away.
Your videos, though, have been of great value.