[Aurornis]

> I think a lot of people just don't have a good baseline for what's normal.

I saw a lot of this when I mentored college grads for a while.

I also saw another problem where people were resistant to the idea that they were normal. This happened a lot with tech students who grew up being the smartest kid in their local elementary school and the computer wizard in the family. They grew up being told they were smart and destined for success. When they didn't get selected for a FAANG job or their startup wasn't successful, they'd often go searching for alternate explanations. ADHD was a common one. I can't count how many times I listened to people explain to me that they were "going to get a FAANG job" or "going to do a startup" but then they "discovered they had ADHD". Like it wasn't okay to just get a normal job, they had to have a specific and public reason why they weren't in a 99th percentile position.

[robocat]

How can we help our friends that buy into this self-victimisation?

Our culture accepts and normalises the behaviour of using self-deceptive excuses. Our culture provides prepackaged excuses which are socially unacceptable to confront. It is a self-reinforcing system including professionals and woowoo practitioners.

The word trauma gets trivialised to be used as an outcome for the normal vicissitudes of life: blame your parents for everything and accept you can never "recover" and you must never repress. Woowoo past-life trauma and regression therapies and discussions - arrrgh.

My responses so far are limited to (a) dropping people I like from my life because their behaviour was unacceptable, (b) playing along with the beliefs of other friends regardless of the damage of those beliefs, (c) slowly trying to influence those I care about the most (d) blithely ignoring everything - training myself to not care.

We can all clearly see faults in others. Our other problem is to recognise within ourselves when we are making self-deceptive excuses or blaming others for things under our own control. Should I buy into the self-help industry? Counselling, coaching, or woowoo?

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

Have you tried telling them straight up that their behaviour is unacceptable? That they need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and complaining or no one will want to be around them?

I found out this lesson the hard way. I was a miserable kid. I don't know how it figured it out, but feeling sorry for yourself accomplishes nothing. Maybe life is shit. Maybe you're over-exaggerating. Doesn't matter, you're not going to get out of that situation by 'woowoo'ing.

Sometimes folks just need to reflect. One core memory I have was when I was really young. I was crying over something. My older brother's friend said to me "Why are you crying? You just want attention!" and that shut me right up. I thought about it, realized he was right, and realized I didn't need to cry.

[robocat]

> Have you tried telling them straight up that their behaviour is unacceptable?

Yea, but it isn't effective on anybody that is fooling themselves or that isn't interested in listening to me. I lack the skill of influence. My usual outcome in this situation is that I drop anyone that is unwilling to listen because it isn't healthy for me. I do give people the benefit of the doubt. Both parties need to respect each other - one-sided submission is unpleasant.

The majority of people learn for themselves as they mature and they are easy to communicate with. Your examples fit this.

The problem is the people that never learn or don't care to. I don't know what to do with them.

[shermantanktop]

It's not clear whether you think the problem is them or is you.

They own their problems, and the best you can do is tell them what you think, and maybe encourage them if you see some positive sign. You can also act as a positive role model, but people in that mindset are unable to draw lessons from others.

But if you hang around people who you think are miserable and self-defeating, and you don't want to move on, but you don't like it, maybe the problem is you.

[riehwvfbk]

Well, what's the alternative? What's not "woowoo"? Something along the lines of "you are bad, tainted by original sin and deserve to suffer?" Or is it "you need to hustle harder?" Well, guess what - self-harm is no more productive than self-delusion.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

I guess I had the opposite problem. I'm still not quite sure. I was maybe in the top 5 or so of my highschool but never thought of myself as a genius but more like "not dumb". Got into uni, did OK (3.4 GPA) but didn't try super hard either. Graduated, and then no one really wanted to hire me. Finally, some small PHP shop "took a chance" on me and I quickly became their top developer. Worked there 8 years, started getting interviews at a few different FAANG positions but kept failing, I guess because I thought I was so good at my day job I shouldn't have study for an interview. Eventually wised up, studied my butt off for 3 weeks and got in.

Where was I going with this story... it's hard to get into FAANG but it's really a matter of studying/practicing the right things. Doesn't matter how good you are at writing code, really.

Maybe some of these kids are qualified but don't interview well like me. Or maybe their resumes aren't interesting enough to pique a headhunter or whatever AI has taken their jobs.

This is probably not PC for me to say, but people need to stop using mental health issues as an excuse. Maybe they have some, maybe they don't. What are you going to do? Give up on life, or figure out how to work with them?