Reply to I feel perpetually misunderstood

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, your friend in the example sounds just like my mother. I might make an offhanded statement once, or explain one specific situation once, and then she overgeneralizes it and uses it to frame things for years, even decades sometimes. DH does this sometimes too. “That kid is a brat” because once, 20 years ago, when they were 2, they ran around wildly at an outdoor party.

Ok, a little off topic, but people get things stuck in their minds and just won’t let go. [/quote]

I don't think this is off topic, it's definitely a thing!

I really appreciated the PP who said this is about framing, it's someone applying a very specific frame to a situation and just refusing to accept that their interpretation could be off. It's probably a result of their anxiety -- putting everything in a specific context right away makes them feel in control of the situation and gives them a script to follow. So OP's friend heard "we're rescheduling our trip for money reasons" and for whatever reason she didn't know how to conceptualize that, so she placed the frame "friend with financial problems" on it and followed what she thinks is the script for helping a friend with financial problems (honestly, it sounds like part of the problem here is that this friend has extremely poor boundaries because even if I DID have financial issues, I would be annoyed by a friend bringing them up all the time and trying to get me a new job, but anyway).

My mom is like yours, she does this all the time. And I've notice that often the frame she'll put on something is one where she gets to feel pity for someone, or feel superior. So her frame is often about how people are victims or how everything is so terrible in their life and poor them. My best friend from childhood has a kid who is autistic, and my mom always takes this extremely grating, pitying tone when she talks about my friend, like "oh poor her, it must be so awful, I'm sure this isn't what she was expecting but she's so brave for surviving it." Meanwhile, my friend is a great mom, her son is super cool, and their family is happy. I think my mom just enjoys feeling sorry for someone else because it distracts her from any aspect of her own life that she might not be happy about (like the fact that her grandkids live further away from her and she doesn't see them as often as, say, my friend's mom who lives a couple blocks away from her grandkids).

So I think it's really about people intentionally misunderstanding things in order to tell themselves stories that make them feel good. That's why no matter what you say to set them straight, they stick to the frame they picked. It's one where they get to be a hero or come out on top.[/quote]

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