Taking things a little too personally
How a general statement as ‘A mother will always know what to do with her own baby’ can be taken the wrong way, misunderstood to be a personal attack, and perceived as being disrespectful or hurtful is beyond anything I am capable of understanding.
I say it a hundred times to myself in my head - using different tones, and different voices… and I still cannot understand how I was able to upset someone (or anyone, for that matter) by saying ‘A mother will always know what to do with her own baby’.
So after trying to understand how it could have been taken personally - and much frustration close to that of me wanting to break many things… I had to let it go.
This person seriously thinks that everything revolves around her….. That is the only explanation I can think of… apart from the insecurity she must be going through. Poor dear.
I can imagine that person feeling a million times worse that how I will ever feel, wanting to take everything personally. It must be a pretty shitty feeling. I actually put myself in the shoes of a person that would take everything personally.
Imagine this - over tea, someone says, my favorite color is yellow… and because you are wearing a blue dress, and you take that statement personally so you end up thinking your friend just said your blue dress is ugly.
Wouldn’t life totally suck if you just took things so personally all the time?
For instance, during the time when I was a new mother… and every time my baby cried, I was automatically asked if my baby was hungry. If I were to take that personally, I would totally think these people (who kept asking me if my baby was hungry) were accusing me of starving my baby.
And that time when I was enjoying a mouthwatering spaghetti carbonara, and this person told me the cheese from the carbonara sauce would turn in to mucus, which would end up in my breast milk, and give my baby mucus. If I were to take that personally I would think that person was trying to tell me I am killing my baby… But I just filed it under ‘SHIT people say to annoy me’.
Vaccinations are compulsory. Well, somewhat. Could I live with myself if I could have protected my child from something like polio, rotavirus, hepatitis etc. and didn’t? No, I wouldn’t be able to. So when someone questions me about why I vaccinate my child… taking it personally, again - I would wonder to myself, why are you accusing me of harming my own child? Instead, I file it under CRAP people say.
The list goes on and on from what I feed my child to whether or not my child wears shoes… And if I were to take every single comment personally, I would totally convince myself I am a terrible mother, underserving to be one - call child protection services!!! and just doing everything possible to screw with my baby’s well-being. Hence, I continue to file all these comments under shit and crap people just wanna say to me because they think they know everything about being a parent.
Taking things too personally indeed!
