Venting

[jay]

A couple of days ago, I looked at a graph, had a half-hour of angst over some implications, vented in an LJ entry, shook it off and went on to work, focussed on other things. I nearly disabled comments... instead, spent most of my energy over the past two days replying to comments and working out the aftereffects with various partners.

A meta-level comment: I periodically see something that I perceive as negatively reflecting on myself, become depressed, and then rebound. The "down" period is usually minutes-to-hours... I don't generally sit alone at home bashing myself. And I know that I'm not worthless, or completely without some virtues... whatever I may feel when I'm in one of those self-critical periods.

Posting during those periods, however, has led to unnecessary drama on several occasions (either here or on alt.poly) over the past five years. I think I should begin disabling comments when I'm venting at myself...

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I can see the value in writing it out, but maybe you want to go a step further than disabling comments, and make the entry private?

[geekchick]

I second the recommendation about perhaps making those entries private. I hope our phone conversation last night helped explain at least a little about why some of us react the way we do to those kinds of statements.

Love you.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Something I've been learning the hard way over the last couple of months is not to discuss my feelings/emotions while I'm still processing them. I've made some very hurtful statements that end up not even in the least reflecting how I really feel about the situation, but because I'm new at dealing with intense emotions, I can run through a whole gamut of feelings as a reaction before I settle on what clicks in my brain as my real feelings (and it ends up usually agreeing with what my logical side tells me makes sense). This has caused the wasted expense of a lot of energy. I've tried to set a subconscious "governor" on my mouth, and am working on actively thinking about engaging it, especially when I feel the rush accompanied by an intense emotional reaction. I'm not perfect yet (far from it), but I'm improving. I think the idea of making totally private LJ posts as an outlet in your case is a great idea. Maybe you don't even have to do it on LJ for fear of mis-marking a post and having others read it. Keep a password-protected text document somewhere. Use a paper journal. Whatever...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I had stuff like this too a while back: I'd post something and get a whole bunch of comments seeming to assume that my mood was permanent or much more serious than it really was. I tried to include disclaimers and write slightly differently: instead of saying "I hate myself" I will now say "I'm having one of those I-hate-myself days." At least the comments are different now.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's a bad idea. Still, I hope you got something good out of the threads. *hugs* are offered if you want them.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

I think I should begin disabling comments when I'm venting at myself...

Maybe if you specified something like "I'm venting at myself and will probably rebound shortly" the nature of the comments would as a result, be of a different, less stressed and stressful sort.

But, if you'd really rather that people didn't comment at all (except by private email), then yeah, disabling comments on those entries would be a good option.

[kitchenwitch.livejournal.com]

I think:

a) Private entries are silly. What's the point? If Livejournal wasn't actually meant to be a JOURNAL, it'd be nothing but people posting the latest amusing Flash animation about George W. Bush. There's a reason that you're using LJ instead of a paper journal or a word processing program - you want your thoughts to be public, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. From my own perspective, having stuff public keeps me honest with myself because it's not just ME I'm saying stuff to anymore.

b) People need to cut you some slack. If you want to vent in your journal, do it. They may not use their journal like a journal, but that's no reason to not let you do it or be judgemental about it. Not to mention, EVERYONE has those moments of self-doubt or self-hatred or hatred of their lives, and they're lying if they say they don't. Just because they don't make entries about it, it doesn't mean they don't have those thoughts so it's unfair to attack you for them,

c) I see no-comments-allowed angsty entries as much more serious than ones where commenting is allowed. It kind of says, "This is how I feel and you can't talk me out of it. Leave me alone."