Abdicate responsibility – Trigger warning

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel in today’s world that you’re only noticed when you have the worst problem of all. If your Instagram account just brags about depression. Or if you have suicidal thoughts and are about to implement them. Only then will you get a place in the hospital. Only then will you be taken seriously.

Why do so few take you seriously or take it as an excuse when you talk openly about your illness? If you’re okay, you’ll be told to be normal or you’re annoying. And if you feel bad and they find out what the reason is, it’s also wrong. So many times I’ve noticed this behavior lately and I really don’t judge anyone who has treated me like that – don’t get me wrong. But then you don’t have to be surprised if you don’t tell anything anymore, have secrets or make up as plausible as possible-sounding lies.

I also learned what real ability to criticize means. You can’t imagine how much I hate that saying, “Insight is the first step to improvement.” Okay, hate is a strong word, but I can’t think of a more appropriate verb. Not liking is expressed too easily, because then it is not taken seriously and hate too hard. Anyway, I can’t please everyone, but I hope you all know what I mean.

I have learned that the first step is far from the insight needed to improve. It’s the will and the knowledge about how to change it. That’s the first step. And then comes the step of thinking about how to break out of the annually recognizable pattern. But like I said, you have to want to. And no, unfortunately it’s still not done after that. It takes practice and hard work that many cannot cope with. Because there’s still a disease that sometimes stops you from doing it. If this disease controls you, there are things you can’t do right away. And for those who still haven’t understood it until now: No, it’s not an excuse, it’s a disease recognised by a specialist doctor, therapist or psychologist, which may be there for the rest of your life. BUT which you can still understand, accept and learn to deal with.

To come back to the ability to criticize: in my opinion, those who go through this very process are capable of criticizing. Of course, not always with the disease in mind, because many do not have it at all. But it can also be applied to many other areas of life.

I always thought I was uncritical. For years, I’ve been telling myself that because some random person on this planet might have said it to me, perhaps without really being so mean and serious. But maybe I am. Because I always take criticism to heart. By now I know that I had to understand for myself what is real criticism and what is just an accusation. Then I think about it and I think about it, and then I figure out how to get out of it. But that’s the fatal mistake. The question you have to ask yourself is, do I want to get out of this pattern? Do I like this pattern? Do I just want to get out of that pattern to please the other person better? And if the answer to the last question is yes, then there is no point. For the other person, this answer may come as “unable to criticize.” But it’s not. After all, you have considered all possible paths and come to a decision for yourself.

In my opinion, it is precisely those people who constantly perceive the criticism as an attack on their own person and try to shoot at it with a completely banal thing that has nothing to do with the subject and then claim that the other person cannot handle the criticism.

What many people, including me, sometimes still find hard is to understand that people can change. Through insights, experiences and conversations a person is constantly evolving and it may be that I or the one person you are thinking about may have been incapable of criticism. But that doesn’t mean it’s still like that. A friend recently gave me something banal-sounding, but still so helpful: “I always look at people just as they are now. What happened once happened happened.“Somehow I see it the same way, even though I have never acted according to this pattern in the past. Because, from a young age, I wasn’t taught to forgive people or accept their change. I wasn’t aware of this kind of scheme, even if it sounds so banal. Of course, everyone still needs to know for himself what he is doing and in which way he is doing it.