Question Re People Looking For Help

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This is going to come out wrong, but…
Why is that all the people who post momentary melodramatic thoughts along with attention getting threats of leaving their parish, The Church (where clearly they have spiritual friends or at the very least acquaintances, along with priests, etc) almost as a passive aggressive statement of - if you don’t help or pay attention to me I’m going to do something… Like a child would…
Generally, it seems they’ve had a bad day, week, month, break up, etc. Oh, and let’s not forget all the bad dreams… The one bad dream they had twice in ten or twenty years…

Within seconds, the posts receive numerous, Numerous, Concerns, well wishes, prayers, help, etc- page after page after page.

Before you jump and attack me, I don’t mean they don’t need prayers, help, etc. I truly don’t and pray for many.

However-
My question is what happens to all the people with the same and worse problems who are either more conservative or shy, or just don’t use dramatics for attention? I’ve seen many. They receive one or two kind replies and that’s it. Period.Done.
Clearly, I’m not including urgent prayer requests for others into this category.
That’s completely justified and any drama, stress , etc totally understandable.

So, what happens to the others? More specifically, like everything else in our world today, must we have a huge red flag waving danger or help, lost, scared *to get our attention???

Is it that or do we just allow ourselves to be manipulated?
 
Just do your best to help everyone. You can’t run out of prayers.
 
I haven’t noticed the exact phenomenon you’re describing, but if it’s true, maybe part of it is that those who appear dramatic actually do feel the way they’re describing. :confused:

And from me, the “original” Thread Killer, I have noticed that certain types of replies – sincere ones – tend to “shut down” conversation. For example, as far as I can remember, I have yet to have anybody engage me in a meaningful discussion on 1 Cor 9:19-23. Why not? I am not sure, but the things I conclude from it differ from the advice many here give each other. If I offer the advice without the scripture, I am wrong and leading others into sin. With the scripture, I am ignored. Or at least it seems that way to me. 🤷

Still, though, I’m curious if you actually went through every new thread that goes by and keep track whether you’d actually find the statistical correlation you’re talking about. I know it’s against forum rules – or at least guidelines or norms – to discuss other posters, but I am not sure that a question as general as yours is a problem because I don’t think you’re trying to “do the mods’ jobs.”

All that said, it is no secret that some of us posting here suffer from one or another mental illness, and that can color the way we express ourselves. When I look back, for example, at posts I made during manic phases, I tended to use language that was either slightly confusing, grandiose, emotional, or otherwise “attention getting.” It wasn’t with the intent on getting attention; it was more a case where I stated it the way it appeared to me at the moment. Sometimes I’d get many responses, both positive and negative, sometimes not. In fact, it seemed there were quite a few times when I felt the strongest about things and worded my posts to reflect that, it shut down threads to the point I could even bump them once or twice and still get no reply, at least to those posts made by me. In those cases, it felt like just the opposite of what you’re observing was taking place.

So yeah, some topics get more attention than others, and I’m not always sure when I or others say something I think is going to draw many responses and they don’t, why they don’t.

People get college degrees in marketing whereby they become highly trained to manipulate the actions of others. I’m told from them that people may think with their mind, but they are motivated by their emotions. Beyond that, I have little to offer in the marketing area. As an engineer myself, I think I am decent at weeding through the emotions to try to ascertain what is the actual issue at hand but when it comes down to a “call for action” I don’t really know what to write to exact a vigorous response from others. In this case, among others, I need more clarification before I can hope to address your actual concern, which I’ll clarify in my last paragraph below.

OTOH, as someone who used to be a trained volunteer answering the Youth Crisis Hotline, I am aware that when people have problems, you can’t always hope to solve those problems in a few minutes on the phone (or in a few posts on the Internet), but you try to help reframe them or at least show that you’ve heard not only what their problem is but how they’ve felt about it. Often by the time they call they are very frustrated, lonely, scared, intimidated, or whatever by the situation they are in, and chances are few people or more likely nobody they know in person has had the patience and empathy to hear them out. In these cases, discussing how they feel is often more useful than trying to get down to the facts at hand. Sometimes as individuals I can help understand what they are saying but I am not any sort of expert at group behavior so all this is just my speculation.

So again, I’m not sure I share your observation, but whether the math comes out in your favor or not, I now turn to you. What is it that triggers you to ask these questions, and how can we maybe help? Have you posted things that have been ignored and you feel it was because you were too “measured” in the way you described it? Or have you seen others who “need” or even seem to “deserve” a bigger response than they received?

Alan
 
I come out up front with certain kinds of people who ask for certain kinds of prayer requests, such as I had an online acquaintance who had some serious emotional problems and he used to post prayer requests about the success of his new friendship with a new friend that he just met, and we eventually figured out that what he really meant was, he is desperately lonely for a reason, because he is an attention-vampire who totally smothers any innocent person who is nice to him, basically cornering them into being his best friend for life within 24 hours of learning each others names, so at one point I told him up front, no, I am not praying for the success of your new friendship, because we all know what you’re going to do, and I’m not going to pray that your poor new friend drowns to death in the stormy ocean of your neediness, so how about I pray that you grow up instead and learn how to manage real friendships that are enjoyable for both parties?

Well he put me on ignore and went on to harvest more prayer requests for stuff I just couldn’t agree with and eventually he let it slip that he wanted an emotionally satisfying, romantic relationship with another guy, someone more than just a “friend”. Then I put him on ignore, and we both lived happily ever after.

So how does everyone else deal with inappropriate prayer requests?
 
DianaCC,

Thank you for your post. It helps me relate better to the OP.
DianaCC said:
Well he put me on ignore and went on to harvest more prayer requests for stuff I just couldn’t agree with and eventually he let it slip that he wanted an emotionally satisfying, romantic relationship with another guy, someone more than just a “friend”. Then I put him on ignore, and we both lived happily ever after.

So how does everyone else deal with inappropriate prayer requests?
Click to expand...
I ignore posts I’m not interested in, and quit posting in threads I think are definitely going nowhere. I don’t change my settings, though, because I like to see how others respond, and unless and until it gets really bad I just like to see all that is going on. Once in a long while, threads that seem to be just bickering, or attention-hogging, etc. produce interesting or even useful posts. Even if I don’t learn about Catholic teachings, I feel like the forums are good places to improve my “social skills” in my writing, and sometimes I think I benefit from seeing how others handle awkward or annoying situations.

You are right that some people here have emotional problems. Sometimes they are just immature; sometimes they have a full-blown mental disorder. Some of us are better able to handle those types of posts than others. When I was manic I sometimes thought I had the answer to everybody’s problems but I guess it was because my views were often out of the norm and/or the emotional content of my language, that I was occasionally referred to as a “troll.”

Now that I’m improved, though, I’m learning to pick and choose a little better what threads I participate in or even view. Especially if a thread has a low number of replies, now and then I like to go in where others don’t want to or probably won’t want to, and try to engage the OP. Now and then I find a “troll” who isn’t, and I enjoy helping get through to them.

Alan
 
AlanFromWichita said:
I’m learning to pick and choose…
Click to expand...
I’ve begun to notice patterns in how conversations degenerate. For example, whenever someone brings up the bad popes, even if they’re asking about specific historical details like what happened to their illegitimate children or what were their names, the conversation ALWAYS becomes a debate about papal infallibility. If someone asks, “Is Medjugorje in Bosnia or in Croatia?” it will end with an “Is it for real?” debate. Never fails. So I just unsubscribe when new people come on board and detour the question.

It’s almost as if certain keywords just trigger people into spewing regardless of the question.
 
Bix said:
This is going to come out wrong, but…
Why is that all the people who post momentary melodramatic thoughts along with attention getting threats of leaving their parish, The Church (where clearly they have spiritual friends or at the very least acquaintances, along with priests, etc) almost as a passive aggressive statement of - if you don’t help or pay attention to me I’m going to do something… Like a child would…
Generally, it seems they’ve had a bad day, week, month, break up, etc. Oh, and let’s not forget all the bad dreams… The one bad dream they had twice in ten or twenty years…

Within seconds, the posts receive numerous, Numerous, Concerns, well wishes, prayers, help, etc- page after page after page.

Before you jump and attack me, I don’t mean they don’t need prayers, help, etc. I truly don’t and pray for many.

However-
My question is what happens to all the people with the same and worse problems who are either more conservative or shy, or just don’t use dramatics for attention? I’ve seen many. They receive one or two kind replies and that’s it. Period.Done.
Clearly, I’m not including urgent prayer requests for others into this category.
That’s completely justified and any drama, stress , etc totally understandable.

So, what happens to the others? More specifically, like everything else in our world today, must we have a huge red flag waving danger or help, lost, scared *to get our attention???

Is it that or do we just allow ourselves to be manipulated?
Click to expand...
After you have been here for a while longer, you will learn to pick out the drama kings/queens; the ultra liberals/super conservatives; etc… and avoid reading their posts. 😉
 
Catholic1954 said:
After you have been here for a while longer, you will learn to pick out the drama kings/queens; the ultra liberals/super conservatives; etc… and avoid reading their posts. 😉
Click to expand...
I must have that skill already mastered, because I haven’t noticed the trend that the OP is talking about.
 
PatriceA said:
I must have that skill already mastered, because I haven’t noticed the trend that the OP is talking about.
Click to expand...
Oh I have. He’s talking about posts where they say things like…
  • “My parish priest refused to marry us so we’re converting to Episcopalian.” Then it comes out the groom hasn’t got an annulment from his previous marriage.
  • Or they say “The Catholic Church is racist because the seating arrangements at mass in the south were segregated so I’m leaving the Church.” No mention of all the millions of interracial marriages the CC has solemnized over the last two millennia, but facts can be confusing for some people.
  • Or “The Catholic Church presumes to dictate who I can and cannot love”, and then comes an endless flood of cut&pastes from the catechism, hairsplitting over the h-word, arguments over chaste friendships, love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin, etc.
Many of these threads just get deleted within hours, because the moderators know how the game is played, and that’s maybe why you don’t see so many of them.

People love to come on here and make flamboyant statements as if to slap the Church in the face and top it off with threats of self-destructive behavior. But that’s what being a teenager is all about, isn’t it?
 
I’ve stopped following threads that are about the OP venting over an issue and not really looking for advice and help. Sometimes people persist in their attitude even when the church teaching is explained in a clear way. At the first sight of that I leave. But these are the topics that get a lot of traffic for some reason.
 
🤷 I think there’s a certain level of manipulation going on and I think sometimes people don’t realize they ARE manipulating others and others don’t realize they’re being manipulated.

But I do think people who seem more desperate garner more attention, if just because they incite emotion in those who read their posts.

I’m a thread killer. 😉 So if you think a thread needs to get stopped just send me on in.
 
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