Cheerfulness as a coping mechanism

[uuu]

Well, I think it would be in bad faith to share about this with IRL friends so I will write about it here instead. The girl turned in a revised draft of her thesis today and had to go to her committee members to sign it. They all said "I won't pass you unless the others sign off" and deferred offering a final evaluation until it got to the final professor. In the comments section he wrote, "This thesis meets the minimum standard" (in Korean). There was a part where he was supposed to circle A, B, or C and he just left it blank and told her to circle as she saw fit ....

She related this story to us over dinner with characteristic cheer.

It was very difficult to watch. I used to enjoy the schadenfreude aspect but not anymore.

 

[mintoots]

Well, I think it would be in bad faith to share about this with IRL friends so I will write about it here instead. The girl turned in a revised draft of her thesis today and had to go to her committee members to sign it. They all said "I won't pass you unless the others sign off" and deferred offering a final evaluation until it got to the final professor. In the comments section he wrote, "This thesis meets the minimum standard" (in Korean). There was a part where he was supposed to circle A, B, or C and he just left it blank and told her to circle as she saw fit ....

She related this story to us over dinner with characteristic cheer.

It was very difficult to watch. I used to enjoy the schadenfreude aspect but not anymore.

Well that was passive-aggressive and playing it safe surely. Is it true that the Korean standard for academics is higher than usual? Do you think her thesis would have passed if she went to a different university?

 

[uuu]

Well that was passive-aggressive and playing it safe surely. Is it true that the Korean standard for academics is higher than usual? Do you think her thesis would have passed if she went to a different university?

I wish you I could give you a definitive answer, but I think that it basically depends on the university. Our university is well-ranked and has high standards, but like any school, their ability to get funding from the government and attract donors is to a certain extent tied to metrics like graduation rates. In my experience, there is intense competition for getting high grades, but outright failing is not especially common.

In my labmate's case, unfortunately, the diploma alone will only carry her so far. From what I have seen, if she is asked in a job interview to explain her research or summarize a topic from her coursework, she will not be able to produce a very convincing answer.

Of course, with her family's resources, it may not matter.

 

[Matty]

I don't think her cheerfulness is a coping strategy. I think she probably doesn't get upset by much.

Some people are motivated by fear, insofar as they are trying to avoid failure/danger/exclusion/etc. Other people are motivated by attraction to something they find appealing. She sounds like the latter.

Motivation from attraction can be intrinsic or extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation can be things like a passion for competitiveness, for a subject, for praise, etc. Intrinsic motivation can be things like a love of knowledge, learning, personal accomplishment, etc.

This girl, from how you describe her, seems to be motivated by a love of keeping herself busy, and a love of social engagement. She may have no interest in her studies, except insofar as it allows her to socialise with others, and it fills her day with things to do. It's a bit useless to everyone else, but she'll probably always skate through just enough to keep her engaged with others.

 

[Sloe Djinn]

Basically sounds like Pixar’s Inside Out but the Happiness character murdered Sadness.

I’m guessing you’re already past the point where you’d be able to interact directly with her and explore her motivations?

 

[dZpADTLrPmX4c]

We interrupt this thread for a public service announcement:

Sloe Djinn is best Djinn

Thank you for your time. We return to your regular content <3

 

[Vict]

When you mentioned "family's resources," well, that completed a picture. Why worry about some bullshit a professor says when your life won't depend on that person's opinion anyway?

But I identified with some of what you described. I also strive for the minimum required when the task or assignment isn't really of personal interest. This is how I approach school, work, life, etc. because perfectionism is a losing game. Just check the box and move on. But I also have a sense of work ethic inherited from a hard-working parent, so even when I'm trying to do the minimum, that minimum is done well. And that seems to be working in my life, so on it goes.

And you know, I've been accused of being cheerful in the face of adversity. I'd say it's trying to put on a positive outlook because no one else is stepping into that role. We can commiserate in misery or failure with no resolution, or we can understand how we failed and march forward with the remains. If we can fix it, we fix it. If our failure is final, accept the responsibility and hope to do better next time.

 

[uuu]

When you mentioned "family's resources," well, that completed a picture. Why worry about some bullshit a professor says when your life won't depend on that person's opinion anyway?

But I identified with some of what you described. I also strive for the minimum required when the task or assignment isn't really of personal interest. This is how I approach school, work, life, etc. because perfectionism is a losing game. Just check the box and move on. But I also have a sense of work ethic inherited from a hard-working parent, so even when I'm trying to do the minimum, that minimum is done well. And that seems to be working in my life, so on it goes.

And you know, I've been accused of being cheerful in the face of adversity. I'd say it's trying to put on a positive outlook because no one else is stepping into that role. We can commiserate in misery or failure with no resolution, or we can understand how we failed and march forward with the remains. If we can fix it, we fix it. If our failure is final, accept the responsibility and hope to do better next time.

Yes, I agree that there's a place for good cheer in the face of adversity, as you put it. And also that perfectionism is a losing game. But we are talking about extremes here: The girl I'm talking about is lazy to the point of being a burden to others, not simply "not a perfectionist." She didn't even show up at the lab today, even though we had a meeting...

 

[slant]

Reading this thread my only question and I don't mean this in a rude way, I realize it's going to come across quite blunt-

But why do you care, @uuu ?

It seems odd to me to spend so much time and effort speculating on another person's motives when there's no actual direct impact on you or reason for you to be doing this. Seems like you are investing a fair amount of time into figuring this out I'm just trying to figure out how it impacts you life, like what benefit do you get from "figuring it out", assuming that's even possible (which I don't think it is.)

 

[Sloe Djinn]

Reading this thread my only question and I don't mean this in a rude way, I realize it's going to come across quite blunt-

But why do you care, @uuu ?

It seems odd to me to spend so much time and effort speculating on another person's motives when there's no actual direct impact on you or reason for you to be doing this. Seems like you are investing a fair amount of time into figuring this out I'm just trying to figure out how it impacts you life, like what benefit do you get from "figuring it out", assuming that's even possible (which I don't think it is.)

My guess is that when stuck in an academic cohort and you are forced into close proximity for an extended period, annoying idiosyncrasies can start to grate on the nerves despite common sense.

 

[slant]

My guess is that when stuck in an academic cohort and you are forced into close proximity for an extended period, annoying idiosyncrasies can start to grate on the nerves despite common sense.

So maybe it's more of a form of venting/self soothing, trying to relieve the tension and stress?

"Hey y'all this person annoys me let me tell you about why, why do you think this person is annoying?"

I'm mostly just questioning it because I feel like I'm dumb like this girl and I probably think similar to the way she does and it would probably hurt my feelings to know I'm just trying to exist and live my own life and somebody is so annoyed by me going to school and trying to pass classes in whatever way is my style that they wanna speculate why I'm doing what I'm doing and in a very judgement, negative way.

It's clear OP doesn't like this girl. That's ok, we all don't like people. I'm not sure that OP genuinely cares about why this girl is the way she is as much as they want reassurance over

So, I have posted recently about defending my master's thesis, and I wanted to share a bit about a classmate of mine who defended her thesis today. To put it bluntly, she is a fairly lazy student, often puts her work off until the last minute, and her seminar presentations and classwork often have lots of typos and errors that would have been easy to catch in a single round of revision.

I don't mean this as a moral judgment against her—life is more than school—but as a factual description of her academic performance. This context matters because I have often been in the room when a professor or adviser has given her harsh criticism, telling her that these sort of habits have to change if she is going to have a successful career, etc. The criticism was gentle and constructive when she was a new student, but since her performance hasn't improved, there have been several times when her adviser has become visibly upset, asking why she would waste his time with a half-baked presentation.

Now, the thing that I find remarkable about this girl is that in the face of this kind of criticism—criticism that would turn me into a puddle of shame—she is downright cheerful. She thanks the professor profusely, says she really appreciates his feedback, and exchanges cheerful pleasantries with him over dinner. And then she incorporates absolutely none of his feedback into her work.

For example, today, she went downstairs to defend her thesis, and it took more than twice as long as was scheduled. Based on what I have seen in her seminar presentations, I think that this means that the professors asked her tough questions and she wasn't able to put together a coherent answer. It could also mean that the professors spent a lot of time in their closed session debating whether to let her graduate, or a combination of those things.

Afterwards, her advisor called her in for a private conference, and she came back out saying, "Wow, omg, maybe I'm not even going to graduate, but I will, right? Right?" You know, trying to seek reassurance from the other students in our cohort that she was going to be OK. And then she started flitting around handing out snacks, all smiles.

Again, I'm not this girl's dad, and I don't consider it my place or responsibility to point out to her that if she redirected the effort she currently puts into grinning away the criticism into actually improving her work, she might be able to avoid the criticism in the first place. But I know that she actually really dislikes being publically berated, because she has told me as much. So the thing I don't get is why her coping mechanisms are so ... bizarre. I just haven't really met anyone like this, who sole mood is one of unflagging cheerfulness, even when she is having an objectively shitty day.

My question is, what do you think is going on psychologically that has my friend stuck in this pattern, where she responds to criticism with inscrutable cheerfulness but never incorporates the criticism into her actions? Have you ever met someone like this? What sort of life experiences or personality traits could engender this sort of behavior?

To answer your question, I'm this way and the reason I'm this way is that I was raised with my mother 24/7 constantly criticizing me. She explained to me once that the only reason she even talked to me was because she knew I didn't have any friends and I'm lonely and although she would rather watch TV than talk to me, she's afraid she will kill myself if she doesn't talk to me so here she is giving me attention.

When you are raised your entire life to feel like you are a burden and that you don't matter and that everything you do contributes to ruining somebody else's life simply because you were born and you have to exist, one way to try to cope with that is to look at the bright side. Try to see the positive no matter what. Because if you let in the negativity and darkness you'll realize like everyone has been trying to tell you all along: you are worthless and should never have been born.

I take every person's criticism to heart and don't evaluate whether or not the person is qualified to tell me what they've said or if their opinion really matters.

So in trying to recover from this, I have realized I need to trust myself above all others that I have to love myself and trust that I'm doing my best. Anybody can have a problem with anything I do, just because they have authority over me doesn't mean it's true. Believing everything my mother said really damaged me.

So, when you see somebody being cheerful like this, realize they probably have had a really hard life and are trying to live. They are desperately trying to keep living no matter all of the terrible things they've been told about themselves and had to go through. I do not have the emotional capabity to take on everyone's negativity and complaining - that's all I've ever known my entire life. So I want to be positive, I want to be happy.

Also, if I'm not performing very well I'm going to try to accept my limitations in life and just be happy with what I am capable of doing instead of beating myself up for what I'm not.

 

[Sloe Djinn]

So maybe it's more of a form of venting/self soothing, trying to relieve the tension and stress?

"Hey y'all this person annoys me let me tell you about why, why do you think this person is annoying?"

Yup.

 

[uuu]

Thank you @slant for your response.

To answer your question, I'm this way and the reason I'm this way is that I was raised with my mother 24/7 constantly criticizing me. She explained to me once that the only reason she even talked to me was because she knew I didn't have any friends and I'm lonely and although she would rather watch TV than talk to me, she's afraid she will kill myself if she doesn't talk to me so here she is giving me attention.

When you are raised your entire life to feel like you are a burden and that you don't matter and that everything you do contributes to ruining somebody else's life simply because you were born and you have to exist, one way to try to cope with that is to look at the bright side. Try to see the positive no matter what. Because if you let in the negativity and darkness you'll realize like everyone has been trying to tell you all along: you are worthless and should never have been born.

That's a deeply fucked up thing for a mother to say, and I can imagine those words leaving a deep scar. Your story makes sense to me: I can see how, having grown up in this kind of exacting, negative, hypercritical environment, your choice to adopt a positive outlook in adulthood is an effective way of reclaiming the nourishment and gentleness that were denied to you as a child.

It would probably hurt my feelings to know I'm just trying to exist and live my own life and somebody is so annoyed by me going to school and trying to pass classes in whatever way is my style that they wanna speculate why I'm doing what I'm doing and in a very judgement, negative way.

It would hurt my feelings, too. Although I cannot compel you to do so, I hope that you can believe me when I say that I don't have any moral animus against this girl. She has the right to pursue a graduate education if she wants to, and I will not stand in the way of that or require her to go about it in the same way as I do. But there are times that her failure to perform professionally causes difficulty for me, as her coworker (not just classmate), and I need to decide how to react in these moments (see point C below).

So, to get to your question, which is an important one:

But why do you care, @uuu ?

It seems odd to me to spend so much time and effort speculating on another person's motives when there's no actual direct impact on you or reason for you to be doing this. Seems like you are investing a fair amount of time into figuring this out I'm just trying to figure out how it impacts you life, like what benefit do you get from "figuring it out", assuming that's even possible (which I don't think it is.)

My reasons for creating and continuing to participate in this thread are, in roughly increasing order of importance, as follows.

A. I want to vent.

Basically this:

My guess is that when stuck in an academic cohort and you are forced into close proximity for an extended period, annoying idiosyncrasies can start to grate on the nerves despite common sense.

B. I would like reassurance that I am not a bad person for disliking her.

I spent many years in a community (evangelicalism) where saying anything negative about another person was regarded as a sin (plank in your own eye etc.). I was taught that anytime I find fault in another, it is really just a reflection of my own sin and I should start by correcting my own flaws. This is a good heuristic, to be honest.

But as I have grown out of the church, I have realized that there are going to be people in life who I just don't like. And rather than trying in vain to delete these emotions, I am working on naming them for what they are—this person makes me feel tired, this person is a burden to me—so that I can understand my reactions on a deeper level.

C. If I can empathize with her, then it may be easier to tolerate her in the work setting.

I would like learn to contain my feelings of annoyance to the specific situations in which we are working together and she makes my life difficult—rather than incubate a hatred that bleeds over into, as you say, being ticked off by her mere existence or presence. The latter would be an overreaction, and I haven't gone there yet. But I can imagine myself slipping into this kind of overreaction if I don't think carefully about what I dislike about her and why I feel that way.

So, given that I don't like her—this is a statement of fact—but am required to keep working with her for one more month, I would like to be able to manage our professional relationship in a way that doesn't cause me lots of stress or unnecessary confrontation (since I am not her supervisor). If, next time she does something that annoys me, I can remind myself that this is rooted in her own personal struggles, then I hope that it will be easier to let it go.

D. Most important reason: Idle curiosity.

Given that, as you say, you prefer to keep things positive, it might be difficult for you to relate to this, but I actually enjoy speculating about the psychology of other people, what happened in their past that made them that way, what it's like inside their head, and so on. Basically, this is my hobby. It is not emotionally laborious. My feeling in participating in this discussion is one of intellectual enjoyment, like watching a VSauce video or something. I simply think it's interesting.

If I had a stronger moral animus against her, then this kind of intellectual detachment would not be possible. In that situation, participating in a thread like this might just force me to relive all the annoying moments, further cementing my dislike and anxiety over the situation, and possibly kindle the kind of "unbridled hatred" mentioned in point C. But I think it's clear from the tone of my previous posts that I'm not going down that road.

If, in the future, I ever make a thread similar to this where it looks like I am doing myself emotional harm by dwelling too much on a situation that I have no control over, then I hope that you guys will call me out.

 

[slant]

Thank you @slant for your response.



That's a deeply fucked up thing for a mother to say, and I can imagine those words leaving a deep scar. Your story makes sense to me: I can see how, having grown up in this kind of exacting, negative, hypercritical environment, your choice to adopt a positive outlook in adulthood is an effective way of reclaiming the nourishment and gentleness that were denied to you as a child.



It would hurt my feelings, too. Although I cannot compel you to do so, I hope that you can believe me when I say that I don't have any moral animus against this girl. She has the right to pursue a graduate education if she wants to, and I will not stand in the way of that or require her to go about it in the same way as I do. But there are times that her failure to perform professionally causes difficulty for me, as her coworker (not just classmate), and I need to decide how to react in these moments (see point C below).

So, to get to your question, which is an important one:



My reasons for creating and continuing to participate in this thread are, in roughly increasing order of importance, as follows.

A. I want to vent.

Basically this:


B. I would like reassurance that I am not a bad person for disliking her.

I spent many years in a community (evangelicalism) where saying anything negative about another person was regarded as a sin (plank in your own eye etc.). I was taught that anytime I find fault in another, it is really just a reflection of my own sin and I should start by correcting my own flaws. This is a good heuristic, to be honest.

But as I have grown out of the church, I have realized that there are going to be people in life who I just don't like. And rather than trying in vain to delete these emotions, I am working on naming them for what they are—this person makes me feel tired, this person is a burden to me—so that I can understand my reactions on a deeper level.

C. If I can empathize with her, then it may be easier to tolerate her in the work setting.

I would like learn to contain my feelings of annoyance to the specific situations in which we are working together and she makes my life difficult—rather than incubate a hatred that bleeds over into, as you say, being ticked off by her mere existence or presence. The latter would be an overreaction, and I haven't gone there yet. But I can imagine myself slipping into this kind of overreaction if I don't think carefully about what I dislike about her and why I feel that way.

So, given that I don't like her—this is a statement of fact—but am required to keep working with her for one more month, I would like to be able to manage our professional relationship in a way that doesn't cause me lots of stress or unnecessary confrontation (since I am not her supervisor). If, next time she does something that annoys me, I can remind myself that this is rooted in her own personal struggles, then I hope that it will be easier to let it go.

D. Most important reason: Idle curiosity.

Given that, as you say, you prefer to keep things positive, it might be difficult for you to relate to this, but I actually enjoy speculating about the psychology of other people, what happened in their past that made them that way, what it's like inside their head, and so on. Basically, this is my hobby. It is not emotionally laborious. My feeling in participating in this discussion is one of intellectual enjoyment, like watching a VSauce video or something. I simply think it's interesting.

If I had a stronger moral animus against her, then this kind of intellectual detachment would not be possible. In that situation, participating in a thread like this might just force me to relive all the annoying moments, further cementing my dislike and anxiety over the situation, and possibly kindle the kind of "unbridled hatred" mentioned in point C. But I think it's clear from the tone of my previous posts that I'm not going down that road.

If, in the future, I ever make a thread similar to this where it looks like I am doing myself emotional harm by dwelling too much on a situation that I have no control over, then I hope that you guys will call me out.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I did my best with my response and I hope that it did not come across as attacking or defensive. I think I was raised much the same way as you that when we find fault in others we are usually trying to avoid looking at our own problems. I still generally tend to believe this so this explains my resistance to the premise of my thread that we ought to pick apart people and speculate about why they are the way they are. I think it's a natural thing humans do but I get scared that it can lead to false assumptions or thinking you know what somebody is about when you only have a superficial understanding at best. I think you have done a good job at disarming whatever reaction I was having to the thread, clarifying yourself in a concise and clear manner and I really do appreciate that.

I definitely have coworkers who have annoying behavior but I try to divorce their behavior from who they are as a person and appreciate what they do contribute. But again this is probably an aspect of my coping mechanism that we don't share.

It's not as much I think you're in emotional distress by speculating on people but that might create emotional distress for the people being speculated on. I know they're unaware the thread but there is a part of me that just feels bad reading this, feels bad for this girl. But there's again probably my own personal issue.

It sucks that you are in a situation where you can't create any boundaries or have any productive discussions about how to increase your ability to work effectively together. I had a coworker who repeatedly makes mistakes and continues to do so when we have shown him the easy fix so that it never happens again. We are understaffed so he can do this as many times as he wants, we need him, he will not be fired. I have had intense anger at him for his incompetency but eventually I just had to accept that's how he is going to be. I don't think knowing why he's doing what he is doing makes me feel any better about it.

It's just, some people are on a different wavelength then you are. It sucks. Thankfully it's temporary and when you get done with it you will have some experience working with difficult people for in the future when you have to work with more difficult people.

Maybe try finding the humor in the situation?

This post pretty much became the positivity attitude you're describing that you hate, so I'm sorry for that. I'm sure it's the last thing you want to hear right now

 

[uuu]

Thank you for your tolerance. I didn't feel attacked by you, but your message showed me that my attitude and handling of this situation could come across as arrogant or vindictive, and I felt compelled to clarify.

It's not as much I think you're in emotional distress by speculating on people but that might create emotional distress for the people being speculated on. I know they're unaware the thread but there is a part of me that just feels bad reading this, feels bad for this girl. But there's again probably my own personal issue.

Yes—if I am honest, I have a few misgivings here too. I would not say the things I've shared here with, for example, my other coworkers or other students in my department, for whom this girl is an actual person they interact with and not just some abstraction. The reason I feel comfortable posting these thoughts on INFJs—or I should say, the way I rationalize these posts—is that (I assume) that nobody here knows my labmate IRL, and I am confident that she won't find this forum, either (I'm not even sure how active she is on the English-speaking internet). So, this website functions as sort of an interactive diary, where I can post my thoughts with the implicit question "Does anybody else?" and without the risk of doing the harm that would be done by talking about this with real people. Or to put it another way: If I am thinking these thoughts anyway, then writing them down isn't really all that different.

But this is probably an incomplete argument. Spreading excessive amounts of negative gossip in real life is a bad thing to do not just because it might get back to someone and cause harm/drama, but because the end goal of gossip is usually more than the dispassionate exchange of information: The gossiper inherently seeks to establish social leverage and/or receive validation by sharing one-sided stories in which he comes across as the moral superior. So, if gossiping is immoral, having a cryptographic guarantee that it is being done anonymously doesn't suddenly make it OK, does it?

 

[slant]

Thank you for your tolerance. I didn't feel attacked by you, but your message showed me that my attitude and handling of this situation could come across as arrogant or vindictive, and I felt compelled to clarify.

Yes—if I am honest, I have a few misgivings here too. I would not say the things I've shared here with, for example, my other coworkers or other students in my department, for whom this girl is an actual person they interact with and not just some abstraction. The reason I feel comfortable posting these thoughts on INFJs—or I should say, the way I rationalize these posts—is that (I assume) that nobody here knows my labmate IRL, and I am confident that she won't find this forum, either (I'm not even sure how active she is on the English-speaking internet). So, this website functions as sort of an interactive diary, where I can post my thoughts with the implicit question "Does anybody else?" and without the risk of doing the harm that would be done by talking about this with real people. Or to put it another way: If I am thinking these thoughts anyway, then writing them down isn't really all that different.

But this is probably an incomplete argument. Spreading excessive amounts of negative gossip in real life is a bad thing to do not just because it might get back to someone and cause harm/drama, but because the end goal of gossip is usually more than the dispassionate exchange of information: The gossiper inherently seeks to establish social leverage and/or receive validation by sharing one-sided stories in which he comes across as the moral superior. So, if gossiping is immoral, having a cryptographic guarantee that it is being done anonymously doesn't suddenly make it OK, does it?

To be fair you have been pretty even handed in this thread overall and other than giving her some negative characteristics like lazy, you have called her your friend and approached this from a space where you are trying to understand her. I'm just not sure that speculating with people who don't know her personally is going to give you much more insight on who she is. I think it will definitely accomplish giving you a sense that other people have dealt with similar problems, venting, getting it off your chest. Even the feedback I gave there is no way to know if any of it is relevant. But it sounds like it is part of your process of evaluating the world. Who am I to talk, I make billions of threads about "is this normal?".

After talking to you more and you answering my questions I realize there is no harm in any of this and I kinda jumped to some conclusions here.

 

[Wyote]

"is this normal?"

None of this* is normal
*the grand cosmic version

 

[uuu]

To be fair you have been pretty even handed in this thread overall and other than giving her some negative characteristics like lazy, you have called her your friend and approached this from a space where you are trying to understand her. I'm just not sure that speculating with people who don't know her personally is going to give you much more insight on who she is. I think it will definitely accomplish giving you a sense that other people have dealt with similar problems, venting, getting it off your chest. Even the feedback I gave there is no way to know if any of it is relevant. But it sounds like it is part of your process of evaluating the world. Who am I to talk, I make billions of threads about "is this normal?".

After talking to you more and you answering my questions I realize there is no harm in any of this and I kinda jumped to some conclusions here.

Thanks, slant. I really appreciate that you took the time to hear me out and listen with a charitable mindset. The culture on this forum is to persistently engage in good faith, and I sense that participating in this culture is changing me for the better.

 

[Elder]

The culture on this forum is to persistently engage in good faith, and I sense that participating in this culture is changing me for the better.

This just made my heart sing.