when you're in pain

short post

i’m trying to understand the relationship between these two facts:

1) many people have said that i’ve been a good influence on them, or a generally pleasant person to be around, or that they’re glad that they know me
2) a couple people have been hurt by our interactions to the point that they never want to talk to me again

and sure, these two statements aren’t inherently contradictory, but it still feels strange to me that they’re both true? it makes me wonder - has the life i’ve led been worth it? how can i prevent 2) from happening again? is it actually possible to have 1) without 2) and if so how do i get there?

part of the difficulty in separating 1) and 2) is that i don’t really know what people like about me. i used to think it was some form of honesty / perceptiveness / truth, but nowadays i am less sure. being too blunt has gotten me in trouble quite a few times now

the closest thing i have to an explanation is this: when i am in pain, i tend to care less about other peoples’ feelings. i think i usually do a good job of acting in a way that is productive and not hurtful, but put me in enough pain and everything falls apart. (and this is also when bluntness becomes incredibly dangerous - if you feel sufficiently bad you can justify saying anything in the name of honesty)

all this reminds me of that line from dune - “An animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape. What will you do?” i’ve definitely gnawed off my own leg a few times, and in the past i’ve forgotten that hurting myself doesn’t mean i’m not also hurting other people. the problem with being too self-critical is that you think you’re doing yourself a favor by being hard on yourself but you forget about all the unexpected ways in which that causes you to act out

so one solution here is something like, be more considerate and careful when i notice myself feeling bad. and i’ll try that, though i’m not actually sure how to build that habit since it presupposes feeling bad? not really the kind of thing you can just turn on and off for practice purposes. and another solution is to Just Feel Bad Less Often, or at least to stop making myself feel bad. i think i’m making progress on that