What is it with people being so dismissive ?

It sounds to me that they think you’re over-reacting and don’t have the energy to coddle it. Whether you are over-reacting or not is impossible to say without knowing the context, but the person you were speaking to clearly thinks you are.

Its not a particularly helpful response from a therapist, mentor, best friend or partner. But from a young relative in a social situation, then it's fine. It's well meaning enough, coming from a place of trying to reassure, when they probably can't think of anything constructive to say and don't want to be negative. When people ask these questions, unless they're one of the people I mentioned, theyre typically not expecting to have to show active empathy, validate your feelings and spend the next hour exploring it with you. Its just a chat.

Maybe they’re just trying to help you think positivity.

Or they’re bored and want to wrap things up quickly to avoid getting dragged into a pointlessly negative conversation with a whole load of ‘he said, she said’ details normally supplied in someone else’s work related micro drama. We’ve all been there, glancing at a wall clock thinking ‘ffs when will this stop, I wish I’d never bloody asked…’.

In your doctor example, it’s a lot easier to do that with your friend as you are not going to lose sleep over whether their child is vaccinated or not.

However, would you be so blasé if it was your grandchild?

It is easy to validate friends, therapy clients etc as you’re not that emotionally invested. It’s much harder when it’s a close relative.

Again, black and white thinking. Only one valid response.

You are blowing this out of all proportions now. In the grand scheme of things nothing major happened and you can’t change your relatives. Your expectations are clearly not met, so either let them know or move on and keep your conversations to small talk.

None of my relatives are interested in my work stuff beyond small talk, so maybe just save those conversations for your DH and friends.

People are generally only worried about themselves op ;(
They will dismiss it because they don't want to listen or hear it really and then shut it down.
All too familiar to how my own friends are sometimes.
It is annoying

I think they're trying to reassure you or make you feel better. I suppose it could be seen as toxic positivity. You might need to explain that you'd prefer brutal honesty than being coddled.

OP - you are extremely black and white in your thinking. You seem to think that there is only one correct way to respond, and any other response is ‘dismissive’ and as a result you want to reduce contact.

People are all different. I wouldn’t go to my mum with work problems as she would both downplay them to me as she wanted to make them go away, but also worry about them afterwards. But friends could be great at the empathising as they were less invested.

She was a fantastic mum.

Some people are just really emotionally unintelligent and it's really galling. I try not to expect empathy or validation from those people because they won't give it. Otherwise you are just setting yourself up to be hurt.

My husband used to do this. It's something that drives me bonkers and I asked him why on earth he does it.

He told me that he hates to see me upset or worried and he's trying to make me feel better.

Is it possible the person who's saying what you describe is doing it because they care about you and are trying to make you feel better?

(I told my husband it doesn't make me feel better. It makes me feel dismissed and angry and like he doesn't believe me and he stopped doing it. Perhaps you could have a similar conversation?)

I have a SIL who does this. She is older than me so not a young person thing. I have no idea why she does it but it is fucking infuriating to be told it was just a 'lack of communication' when a nurse did something wrong in hospital and I lodged a complaint.

'Is it an overreaction to not want to spend entire weekends with people who are cold and dismissive? I don't think so really'

No, not at all. And if you were having a moan, and blowing off a bit of steam, shouldn't that be ok? I'm sure you weren't rattling on for hours about it. No, other people's work stuff isn't always fascinating but if you care about the person, you make a bit of space for them to share what's important to them

I can absolutely relate OP and you've had some very sneery dismissive responses on this thread too.

Agree Op Calling yourself names isn't helpful

There are/a number of things that might make someone react like this
They feel uncomfortable
They feel you are oversharing/ complaining
They don't want to talk about the subject anymore

I would take it as a social cue and just share less, make a mental note to keep it to " good thanks"
By continuing to share, expect a different reaction to one you KNOW you won't get, you are allowing them to be dismissive to you

So stop

Of course it’s not, but assuming their reaction means they think you’re an idiot and not worth caring about, possibly is?

Edited - do you think you’re an idiot and not worth caring about?

I may be wrong but it sounds like the crux of the matter is that this person spends a lot of time in your house at weekends yet you feel deep down they don't like you very much and therefore you're feeling a bit used.

If that is correct then cut down their visits. No need to make a big drama of it, just don't invite them around. Be busy doing other stuff, with other people.

I wouldn’t want to spend an entire weekend with anyone! Who is this relative? Your own child? Otherwise why are you quite so bothered?

Eugh, even reading your posts is a bit exhausting OP. There's just a general sense of being a bit of an over thinker/reading too much into everything/wanting to justify your own actions even to complete strangers on the internet. Truth is, your relative probably finds you quite hard work. You don't think they're very kind to you. It's that simple, just spend less time with them. You can't force someone to like you who doesn't.

It depends if they add other value to your life. The friend who dismissed my comments about my difficult family, has other qualities. So we are still friends but I don’t confide in her any more.

It’s up to you of course how much time you spend with her. Do you think she really thinks you are an idiot though? Just because she couldn’t be bothered to engage or empathise, doesn’t necessarily mean she thinks that?

I've found particularly this year that people are dismissive until it happens to them. I've been terrified and distraught this summer and one ex friend told me to take it easy. This friend had mad dramatics and outbursts over nothing. So I do hope when something life altering happens to her someone tells her the same thing.

OP - if this is your mum, she is most likely now worrying that your new job isn’t going to work out. My mum would have done the same with a new job as she wants it to go well, and wants to make sure that it does. She would have found agreeing that there’s a major concern difficult as she wanted things to go well for me.

Friends simply aren’t as invested. As a result, I shared my work concerns more with friends.

Does that mean my friends were more empathetic?

They validated my feelings much more and were very helpful. But I doubt any of them ever lay awake at night worrying about whether my job was working out.

Oh love, that’s quite a big reaction. Are there other things going on? I don’t want to be presumptuous, but maybe talking to a professional might be helpful (and I say this as someone who’s openly been seeing a psychotherapist for a long term. It’s changed my life, pretty much)