To not expect to be derided for startling easily

[Thedeuce]

Believe me I don’t fucking like being jumpy either. I’ve always startled easily - especially if people are behind me. Yes I jump easily, I don’t like feeling scared or surprised.

Adult DS just came home whilst I was cleaning and I didn’t hear him come through the door - turned around and there’s a man behind me and yes I jumped and screamed. I know it’s fucking pathetic but he gave me the most withering look and said “exaggerate much”?

How hard is it to apologise for scaring someone regardless of if you meant to or not?

It’s like the Katherine Tate skit with the toaster

I startle very easily too, but not for any trauma reasons, just seems to be how I'm wired. I just tend to have a laugh reaction though once I've unpeeled myself from the ceiling so no-one gets cross with anyone.

For anyone saying it's an overreaction though, it is completely involuntary.

Don't be so dramatic (again - are you seeing a theme here?). Of course I have both reactions and emotions. But I generally consider that - where possible (most of the time for most adults) - controlling them so that they don't impact on my day-to-day life is sensible.

If I couldn't have a family member play a silly (and unkind) trick on me without crying - and considering crying to be an appropriate response to my emotions - that's something I would want to address. My tolerance for drama queens has gone right through the floor now I have small children, but I can't say it was ever high.

The problem isn't that you have reactions and emotions, but that they are inappropriate - either entirely, or in their intensity - to the situation in which they arise. That you continue to think that you shouldn't have to control yourself says a lot about you.

Stop, please stop, hornungthehlpful. This is like reading a horror novel written from the point of view of a smug serial killer with a fetish for self control. I can well imagine you as an estranged gransnetter one day complaining that your children never visit just because you raised them so righty right right.

It really isn't, you know.

People who make a fuss when someone makes them jump are irritating. They are irritating because it is making something commonplace and unimportant into a whole drama.

I wouldn't still be going on about it if various posters weren't simply refusing to accept that this is not something that they are totally unable to control or work on. Because it patently is - as many others have pointed out too.

I don't know why you consider me expressing my opinion to be smug, nor why that opinion or the way I express it means that I should be condemned to lonely old-age. However, should I find in my twilight years that I am alone and forsaken by my children, I am sure that I will remember that you predicted it. Do you want to swap phone numbers so that I can call you and let you know you were right? 🙄

There is a startle reflex, I recall an article more than a decade ago.

It made sobering reading - physicians observed that those worse affected have been known to die in some cases when woken suddenly by something as simple as an alarm clock and it’s sudden startle impact on heart rhythm….

I have the reflex, as do my family. I wish I didn’t.

I startle easily. My ex used to hate it. Twice in the theatre I can recall screaming when a character burst on the stage. Mortifying.

but you’ve got to laugh, right? After. Not mid- theatre.

also it definitely is not me seeking attention. I hate it and I hate that it makes me seem neurotic. I just scream and jump out my skin when something unexpected happens.

my friend twisted her ankle walking next to me and I screamed. It makes me seem demented. I am not!

What?! @HornungTheHelpful is being likened to a serial killer for not pandering to drama llamas?! There's overthinking then there's THAT!! 😱

If I was a young adult and it was my mum, I’m pretty sure I’d find it either funny or annoying.

My husband startles easily (he doesn’t scream but definitely yelps 😆) and frightening him is our sons’ favourite thing to do. Luckily, everyone thinks it’s funny.

It has already been done - The Fast Show, maybe?

Catherine Tate!

@PorgyandBess @MagpiePi it's funny I don't ever remember seeing the sketch and I saw someone posted the YouTube link upthread. I must have seen it years ago and filed it away. I genuinely thought it was my own original thought yesterday 😅

Oh do bore off!

Sorry, but I'm with your son. You need to control yourself, people who 'startle easily' are highly annoying and he's probably at the end of his rope with it.

Please don't visit Rome...

But what if she really, really feels it....?

I am now wondering if @HornungTheHelpful also believes in silent births? Possibly might be a scientologist? I mean, we should all just 'control ourselves', surely??!
No emotions, no spontaneous, knee-jerk reactions, just......nothing.
Silence, and absolute composure.....🤐

Ah this is a very interesting subject to me! I've almost started a thread about it a few times!

So it's bizarre but you'd be amazed at the frequency in which I seem to startle people in public!
I walk into a public toilet, a woman screamed.
I stood behind someone at a cash machine in a queue, when the person at the front turned around they screamed. I walk into a room at work someone screamed 🤣
I've got a gothic ish look and I'm very quiet on my feet but come on...

I can say that it can be a little annoying and insulting for the person you scream at.
It's an extreme reaction surely? They are only walking into a room....in a world with 7 billion people you are never far away from someone else.

I don't think either of you are unreasonable in this scenario.
Your son should know you by now, he shouldn't have a go at you but he's done nothing wrong by walking into the house he lives in.

Do you have any tips for how I can not startle people?!

Why should he apologise for walking in? I don’t even think his response was rude. What’s he going to apologise for ‘I’m sorry I exist’?

I get startled easily and I've been like this all my life.
At times I've genuinely thought I was going to have a heart attack because my physical reaction can be really severe.

I don't understand your DS 's nasty reaction. Both of you know he had no intention of deliberately scaring you but it's the easiest thing in the world just to say something along the lines of Sorry Mum, I didn't mean to scare you.
The fact he won't would worry me because it displays such a lack of empathy and caring .
It actually comes over that he has a level of contempt and lack of respect for you.

You’re really just being nasty now, aren’t you? No, I’m an atheist not a scientologist. I don’t believe in silent births, but then I don’t really care how other people give birth.

What I do care about is behaviour - which can be modified (as the idea of exercising some self control is so offensive to you, apparently) - that negatively impacts not only those around you, but the person behaving that way too. So many people on this thread saying how the drama (not the “reaction”; the reaction part you can’t control) accompanying the physical startle reflex is irritating, results in fall outs etc.

I have a quick temper, always have. Doesn’t make it ok for me to go around screaming at people - so as much as I can I control my natural inclination. Is there any reason why you, and others who are naturally inclined to scream and cry when startled shouldn’t try to do the same? Because whether you like it or not, the screaming and crying is every bit as damaging as fits of temper.

have you had your hearing tested?

Oh, and if you tell someone to “bore off” and they do, maybe don’t “@“ them in another post.

Presumably he is fed up with his mother's dramatic reaction to what is basically her own problem. There are a couple of easily startled people in my life. One is my mother, but she recognizes that it is a her problem and doesn't try to guilt others and turn on the dramatics. The other is an acquaintance who makes a huge deal of it. It is annoying, attention seeking behaviour.