People have become mean-spirited during this

[Gyutre]

From the NHS clapping enforcers to the local FB groups curtain twitching, to the truly appalling posts on this website, I really feel this has brought out a nastiness and lack of empathy in people.
It has seemed at times that to even express missinh pubs, friends, holidays etc is to open yourself up to accusations of frivolousness and selfishness. I have turned inside myself and become seriously unwell with depression. But it is all people singing songs and baking bread and lighting candles and meaningless epithets about how "this too shall pass".

I'm a key worker, and luckily I'm office based, but the abuse our frontline staff have received has, frankly, destroyed my faith in humanity.

I'm not sure if the middle-class banana-bread-bakers are all doing that well. At least in my local FB group - full of very affluent professionals - most have gone a bit bonkers. If it wasn't outing I'd give details but their behaviour has been astonishing!

@frozendaisy

Have "people" become mean-spirited?

Do "people" post rainbow pictures and banana bread loaves with the intention "this will make all the other people either on their own or not winning at family life feel inadequate and jealous of my amazing supermum #soblessed life in my perfect kitchen"? I mean really these are the intentions behind ALL the self-smug social media posts?

We have seen people organise prescription drop-offs for isolating others, felt a connection to neighbours once a week with the Thursday clap, mums with crazy housebound toddlers doing rainbow-window walks to break up the long hours, had local independent shops trying to make sure they could still provide bread and fruit, had our local convenience store owner driving to the cash and carry back and forth to make sure there was pasta and toilet rolls available.

Jigsaw swaps, boxes of "help yourself" books, anything to help people get what they need or little extras to pass the time. People passing on kid's bikes free when you couldn't buy a bike for love nor money.

Sometimes you have to look for the goodness, go past all the nonsense, but we believe the majority of people are nice. And perhaps some actions wind some up but I bet the intention behind those actions, most of the time, are not meant to.

Life is too short to assume the worse. Floor people with kindness. Be part of the solution not sniping at the sidelines.

Ask yourself why local shops were struggling to keep supplies of bread, pasta and toilet paper and you have just one example of people being mean-spirited.

@Gyutre I still think your perception is off balance and you’re filling in a lot of blanks yourself. You’re attributing a lot of motivations to peoples actions with no real evidence when the opposite is equally likely to be true. That’s not an attack, we all do it to some extent but people are less and less willing to see themselves doing the same thing under a different banner and it’s divisive and damaging.

I have my own, long, experience with MH and its taken a lot of work to teach myself that my personal feelings don’t equal fact and aren’t as reliable as I’d like to think they are. I have a choice on how I process the actions of others and the upshot is that I’m the one who benefits by not choosing to decide that the most negative narrative is the right one. That doesn’t mean agreeing with them but it does mean I can easily chose to decide their actions are irrelevant to me. From examples you’ve given you have a choice in how to interpret what peoples actions mean in relation to you and you’ve chosen to see them in a negative way. For instance, your assessment of the FB squabble ends with your conclusion that no one offered you help despite this being a group of people that you never asked for help and had no way of knowing you needed it. It’s not a reasonable expectation to think that people should be able to make assumptions past what you do or don’t present to them. The same applies to your colleagues.

I’m not denying that there has been a some truly awful behaviour on display over the past year from a lot of perspectives but it’s important to remember that they’re all driven by basically the same thing which is an inability to cope with massive upheaval in their lives. Someone lashing out isn’t necessarily coping better than someone withdrawing themselves or someone else distracting themselves with frivolous activities. They’re all vulnerable to the same manipulation from others, especially online.

Stepping back and removing your initial emotional response is a useful tool for self-preservation, especially if you’re personally feeling the impact of someone else’s words/actions in a damaging way. Finding people who feel the same way as you do can be comforting or it can get out of hand and entrench feelings that lead to more depression and anxiety, particularly when the narrative descends into a them vs us echo chamber. The comfort from those interactions are often short lived and don’t often lead towards a true sense of recovery or coping. Especially without any neutral guidance online.

Make of that what you will, but my personal experience and observation tells me that it’s a scenario that plays out over and over again in many different facets of life.

@Gyutre I still think your perception is off balance and you’re filling in a lot of blanks yourself. You’re attributing a lot of motivations to peoples actions with no real evidence when the opposite is equally likely to be true. That’s not an attack, we all do it to some extent but people are less and less willing to see themselves doing the same thing under a different banner and it’s divisive and damaging.

I have my own, long, experience with MH and its taken a lot of work to teach myself that my personal feelings don’t equal fact and aren’t as reliable as I’d like to think they are. I have a choice on how I process the actions of others and the upshot is that I’m the one who benefits by not choosing to decide that the most negative narrative is the right one. That doesn’t mean agreeing with them but it does mean I can easily chose to decide their actions are irrelevant to me. From examples you’ve given you have a choice in how to interpret what peoples actions mean in relation to you and you’ve chosen to see them in a negative way. For instance, your assessment of the FB squabble ends with your conclusion that no one offered you help despite this being a group of people that you never asked for help and had no way of knowing you needed it. It’s not a reasonable expectation to think that people should be able to make assumptions past what you do or don’t present to them. The same applies to your colleagues.

I’m not denying that there has been a some truly awful behaviour on display over the past year from a lot of perspectives but it’s important to remember that they’re all driven by basically the same thing which is an inability to cope with massive upheaval in their lives. Someone lashing out isn’t necessarily coping better than someone withdrawing themselves or someone else distracting themselves with frivolous activities. They’re all vulnerable to the same manipulation from others, especially online.

Stepping back and removing your initial emotional response is a useful tool for self-preservation, especially if you’re personally feeling the impact of someone else’s words/actions in a damaging way. Finding people who feel the same way as you do can be comforting or it can get out of hand and entrench feelings that lead to more depression and anxiety, particularly when the narrative descends into a them vs us echo chamber. The comfort from those interactions are often short lived and don’t often lead towards a true sense of recovery or coping. Especially without any neutral guidance online.

Make of that what you will, but my personal experience and observation tells me that it’s a scenario that plays out over and over again in many different facets of life.