Chapter One (continued)
Some of Becky's Student Friends Discuss Psychopaths, Sexual Abuse, Anger Management and Other Things

(To recap: The previous page ended with the students talking about the personalities of paedophiles and how abuse victims often blame themselves.

The Subject of Parents Treating Children Badly in Ordinary Ways Comes up, Before the Conversation Becomes Darkly Humorous for a While

Another one of the students said, "This is such a depressing conversation! It's interesting though. You know, I've been wondering if a lot of parents might be more considerate to their children if they thought about how they wanted their children to remember them when they grew up. I'm not talking about callous abusers who probably couldn't care less about their children, but parents who do care, but they just yell at their children a lot, and tell them off too much, and smack them harder than they should out of anger, instead of getting what they've done in proportion. That kind of thing.

"Someone said on a forum that he's known people who said before they had kids that they'd never treat them the way their own parents treated them themselves; but then since they've had them, they've treated them just the same, as if it's just the way they've learned to treat children and they do it instinctively without thinking, as if it's a behaviour pattern they can't get out of or something.

"Imagine having really good intentions to be a good parent, but keeping slipping back into old bad habits, shouting and nagging all the time and things, only to discover when your kids grew up that those were about the only things they remembered about you, and they'd pretty much forgotten the good times. After all, I think the things that often stick in the mind most are the things that stir up the most emotion, like anger, probably partly because the emotion itself imprints things on the mind more, and partly because things that have annoyed people might lead them to think of them a lot while they're thinking about how they could deal with the problems better in future, or how they could have responded to them better, or just how angry they make them feel.

"It would probably be a good thing for all parents to think about how they want their kids to remember them after they've gone. I remember this film on telly about a church minister who was one of the early civil rights leaders in America. Actually I can't remember much about it at all now, or what it was called, but it was a good film. For some reason, the one scene that stuck in my mind was one where he was giving a speech at the funeral of one of his church congregation. He said something like, 'This man was a drunkard and a fool'. And he said other bad things about him. When people objected to what he'd said afterwards, he said he thought it was good to be honest.

"Imagine if there was an outbreak of honesty at funerals here, for some reason, and lots of people started getting up in church to speak, and instead of giving eulogies for their family members who'd just died, they started saying horrible things about them.

"Imagine if someone stood up at the front of the church and said, 'I'm upset that my dad died last week, ... because I'd have much preferred it if he'd died before I was born, so I never had to have the horrible experience of knowing him. I'll always remember him as a bit of a thug with a big streak of mindless bigotry. His brainless idea of discipline was to whack us whenever we did or said something he didn't happen to like or agree with. His voice could go from zero to eighty decibels in two seconds, as he would burst into an insane roaring rage at the slightest thing, and we'd know we'd better keep quiet in case he came and gave us a mindless slapping. If you ever hear a mysterious savage roaring sound coming from the graveyard, you'll know his ability to bawl with insane temper was so powerful it didn't die when he did, so he's carrying on. I think the only reason my mum married him must have been because she was drunk a lot while she was going out with him, and because she's a little bit stupid. ... Oops, sorry Mum, I forgot you were here for a minute.'

"Or just imagine if someone's mum died, and they stood up at her funeral and said, 'My mum was a naggy irritable supercilious neurotic with an unfortunate empathy deficit, quick to bicker and criticise, without trying to understand the other person's point of view. To give an example, one of my earliest memories of her was when I burped at the dinner table, and she told me off with such hysteria you'd have thought I'd just kicked her with all the might a three year-old could muster or something! I've never understood why some people object to burping so much; it's just a natural involuntary bodily function.

"But anyway, it was often a pain to be around my mum, in my experience. When I was a teenager I somehow taught myself to do false burps, and I've never quite lost the skill. I went and burped on her face in the funeral parlour the day after she died. Childish, I know; but it gave me a good laugh, and there weren't many laughs to be had while she was around, so I kind of felt as if I deserved one. And it was satisfying to be able to do something she irrationally hated in her presence and then to not have to put up with her yelling at me for it.'

"Or imagine if someone's grandad died, and they said at the front of the church at his funeral, 'My grandad was a bit of a caveman. ... Actually, that's probably an insult to cavemen. I mean he was a bit of a knuckle-dragger. He seemed to think it was macho to smoke and drink and not worry about his health, and that anything that seemed health-conscious or arty, or even just different, wasn't macho at all, and that made it worthy of contempt and mockery. I'll give you a couple of examples so you can see what I mean:

"'One day he caught me eating blueberries, and he said, "What are you, some kind of sissy health freak?" He tried to get me into smoking when I was thirteen! When I said I wasn't interested, he said, "You big wimp! What are you worried about? We were all doing it in my day!" It's no wonder he didn't live to a ripe old age. Not that I expect to do that myself.

"'Anyway, I'm glad I haven't had children yet. If I'd had them before he died, I'd probably have had to ban him from seeing them, and that could have been awkward, because knowing what he was like, he would probably have made one heck of a pathetic whiny fuss, the big whiner!'

"And imagine if politicians got worried because so many people were upset about what their family members were saying, so the government decided to ban funerals, and made an announcement saying, 'We've decided to ban funerals for the foreseeable future, due to a disturbing outbreak of honesty in the country.'"

One of the students smirked and joked, "It would be just like politicians to object to honesty."

Another one grinned and said, "And imagine if there was such an outcry about funerals being banned that the politicians permitted them again, but people were worried they'd ban them again if they weren't careful, since it seemed they didn't like honesty, so they thought they'd better not say honest things any more in case they did, and that to be on the safe side, they'd better be dishonest instead, but by praising their relatives in an exaggerated way instead of criticising them. So imagine if people started making up stories about their relatives. Imagine if one person stood up at the front of a church and said,

"'As everyone here knows, my granny was 702 when she died, and she only died in the end because a branch of the tree she was climbing broke and she fell out of it and landed heavily on the ground. She would have been allright, but then the whole tree fell on her. I used to keep telling her not to climb old trees, saying they were bound not to be as hardy as her. This one was only about 350 years old, less than half her age, so she thought it would be allright. But I was worried that since it didn't have as much muscle power as her, it might not be able to cope. Actually, I didn't see any muscles on it at all. Maybe that's why it fell over. Perhaps all its muscles had wasted away with it being so old.

"But my granny was an amazing woman. During the Great Fire of London, she went running into hundreds of homes and rescued thousands of injured victims, taking them all to a hospital she'd set up before, and treating them there, where they all fully recovered. She did caring heroic deeds like that all her life!'"

The students giggled.

Then one said, "Imagine if you were on your deathbed after an illness with your family around you, and as if it wasn't bad enough to be dying, you were irritated by hearing them say annoying things about you, thinking you couldn't hear them because you didn't have the energy to respond to what they said; and they said things like, 'He never achieved much in life, poor love; it was probably because he's never been very bright', when you know you at least raised your children to be good caring people, and that you must have done something well at least, because they all got good jobs. Or imagine if you heard them say, 'Her death will be a merciful release really, because she was getting to be a bit of a burden to us with her illness, and it would only have got worse if she'd remained alive', or, 'It's a pity he's dying; but it's no wonder really, since he was a bit too much of a fan of the alcohol and cigarettes', or, 'She made some really bad decisions in life, didn't she, like marrying that idiot Brian!'

"Imagine you ended up thinking, 'Death, ya lazy swine! What's keeping you? Come on, bring it! I don't want to stay here any more listening to this! Hurry up, Death, you ignorant insensitive scumbag! What's the matter with you, holding off for so long?'"

The students smiled.

Jessica Talks More About Misjudging People on Forums, and Then the Subject of Unintentionally Hurting People's Feelings Comes Up

Then Jessica said, "I was talking about liking people who turned out not to be very nice before, wasn't I. There was another man on a forum I was on who I liked at first, but who turned out not to be very nice, so I realised liking him had been another misjudgment of character, or something like that.

"I think I liked him at first because - I don't know - there seemed to be some kind of innocence in the way he just came out and asked people questions about themselves, as if he just didn't seem to realise they might be thought of as offensive or too personal. ... Actually, that sounds a bit daft, doesn't it. I don't think I can really explain it. I suppose it's possible that he was really just nosy, or didn't care how people might feel if he asked them intrusive questions, or something like that, I don't know. It might have been better if I'd thought of that at the time. But I felt a bit sorry for him as well, because he said his girlfriend had just broken up with him, and he said he missed the way she used to hold him and comfort him. That sounded quite sentimental ... or something. And he was talking to another forum member one day about how he'd had to leave home because his dad used to hit him a lot, and how he was upset about it.

"Anyway, he started this thread about how he was upset that his girlfriend had left him, and he said they'd had some bad arguments, and that some of the things he'd said and done could almost be described as psychopathic. He didn't say what they were. He'd once said on the forum that he was kind of drawn to psychopaths, or fascinated by them. But I still liked him. He seemed to be sorry about the way he'd treated his girlfriend. Maybe that's why I didn't take as much notice of what he said about doing things that were almost psychopathic as I maybe should have done.

"Some people on the forum weren't very nice to him, and I stood up for him. He started this thread about how he was hoping he and his girlfriend would get back together, but that he'd been checking up on her and had seen her with a few other men, and he wanted people's opinions on whether she might be cheating on him.

"Some people said it could hardly be called cheating if they'd broken up. He said they'd spent time together since then and had had sex a few times. He gave some detail that some people thought was unnecessarily personal and graphic, and they had a go at him for it. And some people didn't believe him. Most people seemed to be criticising him, and I didn't think it was fair, although looking back, maybe they just knew him better than I did. I was new to the forum.

"But I thought the fact that him and his girlfriend had met up since they broke up meant there was some hope for the relationship, and tried to encourage him to do things that might appeal to her; and I argued with some people who were being nasty to him.

"They didn't get back together though, and some time afterwards, someone started this thread, asking people if they'd ever have an affair with someone. This person I'd been standing up for and trying to help to get back together with his girlfriend before said he would! He said he'd enjoy having an affair with someone's wife. I asked him how he thought that was fair, especially since he must know what it felt like to worry about whether the woman he was with was cheating on him, and how upsetting it might be if he found out she was. But he just thought it was funny, for some reason, and said he'd learned his lesson.

"Honestly, I might have made some forum enemies, standing up for him and arguing with other people before! After he said he'd happily have affairs with married women, I suddenly realised he couldn't be very nice after all, and thought it hadn't been worth bothering to speak up for him before after all!

"I suppose there were signs that he wasn't that nice a person that I should maybe have taken more notice of before, like the things I've mentioned, such as him admitting to doing things that could be described as almost psychopathic when he'd argued with his girlfriend, - I don't know. But some things he said had made him sound nice."

One student said consolingly, "Don't judge yourself too harshly; I mean, it doesn't sound as if the signs that some of those people you thought were nice at first but afterwards realised weren't were obvious enough for you to have known what they were really like earlier, especially when they had a nicer side."

Another one said, "The opposite thing's happened to me once or twice: There's an Internet forum I post on, and when I first went there, there were some people making bitchy little comments and I thought they couldn't be nice people, and didn't think much of them. But I changed my mind about one or two of them later, because there's this blog section on the forum where people can write about their own thoughts and feelings and what they've been up to and so on, and it turned out that they were more thoughtful and sensitive than I'd given them credit for."

Another one of the group said, "Something I've been thinking about recently is that it's common to insult people who are a bit thuggish or who've got attitudes that seem crass and ignorant by calling them cavemen; but I wonder if that's a misjudgment of cavemen. I heard something on the news about cavemen the other day that I thought was funny. It said scientists have discovered that Neanderthal people who lived in caves were cleverer than they used to think, since they've discovered a gem stone that didn't serve any purpose other than to look pretty, which must prove they appreciated art.

"I thought, 'Why would that prove they were cleverer than if all the things they made actually served a useful function?' It just seemed a funny way of looking at things: They reckoned they could tell people in those days were smarter than they thought because they'd discovered they were making things that served no useful purpose, when before, they hadn't realised they were smart, because they'd thought they only made things that actually helped make life easier for them! Really, I mean, which one of those things seems cleverer to you?

"Imagine if you heard a scientist say on the news one day, 'We can tell we're smarter than the Neanderthals ever were; I mean, about the only weapons they ever had were spears, that meant they had to get really close up to animals to kill them; but look at us! We've got nuclear weapons that could blow the entire world to kingdom come! They couldn't have dreamed of starting a war that would obliterate the entire planet! Doesn't that prove how much smarter we are than them!'"

They all laughed.

Jessica said, "Well, it's nice to know there's a funny side to misjudging people. You know, it seems I judged another person's character wrongly too! There was this young woman who joined the forum who was often talking about how she was recovering from an abusive upbringing, struggling in life with sadness, and that kind of thing. I actually liked her right from when I first came across her, because she seemed caring and sensitive, - well, she probably is really, to be fair. Actually I still do like her really. The first time I noticed her was when quite a few people were criticising someone who wanted to divorce her husband after she'd had six kids with him, and this woman stood up for her, saying she didn't think people were being fair. I thought the criticism was over-the-top a bit, so I thought she was nice. ... Well, she probably really is, ... sometimes. But maybe not as nice as I thought!

"There's a section on the forum where people can write blogs about themselves. I decided to browse hers one day, and read the latest things she'd written. The last thing she said was about how she spent hours every day feeling anxious and sad and lonely, and that she'd been thinking all the time of the horrible things her parents used to say to criticise her, that made her feel as if she didn't have any value, and being engrossed in thoughts like that for ages was terrifying. She said she'd been in therapy for some time.

"I thought, 'Cripes, what if it's one of those therapies that takes ages and costs a lot of money but doesn't make anything better, but just encourages people to brood more and more on their problems so they actually get more miserable, because they have to talk about their pasts in detail during the therapy sessions, bringing up more and more bad memories, some of which might even have been half-forgotten before, so they're just bound to brood on the bad things more when they go home, and get even more upset about them because of all the emotions the thoughts are stirring up! After all, you've been talking about your sicko parents for a year or two at least on this forum, and you seem to be getting more upset about them, not less!' I felt sorry for her, and a bit worried, because I thought, 'Oh no, what if she gets worse and worse, till she wants to commit suicide!' So I wanted to try to help her. Big mistake, as it turned out!

"I asked her what her therapy was like, and suggested a few things I said she could maybe try to help her to stop feeling so lonely and build up her self-esteem, like doing voluntary work to help disadvantaged people in a team of people that might all get to be friends, which might increase her self-worth, because she would know she was making a positive difference in people's lives by helping them, and it would increase her friend group at the same time. I think that does help some people feel better about themselves. And I suggested she talk back in her mind to the critical messages she kept thinking about from her parents, reminding herself that she knew better about what she was like than they did. They keep telling us on our psychology course that that's a common therapy technique, at least in the kind of therapy that's been studied and found to often work.

"She replied, saying her therapy was fine and that her and her therapist were slowly working towards her recovery, and that actually, she was glad to feel her emotions, even though they made her miserable, because she'd felt under pressure to hide them while she was growing up, because her mother had been demanding and needy, and expected her to be there to care about her problems - the mother's problems, that is, - putting herself and her needs and feelings last, as if she was the mother and her mother was the child. So she said it was nice to feel as if she had the freedom to feel all her emotions, even though they were upsetting. Something like that.

"She told me a couple of times that she didn't like people giving her advice when she hadn't asked for it. She said that when people did that, it felt as if they were putting her under pressure to be happier instead of just listening to her. I think that's what she meant anyway - I didn't think it was all that clear.

"She said she gave people unsolicited advice all the time, so she knew she was being a hypocrite when she said she didn't think other people should do it to her. But she said that was the way she felt.

"I suppose that was fair enough. I should have just left it at that really. But I wondered if she was judging some people who tried to give her advice unfairly, so she was feeling as if it was putting her under pressure to be happier than she felt like being, when they were really just caring about her, because I thought about how I'd felt concerned about her when I read her message about how she was sad and anxious and frightened and lonely most of the time, and how I'd instinctively wanted to try to help her. I thought that maybe other people tried to give her advice because they felt the same way, not because they wanted to put any pressure on her.

"So I ... shock horror, tried to give her a bit of advice again - well, it wasn't really even advice; I just gave my opinion on what their motivation might be, and suggested that she might be able to stop other people giving her advice if when she talked about how bad she felt, she explained that people didn't need to worry, because she actually appreciated the freedom to feel her emotions, because she'd had to repress them when she was growing up, so they didn't mean her mental health was going to get worse and worse.

"But I wasn't sure how appropriate or helpful what I was saying really was, because I didn't know what the attitude of a lot of the people who'd been giving her advice was really like - you know, whether it was sensitive, or whether they really did sound as if they were feeling sure they knew better than she did; and I thought my suggestions weren't things I could imagine her wanting to say to people she didn't know that well anyway, because she might not think they were any of their business; so I commented that maybe she wouldn't actually want to do that very often if people gave her advice but they weren't people she felt as if she could take into her confidence, - you know, I was saying I knew I might not be right about thinking that what I said would help.

"Actually, some time later, she said on the board that her parents had often given her advice she hadn't asked for, in an annoying way that made it sound as if they were lecturing her and talking down to her, so then I understood why she objected to people giving her advice, since maybe it reminded her of that. But I didn't know that when we had the conversation.

"When we had it, I'd been wondering if I ought to say what I said about how it might be best if she explained to more people that they didn't need to be worried about her feeling strong sad emotions when she expressed them before I suggested she do that, because I thought it might look as if I was giving her advice again - the very thing she'd just said she didn't like. But I'd decided to risk it. ... But that was when the trouble started! She didn't like it at all!

"She told me she didn't want me to give her advice, because when I said that people might be worried about her emotional state if she didn't reassure them, or that her mental health might improve if she did voluntary work, and so on, it was as if I was telling her to trust my own instincts, ideas and rules over her own, and trying to control her, and that really annoyed her.

"Maybe it's kind of ironic, or maybe just daft, that she had a go at me for giving her advice, when I was actually suggesting a way that she might be able to stop people wanting to give her advice!

"Anyway, I thought what she said about me trying to control her was downright illogical, because it hadn't been as if I was telling her to do anything, but just saying that she must know better about whether what I was saying was appropriate in the situations she was in than I did, but that 'maybe' things I was suggesting would help. I was annoyed at the way she responded, because everything I'd said was phrased in a cautious way like that. Really, fancy saying that someone who phrases everything she says in terms of, 'Maybe if you did this', and 'Maybe if you did that', but then says something like, 'But anyway, you're a better judge than me in these situations, because you know what the people who give you advice are really doing and I don't', and, 'Maybe you wouldn't want to say that kind of thing to them if they're only casual acquaintances or people you wouldn't want to take into your confidence', is trying to control you! Paranoid or what! That's apart from not making sense.

"I felt like telling her that what she'd said was illogical, but I didn't use that word; I just said I wasn't trying to control her or to tell her to trust my instincts and things over hers, and she could tell that because after all, if I had been, I wouldn't have used words like 'may' and 'might' all over what I'd said, like, 'Maybe if you did this', and so on, that proved I wasn't sure about what I was saying. I said she might feel controlled and so on, but that didn't mean someone really was trying to control her, so it seemed she was making a mistake that a lot of people tend to make, of mistaking their feelings about what people say for their real intentions, imagining that the effect of what people say on their feelings is exactly the effect they'd intended to have, when there isn't any evidence that they'd intended to have that effect at all, since all they were doing was saying what they thought.

"She didn't like that at all! She said she didn't like what I'd said about her misinterpreting what I'd meant because of the way her feelings were making her feel about it, and she said she was annoyed with me for saying it! She said that what I'd just said meant I was 'invalidating her feelings', and that that wasn't nice of me at all. It was as if she thought that what really mattered was how she felt about what people said, not what they actually said, and what they'd intended to mean, so if they said they didn't mean what she thought they'd meant, it was bad, because they were contradicting what her feelings were making her feel as if they must have meant!

"You know, I thought she might appreciate being reassured that I wasn't doing the things her feelings were making her think I was doing, like trying to control her; but apparently not! She instead said it was just annoying to be told I wasn't doing what she felt as if I was doing.

"I was a bit baffled! I thought, 'Why do you think your feelings are the most important thing in all this, - way more important than what the truth actually is? Why wouldn't you think the most important thing is the real meaning of what I said, instead of how it made you feel? Aren't you just going to get more upset if you always think it doesn't matter if you're thinking someone said something worse than they really did, because you think the way you feel about it is what really matters?'

"So I said to her, - trying to be reassuring some more, but obviously failing, - that it wasn't as if I was accusing just her of mistaking the way her feelings about what people said were making her feel for what their real intentions in saying what they said were, because everyone in the world probably does that sometimes. I asked her why she took things so personally, instead of just weighing up my advice for its relevance to her situation, and taking on board what was helpful and just disregarding the rest. I was trying to give her the idea to do that from then on.

"And I asked her why, since she herself often gave people advice when they hadn't asked for it, she thought other people's advice was meant any differently than hers, - I asked if she herself meant to 'control' people when she gave them advice, and if she gave it because she thought they ought to trust her 'instincts, rules and ideas' over their own. I was pretty sure she didn't! I just wanted her to realise there was a difference in her attitudes to her own advice and other people's, since if she didn't mean to do those things herself, there was no reason to immediately assume other people were trying to do that when they gave her advice. And since she hadn't even told me what her 'instincts' and 'rules' were at the time when I first gave her advice, I don't know how I could have been insisting she trust mine over hers anyway.

"I said that if she didn't think she was doing that kind of thing, why would she assume anyone else was doing that to her when they gave her advice. I said it might feel like that, but I asked her why she would assume her feelings were a better guide to what was going on than her own ability to think things through realistically. I just thought she'd be better off and happier if instead of just being led around by any unhappy feelings that were stirred up when someone said something to her, she just tried to thoughtfully weigh it up for its accuracy or helpfulness, just accepting it for what it really was - just the opinion of some random other poster on the forum, who might or might not have anything worthwhile to say.

"She didn't like that at all! She accused me of trying to trap her into admitting there were problems with what she was saying, and cross-examining her like a lawyer in court, since I was asking so many questions! She told me I was just asking them because I wanted to prove to her that my way of thinking about things was more suitable for her than her own way was, and said I was being contradictory by saying she was free to ignore any advice I gave her, while still trying to persuade her it was best for her.

"I wasn't actually trying to do that at all, just trying to convince her I hadn't meant what her feelings must have been making her feel as if I'd meant, saying she should rely on logic more than on her feelings. I don't know if she was referring to me telling her she shouldn't rely so much on her feelings but think about things logically - a bit of advice, I suppose, - when she said I was contradicting myself because I'd also said she was free to disregard what I said; but when I'd said I'd be happy for her to disregard any advice I'd given that she didn't think was appropriate, I hadn't been referring to that bit.

"But I don't suppose it would have mattered to her if I'd told her that, since she was so sure she knew what I was doing better than I did!

"So I decided to just abandon the conversation, and thought it wasn't worth me having anything to do with her ever again! It felt as if we must be living on different planets, since our attitudes were so different! So I just told her that I wasn't going to carry on the conversation, but that I thought her attitude was a bit bizarre, since she seemed to think that me telling her I hadn't meant what she'd felt as if I'd meant was intended to 'invalidate' her whole personality, as if you can tell someone they're wrong about one thing, and it means you must think they're a total failure as a human being or something!

"She told me I was making her blog feel like a less safe place, and that people had done that to her before by giving her advice.

"That's got to have been one of the weirdest conversations I've ever had on that forum! I've heard a few people like preachers say that nowadays, we live in an age where people don't think what the truth is matters; it's how they feel about it that counts. I always thought they must be exaggerating. I never expected to come across someone who really does seem to think like that!

"It was a bit like as if someone was standing on your toe, and you told them they were standing on your toe and asked them to get off, and they answered, 'I'm offended by your accusation that I'm standing on your toe! I'm not the kind of person who would do that!' And you said, 'I can tell you're standing on my toe because it's hurting, for one thing!' and they said, 'I find it offensive that you're contradicting me. You're invalidating my perceptions of things! You're just being defensive, aren't you, trying to trap me into admitting it so you win the argument about whether I'm standing on your toe!'

"Or imagine if you got a job in an office, and you went in there one day, and someone was sitting at your desk, and you told them it was your desk and asked them to move, and they said, 'I don't like it when I'm told I'm at the wrong desk. I want you to stop!' And you showed them some of your possessions that were on the desk, trying to prove to them it was yours, and they said, 'Now you're trying to invalidate my feelings. That's offensive! This desk feels like mine! It feels as if it really suits me, with it being by the window and all! If I feel like sitting at this desk, it's not fair of you to tell me it's not mine!'

"Or imagine if one day you said, 'I really don't like heavy rock music', and they said, 'I think that's offensive! I like heavy rock, and you're talking as if you think I haven't got the right to like it, as if you don't believe I've got the right to have my own music tastes! That's not fair! Do you know how that makes me feel?' And you protested in surprise, 'Hang on, I didn't mean that at all; you misinterpreted what I said!' and they replied, 'Now you're trying to invalidate my opinions! I feel as if you're wrong, and it won't be fair of you to contradict me!'

"How would you deal with a person like that!

"Maybe this woman was subconsciously behaving the way her parents behaved towards her, or at least the way her mum did. I think she said her mum was the kind of mum who'd complain about how she was hurting her feelings or something whenever she wanted her own way too much for the mum's liking, so she felt as if she had to stop being the way she'd like to have been, because she thought she had to care so much about her mum's feelings. Something like that. I suppose often complaining that someone's hurting your feelings when they're not attending to your every need or something is a kind of manipulation really, a way of controlling someone. Maybe that's what her parents did to her."

Another one of the students grinned and said, "Somehow I can only imagine that working with kids of a certain age though. I mean, imagine trying to control the behaviour of a toddler having a noisy screeching tantrum by pitifully whining that it's hurting your feelings! You wouldn't get very far, would you! Or imagine if you said it to a teenager, and they just shrugged and said, 'Do you think I care?'"

The others giggled, and one said, "Yeah, maybe you'd suddenly turn from someone behaving all pitiful and helpless to someone more like a raging bad-tempered dragon, and say, 'You'd better care, or else!'"

They chuckled.

Then Jessica said, "Wouldn't it be fun if it turned out that that woman's forum username was a synonym for toxicity! Actually her real forum name couldn't be really, because it isn't quite spelled like an English word, although it almost is. But it would be funny if I joked about her username meaning toxicity, and then I looked up the word toxicity in a thesaurus one day, and discovered that an alternative word for it really was something almost the same as her username!

"And I was thinking, maybe it would be fun to do scientific experiments on her. We could take her into a science lab, and I could ask her questions like, 'If I picked you up and hurled you through a window, which do you think would matter more to you, your injuries or the fact that it had hurt your feelings?' And I could ask, 'If I was to call you a slimy repugnant slice of tapeworm, do you think it would hurt your feelings so much that it would ruin your entire day?'"

They laughed. But one of them grinned and said, "Hey watch it, or you'll end up sounding as psycho as the psychopaths we were talking about earlier!"

Jessica chuckled and said, "Yeah, I suppose so! But another thing I was thinking was: Imagine if we had a feelings face-off, where I said something, and she said, 'I know you didn't mean to, but you hurt my feelings when you said that!' And I said, 'Do you realise my feelings were hurt when you just said that?' And she said a bit louder, 'You just hurt my feelings when you said that!' And then I said more angrily, 'Do you realise you hurt my feelings when you just said that?' And imagine it went on and on like that for half an hour or more!"

They laughed again.

But then one said, "Are you sure you're not getting a bit obsessive about this woman? I mean, she might have annoyed you a bit, but do you really think she deserves to be made fun of so much?"

Jessica blushed a bit and said, "Well, probably not really. Those were just thoughts that went through my mind just after we had the annoying conversation, when I was still feeling irritated. I don't feel that annoyed with her any more. Actually, some time later, she apologised to me, saying she'd finally understood my perspective."

One of the others said, "Actually, I think I can understand that thing she said about 'validating' people's feelings. I remember a lecture where the tutor said he's got a little daughter, and one day they went out, and I can't remember what he said happened, but she was upset about something he thought was just petty, and she carried on being upset about it after they got home. I think it was something that happened that she hadn't thought was fair to her. Every time she brought it up, he kept trying to reason with her about how it was fair, or how it didn't matter or something, but she still kept feeling upset about it and bringing it up.

"Then after a few days, he thought, 'I'm being stupid here; I need to do something different'; and instead of arguing with her when she brought it up the next time, he told her he was sorry she'd got upset about it; and that satisfied her. She didn't bring it up any more after that. She must have thought it meant he cared about her feelings, and it made her feel better.

"And I think I understand that thing about advice as well. I mean, maybe this woman over-reacted, or didn't explain herself very well; but I've learned that sometimes, it's best not to give people advice when they talk about their problems, since all they want to do is let off steam, or something like that, and if people start giving them advice, if they think it's not really suitable for their situation, or they think it isn't helping for another reason, then they can feel as if they ought to explain why, but it feels tedious to have to do that, so they don't want to have to do it, and they can start feeling as if their freedom to say what they think and how they feel is being restricted in a way, since they think that if they do, they'll just end up having to go through the tedium of having to explain to people why their advice isn't suitable for them, or they'll feel as if they're not being understood when they're given advice that they think wouldn't help them.

"I mean in circumstances such as if someone says they've been put off getting into relationships because the person they've just broken up with was cruel to them, and someone else advises them to go out and try to find someone else, so they can prove to themselves that not everyone's cruel and start enjoying themselves again, and they think that's ignoring the fact that they need time to recover from their last relationship before they get into their next one, if they do.

"They might think someone's trying to push them into something, and they need to spend time explaining why they don't like the idea, when they'd much rather be just venting their feelings and getting sympathy, feeling as if people understood them. They might be discouraged by advice to get out and find someone new, even though it's intended to do the opposite. They might feel as if the person can't understand their feelings much if they think it would really be that easy to get over their last relationship.

"Or if someone's got a serious illness, and someone else tries to cheer them up by saying they should try and look on the bright side because they'll probably get better, - well, that might cheer up a lot of people, maybe; but some people might think it sounds as if the person's minimising their illness, brushing off how serious it is, so they'd prefer it if they just asked them if they needed any help or something. You know, that kind of thing.

"So maybe when people talk about their problems, it would sometimes be best if people ask them if they'd like help to think of solutions, or whether they're just letting out their feelings, instead of just trying to think up ways of solving their problems for them."

Jessica said, "I suppose so. That makes sense. Yes, maybe that was the kind of thing that was really going on with that woman - maybe she felt as if all she wanted to do was let off steam about her problems and get a bit of sympathy or something, without having to feel under pressure to explain why bits of advice weren't suitable for her.

"Mind you, she didn't seem to be objecting to any of my advice in particular; it seemed to be just the fact that I gave it that she objected to. But like I said, she's apologised for what she said since.

"And I noticed she started criticising herself on her blog. She said some boyfriends she's had have said they think she's got borderline personality disorder. She said her therapist doesn't think so. But there must be something a bit wrong if more than one boyfriend has said things like that. You know, borderline personality disorder is where people can flip from idealising people and gushing about loving them and that kind of thing to getting annoyed with them over the slightest thing, and then suddenly decide they hate them, thinking they're a bad person and wanting to be nasty to them, so they sometimes rage with anger at them, and that kind of thing. Then they can flip back to being passionately in love with them for a while, and then they can hate them again and rage at them, and then the same thing can happen, over and over again. And they can have severe anxiety, and dramatic mood swings. ... Well, it's probably more complicated than that, but you know the kind of thing I mean.

"This woman actually said plainly that she'd been criticised in the past for getting angry too easily because of being over-sensitive to things, and unfairly blaming people for things and being too dramatic, and being very needy, relying on people a lot for care and attention and reassurance, as if she thought she couldn't function on her own. It says something good for her that she was willing to admit to her faults though.

"But I was thinking that my experience with her just shows you that you can't always judge what a person's like by the way they seem at first. She must have a toxic side I just didn't realise she had at first. ... Well, everyone's probably got one to some extent. But it just shows you that it's best to get to know people well, so you can get a good idea of whether you reckon you're going to be able to tolerate their own toxic side, before doing anything serious with them, like making them your girlfriend ... not that I would have wanted to do that with her, obviously."

The Conversation Becomes Humorous for a While

One of the students said, "This is a heavy conversation! I need to go and get something to drink and some food ... again!"

They all decided to do the same.

When they'd sat back down together, one of them smiled and said, "I teased someone on a forum not long ago. He was a moderator, and we had a bit of an argument. But then we started talking in a slightly more friendly way again. I don't know why he was made a moderator; he used to put some really gross stuff on the board sometimes, like making a joke about how the best way to stop a baby crying is to break its neck. Actually what he said was worse than that. Pretty yucky stuff.

"Anyway, he asked people if they could guess what his username meant. It was something like Dondestro.

"I made up a joke, saying, 'I wondered what a dondestro is, so I looked it up in Google. Here's what I found out:

"'A dondestro is a giant man-digesting fast-growing garden hedge. If someone leans on it, it'll suck them in and immediately start digesting them, much like a giant Venus Fly Trap might, at least if it was especially powerful. It'll digest them quickly and leave no trace, even eating their clothes and shoes. So it'll be as if they just disappeared, while the hedge will grow even faster with all the extra nourishment.

"'These hedges are a real blight on neighbourhoods, not only because they eat people, but because they grow at such a tremendous rate that they block out all the light from getting in the windows of surrounding houses, leading to people getting depression for ages because they don't get any sunlight; and all the little flowers in their gardens die because they don't get much sun either.

"'But if anyone tries to cut these giant hedges down, they're always scared off trying, because when the hedges digest people, they incorporate their vocal cords into themselves, so whenever anyone starts to cut a hedge, it emits a loud and chilling scream, so they stop immediately. If anyone thinks the scream means there must be someone in the hedge and starts having a look, the hedge will suck them in and eat them as well.

"'Some people have planted these giant tall hedges in their gardens deliberately to scare off burglars, or to stop people peeping into their gardens. The hedges have grown so fast and caused so much depression to neighbours who've had all the sunlight blocked from the windows of their houses that they sometimes take their neighbours to court to try to get them to cut their hedges back a lot. But even if the judges rule in favour of the depressed neighbours, the other ones won't cut their hedges, because they're scared of the screams they'll make, which tend to be so terrible they can shake a person up for days. Or they worry that because they're so loud, it'll make their neighbours think something terrible must be going on in their gardens, so they might call the police on them.

"'If one of these hedges hasn't eaten anyone for a while, it'll get hungry. Then, rather than waiting for someone to lean on it so it can suck them in and digest them, when it senses someone in its vicinity, it'll suddenly and instantly uproot itself and chase after them at top speed! Imagine being chased by a giant garden hedge!

"'Sadly for science-minded atheists, religious people are more likely to get away from these maniacal man-eating hedges than them, because if a scientific rational sceptic sees one of these things coming towards them, they might think they're just hallucinating, whereas religious people think anything's possible, so they'll think the hedge really is chasing them and run away. But thankfully most atheists do get away, because even the most sceptical rational sceptic will start to wonder whether a giant hedge might really be chasing them when it gets close.

"'If the hedge can't catch anyone, it'll start burrowing into the ground to catch insects, and extending its branches upwards to catch birds in the sky to eat instead. If it's really hungry, it'll burrow so deep into the ground that it'll take root, so it'll stay there instead of going back to where it was before. So people can come home and find a giant hedge in the middle of their garden that wasn't there before.

"'So Dondestro! Why on earth did you name yourself after one of Those?'

"Then I said, 'Anyway, I don't want to know what your name really means or why you really chose it, because corrective information would spoil things; I want to call you Hedge-face for evermore in blissful ignorance.'

"Dondestro said, 'Well, in that case, it's the first part of my middle name and the first part of my last name combined.'

"I joked, 'Oh, so is your middle name something like Donut, perhaps? And then maybe your last name's Destroyer or something? Wow! What a surname! Destroyer! Why have you never changed it? Weren't you embarrassed to grow up with it? And what must one of your ancestors have done to get a name like that! I'm surprised your family allowed it to pass down the generations; but then, I have heard more embarrassing surnames. Why didn't you use your first name in the combination that made your username? Aha, I know! That's where the hedge thing comes in, isn't it! I knew it must fit in somewhere. So your first name must be MonsterHedge or something. How embarrassing for you! What was it like growing up with a name like that? MonsterHedge Donut Destroyer. Wow, what a name! Hedge-face!'

"He said he wasn't at all impressed with my story about his username meaning a monster hedge, and that surely I could have done better.

"But I liked it. So I made more stuff up, saying, 'Here's more information about the hedge Dondestro's named after: If someone plucks a leaf from one of these dondestro hedges, it'll stick to their hand, and they'll never be able to get it off.

"'These leaves have a kind of audio-photographic memory, which enables them to store sounds from their environment and replay them later. Well, they don't play the sounds as they really are, but they replay them in a little high-pitched noise that sounds like a cricket. So if someone listens to some songs on the radio, it'll pick them up, and it has been known for people to be in the middle of important meetings at work when it's started playing them back at a very high pitch. Or someone might be called into the boss's office to discuss a serious matter about their work, or the principal's office if they're at school, and suddenly this leaf starts playing a jolly little tune when the authority figure's trying to be serious. Often, the person isn't believed when they say it's the leaf on their hand making the noise and they can't stop it.

"'Worse still, the leaf learns to imitate other sounds, like their laughter. It's been known for people to be in serious meetings at work, and someone's said, "I'm sad to say we might have to make some people redundant", and immediately afterwards, the leaf has given off a loud, high-pitched maniacal laugh. Some people have tried to stop it by putting their other hand over it to stifle the noise. But when that happens, the leaf will give off a chilling high-pitched shriek. So they don't try that again.

"'Worse still, the leaf will grow on the person's hand, and as it does, its voice-echoing capabilities will grow more sophisticated, until it can actually imitate the voice of the person whose hand it's stuck on. This causes much more embarrassment, since someone might be in their boss's office for a serious talk, and it will start singing in their voice, so the boss will think they're just not listening. Or it will laugh in their voice, sometimes at the most inappropriate times, like when the boss says he's unhappy with their work. Worse, it's been known for these leaves to laugh in the voice of the person whose hand they're stuck on just after someone tells them they're upset about something.

"But even more embarrassing, the leaves learn to say sentences in their voice. A leaf will say something without warning that the person actually said several minutes earlier. For instance, it's been known for someone to say something to his girlfriend like, "So you're cooking dinner for me tonight? That'll be nice", and then go into a supermarket to buy a few things, and just when it's his turn to check out, it says that in front of the person on the till, who he might never have met before. And the person on the till thinks he must have said it, and sometimes even calls security, especially if the man tries to explain that it was the leaf stuck on his hand that really said it. Yep, these dondestro hedges really are scary things!'

"Then I said, 'If you really don't like that story, then ban me from the forum, Dondestro the aspiring giant Man-Eating neighbourhood-oppressing Hedge of Nightmares!'"

The students giggled, and one joked, "You ought to write horror film scripts!"