Dear Kayla,
I have been working toward learning to interact more with the world.
When you are interacting with someone you don't know well, it is easy to feel slighted. When people don't know you well, they don't understand how you will feel and react to certain small things. Chances are they don't even know what bothered you. I know I have done that to other people on numerous occasions. But it can be really difficult to tell: When is someone's slight genuine and when is it your imagination?
Part of many people's mental illness is a difficulty distinguishing between the two. Some people ignore legitimate threats, and a greater number interpret insignificant nuances and coincidences as intentional threats. I can't tell you how to distinguish real threats from misinterpreted ones in a single letter. That takes years: Frankly, I think that NO ONE, with or without a psychiatric history, is able to perfectly distinguish real threats from imagined ones. But I can give advice.
I have learned that if someone slights you or seems annoyed at you, one thing to examine is whether they are treating everyone that way or just you. Other people have their own problems, they have their own bad moods, and as I said before they can slight people without even knowing it. If you can, watch them closely as they interact with other people. Try to emphasize with the "other people," not the person who upset you. Do your best to imagine how those "other people" feel as they are interacting with this person. Would they feel slighted or upset or put off, too? That is a really clear sign it is not just you.
As I said, social interactions are extremely complex and take a long time to learn. But I can share what works for me.
