Retroactive Interpretation

[nemorathwald]

Have there been times in your life when you experienced an emotion due to circumstances you were already in, and then someone spoke to you, and you retroactively perceived the words as the cause of that emotion? For examples:

Feel anger -> interpret words as demands.
Feel guilt -> interpret words as criticisms.
Feel fear -> interpret words as threats.
Feel shame -> interpret words as dismissal.

Comments

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

Frequently.

[selki.livejournal.com]

Not that, exactly. Certainly mood has influenced my interpretation of the words spoken which may or may not have anything to do with the circs/mood. In those cases, I've been glad when I was able to figure out the mood influenced the interpretation.

[the-leewit.livejournal.com]

I agree with Selki. I have not noticed myself attributing feelings that were already there to stuff people have said (that is what you were saying, yes?), but if I am hungry, physically ill, or very tired, it is very easy for me to slip into paranoia and ill interpretations of innocent words.

In fact, now that I think about it, I have attributed physical bad feelings to things people have said, when they are in fact unrelated. In your model:

-Bumped head that I have forgotten happened> "stress headache" from someone shouting at me earlier;
-Nausea and pain from undiagnosed pyloric ulcer> exaggerating the idea of how sad I am about a breakup and lumping about feeling sorry for myself and writing excruciatingly bad poetry (sadly, I was in my EARLY THIRTIES, not a teenager at all);
-Constipation> everyone else is an IDIOT.

I'd also been told all my life that menstrual cramps (and labor pains) were purely psychological, and the first time I had cramps, I thought "Welp, this is it. I must be in love with this fellow who is speaking to me." Hilarity followed.