…ideally one that was both genuine and that you had the confidence and self awareness to interpret as kind. And for bonus points, what’s one you’ve given?
I’m thinking back to the guy in group therapy years ago who told me he always thought of people who swore as not knowing any better words, but that I obviously knew better words and just also swore and even used them artistically and that’s just really stuck with me. Sometimes I wonder how much of my self esteem has suffered not just because I’ve been told not to brag, but also because I’m extremely weird so the compliments I do receive often reflect that.
My bonus one (and I’m not sure how well he was able to take it) was that one of my fellow psych nurses was frequently and obviously terrified any time shit hit the fan, but that somehow still he’d never once failed to have my back. He’d be stuttering the whole way through an incident but I’d walk out of the med room with both halves of a B52 and he’d take one of the syringes without a second thought. He was literally the epitome of “courage isn’t not being scared, it’s being willing to face it.” I should find a nice presentation of that quote somewhere to send him because I’m not sure I phrased it well at the time.
I know there have to have been even weirder ones I got over the years, but what stuck with me is when a nurse in a
psych wardpsychiatric clinic called me (a patient) being like a “weird, confused professor” as a genuine compliment.Funny story I actually am a psych nurse and “manic professor” isn’t the most dobbed on the bingo card but its definitely a classic and waaay better than the more common “neo-nazi wife-beater pretending they’re depressed to try and duck their charges.”
My better example was the dude that remembered all the weird and vaguely menacing sexual shit he said to me while manic and was mortified and I was like,“dude I worked with actual psychotic rapists for like two years, you ain’t shit by comparison, trust me” and he was like “oh thank God” but the patient who only heard that last half of my sentence was like “What. The. Fuck.” And it wasn’t like I could explain it without illicitly putting the dude on blast.
Honestly I actually believe he was sorry (most who apologize for the weird sex shit aren’t) for the exact same reason I wasn’t worried about it when he was doing it; he really just hit me as young, dumb, and scared and trying to act bigger than he was. Idk I’ve just got a good feel for that kind of thing and even when he was doing it I was just like “…nice try kid. You are gonna take a nap now tho.” He was actually really relieved for me to be like “no I’ve met actual horrible people you’re not even close LOL”
Oh, I just realised (English not being my first language), I meant “just” a psychiatric clinic, not a criminal psych ward, I guess that’s the confusion part showing on my end, lol.
Thankfully, no manic phases for me, but I met several people over the course of my life that had them (one woman I had a short relationship with used to tell me about the stuff she ended up doing during manic phases in her past, oh boy, it can get both scary and funny, but always interesting). I can fully believe and understand that he would have been genuinely sorry in that moment and appreciative and glad to have heard that from you. Another patient only hearing half of it makes it quite funny, I wonder what he thought in his head about the context with seeing the other guy go “oh thank god”.