When things are not correct, what do you do?

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For me:

In December, my niece purchased pizzas for dinner, but she did not purchase the selection we usually get, and I did not get much as she neglected the only kind of pizza I will eat (from that selection - my willingness to eat pizza is a bit broader than that).

I did get to eat enough, however, I got kind of obsessed with having pizza after that, even to the point that other food wasn't interesting to me. I put lunch off later and later until I was getting a snack shortly before dinner because my blood sugar was out of hand. When I did have a meal, it would take 1-2 hours for me to eat it, which is atypically slow, and I was not finishing on occasion. What I did finally was buy the correct selection of pizzas, and once we had pizza, this whole thing stopped - I could eat normally again (I just had to worry about forgetting to eat instead of obsessing over pizza), and whatever it was that was happening ceased.

I've done this on another occasion, when a friend purchased me dinner at a steakhouse. He didn't pay enough for my usual, and I was fixated on, as soon as I got money, having my usual dinner.

I got seriously focused on how things had been done incorrectly.

But I do the same thing with social interactions: When someone insists that incorrect information is actually correct, this offends my sensibilities and I feel a need to provide the correct information. If it's bad enough (say I am in a situation where it is difficult to reply in any manner without reinforcing the incorrect assumptions) I start to actually feel something like a slowly impending meltdown, and the longer I go without resolving the dissonance the worse it gets.

And of course, once I do resolve it, the feeling goes away.

This isn't anxiety. I don't feel like something bad will happen. It just offends something in my mind that I can't seem to switch off or let go.

Does anyone relate to this?

I have to have situations 'corrected' also. I know if I can get them corrected then I can let it go. It causes me tons of anxiety, can't stop it from popping into my mind until it is corrected. It is all kinds of odd things too. Like one day I picked up a string holder for my security badge at the desk. I told them I would return it the next day but then I forgot I was about to be on vacation for a week. I thought about it for the whole week I was off...something inside was off...a loose end I didn't attend to properly. I could have fixed it by calling security but they would have thought it extra weird, like they care or remember I 'promised'. I even wanted to mail it to them...
It was a relief when I went back the next week. I have it with food too, like if it wasn't quite right because I was missing something then it will pop up here and there until I have it again and do it the 'right' way. It isn't ocd stuff either. It is in my mind 'incorrect' and needs to be 'correct' to be put away. I also do it with special interest things....drive all over for the right pen refill. If I don't get the right one it will bother me the whole life of the refill....just not worth it, kind of crazy.

Last edited by alone on 14 Feb 2011, 7:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, not being able to correct it can cause anxiety, but it's not an OCD thing.

If things aren't done a certain way, and I feel like the other person didn't try to do it right, then I may go nuts.

I have a bad habit of doing it in social situations. I'll often correct people without thinking. However, when it comes to food, I don't necessarily do it, partially out of the fear of my food being spit on or something.

A few weeks ago I stopped talking to a friend of mine because I got tired of him saying that the Playstation 3 is outselling the Xbox360. Yes, I DO have a 360 and yes he DOES have a PS3 and both of us are very loyal to our systems. But if you look at the number of systems sold per year, and if you look at the games that are released on BOTH systems you'd see that the 360 is doing very well. But he insists that more people have the PS3, more people buy games for it, etc.

I can't stand it when I know someone is wrong and I have the facts to prove it and they still won't listen.

What you said about food sounds very familiar to me. If I decide to get something, and for some reason I cannot get it, then I will obsess about it, and go to extremes to satisfy my need. It is a strange thing. I am normally not very choosy about food.

I am that about other things too. It often takes me a little bit of time to decide to buy something expensive. If I do decide to buy it, though and I can't get it, I start feeling very frustrated, and go through a lot of effort to find whatever it is.

As far as your other example, though, that is not so much of a problem for me. I know a lot of people who are very determined to stick with whatever misinformation that they want to present. I found that it's just not worth fighting over, because they never change their mind. I think that I just got tired of fighting.

I don't need to convince them or make them change their minds, I just need correct information to be there.

This can start feeding itself in a discussion, though, if someone is constantly misunderstanding me. I'll get stuck in a loop of trying to explain what I was trying to say while they constantly insist on reading things into what I'm saying that depart further and further from my intended point.

There are several other ways this comes up for me, beyond food and discussion, these were just the best examples I could recall.

Yes. I agree with you there. If I think that I am being misunderstood, I will make one or two attempts to get my information out there.



I've been there too. At a certain point, I just to myself , they are misunderstanding me because they don't want to listen, and I abandon it as a lost cause. I think that in this case, my need to avoid conflict outweighs my need to get them to understand my viewpoint.

Whenever I have breakfast at Tim Horton's, they always screw up my order. I've decided to stop ordering breakfast and order only tea or coffee there.

This is the bottom line: the inability to listen to you. Do they stop and say, " why, what do you mean, or I'm sorry I don't understand?"

I think the problem is a bit pervasive here, though, I mean it seems to be more recurrent than usual. And there are a lot of factors here and just being a plain "introvert" or "gifted" can cause this misunderstanding- they aren't around these folks much-too infrequent.

And I grok the above. I've been completely misunderstood by the "dullards"-and not a nice term, but they, in their misunderstanding , go their way thinking the same towards you. The next time they likely will even patronize you. I've been there and it is frequent enough, unfortunately.

Oh, I agree. The only question then is, did the invisible switch in my brain that says "You've been able to adequately correct the situation" get flipped? If no, I'm going to keep at it (is this perseveration?) until it does. Or if I can find a different way to handle it that flips it.



I don't feel that dullard is a good description. The last person this happened with is actually fairly intelligent, but he took a disagreement I had with him as an attack, and when I tried to explain what I meant he got more defensive. And when I finally explained that his original post was confusing because it made no sense, he assumed it was confusing because he is so smart. It was, as many of these exchanges tend to be, a bit surreal for me.

I believe it is a communication problem, sometimes going both ways. But it's frustrating to experience.

Last edited by Verdandi on 15 Feb 2011, 4:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, this is exactly it. Some people have a phobia of admitting that they don't understand something. So they blindly assume whatever they assume. I just don't understand that viewpoint. If you don't understand, just say that you don't understand.



I'm assuming that by "here", you mean WrongPlanet; please correct me if you mean otherwise. I've actually found the environment here to be rather refreshing. Many places that I've been on line have been much worse. There are a few people who I avoid because they seem to have some sort of communications problem which makes them rather argumentative, but the rest seem to be fairly straightforward in their communications.



I come across this sort of conflict far to often in my real life. I wouldn't call them "dullards" though, because most of the people that I encounter are pretty intelligent. But some people seem to be incapable of self-correction, because they are not willing to accept the notion that they may have misunderstood something.

I understand this perfectly. I could easily imagine myself getting caught in that trap, given my behavior in other situations. It's just with me, the need to avoid conflict overcomes the need to be understood. It's a phobia versus a compulsion, and the phobia wins.

" Dullards" is one and is a common one, and a personality disorder would be another. This can go in different ways. Someone can be "intelligent" but if you factor in or subtract the "foibles," such as a "personality disorder," or the like, the balance is an unintelligible link and hence a misunderstanding.

Edit: "Dullard" in this context is one who patronizes you and the situation is incontrovertibly uncorrectable. I don't take it as a fault on my end, when they made up their closed mind. Someone else may come along and may say "excuse me" and it moves on in a right direction.

Last edited by Mdyar on 15 Feb 2011, 7:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, I meant in this context. I've found the communication here above board.