Why Am I Never Taken Seriously?

Then I get angry and think "if they are not taking me seriously because I obviously haven't SUFFERED like they have then maybe they deserved it!"...which I don't like to feel.

Does that make sense?

Hey! It's a start.

The first most important thing to grasp is that you cannot make people take you seriously. You can't make them do anything. Consider the many teenagers who suddenly come to the luminous insight in regard to their parents' various demands - "You can't make me." It's true. You can only endeavor to make it worth the other person's while to do as you wish. They'll either comply or not.

The second most important thing to grasp is that no one can act on information they don't have. You are the only person who knows your mind, your thooughts, your needs, your desires, your opinions. It is up to you to convey that information to any other person who you think requires that information.

Since this communication is ultimately for your benefit, you have to work at it. Communication often fails. Most often it partly fails. If you want to be sure you've communicated your thought, you have to double check.

As Nowell's answer hints, this process requires an assertion of yourself. You have to ask for, get and hold the other person's attention and make sure your message gets across. This means you have to value your message. You've got to figure 'I'm important dammit, so this is important.'

These are the basics, the prime directives. Being diplomatic, patient, gentle and understanding as you struggle to convey your message - these are refinements. Important refinements, but they don't override the prime directives.

Ask for respect. Put yourself forward. Then respect the other person's independence of thought and action. When it works correctly it's a treat. (multiple xpost)

Also, people interrupt me all the time.

My problem is, when I try to establish common ground with people, I am usually slapped down for it, if not so aggressively.

People interrupt me all the time, too. Sometimes they are really rude about it, saying "EXCUSE ME" like they're about to say the room is on fire, but then going on about something that happened to THEM, with no connection to anything I just said.

I think it is a problem with achievement, that is, people who are succesful are intimidating, and the people I can get along with easily are usually of the type seen as society's failures, so I tend to undervalue them.

The problem for me is, I am starting to believe that the dismissive contempt I am receiving from those more succesful than I is no longer just thoughtless, but deliberate. It is as if the world is becoming less and less tolerant of weakness all the time.

Nowell - maybe that is why you distrust adults, because you might partly see them as failures? Teenagers often envision great futures for themselves, and people who have grown up to only have 'normal' lives must seem like they have failed.

I have difficulty with making specific demands of people, because I fear they will react harshly, or subject me to detailed questioning, which just makes me want to say "forget about it then"

I think I'm just a naturally 'vague' person, I don't have very strong feelings about most things.

That's rhetorical, but you understand my meaning.

I have pretended to have them, but always felt really embarrassed about it later. Sometimes people try to be nice and say they won't bring up a certain issue because they "know" I have strong feelings about it, because of something I said before, and I feel ashamed to tell them that I really don't, and that I was just acting impassioned about something because that's what people are supposed to do.

Also, this reinforces my belief that the only things that people remember about you are the times you lost control of your emotions, or made mistakes, or demonstrated your inferiority in some other way.

Ironically, I think you probably appear to other people as a stable, self-sufficient person because of the very fact that you tend not to show emotions, and that therefore people might not take the problems you express seriously because of the image they have of you. To them, your problems can't be that bad, since to them you actually appear relatively strong. I'm just making an educated guess since it's hard to really tell from a thread, but this is similar to what happened to me.

I didn't think of it as not being taken seriously exactly - but I did worry about whether my friends liked me as much as they liked other friends, how much they thought about me, whether they really thought about what I was *feeling* instead of just as someone convenient to hang out with, etc.

Anyway, if this guess is right, you may need to state your issues more strongly or repeat them more, in order for people to take them as seriously.

"How do you react to this? is it something you can use in your work?"

(steeples fingers under chin, nods sagely while waiting for reaction. grows beard)