ok sorry... was busy last night.
No chimera, haha I guess that is a tad cruel. I ought to remedy it.
It has nothing to do with the bluntness or truth of the statement... it's just not productive. If you've ever seen Dr. Phil, with that "you know what you need to do? How 'bout you go get off your lazy ass and get yourself a
job" speech, you should know that I've heard psychologists say that that's the most harmful thing you can say to someone who's too depressed to work. Sometimes people are just lazy... but in that case motivation is not the "root of the issue," as you call it.
I sort of sensed it's the same thing here. AI's said before that he drinks and hates himself later for it... if all he needs is to just "get up and stop drinking," I'm sure it would have been done long ago. And if someone says "why don't you just stop?" it's bad for a couple of reasons. The first is that it sounds like you're insulting his ideas... because the only way it helps is if he's like "oh, duh! I never thought of just
stopping before. I guess I'll just do that, then." And if you're not insulting his ability to think up that possible remedy, then you're insulting his willpower to carry it through. The last thing someone who gets upset at themselves for something like drinking needs to hear is "well why don't you just
do something about it?" If he's thought of it before and wants to stop, then it's just needling at his willpower.
Then if that's true, he's about the last type of person you would ever want to rub a sore spot like that with. If I'm reading this right, he drinks to forget how much he doesn't like himself/life, and doesn't like himself/life even more after he drinks--the inescapable spiral. To say "why not try quitting" to someone who takes it personally is to cause them to drink more--almost certainly. So, of course that's not necessarily who he is or how he takes things at all... but weigh the odds. If he's that kind of person, it would almost certainly do damage (more so depending on how close you are to him--which can't be very, because you're just a person on the forum... but it still might hurt). If he's not, then at best, I think you've broken even. If he wants to, what are the chances he's both never thought about trying to quit and also never given it a try? It just seems impractical, that in the worst case you could do a lot of harm, and in the best case you could break even at having no effect.
So (to answer chimera's question), that's why I even stopped to point out that you may have touched a sore spot. It was not for you that I mentioned it, but for the hypothetical situation I just explained. In the case that he felt significantly worse after having it suggested that he just quit, he'd immediately see that someone else understood, even if you didn't. In the case that it didn't affect him at all, everyone just *shrugs*, I say "sorry, I guess I misread you," and nothing changes. If I'm completely off-base, everything breaks even... and if I'm not completely off-base, a lot of the damage is just healed over instantly. Perhaps you wouldn't really know, if you've never been in some kind of similar situation... but the absolute best and most encouraging thing that can ever happen to you is someone who understands--who
really understands... not like the SFJs who would say they understand and try to imitate our half-existent feelings, but someone who knows a bit of what's going through your head and doesn't immediately judge you for it.
So that's what I was going for... nothing against the bluntness or the hunt for the root of the problem that you had, but just a sort of damage-control against a possible hypothetical situation that may have just been entirely Ne-dreamed. But in the worst case it helps, and in the best case it broke even, so I went with it--it was nothing personal against your suggestion. ...not to mention that I really
did think there was a good chance you hit a sore spot.
.....on a side note, Decaf, I'm beginning to see what you meant when you said that Ti-dominant thoughts would be incomprehensible if they were explained in words to the outside world. That went through my head in about the 3/4 of a second it took to decide to point out that that may have been a bad choice to bring up.
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