What Happens When You're Starved Of Kindness

Dr. K’s Guide to Mental Health explores Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and Meditation with 150+ video chapters in a Final Fantasy-inspired skilltree.

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[santtu]

He gets it. Being treated like a normal person is the best. Being put under or above is uncomfortable.

[xchrysantha]

I really love the phrasing "starved for kindness, " rather than the usual "starved for attention or affection, " which is usually used to shame or to invalidate people. "Starved for kindness" gets to the heart of the issue.

Edit: I think my comment might be getting a little misinterpreted...What I appreciate about the phrasing is that it allows for better intervention. My perspective is that of a special education teacher with decades of attracting mentally unstable people.

"Starved for attention" is judgmental and helps nobody (even if it is an accurate description). "Starved for kindness" gives you a place to start addressing the negative behaviors that come with that.

[Heauxsome]

"Not all kindness is indicative of lust" 🔥

[krazak]

“Because you were oblivious”

God damn….

[nalinea]

It's kind of a vicious cycle, really. Loneliness makes you more likely to latch onto anyone who is kind, which then makes you more likely to appear creepy and drive them away, and that in turn makes you more lonely.

[olady]

I am a woman who's starving for kindness. I noticed that even a tiny gesture of kindness makes me lean towards that person 💔

[vbj]

Emotionally starved people accept crumbs from others whereas emotionally nourished people know their worth and that they deserve a whole meal.

[yanajohnson]

"Not all kindness is indicative of lust" 100% TRUE.

[dms-f]

I'm a lady. I treat people kindly because we're humans and that's the normal thing to do. Some men will think it's "a sign", but I continue being neutral and polite. Be kind and normalize treating each other with dignity. The world is shitty enough as it is.❤

[Duanepipeington]

Men need to hear this stuff. Loneliness is what a lot of men are raised on and it presents itself in a subtly destructive way that isn’t addressed enough.

[ezzie_is]

Gonna be honest. My philosophy used to be “It costs nothing to be kind”, but after years of interacting with men who don’t understand that women can be nice to them simply because they’re nice to everyone, I know that sometimes it does actually cost a hell of a lot.

[glorioustoast]

I’ve never had a girlfriend and people have told me how to “talk to girls”, and many act like there’s some separate contingency plan for talking to the opposite gender. In high school, some of my friends would laugh and make fun of me for talking to a girl a certain way, and for a long time it felt like there was some sort of cage that I had to break out of to have the charisma to talk to women. Media enforces this kind of ideology. There’s these pickup artists, even these casual YouTubers rating their viewer’s pickup game through text, and so many people in social media act like the opposite gender is some kind of foreign species that needed to be “dealt” with in a certain way.

This just made it worse for me, because I wasn’t like that. I didn’t like the idea of being on romantic terms with someone immediately after the first interaction. I wasn’t into hookup culture. It felt like I was trying to become something I wasn’t. In a social setting, all I wanted was to ask questions and understand the person I was talking to. And a big moment for me was when I realized that I wasn’t doing this for everyone equally. It sounds really cringy, but because of how people have conditioned me to act a certain way around women, I couldn’t bring out my natural social skills around them, and this also applies to so many other groups of people in my life, like authority figures.

Eventually, I just stopped acting a certain way around the way that I categorized people, and tried to understand the individual, because everyone is human, and everyone is different. I’ve had so much success socially ever since when I adapted this mindset.

[Bioniclema]

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that if a girl is nice to me, it doesn't mean I'm special to her in the slightest. These days I always assume I'm not and I've had no issues at all.

[MysterySteve]

The worst part of romance from the perspective of a lonely person, is that it requires a level of patience you might not be ready for, despite it seeming like the biggest and best cure for said loneliness. Very glad I got out of that hole, there's hope for everyone

[daleelaletyaeva]

goes the other way too. I'm a woman and I needed this reminder 😅

[CuriousObserver]

Hes kindly saying 'Stop simpin'

[TheNikolajHE]

Anyone nice to you is nice to everyone. Don't forget that.

[GatingHeadlamp]

I once showed someone kindness and I believe they got their hopes up expecting something beyond that. It makes me feel bad, because I feel like I lead them on and used them as a means to an end (having a fun night out). It made me feel especially bad when I noticed how emotionally vulnerable they are. In hindsight I was thinking that maybe I should have kept my distance. But not interacting and having fun together when it feels natural seems wrong, too. Feels like a game you can't win unless you only interact with people you are sexually attracted to or those who don't "need" kindness in the first place. Kinda tragic

[leaelzebub]

This has happened to me so many times. As a hostess at a restaurant being nice to an older gent once he started coming in at night to sit at the bar and ask me to drink with him and go out with him, grabbing my arm when I walked past. A kid I went to college with was alone and painfully shy so I invited him into our group for lunch and he wouldn't take no for an answer when he asked me out like a couple of weeks later when I was trying to turn him down gently. But the worst was a mall kiosk guy selling jewelry who I walked past on my way to get lunch a lot and waved and talked to BRIEFLY. He asked for a hug one day, and I SHOULD HAVE SAID NO, but didn't as it seemed so innocent and he kissed me ON THE NECK. It was horrifying.
So... I stopped giving an inch anymore. Bare minimum politeness.
And my gamer tag sounds likes a dude's and I never use a mic so I don't get any ick while gaming.

[essoundsofsilence]

"Treat women like human." I know it's a revolutionary, mindblowing thought 😂