Disgust is awful!
Oh no! My friend thinks she shouldn't use her nice ornamental coffee pot, because it is made of aluminum! Nevermind that there might be science developing somewhere that this substance may be some kind of innocuous which is not total. It's just horrible that that is how people make decisions
sometimes!
I got really defensive when I started hearing that people would avoid plastic bottles. Seemed like the kind of discernment that could only put me out of touch with things which are available. Go get your coffee pot! I doubt that you'll ever be able to tell if it ever impacted your health. Another friend of mine has a whole crop of prohibitions. He liked some of my clothes and talked about borrowing them until he found out they included polyesters, at which point he completely dropped interest and then I just felt put down for going on with something he had rejected. I thought, why did he speculate to me at all, knowing he had that sort of judgment still pending? Disgust should be unspeakable! but people bring it out with such righteousness, like "wouldn't you like to be healthier, away from all these awful things"? I also feel this way about smells. I hate how people respond to perceptible odors. Everyone is so sure of their opinions. Someone please come out with me for this. Unless you're struggling to breathe I really do not want to hear what you think about a smell. You're just going to interpret the world as being a worse place to be and that habit is what disgusts me!
Well, it seems to me that anyone has the right to feel disgusted by whatever they want. There are certainly many things that disgust me. What people don't have is a right to prescribe what everyone else should like based on their own likes and disklikes. So yeah it's okay to be disgusted by some things, just don't be an asshole about it 🤷🏿♂️
Is there anything you're disgusted by? Are there things you complain about or criticize? Do you view all of your criticisms/disgusts as immune to your complaint?
I don't see why, I quite disagree, especially when it comes to relatively trivial things. Now if someone voices disgust in a hateful way (like towards group of people or something), that becomes a different matter- but that's not really what you're talking about here.
Now, if I try to search for maybe a core of something that resonates me in what you're saying (which doesn't fully resonate with me, which is okay) - I understand frustration when people have a tough time trying new things, like unfamiliar tastes or smells, or when people make decisions based on loose information and try to push that on others ("don't you know that energy drink you're drinking is unhealthy? don't you know that aspartame <blah blah blah>"), or when people write off something without attempting to understand it (certain types of music, etc)
(For instance, one constantly on my mind is some people hate the idea of acquired tastes. For me, the fact that I can alter my taste perception over time seems like a magical self-hack that I wish more people could see as a positive!)
But I also turn the mirror on myself and reflect that I do these same things which frustrate me, just in different facets from other people, and while I try to fight those urges, biases, and responses- I understand why others have them- it's quite easy to have reactions to things or have partially formed opinions on things from a myriad of life experiences, sources, relationships, and other parts of life. I think it's part of being human. I wish more people were more informed on various things but there's only so much time, priorities, etc in the world to allocate to such things. Add the landslide of misinformation available online on top of this and it's no surprise.
So I just try to keep it all in perspective (and I don't mean this with some holier-than-thou or aggressive tone- hopefully I don't come across that way)
It sucks to feel judged, and it's natural to be defensive about it, I think. It helps to consider where it's coming from -- not on a personal level, but for example, if someone is deep into alternative medicine and someone told them that A is hazardous, when the hazard is in fact quite minor, it's because of where they're at.
As hard as it might be to recontextualize a lot of it comes from a place of positive intention most of the time. I try to look at it that way. When it comes up, I am simply forward with that I'd like to see the study since I haven't seen anything in that vein which I find compelling.
When it comes to thinks like discomfort with an environment, I would prefer that my friends tell me than simply be uncomfortable in silence. If there's something I can do about it, I will try, but I'll agree that sometimes people are rather blunt when it comes to their reactions.
These sorts of things don't typically bother me unless I'm already under stress from something else. I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with that either -- life is very stressful some times. But my awareness of when I am being poorly centered and more emotionally reactionary also helps me put my own responses in perspective and it helps me mitigate and control them.
This seems like it could hopefully be some helpful venting as well, but I also think there's decent advice in the comments here from others.
I wish I knew more about how to guide people from turning their fear into perspectives that probably have more of an impact on their life than what they are afraid of, like I'm half-way through my life and if there's some kind of effect from mercury fillings at this point, paying thousands of dollars to have them removed early (since they need to be replaced eventually) isn't going to have much of an effect besides spending a lot of money on a placebo. But people have to make their own decisions ultimately, since pushing too much just turns people into defensive panic mode. :E Those are my own semi-related problems.
There is an expression that I heard during Covid that I think pretty well encapsulates what you're saying: "Don't yuck my yum".
There is some pretty colloquial language in there that I'll explain in case any tilderinos aren't familiar with it. Yuck is derived from yucky, meaning gross, and is usually said as "YUCK!" in disgust. Yum refers to the sound people make when they find something delicious. So the saying pretty much means "Hey, I'm enjoying this so don't bring all that negativity in here!" I've been using it to pretty great effect with my partner. We have very different taste in music, so if she start critiquing my taste in music (which is extremely subjective) I'll usually just respond with a "Don't yuck my yum!" and she usually realizes I'm being an asshole. Now if she brings it up in a situation like us driving in the car where she is also subject to it, I'll usually say "can you just ask if we can listen to something we both enjoy without degrading my taste in music" and then change it to one of our shared interest playlists.