u/DirectionLimp2745

Hi all!

I have ADD (inattentive type) and OCD/Anxiety. One aspect of this that has impacted my daily life is that I’m overstimulated by a lot of different aural stimuli/ sounds. A lot of it is the din of multiple conversations happening at once in a public place. I shut down, become irritable, and my stress level spikes to the point where it’s like I’m in fight or flight mode. My dad is a professor and recently invited me to a community dinner at the college where he works, which took place in a cafeteria full of people having conversations. It was not an enjoyable experience for me. It’s greatly limiting my social and dating lives that I’m like this. Maybe more exposure is the answer, but I’ve been a middle school teacher for almost 10 years and I live in a city where I take public transportation and it never seems to get easier to deal with noise.

At the school where I am a teacher, we are approaching end-of-year festivities (trips and dances and stuff.) I feel like such a killjoy because my teenage students are loud and it really gets to me, but they are just kids having fun. The loudness of their overlapping conversations drains my energy. Sometimes, in the classroom, I ask for someone to come relieve me for a bathroom break just so I can sit in a quiet bathroom for a minute. Being a middle school teacher, I am always exhausted, not just from the workload, but because the sounds of the day, more generally, the abundance of stimuli I have to respond to, and lack of boundaries drains my energy. I sometimes sleep for most or all of the weekend or breaks, and this interferes with my personal goals. I’ve always wanted to have kids but I’m wondering how I can when noise bothers me this much.

It’s also sudden loud noises. A car honked right as I was walking by it today and it really upset me. The bell at school makes me jump (and even in some instances, scream) whenever it goes off, despite the fact that I’ve worked at that school with that same bell for three years.

I think this all became worse post-COVID, which makes sense because COVID was such a quiet time. But I worry how this impacts me in terms of my stress level, my job being sustainable, my goal of dating, and my goal of having kids eventually. I genuinely feel anguished in loud environments. It really is my idea of a living hell.

I do really love soothing sounds. For instance, I’m a big fan of ASMR. I also am a lover of music. It’s really just loud “overlapping” voices and suddenly arising loud sounds that upset me.

Just wondering if anyone else navigates this challenge, and if so, what you have done to work through it.

Making this its own post. If you are the person mentioned in the first paragraph and want credit, reach out to me. 🙂

Edit: Here’s a better way to sum my points up.

I think Taylor became evil in her pursuit of acceptance. I feel sad for the part of her that never felt accepted. I hate her for being evil. And she continues to choose evil every day.

We can see that she is unfulfilled in being accepted in the way she never shuts up about her critics and keeps “climbing” to reach new records and sales numbers. She will never scratch the itch she’s hoping to scratch because she will never be good enough to where she feels she’s worthy of acceptance. (At least, not without therapy.) Nothing will ever be good enough for her. She doesn’t know how to just “be”. *End of edit.

Someone pointed out her Grammys quote about how her biggest fear is being average, and said that other artists will use similar opportunities to talk about how touched they are to be the soundtrack of peoples’ lives through happy or tough times. That’s such a contrast. One is about being part of other peoples’ lives, while the other is about being better than other people.

It gave me a lot of thoughts. As of 2015 I’ve been a vocal ex-fan-turned-hater and have followed her public persona over the years. I will start by acknowledging that I don’t know her as a person and that it’s possible that I am projecting, but I really don’t think that I am.

This quote is to say she doesn’t want to be like other people (hence the “not-like-other-girls” theme that runs through her work, or insistence on creating separation between herself and the working class or non-celebrity, or even between herself and other celebrities.) She shows a compulsive need to be an exceptional rare genius that stands out from the rest. But she’ll never scratch that itch. What she’s reaching for isn’t attainable. She will always want more.

She simultaneously tells herself she’s better than everyone else and is terrified because on some level, she knows that she isn’t. So she keeps overexposing herself, driven by fear of being average, and in the process, has become an exploitative husk of a human being. Her family too, though I think they were unhealed and unhealthy far before she came along. (This is largely the source of the empathy.)

I think she believes she has to earn being worthy, not that she inherently is. I used to be like that too, and therapy really helped me. She’s miserable and it’s so clear. A gratitude-filled life is worth more than anything she has. She never has to worry about a roof over her head or bills being paid and yet, I would never trade places with her because she’s missing some crucial things, like humanity and love (for self, for others, and for what she does).

I really believe (and I know I’m not alone) that she needs therapy in a truly dire way. I really believe she’s in crisis. We’ve already seen it in her lyrics for years.

I think she doesn’t know how to love herself, but can somewhat talk herself into it if she’s “the best”, which she’ll never really be because that’s not measurable, objective, or stable (hence how she sings about the next young star to come along). But that points to her obsession with the charts. The accolades fill the self-love void, but only temporarily.

I think she’s evil, but I still sympathize with her 🥴. I think she really needs professional help (and that, by itself, is not a bad thing). She could choose to be a good person, but has continued at every juncture to choose exploitation and greed. At this point I wonder if she’s lost all humanity, if it’s buried, or if she had any to begin with.

In addition to all this her personal life is heavily scrutinized and while I realize I’m playing a part in that, she has literally made a career out of packaging her personal life for public consumption for the sake of capitalizing off of it. So she kind of built a brand that has swallowed her whole. I really think she needs to attend to her mental health. Something is not right.

It’s interesting that snarkers often are more attuned to Taylor the person than her fans are. She’s more a product to them than a person.

What are your thoughts? How able are you all to compartmentalize and empathize with evil people*, and do you think it’s productive to do so? Because of her victim complex, I’m tempted to suppress any empathy I feel. It would only be weaponized against others, because that’s what she always does.

*I think I’m in likeminded company here, but if you are someone who insists she’s not evil, a core tenet of her brand is siccing her fans against people by writing lyrics with Easter egg hints leading directly to those people, including the ex of her fiance, who has been the target of racist hate. And this is just one thing out of many. The ACLU thing revealed she’s a fascist obsessed with narrative control, and also a racist. She’d rather threaten an anti-racist blogger saying she should denounce the white supremacist magazine claiming she was one of them than threaten the white supremacists or simply denounce white supremacy? Fuck outta here. There were options there and she took the racist fascist one.

Edit: I guess what I’m saying here is that I think there is something fundamentally wrong with her. She might be a sociopath. She seems completely unable to empathize with others (though she presents like she is able to), and I can’t help but feel sad, even for people like that. It just seems like a soulless, unfulfilling existence. Even as she has stadiums full of people celebrating, she seems empty and robotic, not like she is partaking in the joy.

I wish I did not feel empathy for evil people, but honestly I still do. I can more easily turn it on and off, though, but the intrusive thoughts do come. I feel more anger towards her and empathy for her victims than I feel empathy for her, but multiple things can be true at one time.

I think Taylor is broken inside. I really hate her so much on behalf of those she’s victimized. It’s just that I am able to have empathy for those I hate (including when I’m the victim). Can anyone relate?