Why do people not care about things until it affects them?

burnoutbabe

fierystormcloud wrote: »

In addition, she keeps asking for money for 'autism' charities and things they're doing for autism. She actually gets quite snarky when people refuse, and says 'I hope none of YOUR grandkids never get autism!' with a nasty spiteful tone and her eyes glaring.

I'd be reporting her at work to a boss, that's not something that is appropriate for work - 1 email saying she is doing x and her is her just giving link if anyone wants to sponsor her is okay but keep asking people to give her money is not on.

Torry_Quine

It's normal to be more concerned and involved about a condition that you have personal experience with. there's no way everyone can do something about all causes.

thorsoak

People may know little, and care even less, about a condition until it affects their own family - often then their reaction is more intense - partly through guilt.

Tigsteroonie

I will freely admit that I knew nothing about deafness, nor autism, until we had our son. Both Marley and I are familiar with the difficulties of visual impairment, the fates obviously decided we knew enough about that and gave us new challenges!

I would hope that my work colleagues would say that I don't obsess about it I generally ask them to help me fund-raise once a year. I occasionally share appropriate memes on FB but that's because I like them, not to raise awareness amongst my FB friends.

Rev

bugslet wrote: »

Too many things to care about, you can't care about them all. When something affects you, it becomes your whole life. Dementia became more important once my *OH had it. I couldn't spend time worrying and caring about epilepsy, strokes, lupus, hi polar and on and on as well.

Exactly. There's so many things out there you can't worry and care about them all.


My mother became disabled when I was 6. She also became epileptic. Epilepsy became the most important thing in my life aged 6 because o was terrified my mother was dying every time she had a seizure. I became her carer then and epilepsy ruled that next ten years of my life until they finally found the correct medication combination that worked for her to keep it under control.


When she developed leukaemia that became the centre of my life until she sadly passed away.


There are billions of debilitating illnesses and if every person worried about every one of them the world would grind to a halt because we'd all cease to function for all the worrying we were doing.


When something effects you, of course knowing personally the hell it is you hope for a cure, you donate to related charities and try to raise awareness because if they find a cure then you know nobody will ever have to go through the hell you went through ever again.

Georgiegirl256

thorsoak wrote: »

People may know little, and care even less, about a condition until it affects their own family - often then their reaction is more intense - partly through guilt.

Guilt? Why so? Just curious as to why that would be a reason.

meer53

OP, maybe try to understand that everyone's circumstances are different. Why does it bother you that people care about things ? Your posts are very negative. Try to see some positive, it makes life much easier.

lostinrates

Its not so unusual at all to approach through personal knowledge. OP I note in a few responses of yours I have you have referred to what is common in the experience of yours and your social experience as if that is exclusive for normal expectation or possibility within sociably acceptable parametre ....is this not a similar situation? That until experiencing something different its 'off your radar' as a possibility or a frame of reference?

TBagpuss

Callie22 wrote: »

This is one of the things in life that I really struggle with - it's amazing how few people seem to be able to think 'how would I feel if x, y or z happened to me' and modify their behaviour accordingly. I swear the world would be a much more pleasant place if more people had this ability.

I think quite a lot of people do think about it in relation to some things, but it simply is not possible (or healthy) to cover all the possible things which might happen, all the possible disabilities or illnesses which might affect us or those we love. We learn from out own experiences and from having contact with people who are affected.

It's one of the reasons why 'profile raising' exercises such as the ice bucket challenge can be helpful, as they help to move the particular cause into the frame of reference for more people.

Obviously that doesn't excuse people who are rude or dismissive about disabilities or other challenges, but there is a difference between not caring due to an 'I'm all right, so sod off' attitude and that of simply not being aware of, or not being well informed about, a specific issue.

the whole 'every 2nd post is about "x" is largely to do with how different people use different social media platforms - it can be annoying, but so is it when someone is posting every 5 minutes about their kids, or games, or 'inspirational' messages.

GlasweJen

I know what you mean OP. Quite a few drama queens in my family latch onto a diagnosis and it becomes their world.

I have a cousin of my mums who jumped from congenital heart conditions (me), to autism (lots of family members) to leukaemia (a cousin on the other side of the family) to breast cancer (my aunt) then the beatson, mcmillan, marie curie and now she's settled on cerebral palsy (not sure where this one has come from).

Every time she adopts a new charity she wants us all to rally behind it 1000% not realising that although she's moved on we haven't. You don't, as a cardiac patient, stop supporting BHF when someone else in the family gets cancer or any other condition.

This cousin of my mums was always the centre of any drama going on, when i was waiting on a transplant she was always turning up at hospital crying and when i got the transplant she announced it on facebook before i was even concious - for all she knew it was about to kill me.

Then when my aunt died of breast cancer she was at the funeral sobbing her heart out proclaiming that no one was more heart broken than she was - a bit of a slap in the face to my aunts adult children, sister and parents.

It is annoying but all you can do is ignore her.