(Wrote this in Dec. 2024, didn\u2019t post it until now.)<\/p>\r\n
Lately, even more than usual, I\u2019ve been noticing how differently different people feel about giving and receiving gifts.<\/p>\r\n
For example:<\/p>\r\n
And I feel like there\u2019s often a mismatch between what the giver wants to get out of a gift-giving interaction and what the recipient wants to get out of it, and that can cause friction and stress.<\/p>\r\n
The rest of this post is mostly about my own personal feelings about receiving gifts. It\u2019s not intended as a criticism of anyone (and I always appreciate the thought when someone gives me something); this is just an exploration and description of some aspects of my psyche. But if you\u2019re likely to feel criticized by my discussion of my generally not liking to receive gifts, then it might be best to skip the rest of this post.<\/p>\r\n
I\u2019m in that last category on the list above: I find the whole gift thing stressful. I like giving gifts when I know that they\u2019re wanted, but I don\u2019t like feeling required to find a good gift for someone at a specific time of year, and I don\u2019t like giving gifts that may turn out to be unwanted. And I particularly don\u2019t get along well with receiving gifts.<\/p>\r\n
For me, a lot of the problem with receiving gifts is that my tastes are apparently quite idiosyncratic and hard to predict. It\u2019s pretty rare for anyone, even close friends who\u2019ve known me for many years, to give me a gift that I particularly like (without consulting me ahead of time). It has happened now and then (and a few such gifts have been spectacularly wonderful\u2014thank you to those of you who\u2019ve given me such gifts!), but I haven\u2019t been especially fond of the vast majority of gifts that I\u2019ve received.<\/p>\r\n
And because of the way my brain works, I find it distressing to receive a gift that I don\u2019t like. I\u2019m a people pleaser, and super conflict avoidant (those aren\u2019t good things, but they\u2019re pretty deep-rooted parts of my personality); if someone gives me something, and I express unhappiness about it, I feel like I\u2019m being ungrateful, or even hurtful. So then I feel the need to act like I like the gift, which can sometimes make things worse. (\u201cI saw how much you loved the cheap plastic duck that I got you last year, so this year I got you a hundred of them!\u201d)<\/p>\r\n
And sometimes even a gift that might under normal circumstances be fine ends up not working so well for me. For example, a friend recently gave me two paper books. I certainly appreciated the thought, but I am in the middle of trying to read all of my unread paper books, and I have about a year left to go on that project (after nearly ten years of progress), and so if someone gives me paper books right now, that increases how long it\u2019ll take me to finish this already-long project.<\/p>\r\n
(Relatedly, part of the problem with physical gifts that I don\u2019t want is that I hate throwing things out, so such gifts add to my pile of stuff-to-give-away. And giving stuff away takes time and energy for me, and some of my giveaway stuff is stuff that nobody wants, so it just sits around in my giveaway closet for years.)<\/p>\r\n
Things go better if the gift starts as an offer rather than just presenting me with something. For example, if someone asks me if I want such-and-such, and I know that they\u2019re fine with my saying no, that usually works out okay (and I usually say no). But even there, I sometimes get some anxiety about saying no.<\/p>\r\n
(Another part of the problem between me and gifts is that I have enough money that when I want something, I generally just buy it for myself. And the things that I don\u2019t do that for are generally expensive enough that I would be uncomfortable receiving them as presents. And so even when someone asks before buying or making me a present, part of the calculation for me is whether I\u2019m willing to inconvenience them that much, by causing them to spend money and\/or time and effort on me. This, too, has much more to do with the quirks of my psyche than with the other person; they\u2019re offering<\/em>, so I should take them at their word that it\u2019s something they\u2019re willing to do. But when I perceive<\/em> a situation as my costing someone else time or money or work, it makes me tense, whether or not they perceive it that way.)<\/p>\r\n And acts of service similarly don\u2019t work well as gifts for me. For example, if someone offers to do my dishes, I hear that both as a criticism of me (for not having already done my dishes) and as a probably resentful offer to spend time and effort on my behalf, which I\u2019ll then feel guilty about.<\/p>\r\n So in general, it\u2019s simplest to just not give me gifts. I don\u2019t need them, and they almost always make me feel stressed, and the chances that I\u2019ll truly like whatever the gift is are pretty small.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anxiety"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21610"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21622,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610\/revisions\/21622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}