How do you stop a train wreck?

[dubya]

Or does this even matter?

Yesterday, I'm in the hallway waiting for our teacher to show up and unlock the door and all that good stuff. One of the girls in my class walks up and leans against the wall on the other side of the hall. She kind of has a nerdy look but she is cute.

I say hi. She responds. We start talking about an assignment we had. I mention I haven't had time to read everything. She says something about work and I ask where she works... Chemo department at the VA. Okay, cool we have a commonality. I tell her I used to work in the Radiation department at another hospital and I have some friends who work in Tumor Registry at the VA. She doesn't know anyone who works in the office but thats fine.

We both express how hard it is to work in Oncology. I guess we're "emoting"... cool. I was fine with that but I wanted to steer the conversation in another direction.

Then she said she hates people. I ask what she means. She hates people because if she doesn't she'll start to like them and then they'll just die because what we do isn't really helping them.

Me: Palliative treatment?
Her: Yeah.
Me: Wow, that sucks.

I really DO NOT want to follow the rest of this conversation at this point because I know where it's going. I can see it on her face. Lots of negative feelings... She starts talking about one of her patients and how she's going to a funeral later.

About this time the teacher shows up and we get to go inside.

Fucked up thing is that I actually understand. I never really felt like I hated the patients but I was seldom very comfortable with the older ones.

Here are my questions...
How do you prevent a conversation from going in a negative direction like this?
Would the strong negative emotions that centered around this conversation prevent me doing anything else with this girl?
Should I even try?

[zine]

emotional spikes positive or negative cause a girl to feel drawn to you. Generally positive is better though. What I do is relate to what shes saying.
I.e. wow I agree it does feel like I'm not helping them at all sometimes, but the way I see it at the very least I'm giving them a chance. A chance to live is better than not living at all isn't it?

[Finesse]

Depending on how early you are in a conversation, like if you're with in the first 2 minutes.

You could use this line, "You seem nice, are you friendly."

All you're doing here is presuping the conversation and laying out a frame that she can jump on board with or not. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

Keep in mind not to revert back to the fucked up conversation before unless it's for a good reason.

But what you should have done in this situtation is just change the subject.
CJ just mentioned it in his recent blog, Death is a no go, it's never good to go down that path, so when she brought up "hate" (you can do the same thing with nearly every other bad emotion too) you could have said, "Man, l it's really bright in here." Stack forward.

All you're really doing is framing man. If you want to get a better understanding of it then start reading up on framing.

Hope this helps.

[dubya]

emotional spikes positive or negative cause a girl to feel drawn to you. Generally positive is better though. What I do is relate to what shes saying.
I.e. wow I agree it does feel like I'm not helping them at all sometimes, but the way I see it at the very least I'm giving them a chance. A chance to live is better than not living at all isn't it?

Okay...

Depending on how early you are in a conversation, like if you're with in the first 2 minutes.

You could use this line, "You seem nice, are you friendly."

All you're doing here is presuping the conversation and laying out a frame that she can jump on board with or not. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

Keep in mind not to revert back to the fucked up conversation before unless it's for a good reason.

But what you should have done in this situtation is just change the subject.
CJ just mentioned it in his recent blog, Death is a no go, it's never good to go down that path, so when she brought up "hate" (you can do the same thing with nearly every other bad emotion too) you could have said, "Man, l it's really bright in here." Stack forward.

All you're really doing is framing man. If you want to get a better understanding of it then start reading up on framing.

Hope this helps.

so I could have done this...

Yeah, palliative treatment sucks but at least you're helping them feel less pain. You're obviously a very caring person or you wouldn't feel this way. I bet you had an interesting childhood, where did you grow up?

And then just go from there.

[Finesse]

Sounds good to me.

[zine]

yeah that sounds good. You can use that same format for nearly all negative stuff.