#psa's

However, if you feel frequently compelled to--

Self-censor.

Give much more than you receive, often with the accompanying feeling that receiving anything, whether material, emotional, or otherwise, requires a certain amount of self-flagellation to convince them you're truly grateful.

Convince yourself you want or believe things you really don't, or to hide that which you do, in order to avoid shunning, shaming, and mockery.

--that's not belonging. That's emotional slavery.

Patience and Other Silly Things - a ShieldShock Fanfic set a few months after the Battle of New York, by @glynnisi  (what if Darcy was the one who wrote the PSA’s from Spiderman: Homecoming?)

Darcy skidded into Jane’s lab and shut the door behind her, back to it as though to prevent an invasion. Her eyes were wild and her cheeks afire.

“What are you doing here?” Jane’s tone was cool.  “And why are you running in those heels?  You almost fall every time you wear them.”

Breathless, Darcy held up a finger to beg for time as she managed, “death by embarrassment and possibly shield.  Fleeing.”

Grumbling, Jane shook her head, “SHIELD will find you here, Darcy.  Though you’ve abandoned me for the glamorous world of Avengers PR, this is the first place they’ll look.  In fact, I should call and tell them you’re here!”  She frowned as she looked over Darcy’s professional-looking pencil skirt, fitted button-up blouse, and high heeled shoes.

“Jaaaaane!  I said ‘shield’, not ‘SHIELD.’  The round and patriotic one, not jack-booted thugs! And, glamorous, my ass!” Darcy brushed an errant curl behind her ear and squealed when a knock sounded against the door.  She turned around, searching in vain for a lock.  Her look to Jane was pleading.  She mouthed silently, “sisterhood!”

Jane crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue, but relented.  “Who’s there?”

“Steve Rogers.  May I come in?”  His tone was firm, but utterly polite.

Jane mouthed, “he doesn’t sound mad.”

Darcy shook her head and made incomprehensible gestures with her hands.

Put-upon but still loyal, Jane marched to the door and gently moved Darcy aside. She opened the door part way.  “How may I help you, Captain?”  Jane’s expression was one of utter innocence.

Captain America, in full uniform, shifted nervously from one foot to the other as he held up an iPod. “Miss Lewis forgot this- in her haste to leave the video studio.”  His lips twitched with repressed mirth. “After Tony finally revealed that the mirror was not one-way and that I could see her the entire time I was taping the school PSA’s, she hurried out.”

Darcy covered her eyes.

A slow grin filled Jane’s face.  “Oh! That’s so nice of you to return her iPod.  It’s one of her favorite things.  She loves music.”  Knowing Darcy as she did, it was all Jane could do to keep from bursting out laughing.

Laughter edged Captain America’s tone, too.  “I could tell.  She’s quite the dancer.  Between writing new things for me to say, she…”

Being treated with neutral civility and dignity is not something you have to earn, and in many cases can even be afforded to people we don't necessarily like.

Here's the full stop bullshit line I concocted--I repeat, this is intentional bullshit for educational purposes: "If you're survivor of extensive emotional trauma, you have to understand that you probably don't really have love languages. What you have is a twisted mass of self-defensive people pleasing efforts, which can actually be manipulative of others when you think about it, because what you're doing is for yourself. But healthy and genuine love is something you were probably prevented from learning how to feel or express."

Now that I've thoroughly offended myself, my real advice is this: If you come across something that reads like this, understand that it's crap, or worse, outright malicious. Look at everything the monster I created above does--it tries to deny the readers their own good will, tells them they're not capable of reading their own emotions correctly, tries to tell them how incapable of certain positive emotions and expressions they are, and low key guilt trips them into the idea that they're being manipulative. And perhaps most telling, it doesn't offer any solutions.

I know it’s not good at all to rip off others work no matter what it is, nor anything else of the sort but I get so much drama at work from customers sometimes.