Exaggeration

I am often accused of exaggeration when attempting to accurately state my feelings. Even worse, sometimes people simply assume I am exaggerating, without stating their belief that I am exaggerating. This makes communication difficult.

If I feel quite strongly about something that you cannot imagine feeling strongly about, it is understandable that you might assume I am exaggerating. Unfortunately, this happens at the very moment I am trying to communicate the fact that I feel strongly about something that you cannot imagine feeling strongly about. The question becomes whether there is any way to effectively communicate these strong feelings that seem so totally outside of another person's perspective.

A true example: Ice cream is one of my favorite foods. Ice cream with peanuts is one of the worst substances I can imagine putting in my mouth. This is my opinion, and my preference, and it does not necessarily make sense, but it is truly the way that I feel. Generally, if you put peanuts on ice cream, and then attempt to remove them, some of the flavor remains behind, if not some of the actual peanuts, and I do not ever wish to consume ice cream that has ever had even a trace of contact with peanuts. I understand that my strong feelings on the subject of ice cream with peanuts are unusual and difficult to grasp, so when the situation arises, I try to make them clear. Here are a couple of true statements:
1) If you gave me a choice between consuming a dish of ice cream topped with a single peanut, or a dish of something commonly considered horrible, like animal excrement, there is a good chance I would choose the thing commonly considered horrible.
2) Even though ice cream is one of my favorite foods, if I became convinced that SOMETIME in the future my ice cream would in fact contain a peanut, I would seriously consider never consuming ice cream again, just to avoid the risk.
Anyone hearing or reading either or both of these statements can be forgiven for assuming that I am exaggerating, but I am NOT. I really, really, do not like ice cream with peanuts, and it doesn't help to "ignore them" or "scrape them off". I would rather just not eat ice cream that has been in any way contaminated with peanuts. Again, the question is whether there is any way of actually communicating these strong feelings, since most people will simply assume that I am exaggerating when I try to state my feelings.

The previous example may have been too inflammatory. Anyone reading this may simply be thinking, "This person is a wacko. NOBODY could dislike peanuts in ice cream THAT much." Of course, this illustrates my point. If someone expresses strong feelings that seem unusual and foreign to you, one of the easy, understandable routes is to assume that they are exaggerating. (Another route is to consider them to be a wacko.)

I have not addressed the fact that sometimes people truly do exaggerate. This leads to a "boy who cried wolf" phenomenon. Frequent exaggerations make people anticipate more exaggerations, even if one person is doing the exaggerating, and a completely separate person is attempting to accurately state a strong but unlikely belief.

In earlier postings I have pointed out that sometimes I can clearly see a problem, but cannot see any solution. This is one of those areas. It is a problem that people attempting to accurately express strong feelings are often believed to be exaggerating. I guess a partial solution would be to come right out and ASK whether a person is exaggerating in cases in which you are having trouble accepting their stated strength of emotion. This approach has various pitfalls, including the facts that the person might lie to you or to themselves, or that the person might be insulted by the question. Another partial solution is to do your best to accurately state your own strong feelings, without exaggeration. Still, the problem remains.

Truth is complicated.