I was just reminded again of one example by a reblog, after thinking of it with one incidental line in another post the other day.

(It’s not common, the only time I’ve personally ever heard of it happening is with eye drops where one woman found the branded ones stung when she put them in, but the generic didn’t. That’s individual.)

Anyway, speaking of people often having very different needs and experiences, even when they’re dealing with very similar problems.

Mt mom and I both had pretty bad allergies. It kinda runs in the family. And particularly when certain types of pollen are in season, that often involves eye bullshit.

She was a big fan of OTC eyedrops for that, and felt like they helped a lot. To the point of trying to push them on me too whenever she needed to use them.

Nor only did I not find them helpful for allergy irritation, the type she liked (I don’t even remember the brand now) also stung my eyes like a sonofabitch.

She was apparently not sensitive to whatever was in there herself, so it was all “Stop being ridiculous! Look at your eyes! You need drops!” (More than once, cue her trying to put them in my eyes against my will, over further protest. After I was way too old for that to be remotely appropriate behavior.)

Sure, extra stinging and burning on top of the original problem will make everything better 😬

Not to mention that if you are already sensitized to some ingredient, further exposure is liable to cause worse reactions. When we’re talking about everyone involved being allergic to quite the variety of stuff, to begin with.

But yeah, she evidently didn’t think about any of that. Whatever works for her must work for other people. And it’s liable to be taken as criticism of what she’s doing if someone else says it’s not helpful/actively harmful to them.

That’s one way a lousy sense of boundaries and perspective taking dealing with other people can look. And there does seem to be a lot of that going around, to varying degrees.