An Emotional Landmine is someone with unpredictable, turbulent emotions, and/or unexpected and extreme reactions to seemingly benign conversation. Emotional Landmines tend to hide their boundaries until you cross them, and seek revenge for the unintentional slight. Some Emotional Landmines
may ghost close friends for setting them off, without even telling them that they've done anything
wrong.
Some people on the
autism spectrum
see allistic (allistic means "not autistic") people as Emotional Landmines, and vice-versa. It's important to remember that the neurotype barrier is not a flaw with the other neurotype, but a "it's six/no it's
nine" situation, neurologically. Some things that upset allistic people are totally fine and
normal to autistic people, and some things that upset autistic people are totally fine and
normal to allistic people.
Neither are wrong; it's important to recognize these differences, and acknowledge that other people
may not know how you feel. This is not a lack of empathy, but rather, a lack of understanding. If they knew how you felt and why, they'd likely be supportive. Please be patient with people, especially strangers.
Please
don't be an Emotional Landmine. Anyone can be one, especially under immense
stress, so please be mindful of other peoples' perspectives.
Use in sentence:
"Hey, what happened with
Andy the other
day? He stormed off like he was
pissed."
"I have no idea, man. I asked him how pizza night went, and all of a sudden he blew up in my
face like I offended his ancestors."
"Sounds like he's an emotional landmine. Maybe be more careful around him."
Example 1:
"Hey Greg, how's the wife?"
"She died last week, you
jackass."
"Woah! I had no idea, I'm so sorry!"
"It's too late for sorry! You should know better!" <-- Emotional Landmine
Example 2:
"Hey dude, how's it going?"
"Not great, my
dog is missing and I'm super worried. Last time this happened with my other
dog, we had to cremate. How about you?"
"Awful, now that you just trauma dumped on me. Why did you start the conversation like that?"
"Because you asked how I was doing???"
"You're supposed to just say 'yeah I'm fine' like everyone else. Dude, screw off." <-- Emotional Landmine