Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Sand, Some answers, if you will.....

Hi sweetie. Here are my answers...
AS far as my moms board goes, it's become much more of a friendship than anything technical, and what the PM gets used for in that respect is lending a deeper amount of support to a specific mom, offering a phone number to call, or discussing how to help someone in need or help them see their behaviour is not OK. We exchange Christmas presents so we have addresses for everyone, and we've been together for three years now. That being said, the gift we put together once was a scrapbook, and the one person just had stuff sent to her address and compiled it and sent it on. Then again, we've had pie-in-the-sky ideas that never came to fruition too.

My mom's board is pretty slow as is, but PMs do not detract from the action on the boards. I prefer to click a PM for a person to doing all the work of emailing them, so it's more convenient for me.And if we need to do a surprise for a mom, we just PM the people we know would be most interested, and don't worry about the rest. PMing everyone on here would take FOREVER!!!

You said:

I was struck by your comment that you would be more comfortable with PMing than with emailing because anonymity is important to you. I can understand that. I use a "fake" email in my profile just to weed out any wackos. If I'm going to send an email cold to someone from the Board, though, or if I get into an extended email exchange with someone from the Board, I switch over to my "real" email with my real name - it's seems not quite right to keep hiding under those circumstances. So, to me, my "fake" email is just like PM - it preserves my anonymity until I'm ready to let it go. I guess it's just a matter of different people drawing the anonymity line in slightly different places.

My response is that yeah, I guess I don't mean anonymity as much as I mean....this is sort of a less real world for me, not as tangible, and I've met people I met on the Internet before and have had some very bizarre visits, so I guess I feel safer in the realm of PM, soryt of like there's still that safe distance. I don't care that anyone knows I'm Shannon Webb, but coming to actually meeting anyone still makes me nervous. I have attachment issues.....lots of therapy going on for that. I have had a hard time trusting, so PMing is like getting personal but still having the safety of the Internet to protect me. Stupid? I don't know. I've had stalkers before though.

I hope I was of some assistance. You guys are all very important to me, even though I like to keep it on this plane of existence.

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Keep on keepin' on...

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