Managing The Consequences Of Incompetent Parents

Acarpous

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"A person who wants to drive a car has to pass a driver’s test; this is a necessary requirement to guarantee the safety of others. A person who owns a bigger house than he can afford is forced to rent or buy a smaller house. A person who wants to open a shoe store must show proof of his ability to do so. But in this twentieth century of ours, there is no law to protect the newly born against the parents’ inability to bring them up and the parents’ neurotic influence. Scores of children can, indeed should, according to the fascist ideology, be put into the world; but no one asks whether they can be nourished properly and whether they can be educated in keeping with the highly extolled ideals."
- Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

RP talks about similar topics (A) but tends to direct criticism towards society as a whole and provides suggestions for self improvement with an appreciation that he does not (and cannot) know his readers very well, though he does seem to be aware of the fact that we as a society are not currently exploring our best potentials. However, speaking from my perspective as someone whose quality of intellectual, social, and economic life has been abridged by parents who were not ready for nor cognizant of the requirements of their child, I would readily argue that childrearing is a task appropriate for a significantly narrower portion of the current global population. That being said. the only reality is to manage the life one has, rather than fantasizing about impossible potentials (though I am annoyed I find myself complaining and requesting advice on the Internet). In other words, children, and the adults they grow up to be, are far more sophisticated and potentially dangerous systems than a car, so how, with the guidance of people like RP, can we go about maximizing our collective potentials? (I am aware that RP talks about the importance further research to make his writings more relevant to our individual contexts.)

Has anyone found effective techniques for dramatically/ reliably improving one's intellectual and economic resources? Obviously there are no short cuts, but there must be ways of objectively acknowledging and improving the learning process (socially, intellectually, financially, sexually, etc).


A) Intelligence and Metabolism...
Appropriate stimulation is an essential part of the developmental process. Inappropriate stimulation is a stress that deforms the process of growth...


Education can either activate or suppress mental energy. If it is mainly obedience training, it suppresses energy. If it creates social dislocations, it disturbs mental and emotional energy.

Stress early in life can impair learning, cause aggressive or compulsive behavior, learned helplessness, shyness, alcoholism, and other problems. ...
 
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Makrosky

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How old are you ?

What has been done, has been done. Going back to the past and thinking about your parents over and over only creates more pain and deviates energy from the present. Forget about it and live your life. You are not the product of your circumstances. Your parents behave the way they did probably because they didn't know how to do it better. You are not obliged to love them or care about them. If you wanna play the game of being a victim of your parents or government education and are gonna blame them all your life for the bad things in you, then thank them for the good things in you also. C'mon, gugget about it and move on. But one thing for sure if you are ALIVE it's thanks to them. Don't be so ungrateful with life. It's so simple as that. Go now, move. At once!
 
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LUH 3417

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One thing that helps me is remembering that they were just doing the best they could with what they had. I often times felt very angry and some times I still do, but I notice that whenever I feel like anger it's because I am really not doing what I want or taking care of myself as I should. So being mad at my parents allowed me to displace the self criticism or something. I agree they parents could be destructive, but without them you wouldn't of been able to survive the first few days of life.
Are you in touch with your parents? I know for me I would also feel the most turbulence when I was unconsciously still doing things for their approval, all the while harboring negative feelings about them. I don't mean this in a condescending new age preachy way but I think forgiveness does go a long way to healing you and restoring health.
 

LUH 3417

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Or if on the other hand they were absolute monsters I would think cutting them out completely might be the best option.

Are you dependent on them financially? Moving out and taking steps towards separating from them in that way has also been helpful for me. I think when you're too dependent on them but well into adult hood it just perpetuates the vulnerability you felt as a child.
 

Makrosky

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One thing that helps me is remembering that they were just doing the best they could with what they had. I often times felt very angry and some times I still do, but I notice that whenever I feel like anger it's because I am really not doing what I want or taking care of myself as I should. So being mad at my parents allowed me to displace the self criticism or something. I agree they parents could be destructive, but without them you wouldn't of been able to survive the first few days of life.
Are you in touch with your parents? I know for me I would also feel the most turbulence when I was unconsciously still doing things for their approval, all the while harboring negative feelings about them. I don't mean this in a condescending new age preachy way but I think forgiveness does go a long way to healing you and restoring health.
+1
 

marcar72

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You are not the product of your circumstances. Your parents behave the way they did probably because they didn't know how to do it better.

You sound pretty dismissive of the OP's situation, or his circumstances rather. Stuff happens in life granted, but those things do go into shaping and molding a person and their personality. To say that someone isn't a product of their circumstances is pretty ignorant, really. Let me guess, you come from a good family.

Take for instance my brother. He's 43 years old and is currently a convicted felon who's an alcoholic and homeless. He'll probably die a homeless alcoholic lest God performs a miracle in his life. Our mother "went crazy" when she was pregnant with him and started hearing voices. The voices told her to kill herself so she drove her car into the local lake, almost taking out a couple fisherman in the process. As the car sank into the lake it dawned on her she was pregnant and changed her mind. She still ended up in the psych ward while pregnant, was diagnosed as uni-polar, and put on meds for the rest of her life. To say that the stress she was under during that time didn't have an effect on the fetus (my brother) would be a stretch. I'm pretty sure I've seen haidut post some study on her about how such stress early in life can negatively affect the development of the serotonin system (nervous system).

So again the topic is how to manage situations like this. Coming from a very dysfunctional family isn't without a price. One does the best he can I guess.
 

Makrosky

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You sound pretty dismissive of the OP's situation, or his circumstances rather. Stuff happens in life granted, but those things do go into shaping and molding a person and their personality. To say that someone isn't a product of their circumstances is pretty ignorant, really. Let me guess, you come from a good family.

Take for instance my brother. He's 43 years old and is currently a convicted felon who's an alcoholic and homeless. He'll probably die a homeless alcoholic lest God performs a miracle in his life. Our mother "went crazy" when she was pregnant with him and started hearing voices. The voices told her to kill herself so she drove her car into the local lake, almost taking out a couple fisherman in the process. As the car sank into the lake it dawned on her she was pregnant and changed her mind. She still ended up in the psych ward while pregnant, was diagnosed as uni-polar, and put on meds for the rest of her life. To say that the stress she was under during that time didn't have an effect on the fetus (my brother) would be a stretch. I'm pretty sure I've seen haidut post some study on her about how such stress early in life can negatively affect the development of the serotonin system (nervous system).

So again the topic is how to manage situations like this. Coming from a very dysfunctional family isn't without a price. One does the best he can I guess.
And what does your brother have to do? Start spending time and effort on why your mother did that or this and whatever... Or spend time on himself? That's what I meant. If he sees himself as a victim of circumstances he will never get out of the victim position. Albeit your brother situation is a extreme but there has also been cases like your brother coming from "non-disfunctional" families. What is a "functional family" btw? A family that "functions" in the society established patterns? And even in that case you can't go back to the past to fix it. It's better to focus on the present.

There's that Ray's quote about when you have good metabolism/thyroid then you can think whatever you want about what happens or happened.

Imagine your brother has some kind of enlightenment and decides to help others... And he really gets fulfilled and finds meaning in his life. Then, what? Is that because of your parents also?

And regarding stress hormones affecting the fetus... Of course that is true but you know what? You don't know it for sure. You don't know which kind of effect had in you. Maybe you had very good "genes" and the stress affected you but the global sum is a better metabolism than someone with poor "genes" and no stress. How do you know? It is easy to go back to parents... Yeah my mom had nutrition deficiencies and amalgams that passed mercury to me and excess estrogen and whatever. You don't know. Focus on the present is the only real thing you have. If you would die tomorrow, what would you do? I'm sure you won't spend time dwelli g in the past. Same thing.

I readed lots of Dostoyevsky's novels and loved them. It was thanks to Ray that I discovered a small novel called "The dream of a ridiculous man" which I never heard about before. I encourage you to read it.

Paul Watzlawick essays are good also.
 
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Integra

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"Swirl it around one more time," I said to a little girl who was turning the contents of her plate in a goey mass. She laughed while everyone at the table stared at us.
"Stop that," the mother snapped at her, but I felt it was aimed at both of us. Oh, how embarrassing it must've been to have such an uncivilized child. Moments later though, when her attention was away from us, I leaned in, close enough to whisper in her ear, towards the little girl's plate.
"Do it one more time. Give it another swirl." Do it for yourself, screw what boring adults think. Or so I thought that I thought. So understanding, so open-minded, I was on the little girl's side. Explore this world. Don't let them kill your joy.

But had you paused and listened to the track playing in my mind a little closer, a little less cowardly, you would've heard another voice, a darker whisper exposing my true desires: Make mama really angry.

The little girl pointed two inquisitive marbles at both of us. She looked at Mommy, she looked at me. She looked at the plate. Why can't she swirl the food?, she must have been puzzled. Why, then, should she swirl it again? But the confusion lasted only a moment. Ten minutes later, I was watching the same child climbing the table, throwing a tantrum the way only a four-year-old can, raising her arms, shouting, knocking over a flower pot... And nobody--not her mother, not I, not anyone else at the loud family table going about their business--nobody thought that we should intervene.

After all, since we all agreed as good-natured, mature adults, we should let children be children.
 
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alywest

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It often puzzles me how people from even the seemingly most normal of families, who got to go the best schools and never had to worry about anything financially, still end up really screwed up. There seem to be soooo many variables at play, that there is almost no way a parent could get it all right. And then there's you. You want to be better than them, it's clear by your line of questioning. Do you think they wanted to be better than their parents? Probably. Not always, but probably. Especially if their parents were terrible. But did they really fall far from the tree? It takes a lot of self-reflection to get past the past. So, does that mean you are going to be an apple who by it's own volition will roll away from the tree to start a new life? You and I both know that is impossible. Does the apple say, I'm going to become a pear so I'm different? Maybe, but we both know that won't happen. So what seems to be the only way to rebel against this awful apple tree from which one has sprung? To stop growing, just refuse to grow. That'll show them! You will just rot away and no one is going to force you to be any certain way! Ha!

Or do you grow anyway? Do you just grow and be the best apple tree you can be and let yourself enjoy your fruit and what you provide to the world now? Easier said than done, but what choice do you have? Otherwise they win. I used to fail as a big FU to my parents. I didn't want them to sit back and admire their successful child because I hated them that much. I hated them so much I wanted to punish myself, imprison myself. And who did I hurt? Them, a little I guess. But because they're narcissists they didn't really care that much. If anything my mom would be jealous of me if I was too successful. So the people I hurt were the people who actually cared about me, because they were the only ones I could hurt. If someone doesn't really care about you you might ruin their day or their week, but you're not going to ruin their life. That's reserved for the people who love you, the people who depend on you. So you hurt them because you're really trying to hurt those jerks who screwed you up to begin with.

Right after I wrote that wonderful stuff, I snapped at my child for behaving in an annoying way. I'm human. But I'm aware of it. I don't take it to the next level which is what my mom did many times. Does it mean I don't have fantasies about smacking them in the face? We all have our good days and bad, and I think our bad days will be in proportion to the crap we suffered as kids. So you just don't. You don't say the things they said and you don't do the things they did. If you can't not do those things to them you get help. You bight your tongue and lock yourself in your room until you calm down. You cry. You scream into a pillow. Get it out but don't take it out on them. And yet you will. If they're there, you will take it out on them. That's why you have to do a 12 step program or something similar. It depends on the particular way you tend to punish yourself and the people who actually care about you (this may or may not include your parents.)

I found a really good resource in fuckportioncontrol.com ; especially the blog post entitled "the Cure for Alcoholism" The Cure for Alcoholism Hint: It's not just for alcoholics. also check out "Gays and God."

People will tell you to grow up, they'll tell you suck it up, they'll tell you that you should just move on, but it's not that freakin easy. If it was we would all be healthy, well-adjusted people, right? Being real, being honest about your failures and your role in them is what brings you back to wholeness again, realizing that your parents were bad at their job is unfortunately only one side of the equation. You did play a role in your failures but that doesn't mean you're doomed to suffer infinite heck. Churches and society try to scare you into being good by threatening hellfire and doom, but that doesn't seem to help a lot of people. Even if it's true. Apparently there is no punishment vast enough that scares us into being healthy, because health is not about being fearful. It's about realizing your own power, and you ironically find that by admitting your flaws. Which is the last thing your parents did, I assure you. So what about you, what's your story?
 

LUH 3417

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It often puzzles me how people from even the seemingly most normal of families, who got to go the best schools and never had to worry about anything financially, still end up really screwed up. There seem to be soooo many variables at play, that there is almost no way a parent could get it all right. And then there's you. You want to be better than them, it's clear by your line of questioning. Do you think they wanted to be better than their parents? Probably. Not always, but probably. Especially if their parents were terrible. But did they really fall far from the tree? It takes a lot of self-reflection to get past the past. So, does that mean you are going to be an apple who by it's own volition will roll away from the tree to start a new life? You and I both know that is impossible. Does the apple say, I'm going to become a pear so I'm different? Maybe, but we both know that won't happen. So what seems to be the only way to rebel against this awful apple tree from which one has sprung? To stop growing, just refuse to grow. That'll show them! You will just rot away and no one is going to force you to be any certain way! Ha!

Or do you grow anyway? Do you just grow and be the best apple tree you can be and let yourself enjoy your fruit and what you provide to the world now? Easier said than done, but what choice do you have? Otherwise they win. I used to fail as a big FU to my parents. I didn't want them to sit back and admire their successful child because I hated them that much. I hated them so much I wanted to punish myself, imprison myself. And who did I hurt? Them, a little I guess. But because they're narcissists they didn't really care that much. If anything my mom would be jealous of me if I was too successful. So the people I hurt were the people who actually cared about me, because they were the only ones I could hurt. If someone doesn't really care about you you might ruin their day or their week, but you're not going to ruin their life. That's reserved for the people who love you, the people who depend on you. So you hurt them because you're really trying to hurt those jerks who screwed you up to begin with.

Right after I wrote that wonderful stuff, I snapped at my child for behaving in an annoying way. I'm human. But I'm aware of it. I don't take it to the next level which is what my mom did many times. Does it mean I don't have fantasies about smacking them in the face? We all have our good days and bad, and I think our bad days will be in proportion to the crap we suffered as kids. So you just don't. You don't say the things they said and you don't do the things they did. If you can't not do those things to them you get help. You bight your tongue and lock yourself in your room until you calm down. You cry. You scream into a pillow. Get it out but don't take it out on them. And yet you will. If they're there, you will take it out on them. That's why you have to do a 12 step program or something similar. It depends on the particular way you tend to punish yourself and the people who actually care about you (this may or may not include your parents.)

I found a really good resource in fuckportioncontrol.com ; especially the blog post entitled "the Cure for Alcoholism" The Cure for Alcoholism Hint: It's not just for alcoholics. also check out "Gays and God."

People will tell you to grow up, they'll tell you suck it up, they'll tell you that you should just move on, but it's not that freakin easy. If it was we would all be healthy, well-adjusted people, right? Being real, being honest about your failures and your role in them is what brings you back to wholeness again, realizing that your parents were bad at their job is unfortunately only one side of the equation. You did play a role in your failures but that doesn't mean you're doomed to suffer infinite heck. Churches and society try to scare you into being good by threatening hellfire and doom, but that doesn't seem to help a lot of people. Even if it's true. Apparently there is no punishment vast enough that scares us into being healthy, because health is not about being fearful. It's about realizing your own power, and you ironically find that by admitting your flaws. Which is the last thing your parents did, I assure you. So what about you, what's your story?
I like your tree metaphor. It reminds me of James Hillman's acorn theory that he explores in "The Soul's Code". He likens the soul to an acorn tree, where each acorn has an imprint of the tree it'll become from its very inception, and the development of the tree depends on an adult (parent, teacher, mentor) seeing the potential in the acorn to become the giant amazing tree. He recounts the biographies of famous and gifted people who became who they were mostly because someone saw the potential in them and made sure they practices their gifts. The book left me longing for some deeper guidance being that I'm an acorn who was never noticed by any adult but it was an enjoyable read regardless.
I don't have any advice left but I'm enjoying this thread and hoping more people will contribute.
 
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"Swirl it around one more time," I said to a little girl who was turning the contents of her plate in a goey mass. She laughed while everyone at the table stared at us.
"Stop that," the mother snapped at her, but I felt it was aimed at both of us. Oh, how embarrassing it must've been to have such an uncivilized child. Moments later though, when her attention was away from us, I leaned in, close enough to whisper in her ear, towards the little girl's plate.

Source?
 

Peatogenic

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And what does your brother have to do? Start spending time and effort on why your mother did that or this and whatever... Or spend time on himself? That's what I meant. If he sees himself as a victim of circumstances he will never get out of the victim position. Albeit your brother situation is a extreme but there has also been cases like your brother coming from "non-disfunctional" families. What is a "functional family" btw? A family that "functions" in the society established patterns? And even in that case you can't go back to the past to fix it. It's better to focus on the present.

There's that Ray's quote about when you have good metabolism/thyroid then you can think whatever you want about what happens or happened.

Imagine your brother has some kind of enlightenment and decides to help others... And he really gets fulfilled and finds meaning in his life. Then, what? Is that because of your parents also?

And regarding stress hormones affecting the fetus... Of course that is true but you know what? You don't know it for sure. You don't know which kind of effect had in you. Maybe you had very good "genes" and the stress affected you but the global sum is a better metabolism than someone with poor "genes" and no stress. How do you know? It is easy to go back to parents... Yeah my mom had nutrition deficiencies and amalgams that passed mercury to me and excess estrogen and whatever. You don't know. Focus on the present is the only real thing you have. If you would die tomorrow, what would you do? I'm sure you won't spend time dwelli g in the past. Same thing.

I readed lots of Dostoyevsky's novels and loved them. It was thanks to Ray that I discovered a small novel called "The dream of a ridiculous man" which I never heard about before. I encourage you to read it.

Paul Watzlawick essays are good also.

This is so good. I would add that sometimes the trauma isn't developmental. Sometimes it's psychological torture, sexual abuse, physical abuse, etc. As Ray has said, even something like having severe shock can shock the thyroid. That's just a one time event. So the learned helplessness someone might feel isn't just a faulty mindset. It's chronically low thyroid, etc. Does changing your mindset change your thyroid? Does ignoring the past magically alter brain structure? You're so right, as it applies to certain contexts. I just feel badly that this understanding here of regulating body systems is not more widely disseminated. It's truly a shame, because the high priest of trauma physiology Bessel van der Kolk understands how the body dysregulates, that trauma changes the body, but there's little offered on how to approach that problem outside of psychotherapy and mild body therapies.
 

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