The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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This will be a very verbose, haphazard missive that I am composing at 3 AM in my timezone. Proceed if you wish.
I only very recently grasped the full gravity of just how dysfunctional and manipulative my household was. I like to think I'm not a provincial fool and that I'm more cognizant of inadequacies whenever they are present, but I truly believed my family dynamics were the norm. My father is a narcissist, my mother is emotionally unstable and volatile, though I'm unsure if it's faulted by PTSD, BPD, both, or neither. For the longest time, I attributed everything to a cultural/generational disconnect, that my parents were just hard-working Soviet immigrants who were a bit difficult yet ultimately well-meaning. My father studied hard and escaped his desolate Siberian hamlet, learned the English language, found employment at a Global Fortune 500 company, and moved to the US, where I was raised in a financially stable household. Nobody ever had reservations about buying the newest trendy brands of clothing for me, taking me on vacation to Ticino or Waikiki, driving me into town to meet with my pals, etc. Any time I expressed grievances over a comment or behavior I perceived to be denigrating, my parents shielded themselves behind this and would swiftly resort to a black-and-white reasoning and insinuate that I'm saying they're terrible parents. I was ignorant to the dissonance that was being created in my head; my parents weren't consistent douchebags, but they also weren't consistently warm. I had access to plenty of opportunities my peers didn't, so surely I ought to look past whatever trivial shortcomings existed.
Growing up, my father would often use teambuilding activities at work and workout sessions at the gym as a means to abscond from his parental duties. When I was 12 months old, he would tell me I was already a big kid who had nothing to cry about. I was never a picky eater, but there was food that physically made me gag and wasn't merely something I mildly disliked, yet he'd shove it in my mouth. He would comb my hair in an overly aggressive manner, and accuse me of not knowing how to comb properly if what he did hurt. From a very young age, any missteps I made could result in insults and curses. If I ever wanted to understand his line of reasoning behind a certain instruction, he would default to "because I said so", or "find another home if you don't like it here". A few years ago, following COVID, we were forced to relocate to an industrial, blue-collar dump (albeit a particularly prestigious pocket of it) from a densely populated, affluent suburban area where I thrived by being encircled by a milieu of ambitious, curious, and sharp peers. Due to the taciturn and curt nature of my peers here, I was devoid of a social life for two years before things mitigated to a slight degree. I had to carry a knife to school for my safety and I witnessed my classmates nodding out in the middle of class, but in my father's warped mind, all of my frustration was just a secret plot to manipulate him and distract him from his work. He would minimize my deficits by reminding me of how much worse his childhood was and how he simply cannot afford to entertain that my first-world upbringing could be as dismal as I purport it to be. If I said I didn't have any peers at school I could hang out with, he'd tell me he had no colleagues to hang out with either. When I finally joined some uninteresting extracurriculars out of desperation and was assigned at the start of the school year to a new class where students were less actively hostile, I at last found people I could make plans with. In this region, it often meant drinking in the woods or by the beach, summer and winter. My father would act in disbelief that I could show up at home drunk after he refused to give me counsel. Not once have I ever walked out of a conversation with him feeling assuaged and uplifted about any obstacles, but again, I thought that was some cultural disconnect that's not intractable. I was always inculcated not to divulge family matters externally, but when it has affected my quality of life so acutely that I needed to get it off my chest, people frequently tipped that my father may be a narcissist. Having done a deep dive of the various symptoms in the past month, I see a plethora of bullseyes being hit. My father's a brilliant, educated man, who whenever in a good mood, would answer questions to any metaphysical ruminations I had growing up as a child. I thought that I was an exceptionally difficult kid who was exacerbating his burnout and that if I learned to do better, he could always stay warm and loving. Only now did I shake myself out of that delusion and realize that this potential version of my father will never come to be, and I can't look at him with the same reverence. Seven months ago, I found my way to my current faith as a lifelong agnostic, and it has been an immensely effective lifeline, knowing that as a human being I am born with inherent dignity, that there is a long-term meaning to life, that my self-worth isn't contingent on a handful of people's perceptions of me. It is thanks to my faith that I haven't put a halt to my 7-month sobriety journey, despite the temptation.
My mother, due to some experiences in her childhood, grew up with an abject fear of abandonment, only amplified by my father's antics. "Splitting" is one of the scariest things I've had the horror to witness throughout the duration of my life. She can initiate a normal conversation, ask me how my day has been, we get a conversation going, then I accidentally spill something in the kitchen or fold something incorrectly and she lets out a curse word or raises her voice, I ask her politely not to, and she tells me I'm trying to command her what to do, and the long train of gut-wrenching insults unfolds. Growing up, I've been unfortunate to have several not-so-compassionate pedagogues as my teachers, many of whom obtained their teaching licenses after a bachelor's from a 100% acceptance rate school, and tried to get me diagnosed for a certain neurodevelopmental condition my psychologist later informed me that I either do not have, or have it at such a high-functioning level that the opportunity cost of the tedious diagnostics process is not justified. My mother frequently vacillated between either the teachers being a bunch of unprofessional pricks who witch-hunted me with nothing to elicit it, or me being such a nightmare of a child. She weaponized terminology she could not define against me, even after I believed we agreed to close the case. She told me she was skeptical to my psychologist's conclusion, and I told her that either she could go the route of soliciting a second opinion, or close the case, but that the degrading way she threw the term around as an insult was unacceptable. She would often treat 16/17 year old me as a marriage counselor after her argument du jour with my father, go on hour-long tirades only wanting to be heard, with no desire for proactive input. I've invited her to come to my church since she complains about lacking a social life in her new area and being stuck in the toxic environment at home, but she musters any possible excuse when I throw that out there. She's had 20 years to step away from this nonsense, but she tells me that she always wrongly thinks that this time things can improve if she does something differently. They never do, and I'm faced with the fallout of it all. One time recently, when she sat me down to talk she asked for examples of what she’s done in my childhood that I found hurtful, when I began providing examples she dithered between “that’s not what I actually meant” and “when you’re throwing it all in my face at once you make it seem more severe than it actually was”. She told me that nobody outside of my immediate family will ever show me unconditional love, that all other relationships are transactional, and that as I get older I will come back running to my parents with a greater understanding for why everything turned out the way it did. I gave her examples of philanthropists, humanitarian workers, international legionaries in Ukraine jeopardizing their health and career prospects, adoptive parents, etc. She began pointing to some isolated incidents of adoptive parents abusing their children to try to rescue the merit of her argument.
I'm just exasperated from it all. God knows how I managed to pull through to this day. I have two months left until I move out for college. What keeps me going is knowing that this is the very last stretch, and that I'll be a much better father. I hope this post wasn't written in vain. If anybody wants to share any advice or their experiences with me and how they've dealt with it, please do. Right now, I feel as if a breakdown is impending.
I actually say that quite often. First one because my young son (<6) keeps asking questions beyond questions, and I'm just trying to get through my day.
Sometimes I do understand he's trying to make sense of something but I just don't have time for it. Supposedly there's a cultural movement in parenting called 'gentle parenting' where every single decision a parent takes has to be negotiated with the child, and it just sounds exhausting.
Searching the site for gentle parenting I found this thread that may interest you:
For the 'find another home' one, which may come across as even harsher, it's for non-negotiable decisions. We simply do not do this as a family, we do not tolerate this behavior, so I'd usually ask it rhetorically 'oh so you want to switch families then?'
Obviously a teenager is a more rationally-minded person, so I don't expect you to be as relentless in asking questions, but I do sense something unpleasant in you.
While as a legal child you are in many ways trapped by your parents' decisions, and perhaps your description of being in a sense geographically-locked since COVID is accurate, as American geography can be relentlessly oppressive, there is still a sense of ungratefulness I can read.
You were privileged to have access to such an interesting environment, you know that? And that privilege comes from your father's hard-work. The issue is that your father did not raise you to be a hard person the way he was raised, and he is blind to his short-comings, so he does not understand why you are being so difficult about things, while he probably thinks that he would have personally thrived in the conditions he provides to you.
You're not mentioning it but did you have any other family? Or did your parents both get uprooted leaving you without grand-parents, uncles, etc that could have relieved the day-to-day pressure of handling children, and provided different perspectives?
As a Christian(?) you should seek to forgive your parents, pray for them and strive to have love for them. You'll find out that most people had less than perfect parents and while not having mean, broken parents seems like the fair thing for a child, they could also be mean, broken and broke parents, or worse.
Another question I have for you:
Why didn't you? A few weeks of cutting grass should have allowed you some kind of means to transport yourself to another area if needed, couchsurf or join a polycule or whatever young people are up to these days. Every tribulation should be seen as a way to harden or sharpen yourself.
Praise the Lord for all the good things he's given you so far.
The greatest challenge of these times for our youth is the relentless mental attack from a sophisticated, always-on panopticon. Guarding yourself against it is the hardest thing. All your perceptions and beliefs are the product of a constant, fine-tuned, precisely-dosed marketing system. Not one person can defeat this alone. Even that Covid mass psychological event, very few fathers could say 'I shielded my family from the psychic damage induced by mass-social paranoia, forced isolation, etc'.
Practically she is right, aside from the odd saint, God is not a person, He's 3 Persons. Any relationship will sour on you if you start behaving in unacceptable ways. Surely if you blaspheme consistently enough your church friends will turn their backs on you.
That is right. The second half of it is humility. There was no plan according to which you were fated to have non-abusive well-off parents. You'll have to deal with that just as any saint had to deal with growing up in poverty, persecution, martyrdom etc.
Any other person you meet has had to deal with some kind of hidden pain in their childhood, some bad relationships. You're a sinner like they are, and hopefully as you grow up as old as your dad, you will be able to look back and say 'I did a better job than the old man'.
I'm not demanding gentle parenting, I don't buy that dichotomy. I do concur that children need to be disciplined and that standards must be set. Along with that must come warmth and dignity, which my parents have not treated me with. I've never demanded handouts. Any Christmas gifts they gave me since at least the age of 13 were what they personally deemed fit to provision for me, and never anything I begged for. I'd be fine buying clothes from Ross. I'd be content to go on vacation to Daytona Beach or even not go on vacation at all if it meant they'd quit using it as leverage. I don't care if I have the latest iPhone or a 10-year-old Google Pixel. I want them not to act morose and curt and treat me like scum because I dared to ask a simple question. Sure, I get the sentiment that parents are a position of authority and that their instructions alone should be enough, but ultimately it leads children to be every bit as uncommunicative at school or in their work life and impedes their ability to think critically and question authority. Proponents of gentle parenting don't want to set boundaries; I want them to be set with clear explanations. Proponents of gentle parenting don't want consequences; I want consequences that are logical and not arbitrary, that don't involve cursing in my face like a sailor, screaming at the top of their lungs, threatening violence, and banging doors. I want obedience to be taught through deliberation and conviction rather than through fear and control.
Well, not in my house. It can be said over the most trivial crap imaginable.
Haha, I wish. My grandparents still live in my parents' respective homelands. My maternal grandmother came to visit us twice when I was a pre-teen, but it's been difficult to coordinate anything since then. My paternal grandparents have been entirely absent. My mother loathes her in-laws, so I rarely got to meet with my uncle.
Forgiveness is a virtue. That does not mean I must quietly absorb everything like a pushover and never air my grievances out. Acknowledging the reality and seeking a way out (what I am doing as I am moving out for college), is entirely compatible with Christianity. The Biblical forgiveness means to not harbor ill will against those who have hurt you and to progress in life without dredging up this hurt, it does not say to justify their actions and give them pats on the back. Forgiveness requires distance, healing, and time.
See above. Again, I believed my parents could be persuaded into becoming more pleasant people if I just behaved a little better here and walked on eggshells a little more there, but they operate on a separate, irrational wavelength. Maybe I'm still grateful to a fault, where getting up and leaving would lead me to feel immense guilt.
I do every single morning, and every single night. Once again, you are not privy to what I've done in my everyday life.
Her cynicism is her trauma talking. I don't consider her or my father's love to be any more unconditional than that of the friends I've made. If you're thinking from an absolutist lens, then even a parent's love for their child can never be truly unconditional, only God's is. We are taught to love our neighbors as ourselves, and I will strive to uphold that. I will serve as a missionary for my church for two years to serve people I currently do not know exist and to introduce them to the Gospel and show them the love that our Heavenly Father has for all of his children.
I'm actually very familiar with your situation. My wife was raised by a mom with a similar slavic background, she did have the luck to have a very kind grandma, but it went awry upon her passing away in my wife's teens. She then had to work part-time after school, deal with her mom disappearing sometimes for days possibly due to jail, power getting cut in winter, things like that. I like to compare her childhood experience to the black experience, as the verbal and physical abuse are actually quite similar imo.
This is also something I struggle with as an expatriated parent as I do not have any family support either. Perhaps that means that I can't properly handle my kids' emotions due to some personal stress with work, or maybe I just don't have time for a given child's tantrum among some other more pressing concern.
I agree with this. Unfortunately the striver mentality which leads to social success and material provisions is in some way opposed to a holy, good-natured, empathetic approach to relationships. This becomes apparent with a cursory look at the basic physiognomy of the apparent leaders of the world, Musk, Zuckerberg, Alex Karp, Sam Altman... There's something weird about these people. On the other hand, the kind of people who see themselves as empathy experts, who can sometimes be found in colleges and other prestigious institutions, can also be nasty people (Ellen DeGeneres comes to mind).
In fields manned by volunteers and passionate people, grifters and apparatchiks rise to the top. Isn't that the story of the Soviet Union, with the bank robbers taking control over the idealists?
Of course, I'm writing from my own experience. There is a tension as a parent between asserting control, being a teacher, letting a child bloom and develop independence... We want them to eventually make their own choices and suffer the consequences of them proportionally, without getting any catastrophic failure mode.
I think it's possible too. It would take tremendous work, it would take things that you probably don't have right now, but such miracles are possible. I maintain my mother-in-law in a sort of quarantine, and at the present I have no idea how to reach out to her and help her heal whatever damage she's got going on. You are also called to be a fisher of men, down the line, and that is the kind of work that is needed.
Perhaps having challenged their authority early on would have helped, as it would have helped you create your own, separate life, without any leverage as you say. These kind of broken family dynamics sometimes end up with a child taking care of a belligerent parent suffering from dementia. Another aspect of that is some kind of emotional detachment, dealing with your parents becomes like dealing with a boss you tolerate for a paycheck.
Eventually you get to replace the guilt of betraying your parents' expectations with the guilt of not giving your children the ideal life.
Another aspect of your misfortune is that for every child in your situation that would benefit from 'raising awareness that getting shouted at daily for minor inconveniences is abnormal', the kind of people and organization that would be suitable for such messaging also want to roll in things like 'if you like playing with dinosaurs / dress up your action figures, we'll probably want you to cut your genitals down the line m'kay'. Also a lot of it is basically considered racist (it may be).
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