Too many children are raised in homes where their parents commanded them to achieve and accomplish. This parenting style is very common in Asian and middle eastern countries, but it also happens here, in America.
When a child is only valued for bringing home high grades in school or having attained athletic prowess, he grows up with poor self-esteem. His entire sense of worth is predicated on his parents’ approval for acting in certain ways and ‘doing.’ His only sense of lovability and value are contingent on how much he achieves, according to abstract standards of ‘perfect performance’ his parents have set for him.
The biggest problem with this type of upbringing is, the child who’s a product of it never has opportunity to appreciate myriad facets, talents and abilities he has outside of his parental ideations of who he should become~ but more tragically, he never gets to feel cherished and valued for simply BEING the adorable, sweet and bright child that he is. This is the equivalent of withholding affection to a dog, unless he obeys commands you impose on him to do tricks for you.
This dog OR child develops no sense of intrinsic worth, given that he must perform in order to gain any feeling that he matters to you, and that he is loved just for being himself. Incidentally, children who grow up in this type of environment are often shamed for feeling good about their achievements and accused of being “prideful,” which is considered a sin.
This damed if he doesn’t accomplish, yet damned if DOES, often spawns psychosis in the developing child. He struggles to find a way to remain in-between two polar opposites: His parent’s disapproval and the loss of their “love” if he fails to achieve what’s expected of him, and the shame of feeling better about himself, if he feels any degree of satisfaction or glee as a result of his victories. How does one even exist within these rigid parameters?? Beats the hell outta Me!
I worked with a client for a short time who, like all the people who’ve found their way to my practice, had no self-worth. Intellectually, he understood that he had various skills and talents, but could not own them. They were not integrated and held in his cellular structure.
One day this client called, saying he’d done something that uplifted him. It made him feel light and good. Almost immediately, he placed himself under a virtual microscope to analyze those light, good feelings, and questioned whether he’d engaged in “virtue signaling.” The moment he went into his head to analyze his emotions, the desirable, enjoyable feeling states evaporated, and he fell back into his familiar depressive state of being.
Children who grow up feeling poorly about themselves due to defective parenting, tend to compulsively destroy any positive feelings and experiences that happen in their day to day lives. Joy and glee feel unfamiliar and foreign to them as adults, so they must be gotten rid of, the same way painful emotions always have. The instant you go into your HEAD to discern what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling it, those sensations you’re experiencing in your body, are dissociated from. This is the primary reason psychoanalysis (within the realm of psychiatry and psychotherapy) has never worked to eliminate and heal anyone’s pain, and it never will!
A true healing modality is experiential~ not cerebral. You can’t THINK yourself well when you’re down with the flu or you’ve incurred an injury. While positive visualization can play a part in your recovery process, the business of healing the body, heart and soul are NOT cerebral functions~ which is why millions spend decades in a psychotherapist’s office hoping their inner pain will abate, but regardless of how many brilliant insights they acquire about their lifelong agony, there it sits, indelibly etched on their soul.
Today’s “Cancel Culture” has flourished under Joe Biden’s regime. The divisiveness and racism that’s been promoted and sanctioned under this current administration (and the hackneyed jargon that’s attended it) has exacerbated the inability to freely experience joy or glee, in people who live with psychosis. These folks live with childhood programming that forces them to feel BAD when they’re feeling really good~ and while this reaction is by now, automatic and reflexive in them, the less than sane and rational segments of today’s society, propagate and promote this nonsense!
Did you ever in your life, think you’d be harshly judged, censored, called vile names and ostracized from social media platforms just for being a Caucasian-born man or woman? Me neither. I’m not a “sis-female,” I’m a fully-formed, self-actualized woman, who’s comfortable with her genitalia, and in her own skin. I’m not ‘prideful’ about my gender nor my race, my good looks, nor any of the birth defects I’ve had to live with. This is the hand I was dealt when I came into this lifetime, and I’m accustomed to it, content most of the time, and essentially happy.
My feeling is, no matter who you are, You should be too! If you’re gay or straight, if you’re transgendered, or you’re ugly or beautiful, this is either how you came into this world or how you’ve chosen to direct your life, energies and focus. Good for You!
I have nothing against you for making the choices that have made sense to you, or that served you better as you navigated this thing called “Life.” But don’t you fucking DARE try to paint me black or make Me wrong for being who I am. I won’t stand for it~ and neither will any other rational, sane, healthy, evolved human who has even a shred of healthy self-worth, because you can only make someone feel bad about themselves, when they’ve never had solid, healthy self-esteem to begin with.
I don’t blame society for this acute dysfunction some of us are having to tolerate in our world today. I blame women and men who should never have been allowed to conceive and give birth to a baby, because they sure as fuck had no idea about how to love a child, and help him grow up to be a self-respecting, self-sufficient, truly empowered and joyful adult.
If discontented young people today are voluntarily sterilizing themselves, perhaps it’s a good thing for societies of tomorrow! One can only HOPE for a saner, brighter future that’s relatively free of confused, angry individuals who carry a chip on their shoulder. These adult children didn’t get the love they needed as infants and youngsters, have never confronted their parental units about this painful deficit, and yet are utterly determined to turn their outrage about it, on the rest of us.
Personality Disorders are a byproduct of stunted emotional growth. Malcontents are products of parental neglect and abuse. These segments of society have previously lived with marginalized station among us, but by seeing them through a lens that has labeled them as pathetic “victims” of historic injustices, they’ve been granted celebrity status. The pendulum has swung way too far in the opposite direction if you ask me, and extremism has never been at the heart of a healthy society. When the few are given a much louder voice than the many, we have a dystopian world.
Will you join me in taking a firm stand for what is rational and right?
It truly is the war of the periphery against the centre. I have worked with supremely capable gay people and some who are clearly disturbed and probably borderline. In stead of just getting rid of them, companies feel compelled to "make accommodations" that wouldn't be offered to more mainstream people. Although this one company eventually gave him an office of his own so he had less opportunity to berate people. Eventually he left for a completely "off the wall" career change.
As someone of South-Asian heritage, thank you for pointing out the cultural aspects that fuel this type of dysfunction in children! The element of cultural upbringing is not mentioned enough, and too often conveniently omitted (especially with poc, I suspect it has to do with political correctedness).
Due to the unhealthy importance education and academia is given to in these cultures, there is definitely a weird/pervasive enmeshment that seems to go on - not just with parents living through their children, if that's not bad enough; but also the enmeshment of children with teachers. Whenever I'd visit home (India) for college break in the States, I'd see peers my age frantically wanting to visit their middle/high schools to meet their teachers whom they'd make it a point to be in touch with until the end of time - very similar to that Julia Roberts-movie, Mona Lisa's Smile. Unfortunately, my father also shared the same manic dedication towards his almamater and has never missed a college reunion in all his 73 years. For some, it seems to be a virtue to not move on in life (seen as "forgetting one's roots", I suppose).
Unsurprisingly, such kids go on to "graduate" in having the same level of manic dedication for their employers later in life. It baffles me how they set themselves up to be exploited, and yet it's seen as noble. I find the ways in which people from my community represent themselves just embarrassing and is always a trope in modern tv shows and movies. In my own (already minority) community, I am even more of a minority in having these opinions (I'm seen as racist or a reverse-racist towards my own, lol).
Thank you again for saying what needs to be said, that doesn't seem to be said often enough. I appreciate you being a champion of the truth (and by extension, of children), no matter how hard or difficult the truth is :" )