Tom needs to leave his family behind and concentrate on having his best life. He can't change the past and will never change them. When you get older you begin to see your parents as "individuals" and at times these individuals just aren't worth having in your life. Sad but sometimes a reality.
This was very hard to read, and it's heartbreaking to know this happens. And yet, it does us no good to pretend it's not true. Thanks for the work you put into helping us all see clearly this kind of awfulness--in the lives of the individuals you help, in your own life, and also how it manifests in our society at-large.
I think one of the most harmful trends of the past decades is how much people have stopped calling this evil. We use euphemisms—mentally ill or unstable, sick, etc.—but the reality is it's evil. And it needs to be called what it is. I appreciate that you are willing to do so.
Something I would like to add to this, to explain how we get trapped, in my family at least. Happy people, that is, regular normal people who are happy with life, their families, their circumstances, etc. are considered stupid. Your family culture is miserable because you know more than the stupid happy people. This especially pertains to Cluster B as politics. We know how the world really works which is why we are always angry about everything. Happy people don't understand, that's why they are happy, the damned fools.
This creates a self-enforcing mental mechanism where, yeah, you know normal people, are friends with them, see their happy families so you should know that what you are experiencing at home is wrong but...even these friends of yours are a bit stupid, no? You are better than they are which is why you are depressed and unhappy.
Like Josh has noted before, it's extremely difficult to crawl out of this. And to some extent, you never completely escape. Every day is a battle.
One phrase jumped out at me: your family thinking you are stuck up. I knew I was different from my family for as long as I can remember, having grown up as poor white trash (sorry if that offends some), one of six siblings. I honestly felt that I must have been switched at birth and was supposed to go home with a different family. My mother was an obese woman with a horrific temper, picking fights with my father or us kids in order to have an excuse to blow off steam by beating somebody. When I was 13 and my 2 older brothers had moved out, I was able to take one room in the attic as my bedroom. I was so relieved to have a place to retreat from the drama. My mother would yell upstairs about me "being in my ivory tower." I married at 18 and kept my promise of "getting out of there when I turn 18." I was the first one to go to college, and later law school. Unlike Tom, I never had trouble calling a spade a spade and cut off ties with my parents.
Josh, I don't know if you have covered or seen the Menendez brothers documentary on Netflix, but it is devastating. They both believed that their parents were going to quickly kill them after they tried to confront years of sexual abuse of the younger brother and they ended up killing their own parents in a mad panic. The father had even said that if they talked he would kill them on several occasions. It is an utterly sobering deep dive into the world that you have brilliantly described above. The beauty of the show is that they have become very full, good people despite the hell they endured.
Your writing is incredible: a few posts back the pictures you were creating reminded me of John Kennedy Toole's, A Confederacy of Dunces, one of my favorite books. And you are wonderful.
D.A.R.V.O. and its extreme affect...on everyone, but especially.... its effect on the victim.
" DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, is a tactic used by perpetrators to avoid accountability, often involving victim-blaming, by denying wrongdoing, attacking the victim's credibility, and then portraying themselves as the victim. "
Given that children are hard-wired to automatically ingest feedback from their parents -- regardless of the content -- then of course Cluster B parents convince their children of the most horrible things about themselves.
Even without an explicit "see what you made me do," a kid will observe that a parent reacts to the kid's behavior with wrath, for example, and his hard-wiring translates that into "I screwed up." A parent who reacts with gentleness communicates "nah, you're good; try better next time."
Kids absolutely don't have the emotional or mental maturity to see a parent's wrath as something preexisting the kid -- that the parent is the problem instead of the kid. It absolutely does not compute. I remember thinking as a kid that every adult MUST know the right way to parent, because if it was obvious to me as a kid, then it must be obvious to any adult. Especially to my psych-prof dad.
Alas, no. Cluster B parents failed to develop essential aspects of emotional and moral maturity when they were young (no doubt from the emotional malnutrition of their own abuse), so they can't handle the constant, severe demands that kids make on a parent. In some cases, it's so severe it's functionally psychopathy.
"Cluster B abuse from a parent is so fully and completely deranging that it can take a man with an actual genius-level IQ and make him 'unable' to 'understand' that when his father was trying to murder him, that meant, yes, his father was trying to kill him."
The ability to rotate shapes in your head or work out chess strategies or maintain a mental map of a complex system is not in the least bit related to one's primal emotional needs. He had desperately needed his parents' love growing up -- and he kept waiting for the day when maybe somehow he'd get something? anything? from them. No amount of scholastic success would provide insight into the fact that he was hoping to squeeze champagne from manure.
I'm glad you're able to help "Tom" and all the rest to see what they can't see because they're just too close to it. Is "Tom" crazy to not realize his father tried to kill him?
Josh, You make me so grateful for my flawed but normal parents. However my husband had a mother who could have given yours a run for her money. Gratefully in his early 20s, he understood this and--as he put it--"restructured" his personality to remove her influence. Then he maintained a life long relationship with her but within boundaries and at 600 miles distance. Also protected me from her and her sisters. A very strong character.
Great essay Josh. Important to read for normies and not so normies alike . I was having a similar conversation a day ago with my husband. I explained to him that Im wired to perceive mistreatment towards myself from any quarter for any reason as acceptable and normal initially. I glitch out. I can see cruelty accurately when someone else is the target but myself? Not so much. I get there but it takes longer with more confusion, doubt and hand wringing. It’s incredibly sad.
Thanks for this insight, it's a fascinating topic. Neither of my parents ever tried to kill me, but as long as I live I'll be trying to figure out what was going on when I was a kid. There were times when things were not good, but other times that seemed more-or-less normal. After a pretty rough teenage period, I ended up having a good relationship with them as an adult, but there are things from my childhood I still don't understand and will always resent. I think they loved me, but I'm not certain. There were negative effects to my psychology that I'll never get over. It's almost as if it would be simpler (although not necessarily easier) if they had just been consistent out-and-out assholes I could have turned my back on at eighteen. Apart from Judge and Mrs. Hardy, I don't think there are perfect parents, but it's clear that, even with their faults, there are parents far worse than mine were. I suppose "good enough" (at least some of the time) is something to be thankful for.
Powerful and much needed post. Josh is providing such an important service. I think sometimes adults with Cluster B parents end up using a faulty scale. Example: "Well, I wasn't tied to a bed and starved so it wasn't that bad." Yes, there are levels of abuse and neglect. One level does not negate the other. The result can be that rationalization and heartbreaking self-blame. Most children (a few exceptions) are wired with an innate defense mechanism of their parents. The realization as a child that you are not safe with one or both parents is too much to bear so (often unconsciously) "it must be my fault." Bringing to full consciousness that they are capable of such abuse and neglect cannot be allowed as a child. We carry it into adulthood. Tom's father tried to kill him. Letting that sink in is so very painful and yet so very liberating. Then the often slow and even more painful yet liberating realization that "I was not loved." Whatever sick enmeshment was created was not love. Not that "they loved me in their way" or "they did the best they could." They, (he, she) did not love me. Acknowledging that parents themselves were childhood victims is useful information for study but is sometimes used to minimize what was done.
Josh, I think you would find The People of the Lie, by M. Scott Peck, to be a worthwhile read. He examines the evil that he encountered during the course of his long career as a psychiatrist, and is convinced that evil is real and not just the product of misunderstood, damaged people or an unfair society.
Tom needs to leave his family behind and concentrate on having his best life. He can't change the past and will never change them. When you get older you begin to see your parents as "individuals" and at times these individuals just aren't worth having in your life. Sad but sometimes a reality.
This was very hard to read, and it's heartbreaking to know this happens. And yet, it does us no good to pretend it's not true. Thanks for the work you put into helping us all see clearly this kind of awfulness--in the lives of the individuals you help, in your own life, and also how it manifests in our society at-large.
I think one of the most harmful trends of the past decades is how much people have stopped calling this evil. We use euphemisms—mentally ill or unstable, sick, etc.—but the reality is it's evil. And it needs to be called what it is. I appreciate that you are willing to do so.
Something I would like to add to this, to explain how we get trapped, in my family at least. Happy people, that is, regular normal people who are happy with life, their families, their circumstances, etc. are considered stupid. Your family culture is miserable because you know more than the stupid happy people. This especially pertains to Cluster B as politics. We know how the world really works which is why we are always angry about everything. Happy people don't understand, that's why they are happy, the damned fools.
This creates a self-enforcing mental mechanism where, yeah, you know normal people, are friends with them, see their happy families so you should know that what you are experiencing at home is wrong but...even these friends of yours are a bit stupid, no? You are better than they are which is why you are depressed and unhappy.
Like Josh has noted before, it's extremely difficult to crawl out of this. And to some extent, you never completely escape. Every day is a battle.
Oh my gosh you just shined a light on a dynamic I never noticed before. I think I need a moment.
Excellent article, Josh.
This was great. I want to do better at helping my therapy clients see reality more clearly. More articles on this are most welcome
One phrase jumped out at me: your family thinking you are stuck up. I knew I was different from my family for as long as I can remember, having grown up as poor white trash (sorry if that offends some), one of six siblings. I honestly felt that I must have been switched at birth and was supposed to go home with a different family. My mother was an obese woman with a horrific temper, picking fights with my father or us kids in order to have an excuse to blow off steam by beating somebody. When I was 13 and my 2 older brothers had moved out, I was able to take one room in the attic as my bedroom. I was so relieved to have a place to retreat from the drama. My mother would yell upstairs about me "being in my ivory tower." I married at 18 and kept my promise of "getting out of there when I turn 18." I was the first one to go to college, and later law school. Unlike Tom, I never had trouble calling a spade a spade and cut off ties with my parents.
Josh, I don't know if you have covered or seen the Menendez brothers documentary on Netflix, but it is devastating. They both believed that their parents were going to quickly kill them after they tried to confront years of sexual abuse of the younger brother and they ended up killing their own parents in a mad panic. The father had even said that if they talked he would kill them on several occasions. It is an utterly sobering deep dive into the world that you have brilliantly described above. The beauty of the show is that they have become very full, good people despite the hell they endured.
Your writing is incredible: a few posts back the pictures you were creating reminded me of John Kennedy Toole's, A Confederacy of Dunces, one of my favorite books. And you are wonderful.
D.A.R.V.O. and its extreme affect...on everyone, but especially.... its effect on the victim.
" DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, is a tactic used by perpetrators to avoid accountability, often involving victim-blaming, by denying wrongdoing, attacking the victim's credibility, and then portraying themselves as the victim. "
Given that children are hard-wired to automatically ingest feedback from their parents -- regardless of the content -- then of course Cluster B parents convince their children of the most horrible things about themselves.
Even without an explicit "see what you made me do," a kid will observe that a parent reacts to the kid's behavior with wrath, for example, and his hard-wiring translates that into "I screwed up." A parent who reacts with gentleness communicates "nah, you're good; try better next time."
Kids absolutely don't have the emotional or mental maturity to see a parent's wrath as something preexisting the kid -- that the parent is the problem instead of the kid. It absolutely does not compute. I remember thinking as a kid that every adult MUST know the right way to parent, because if it was obvious to me as a kid, then it must be obvious to any adult. Especially to my psych-prof dad.
Alas, no. Cluster B parents failed to develop essential aspects of emotional and moral maturity when they were young (no doubt from the emotional malnutrition of their own abuse), so they can't handle the constant, severe demands that kids make on a parent. In some cases, it's so severe it's functionally psychopathy.
"Cluster B abuse from a parent is so fully and completely deranging that it can take a man with an actual genius-level IQ and make him 'unable' to 'understand' that when his father was trying to murder him, that meant, yes, his father was trying to kill him."
The ability to rotate shapes in your head or work out chess strategies or maintain a mental map of a complex system is not in the least bit related to one's primal emotional needs. He had desperately needed his parents' love growing up -- and he kept waiting for the day when maybe somehow he'd get something? anything? from them. No amount of scholastic success would provide insight into the fact that he was hoping to squeeze champagne from manure.
I'm glad you're able to help "Tom" and all the rest to see what they can't see because they're just too close to it. Is "Tom" crazy to not realize his father tried to kill him?
No. And yes.
Josh - 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Josh, You make me so grateful for my flawed but normal parents. However my husband had a mother who could have given yours a run for her money. Gratefully in his early 20s, he understood this and--as he put it--"restructured" his personality to remove her influence. Then he maintained a life long relationship with her but within boundaries and at 600 miles distance. Also protected me from her and her sisters. A very strong character.
Great essay Josh. Important to read for normies and not so normies alike . I was having a similar conversation a day ago with my husband. I explained to him that Im wired to perceive mistreatment towards myself from any quarter for any reason as acceptable and normal initially. I glitch out. I can see cruelty accurately when someone else is the target but myself? Not so much. I get there but it takes longer with more confusion, doubt and hand wringing. It’s incredibly sad.
Thanks for this insight, it's a fascinating topic. Neither of my parents ever tried to kill me, but as long as I live I'll be trying to figure out what was going on when I was a kid. There were times when things were not good, but other times that seemed more-or-less normal. After a pretty rough teenage period, I ended up having a good relationship with them as an adult, but there are things from my childhood I still don't understand and will always resent. I think they loved me, but I'm not certain. There were negative effects to my psychology that I'll never get over. It's almost as if it would be simpler (although not necessarily easier) if they had just been consistent out-and-out assholes I could have turned my back on at eighteen. Apart from Judge and Mrs. Hardy, I don't think there are perfect parents, but it's clear that, even with their faults, there are parents far worse than mine were. I suppose "good enough" (at least some of the time) is something to be thankful for.
Powerful and much needed post. Josh is providing such an important service. I think sometimes adults with Cluster B parents end up using a faulty scale. Example: "Well, I wasn't tied to a bed and starved so it wasn't that bad." Yes, there are levels of abuse and neglect. One level does not negate the other. The result can be that rationalization and heartbreaking self-blame. Most children (a few exceptions) are wired with an innate defense mechanism of their parents. The realization as a child that you are not safe with one or both parents is too much to bear so (often unconsciously) "it must be my fault." Bringing to full consciousness that they are capable of such abuse and neglect cannot be allowed as a child. We carry it into adulthood. Tom's father tried to kill him. Letting that sink in is so very painful and yet so very liberating. Then the often slow and even more painful yet liberating realization that "I was not loved." Whatever sick enmeshment was created was not love. Not that "they loved me in their way" or "they did the best they could." They, (he, she) did not love me. Acknowledging that parents themselves were childhood victims is useful information for study but is sometimes used to minimize what was done.
Josh, I think you would find The People of the Lie, by M. Scott Peck, to be a worthwhile read. He examines the evil that he encountered during the course of his long career as a psychiatrist, and is convinced that evil is real and not just the product of misunderstood, damaged people or an unfair society.