How Would I Turn Out, Given My Childhood?

[NotDarkYet]

1) Severely alcoholic father.   He took zero interest in me.  None.  Zip.   He didn't come to my graduation.   He had no interest in speaking to me about anything (or anyone in the family) .  He constantly made me feel worthless (silently, and with eye rolls)  I never had a real conversation with him until my teens (when he started taking interest in my musical talent).    He never looked me in the eyes, or gave me any good advice that I remember.  He died in my early 20s.

 

2) A platitudinous mother whom you can insult to her face, and she'll just accept it...and even apologize.    Her entire life was spent placating my father.   She "spoiled" me, by giving me anything physical that I wanted (video games, mostly, I was not a materially interested kid) but never wanted to talk intellectually.  I remember the first time she asked me my opinion (what to name our dog, when I was 8) and I NEVER forgot that rush of pride I felt.  It was such a shock.

 

3)  Never heard, or spoke the phrase "I love you".  (to this day I can't say those words out loud without feeling massive discomfort).  I refuse to use those words now.

 

4) No 'rules' in the house (except for the unspoken ones).  I was allowed to fail any class, no questions asked.  No parent teacher meetings.  No dietary suggestions (it was hamburgers and potatoes most nights)  I could leave for days at a time to stay at friends families.  No curfeiw.

 

 

 

How does this childhood affect me?  How might I fix it?

 

 

How I turned out:

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I had massive panic attacks in high school and university (and still some anxiety problems, especially with conflict and speaking my mind...or others speaking their mind).  Of course I didn't want to 'burden' my family with my issues, so I kept silent.

 

I'm anxious, and sometimes awkward.  I'm not comfortable hanging out, because I feel I always have to be "on" and clever and funny - and I've developed a great skill of being entertaining around others.

 

In relationships, I don't like to be challenged, or to challenge them.  I have a difficulty showing or accepting affection.

 

Alcohol calms my nerves and has become part of my life.  Although I've cut down recently.  I'd say I have about 2-3 drinks a day on average.

 

I'm extremely tight with my money, refusing to spend on anything unnecessary (movies, shows, furniture, haircuts (I cut my own hair half of the time).

 

Perhaps I've answered my own question.  But I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

 

 

Solutions?

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I did 4 months of therapy which were alright.  It helped me be more comfortable with defining my boundaries and speaking my mind BEFORE I explode with hatred and resentment.

 

But I still have all of the issues above.

[Kevin Beal]

First of all, I'm very sorry that some of the most your basic and fundamental needs were denied to you. I'm sorry your dad was a contemptuous asshole. I'm sorry your mom was a cowardly enabler.

 

A childhood without security, bonding and validation (as with all neglect) would make you much more prone to having issues with depression & anxiety, alcohol & drug abuse and difficulty forming healthy relationships.

 

Absent fathers, I believe, adversely affect your capacity for empathy. Your parents never asking your opinion would likely result in being disconnected and other focused, rather than focusing on your own needs. Having a contemptuous father would surely affect your willingness to be vulnerable, which is going to mean you don't develop a lot of important social skills around connecting with other people.

 

I think you know all of this already.

 

You are an alcoholic if you are drinking 2-3 drinks every day. I know it doesn't feel like that much when your blood-alcohol levels are high and your tolerance up, but you are doing a lot of damage to your body.

 

And it's escapism.

 

If you want to have a more productive time working on yourself, figuring out where you are now and where you want to be, you need to be sober.

 

There were some words from a famous psychologist that have stuck with me about drinking. He said that he had clients come in who had been drinking, and they were able to disclose a lot of painful things, and even feeling grief in their intoxication, but it didn't translated into any kind of action. A lot of therapists won't even see clients who abuse drugs or alcohol.

 

 

Also, you said "I did 4 months of therapy which were alright". Does that mean you stopped going? 4 months, how often? Was it just "alright"? Are you doing self therapy outside of therapy?

 

Personally, I take that the way that I would take a romantic relationship. If my friend tells me tells me that things with his new girlfriend are just "alright", to me, that's a problem. Something has to change. It should be great!

 

 

Maybe what drove you to post today was a part of you insisting that you push yourself to take your life more seriously. And it makes perfect sense that someone denied so much essential affection, bonding, closeness and love would have patterns of behavior that are self sabotaging. I would just urge you to push forward.

 

No one is coming to save us.

 

You know that fulfilling feeling you feel when you do push yourself to rise up to the challenge of living in line with your own values? It's this pleasant whole body feeling,... kind of like a hug. It's self love. And there is no end to that feeling. You can have as much of it as you want, you've just gotta work for it.

 

And to do that, you need someone in your corner. If your therapist is not working out for you, fire them. It's important to feel motivated and that you can't wait to come back and make more progress on yourself. Somebody who takes your inner world as seriously as you wish you did.

 

That's my amatuer opinion, anyway.

[NotDarkYet]

Wow.  Thank you for the thoughtful response to my meandering post.

 

 

Regarding therapy.  It was once a week.  It helped, but after the 15th session, we were covering the same subjects again and again.  

 

My self-therapy = listening to FDR

 

Since listening to FDR (I started early, around the time of UPB) my life has improved.

 

I've removed the bad people (and politics) from my life.  I don't see my mother more than once a year now, and I've cut out my brother completely (he was a horrible dick to me growing up and never even visited me (or replied to emails) when I came back from China after 8 years abroad).

 

I don't argue with bad people either, which used to be a core part of my day.  

 

But my inferiority complex stuff still remains.

[Kevin Beal]

Regarding therapy.  It was once a week.  It helped, but after the 15th session, we were covering the same subjects again and again.  

 

My self-therapy = listening to FDR

Same topics might be good, but if you are getting bored with it, then that doesn't sound like a good sign, to me.

 

How would you feel if you told your therapist "hey, I'm actually getting kinda bored. I don't know what to do about it, but I want to be honest so we can talk about it" ?

 

They work for you. Whether it's them or you, or whatever, it's something that should be discussed.

 

I found that when I got bored in therapy, it happened to be (at least in part) because I was censoring myself and saying nothing when my therapist would say things that I didn't like or thought sounded like nonsense. Bringing it up with her was very productive. More trust was established, and I felt more free to voice disagreement. And that's an important skill worth developing. Who better to do it with than a therapist who I pay to put up with me, haha

 

 

Also, I don't think that listening to FDR is self therapy. I think it's a great resource to learn, but self therapy is an active process. (At least that would be my definition). Do you keep a journal? Have you been recording your dreams? Do you talk to yourself? Do you do any kind of meditation? Visualizations? Sentence completions? Dedicate time to introspect?

 

I have recently changed up my routine which I'm finding very productive:

• Start out the day writing any dreams I had that night (and starting an analysis if I have time before work)
• Sentence completions when I arrive at work to remind myself of what my values are
• I audio journal when I get home for a half hour to 45 minutes about my day
• If I'm having an emotional experience that I can feel is loaded with things that need processing, I do parts work instead of journaling
• Then I work more on analyzing dreams

I don't always have time to do all of the above, but that's the goal anyway.

 

The more I do self therapy, the more fulfilled I feel, the higher my self esteem and happier I am. And when I was seeing a therapist, the more productive it was.

 

Daniel Mackler is a great resource for self therapy. I would highly recommend checking him out.

[Devon Gibbons]

 If your therapist is not working out for you, fire them. It's important to feel motivated and that you can't wait to come back and make more progress on yourself. Somebody who takes your inner world as seriously as you wish you did.

 

That's my amatuer opinion, anyway.

That's really helpful advice Kevin. I've been looking for a therapist again recently with that idea and I shot one down quick. No time to kill, I only got time to kill time killers.  

(not actually kill them, though)

 

Do you talk to yourself? 

I tried this shortly after this you posted this question, and it helped to connect with myself tremendously. I was at a nature trail and feeling really down, I remembered it and picked up a stick and started talking to myself. Today, again recently, I used the method with a real phone. Worked much better, people didn't look at me weird.   This is something I think I will use often, now. I'll pretend I have a call and then start talking to myself. I have social anxiety, and this has helped me talk frankly and express myself in front of strangers. I can do parts work wherever I am, unless of course I'm with family. 

 

I really encourage others who have social anxiety to try this out if it sounds interesting and you have fairly good imagination. 

[Kevin Beal]

I tried this shortly after this you posted this question, and it helped to connect with myself tremendously.

I'm very glad

 

I'm very curious what the process is like for you, if you felt like sharing. 

 

I recorded a video where I talk a bit more about it, if you're interested.

[Devon Gibbons]

I'm very curious what the process is like for you

I've done it a couple of times. That video's well done. I like. Here's my process of how I figured out the process; I'll bold the critical process:

 

The other day I was at a different park (so being at a nature park helps me, or is a trigger for social anxiety) and I was walking alone, and there was no one around me. I was walking around and approaching a divergence in the path I was on. I was self-loathing and nihilistically wondering why I'd come here. "Who owns this place?" I cynically thought, "They must be narcissistic to want to feel that they are good for owning and keeping up a park for the public. Government parks are just a means to placate their otherwise well-managed sheeple to give them a semblance of freedom." With this ridiculous abstract projection I sat down. 

 

On this bench I realized I was sitting at a trivium (where three roads meet) on my metal grated bench; I was sitting on it just off the pavement of a convergence; in front of me was a path going straight ahead, and there were paths leading left and right. I thought "past, present, future". Past on the left, present straight ahead, and future to the right, where I came from. Then I remembered a video a guy on FDR chat recommended I watch and "The Big Picture" rant Stef gave in that podcast and I had a real desire to come out of myself and not lock myself up. I saw a cardinal calling above my head, continuously, alone, and I thought of its sadness, but then its beauty; I could be like the cardinal and not care what others thought, and just get up going forward and express myself in the present, for the past and future.

 

I walked straight ahead from the seat and began thinking of what I could say to myself. I was filled with anxiety still and felt terribly uncomfortable - fearing the possibility of running into another person (quite literally, I felt) - and so I simply soothingly talked to myself, it was a bit uncomfortable because it sounded like a voice of my mom or dad, who I was currently evading. But as there were no people around I continued calmly, assuring myself, getting over some claustrophobic ghost-like agoraphobia by focusing my attention outwards and appreciating my surroundings on this secluded forested path in the park. As I was walking out of a crisis, unfortunately, or fortunately, I passed a couple of women who did what I feared would happen, they said nothing to me. I had fake smiled and waved as I'd passed them . They stopped talking as they were within 20 feet of me and the silence continued after I passed them for another 6 long seconds until I heard their faint voices start up again. "Good", I thought, "my aggressive desperation didn't ruin their walk".

 

I began thinking of how ridiculous people can be when they pass each other on sidewalks. It's not just me that's delusional I thought: "walking past people on paths is like getting into car wrecks". There's such a seriously uncomfortable wreck of an exchange of words. Like one person will say, "Hello", to you, then after they say that you say [which you had already comfortably thought, concretely planned, and then assuredly carry out by saying] "Hey, how's it going?". But all they had planned to say was just "Hello", and they continue on as if you said nothing as if implying "What? You expect me to tell you how I'm DOING asshole?!" (inner voice). There's a car wreck of confusion. I sometimes think, "WHO CAUSED THIS WRECK?!!?", feeling a compulsion to either run in horror or do the opposite and stop and order them to show me their license and registration. But after this sharing of intimate details, there's this silence... a solemn kind of mourning for 6 seconds, to acknowledge the sorrowful death of communication. It's like a hit and run where the perp speeds off with no one in pursuit, and the chatting happily begins again.

 

Those were my (insane?) thoughts beginning the process. I became very animated at this funny redundancy of seriousness I put on meeting strangers. I put the phone up to my ear and started talking into it to record my thoughts on this matter. I stopped talking into the phone recorder as I passed other people across a creek from me and then continued later when they were out of earshot. This inconvenience gave me the later radical thought of just pretending that I'm on my phone instead of stopping talking. And so I used this method passing probably 4 other people.

 

Regarding the process, unconsciously I thought of what sort of conversation would look most normal for me to have on a phone. So I came up with a story about a friend and his problems with a girlfriend, as a way to talk and think about my own feelings about how a relationship should work out. I asked my friend about what he was doing, he told me he went on a date, I asked about her, I asked why she liked doing the things he liked to do, and he told me her experiences with the interests she had developed which he shared and why she liked them, he told me of something that he didn't quite like about her, I then gave this fake friend advice on what I thought a relationship should be like. I did this speaking openly sitting at another bench I had come to. I was so into the conversation that when people came towards me, I felt encouraged to be empathetic towards my friend. When you begin it may feel insincere kind of, but I think that's just an ego-protector who doesn't want you to lose control and have parts throwing an inadvertent Touretts fists-of-emotion at innocent passerby. I often feel like I may be making people uncomfortable and harming them, but with this you're not targeting other people and there's no one to harm -you're just talking about yourself and your parts, which is actually much more a process of secluding yourself or balling yourself up more than (what I often feel interaction with others is about,) an extroverted display for other people's entertainment or judgment¹. However, you can include your external scenery as part of the discussion and subtly talk about those around you by incorporating aspects of them into your story. You can talk about ANYTHING. If you want to express extreme sadness, you could pretend like you've gotten news that your mother (your inner mother) is dead (too extreme? whatever you're comfortable with). Or you want to express your helpfulness, come up with a situation where someone has called you for advice. Or maybe you call someone else for advice.

 

The only disclaimer is if you're emotive at all, people will look at you maybe positively or negatively. BUT, the amazing thing is, people will fundamentally respect and trust you beneath whatever outward judgment they may show, because to them and to yourself you are talking to a real person who values your friendship and advice! They fundamentally value people who connect with others. Connection is a virtue, and displaying it to people you pass can be more fulfilling for you and them than meekly gesturing, "hi". And it will always be an insincere "hi" unless you first connect with your "self". All you have to do is stay genuinely open with your part, which really is indistinguishable from a real person, or should be talked to as such. 

 

So they think that you're actually trying to help someone out and speaking like a real human to someone else. Whether or not the conversation goes anywhere or not, it's beneficial to yourself and others around you. Basically, you create a safe comfortable conversation with another, so you can be open about yourself without fear of attack and condemnation from others in your vicinity. The connection will strengthen your intuition of boundaries. ¹In the presence of others you might even find the more nervous you are the more authentic the conversation becomes because you want to connect with the part to compensate for your fear of being found out as a "fraud", which happened to me. You can then reflect about what you said and why you said it.

 

The whole point is to express yourself regardless of other people's presences, and this sort of "E.T. phone home" impresses other people. A couple of guys I passed thought I found a rare alien friend and were intrigued about what this "openness and honesty" language I was speaking was all about, they were lonely cynical skating teens. It's a beautiful language and people are attracted to it. I ignore a lot of people generally, because I'm afraid of being ignored. This is an alternative to keeping silent I have found useful.