Should I Apologize to My Mom

[WasatchMan]

For years now my mom and I have had a strained relationship due to her parenting methods while I was growing up.  My mom was a screamer.  On top of that, she was emotional and intellectually unavailable and did not play with me as child or talk to me about anything important during my development.  These methods have left me with a lot of problems as an adult, such as social anxiety and some rather extreme introversion at times.  Before FDR I never even identified these problems, I just assumed that was my intrinsic character.  Through introspection and working on self knowledge on why I do the things I do, I was able to identify my issues and their root in my childhood.  However, I also did discover that this parenting method provided me with huge benefits to my professional success and level of comfort today.

 

Being alone as a child, I grew an extreme defense mechanism for survival, and particularly self-sufficient survival. Anything I have done in my whole life I have approached with the character of Howard Roark, nothing could stop me and me alone.  My lone wolf self survival skills had me working all through university just because I never wanted to be in a position where money was a problem. Ever since I graduated university, money has never been an issue.  Even now, I live below my means, with good savings because I have the emotional need to be prepared for anything that comes across, on my own. 

 

I am a professional civil engineer, well known and respected in my industry for my ability to solve problems and deliver complex projects.  Every manager, boss, and now clients I have ever had has been blown away by what they viewed as my natural talent.  Through self-knowledge I have discovered this natural talent initially came from a deep sub-conscious fear where failure was death, which I believe is a direct result of my mom’s parenting styles.  I have grown a lot in the years, and I believe that I have been able to get rid of a lot of the fear, and am able to work for the sheer joy of what I do professionally (which I would recommend to anyone who wants an exciting diverse career).

 

However, without the momentum that launched me from childhood I know that I wouldn’t have been able to compete and get to where I am in my career without the very powerful success or death false dichotomy planted deep into my subconscious.  I am mentally average (at least for engineers), so there is no other reason why I should be so successful, professionally rising above all my peers. These are empirical facts.  Until recently, I was not able to identify the beneficial consequences of my mom’s parenting methods.  Through us trying to talk through these issues, I have never given her any credit for this, and have only talked about how bad it was for me as a child and how that impacted my early adulthood.  It is strange to me that such a bad methodology could lead to such great results in certain realms.  Given my new understanding of these facts, should I apologize to her for not stating the good?  Obviously, there is still the bad, but I am wondering if I should take responsibility for not being aware of the empirically good results.  If philosophy is about empiricism, it seems like that would be the correct, and consistent, thing to do.

 

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

[Alice Amell]

This is tricky...on the one hand, you did benefit from her maltreatment. But it was still maltreatment. I dont thank the government for roads because they stole from me in order to make them. It was wrong, regardless of the benefits. Or should I thank them for the roads?

 

Also I have trouble seeing social phobia as a good thing. It may have turned out well for you. Me personally reacted different to it. I am introverted and scared of failure, but instead of just not failing, I just dont try, because then I can't fail. I know that's an argument of consequences which doesn't have anything to do with whether it was good or bad. But as far as I can tell it is bad. Do you want to escape the fear? Or do you like it because it enables you to do well at your job? Is it possible to consent to maltreatment as a child after the fact?

 

I'm not sure about the answer but these are just thoughts I have. I'm curious to hear what you think of them.

[WasatchMan]

This is tricky...on the one hand, you did benefit from her maltreatment. But it was still maltreatment. I dont thank the government for roads because they stole from me in order to make them. It was wrong, regardless of the benefits. Or should I thank them for the roads?

 

Also I have trouble seeing social phobia as a good thing. It may have turned out well for you. Me personally reacted different to it. I am introverted and scared of failure, but instead of just not failing, I just dont try, because then I can't fail. I know that's an argument of consequences which doesn't have anything to do with whether it was good or bad. But as far as I can tell it is bad. Do you want to escape the fear? Or do you like it because it enables you to do well at your job? Is it possible to consent to maltreatment as a child after the fact?

 

I'm not sure about the answer but these are just thoughts I have. I'm curious to hear what you think of them.

 

Thanks for the reply Alice.  I am really sorry to hear about how introversion impacted you.  I look back sometimes and wonder what would have happened if it would have frozen me, because I definitely could see that potential.  Once I  began working on my self through introspection and self knowledge, I did go through what I consider a pretty major depression where I lost almost all personal discipline. 

 

I really like your road analogy, it is a pretty insightful way to look at this.  Thanks for that.

 

To be clear, I was not saying the social phobia is a good thing.  My purpose of bringing up was to point out the bad things that resulted from my upbringing.  Introversion on the other hand can be a good thing if kept to a Aristotelian mean because it usually provides you with the time required for mastery, but when it gets to the extreme side it can cause a lot of damage.

 

As for the fear stuff, I feel I have been able to make good progress in removing it mostly from my life. I am able to be more relaxed now at my job and am able to put things in better perspective instead of always going to full stress mode before major deadlines.

[Kevin Beal]

If someone takes out my eyes and I learn to adapt and gain crazy good hearing, I don't thank the person who plucked out my eyes.

[Alice Amell]

Thanks for the reply Alice.  I am really sorry to hear about how introversion impacted you.  I look back sometimes and wonder what would have happened if it would have frozen me, because I definitely could see that potential.  Once I  began working on my self through introspection and self knowledge, I did go through what I consider a pretty major depression where I lost almost all personal discipline. 

 

I really like your road analogy, it is a pretty insightful way to look at this.  Thanks for that.

 

To be clear, I was not saying the social phobia is a good thing.  My purpose of bringing up was to point out the bad things that resulted from my upbringing.  Introversion on the other hand can be a good thing if kept to a Aristotelian mean because it usually provides you with the time required for mastery, but when it gets to the extreme side it can cause a lot of damage.

 

As for the fear stuff, I feel I have been able to make good progress in removing it mostly from my life. I am able to be more relaxed now at my job and am able to put things in better perspective instead of always going to full stress mode before major deadlines.

Thank you for your concern

I'm sorry for the depression you experienced but am glad you have healed somewhat from self work. I do agree some introversion is good, as is some extraversion. You sounded farther on the introversion side, judging by the social anxiety you had. Do you find since lowering your fear of failure that you are less productive? In other words, maybe the so-called benefits of your abuse weren't really benefits. Going back to the road example: even though I like having roads, in a free market we would have better, cheaper, more efficient roads. Maybe if you weren't abused you would be even more productive, or at the least not have to feel stressed and anxious all the time about not being good enough. And I'm very sorry you had to endure that abuse..

[freemickey]

Well I applaud your resilience WasatchMan but let me ask you this: What do you think you would be doing right now, today had you been raised differently, i.e. by a mother who was emotionally available, nurturing and could give you guidance? Would you be worse off? Why or why not? 

 

Personally I consider what special circumstances bring about success to be quite complex and varied. I'd like to point out endless supportive parent/child relationships that have fostered hugely successful  adults like: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, etc, because I  just plain don't gut instinct believe that adversity creates success. 

[Eh Steve]

First off I'm sorry about your childhood and the resulting fears and issues it has given you to deal with.  I understand these childhoods are basically the norm but I do sympathize that you didn't deserve that as a child and it wasn't the right thing for your mother to be doing.

 

The behavior you are proposing is that apologizing for half-truths, ignoring the good aspects of something while only focusing on the bad, is UPB.  It is something everyone should do and is the right thing to do in this situation.  I agree this is true.

 

The question then becomes:  If this is a universal standard of behavior, do you hold other people up to this same standard of behavior?  

 

Has your mother apologized for the verbal abuse she inflicted upon you?  I genuinely don't know how your relationship with her is going, since you haven't talked much about it I'd assume she has not.  Because such a drastic change in a relationship is pretty dang noteworthy I'd say it's likely she hasn't to any significant degree.

 

I don't think her abuse had the intended consequence of your desire for success or immense fear of failure.  I doubt it had much long term intention outside of immediate anxiety avoidance.  So to credit her abuse with long term success isn't really fair.  I don't think she was screaming at you thinking "This will turn him into someone terrified of failure, but...he'll be a big success!"  She was as you described a screamer who wasn't particularly interested in your development.  

 

When we talk about evil/abuse we need to ask ourselves "Is this right or wrong?".  And not get too hung up on the results of the abuse.  If someone tries to shoot you and ends up shooting someone who was going to stab you...you don't credit them with saving your life.

 

I think you can be thankful to the part of yourself that interpreted her verbal abuse and your upbringing in general and spurred you onto financial success.  I think if you've been hard on that part of yourself you may in fact owe it an apology.  As it was the one who looked towards your future development and made you successful.   

 

But your mother wasn't a factor in that, she just screamed at you with as you claim no great sense on what impact it would have on you long-term.  For all she knew you could have become schizophrenic and homeless as a result of her verbal abuse.  But fundamentally that would credit her with even considering your future which it sounds like she never did.  I don't feel you owe her any sort of apology for something she never intended or considered happening. 

 

Let me know what you think.  And once again I'm sorry what you've been through.  And even on top of that I'm sorry you now have to consider that abuse might have made you stronger, that is a weird sort of hell to be put into and figure out.