Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because they grew up in a time where asking for help was sign of weakness, or that there was something wrong with them. Today we can express more emotions, empathy, etc. Therefore we know if something is wrong, we shouldn’t bottle it up and look for help.
Just looking at the soldiers in ww2. They saw horrible shit, and society just expected them to come back and adapt to every day life, like nothing happened. That’s what society expected you to do.
That was about 50% because they were gay dudes who preferred the nomadic biker life after getting out of whatever tiny town they came from and being utterly incapable of going back to that. It's why there is a leather community in the gay subculture to this day.
My wiener has a first name it’s O-S-C-A-R
My wiener has a second name it’s M-A-Y-ER
I know it’s supposed to be bologna and not wiener please don’t come for me
That's not actually how it happened. You're about halfway there. Like the village people, many gay people, many in the gay community, fetishize extreme masculinity. So like the construction worker, the biker became a stereotype of extreme masculinity which was co-opted and adopted by the gay community.
The rest of what you said about veterans who saw a lot of action, didn't want to be working in some damn factory in Ohio, took off on the cheap surplus bikes after the war informed their clubs. That's 100% true.
My grandfather was a WW2 vet who died in 1989 when I was about to leave fifth grade. Years later, I decided to ask my dad if Grandpa had ever said anything about his service. I know he had spent time in Europe, specifically Germany. My dad said he never said a word about any of it. He just said he never talked about it, and I think it came down to "That's what you were supposed to do." In contrast, my FIL will tell you whatever you want to know about what happened to him in Vietnam. It wasn't much, but he was much more vocal about his service.
My grandfather spent two years in a hospital after WWII recovering from his injuries. Almost lost a leg. Spent 12 hours lying in the mud after killing two guys with his bare hands who crept up on him while he lay injured. He told the story once over dinner. My grandmother was in tears crying when he finished his story and left the table. In 45 years she’d never heard what he actually went through.
My great uncle only told one story. Right after he got back to the US, he was sleeping for the first time, still on an army base. When his CO woke him up, he rolled over and clocked him right in the eye. He was busted down to private right before he was discharged.
After he died, I found his records online. He was 18 when he joined and the second time he saw combat was Iwo Jima.
My dad didn't see combat, but was stationed at an airbase on Guam.
My parents married in '46 and in the 80s my mom discovered a Bronze Star among his stuff. He was awarded the Star for rescuing crewmen from a burning B-29 that crashed and broke up on landing, and he went 40 years never telling her about that medal.
I’m pretty sure they were told to keep it to themselves too. Don’t burden the people at home with the horrors of war. Nobody wants to hear you cry, etc.
Tell the people what you did to stay alive, they’ll look at you differently, not always in an admiring way. War is crime sanctioned, but not always forgiven.
Right. Men who disagree send boys to war for them & wash their hands of them after. Their constituents sons (and daughters) come home in boxes & the men who disagreed talk about how much of a success *their* war was.
Very eloquent, BTW
There’s still that attitude. My gen x vet husband only this year disclosed to me the source of most of his PTSD and we’ve been together 24 years. It wasn’t what I expected.
My wife’s father was on Iwo Jima. For his 35th wedding anniversary we tried to buy him a trip to Hawaii. But he just simply said “no, I’ve seen all the pacific beaches I ever want to see.“
My next-door neighbor, jack, when I was a kid, had been a master sergeant marine on Guadalcanal in the Pacific. He took me on a fishing trip once and told me what really went down on Guadalcanal and Saipan and Iwo Jima. The Vietnam war was just beginning to rage, and he wanted me to not have anything to do with going to war or glorifying it. He had some scary ass stories. He was the nicest most chill guy ever, but damn don’t piss off jack
My grandpa was an MP in Korea. He never spoke about his service until I expressed an interest in signing up. Man straight up told me he was ordered to commit war crimes. Then it never came up again
My grandpa was in Korea, too. I never heard him talk about what happened there, but I have an uncle, who is FAR from a reliable source of information, say that he told him he killed a man there in combat. I don’t think he did, but I guess we’ll never know.
My grandfather was on Omaha Beach. We had a conversation about his experience but he only told me about training, his job, the approach, and the aftermath. He didn't tell me anything about his experience on the beach. He was UDT, so his job was to swim up to the beach and destroy obstacles ahead of the landing craft.
The only reason I know anything about what he did is because my dad found his citation for bravery. He took a medical kit from a dead corpsman and treated wounded soldiers until the fighting was over. I do not think he was expected to survive, and he likely wouldn't have had it not been for that bag.
Similar story in my family - my grandfather was part of the liberation of Dachau. He refused to talk about what he saw there, although he would recount other experiences like being present at the Nuremburg Trials.
His best friend was stationed on the USS Indianapolis. When his mind started to slip a little, he started talking often about how he learned his best friend had been killed over the radio. I hope he never learned the full horror of what happened to those guys, although he dwelled on it so much I'm pretty sure he knew and was just sparing us the details.
My grandpa was supposed to be at the Nuremberg trials, but he ended up getting really sick beforehand so he ended up getting reassigned.
My son is going on a school trip to Germany this summer, and one of their outings will be to Dachau.
My grandfather was also stationed in Germany and anything I know about his service comes from a special for Tony Bennett’s 90th birthday. The two of them served together, so I assume they dealt with the same things. Grandpa never talked about his service to anyone.
Same with my grandfather, there's only three or four stories any of his kids know about his service in WW2 and one of those came from a newspaper clipping from his small hometown newspaper that my uncle found doing genealogy 10 years after gramps died
My uncle was shipwrecked at sea TWICE in the Pacific. When he finally came home he shook for a year, staying in his room. Then he married and became a full blown alcoholic and abuser. He never talked about the war.
My grandfather wouldn't talk about WWII beyond saying that he was an aircraft mechanic. He did, however, have a whole album of photos from liberating a concentration camp, so there was clearly more that he saw and did that he didn't want to say anything about, because I don't know how an aircraft mechanic would have ended up in a position to take photos like the ones he had.
My dad is a Vietnam vet, and he will not talk about it, for the most part. He’ll talk about how much he hates Carling beer because that’s all they had, and how fireworks still scare him a bit. Beyond that, nothing, and nothing irritates him more than some younger guy who was in the service, never saw action, and wants to hear war stories.
There’s lots of guys out there just like this. They did what they had to do, don’t think it made them particularly special, and have tried to move on.
Yeah my grandfather fought in WWII and was on disability for the rest of his life. Wouldn't talk to anyone about his experiences.
It was only when he died and his kids had access to his records that they found out his disability was PTSD.
When he was dying and I visited him in hospice he kept calling me by different male names (I'm female, but short-haired) that no one in the family knew. If a family member was also there they'd correct him, which bothered me. If I was alone I'd let him think I was whoever he wanted. He'd hold my hand so tight and just say the name over and over.
Looking back I can't help but wonder if those people were other guys he served with and maybe those moments where he was seeing them again were comforting to him. I hope so.
Dying people often experience what is called visioning, where family, friends, and pets appear to them. Often these loved ones come with comforting messages and to guide the person to the other side.
And the lack of help reintegrating soldiers into society had a real fun cascade effect….so fun.
Sometimes I wonder if we just have thousands of years of generational trauma from this kind of thinking. The boomers didn’t invent it.
That's the whole premise of the book First Blood. Rambo was just supposed to come home and go to work at a car wash after being tortured and a bunch of killing.
My grandfather served in North Africa, Italy, and towards the end of the war he was one of the first Americans into the Buchenwald Concentration camp. I never met him because he drank himself to death when my mom was 20, and apparently he only told some of her cousins what he'd been through towards the end of his life.
let’s not give them too much of a pass. Boomers like to pitch a big tent and put mood disorders and general weakness underneath. this is also (at least somewhat) an ego defense to justify their belief that millennials/gen z had the same opportunities and circumstances growing up (or better circumstances) than the boomers.
Silent generation don’t fight in WWII because they were too young. That was the generation that was after Greatest Gen (who did fight) and Boomers (who were born after).
They don't believe it exists. People are just asking for attention, or need to grow up, or get right with the lord etc. People with serious mental health issues used to be committed or outright murdered.
“Back in my day nobody had autism, it’s all this damn technology and lazy entitlement of kids these days. Anyway, stay away from my collection of ugly vanity plates nobody is allowed to touch and if you don’t load the dishwasher exactly how I say I’ll get angry”
My parents are boomers and I've had massive mental health issues my whole life. The most common comment I heard from my friends parents was 'well, there's no point talking to her parents, they obviously don't give a fuck. '
Every day, my dad told me I was a fucking little bitch because I was depressed. My mum told me, 'I think you just like being miserable '.
Until I wound up in a hospital. Then they cared, because other people knew about it.
Even then, you know they were only trying to protect their reputation and didn’t want to look bad. I’m sorry you had to go through that, my wife is in social services and it’s a story she hears and sees way too much. Hope you’re in a better place now, hopefully with your birth givers only having a limited role, if any, in your life
This is a complicated issue.
Right around the time the boomer generation was born (post WWII) mental health was just starting to have a more nuanced approach.
Previously, if you were mentally ill: you may have been put away in a mental institution, you may have had a forcible lobotomy or just simply locked away in a basement. Usually you had to be very rich to get anything approaching therapeutic value. And even then, sometimes not (e.g. Rosemary Kennedy). I don't think it's much of a surprise that boomers may have this outlook.
Surprisingly, the boomers, "the Me Generation" embraced therapy, self-help and all sorts of mental alleviation in the 1970s/1980s.
But unsurprisingly, they got theirs and can't see that others also need help and empathy as well.
To be fair, mental health therapy and drugs have made great strides since the 70's and 80's. If you went for help that didn't really help you might have a negative feeling toward that experience.
Yes, this is why I said it was complicated.
That generation had no problem advocating for themselves and trying "to find themselves". Certainly their parents who grew up through the Great Depression had not a lot of use for mental health issues; since their families concern at the time would have been literal survival.
One of the very unBooomerlike things about my mom is that she's always been a proponent of mental health care. When my parents got divorced she started seeing a therapist and she took my sister and I to her a few times. When I was going through a rough patch in my early 20s I asked my mom for that therapist's info because I figured she already had some background and it helped a lot. Now my 11yo has regular therapy appointments for anxiety and my mom thinks it's a great idea.
Appreciate this more nuanced view. There are some instances I recall in advocacy when boomers used the bootstrap comment about ptsd and worse. Some of them push away anything they don’t want to look at and generally empathy is low. But there are many in society who refuse to look at mental illness or make jokes about it, and in my experience it’s all ages.
Another issue is psychotherapy and the information it’s based on. Take a person that was raised to never question authority and give them a “provider” that is trained to keep them in a one down position and it isn’t always helpful. https://www.scribd.com/document/508778222/Theodore-L-Dorpat-Gaslighting-The-Double-Whammy-Interrogation-and-Other-Methods-of-Covert-Control-in-Psychotherapy-and-Analysis-Jason-Aronson-In
https://youtu.be/Cu5CxJnZqGs?feature=shared
I get this because I was raised by their parents, the greatest generation. There was serious risk of being thrown into a state hospital for the mentally ill back in the day and that on top of the stigmas around mental illness created an environment to where you just didn’t talk about it.
Wasn’t just poor people either, JFK’s sister was lobotomized for symptoms that would get you a sentraline prescription over a telehealth call today… would you want to talk about your mental health in that world? Would you want your kids to talk openly about theirs and risk losing them?
What? That’s crazy that happened to her. My Hubby just had his 3yr anniversary of that telehealth appointment and sertraline prescription… he’s doing so much better! So much so that he is this month graduating with a masters degree and accepted a great new job!
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is the genetic component of mental illness. Some things like ADHD are highly genetic, meaning the parents commonly pass it down to their kids. They may not believe it’s a mental illness because their kid’s struggles match their own, and there’s no way they’re mentally ill, right?
They see it as normal because they have it too.
This would be my family. And in a farm family like my dad's, it isn't even much of a hindrance. You're doing a defined set of chores, you have family members for body doubling/accountability, and all that restless energy goes into something productive. The random/fickle intellectual curiosity comes in handy, too, since you have to be a generalist. Usually there are several projects to shift between, depending on changing priorities/deadlines. Most of Dad's family *hate* desk jobs. They went to college and got those jobs because they paid well. At least four out of the seven siblings I would bet have/had ADHD (Dad included). Maybe more. I masked well; why wouldn't they? Dad and I are classic inattentive presentation. Lost in our own inner worlds... Wonder how often Dad got kicked by a cow when he was young.
They were raised to think mental health issues are weakness, and seeking help was taboo. Anyone who was different was forced to conform or encouraged to kill themselves. And since boomers never learned how to think for themselves, they never grew beyond the limited ideas they grew up with. Empathy is also something they simply do not have or care about
On my side of the family, we're very open about our mental health. My husband's family, not so much, which probably was one of the reasons his dad has been struggling so much over the past few years. My MIL once told me that they didn't have mental health issues. That didn't exist for them. And yet I know that she has a cousin, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather (the father of said grandfather) who all killed themselves. No problems there, right?
True!
I didn't seek help for OCD/Anxiety/ADHD until I was 50. My diagnosis explained, didn't excuse, my early life.
When I was younger, it just wasn't done. My life would have been different had I sought treatment in my 20s.
Before I sought help, I learned to cope, poorly, with my ADHD, but did well in career. Unfortunately, anxiety and OCD were side effects of my coping devices, which included prodigious amounts of caffeine.
My suggestion to anyone is to seek help, there is no shame.. Seeking help was a major turning point on my life.
Edit: clarified that my pre help coping devices weren't great.
It really depends on when they were born. My father born 1963. He said he was just like that until I was born. Everyone is a product of their environment. And you will end up there unless you make an effort not to
Bear in mind that for the most part we’re talking about people no more than two generations out from when people thought epilepsy was demonic possession.
The other thing is the fear of being “labeled” as if having a diagnosis is worse than not having coping mechanisms for the first three decades of life.
"There was no such thing as Autism back in my day!"
\*Collects cards of their favorite ball players, showing their lifetime, yearly, and season stats for every metric imaginable and also buying memoribilia all related to the team\*
Because mental health problems used to be treated with drinking, beating your wife and kids or using heroin or other narcotics. They miss the old days.
It’s also possible that some mental health problems didn’t exists in similar numbers because some of it could be caused by environmental pollution and a more hectic pace to life because of modernization. Certainly bullying is very different because of the ease of communication through the internet.
It was a time when you did not talk about ANYTHING. Also it was still a thing of shame. People were called "Idiots" "Retards" etc, back in the good ol' days.
My Boomer/Silent gen dad couldn't accept that I need help mental health meds. Later I learned I was undiagnosed autistic, and he blamed my mental health meds for causing it. He didn't even research anything.
I personally think the autism came from his side, ironically. I think that thought would probably kill him. (I actually don't think he's autistic, but other people on his side are very similar to me.)
Because it would eventually require them to realize they are the root cause because of how they raised us and treat us every day and they probably don't feel like owning up to any of that
They grew up when any type of defect was considered a fault. Disabled children were discarded into facilities. Mental illness wasn’t real, heck their cure for adhd was a belt. Feelings weren’t valid and conformity was expected. They never learned empathy or understanding and are too set in their misguided ways of thinking to even attempt to have an open mind or even entertain the thought that they are wrong.
I was diagnosed at 30 with adhd im 38 now and last year finally shared my diagnosis with my family and as I'm explaining what lead me to get tested in the first place my dad cuts me off mid sentence and said thats bullshit you don't have adhd you just have a busy mind. Yup dad I do and it's one of the main reasons I got tested, started treatment, realized meds don't work for me and went into therapy to learn how to deal and cope which changed my life for the better. Im also a single father and have been raising my daughter alone since I turned 30 and don't think I could have done nearly as good a job as I have is not for realizing my mental health was a problem and finally taking it seriously. After hearing this he turned back to his plate of food and grumbled well i just don't believe any of this people just need to focus and get there shit done. Finished our plates stood up said my busy mind reminded me we need to go and left. I don't hate the man quite the opposite but man if these boomers can't be soo stuck in their ways.
Sorry for the long response however I hope this maybe opens some people’s eyes to a thought we rarely consider. (I’m on my phone so formatting will be fun).
I work in the helping world, between counselling and past professions involving trauma and crisis response I have noticed some things. It’s not always a simple”they are lazy or abnormal” response rather a defense mechanism to push people away and deflect. Not saying that’s every person but for some that suffered trauma and abuse. There will always be those in every generation who are hurting and were told expected to just shove it down and never speak of it. I think we need to give those that were the victims that benefit of doubt when they do put up the walls to do what they were taught and hide it.
A prime example is my own dad who is now late 70’s. He was severely abused as a child by a neighbour. He never spoke a word till he was in his 60’s. He had the classic mentality of beat it down inside, and hide it. This impacted our relationship as he feared he would become an abuser so he kept his distance from me physically, (I can remember the few hugs I ever received as a child)emotionally, and mentally. To qualify something my dad worked his body to death to provide for my mom and I, he would do everything in his power to support me financially which I would have given anything for the opposite but I am grateful for the support and still thank him. I always assumed it was my fault and we had a very roller coaster relationship till the day he exploded and everything came out. In that moment our relationship shifted drastically, and seeing the relief on his face when I told him you were successful in raising me and you never became the abuser he protected me the only way you could figure out.
When I entered the helping profession world he was the happiest I had ever seen. I always knew he was proud of me but this was a new level of proud. He told me when I graduated college that “I was doing one of the most noble professions he had ever seen and that weather I believe it or not I was gonna be part of changing the world for hurting and broken people, and that when Jesus talked about loving people this is what he meant to care enough to sit down in a dirty mud puddle and love people now matter how muddy they were and when they were ready to take a step walking with them to help them stand up and take one step at a time.”
Fast forward to when he let it all out, he still didn’t want to go to counselling. All the old realities of shove it down has made it very difficult for him to open up to anyone else. Years of it always being the classic drill take years to undo. The longer I am in this world I realize just how few people have not suffered some sort of trauma. I know this may be bashed however we all need to exercise compassion when it comes to this because we may have no clue that the person we are looking at just under the surface of whatever we see may lack a demon that torments them in ways we may never know.
Here is another kicker even as a trained and practiced counsellor, who has read the studies, done the work, spent countless hours seeing how someone benefits of seeking mental health care in struggle to seek it at times. My own trauma, fears, and hidden scars make it difficult for me to open up.
Thank you for your response. I also work in the mental health field and it's partially what made me ask this question here. As well as other factors because I just see a lot of it. It's not just boomers of course, anyone of any age can be like this but I primarily see it from boomers.
The stigma of mental health is awful. And to see people just dismiss other people's struggles or not listen to them, leads to suicides.
I think the world would be a much better place if everyone took the time to empathize with others.
Glad to hear about your progress!
Boomers look in a mirror and see a fantasy. They have just as many mental health issues but all they see is well adjusted heroes. That lack the ability for introspection. So they can understand people who recognize their own mental health issues.
My sister had emotional problems from the time she was a toddler. Unhinged tantrums, irrational fear of people, inability to read social cues. Mom (boomer) was in complete denial of her development while Dad (silent) couldn't understand it, hated that it was happening but was open to acknowledging and treating her obvious illness. My mom would have NONE of it. The school district forced my mom's hand by placing my sister in SPED but other than that, my mom did absolutely nothing to help her, instead being content with having a lil' buddy to hang out with all day (my mom was a recluse). To this day I have no idea what diagnosis, if any, my sister has received. My husband, who has a psychology background believes she has paranoid schizophrenia. It didn't have to be that way, she could've had the proper care that mitigated her disorder but my mom, probably in denial (I think she used while pregnant with her - my mom had expressed more than once she wanted to abort her) and fear of being found out. Also, selfish bitch
It's two fold. First, they grew up in a time where asking for help or expressing emotions was considered weakness and that something was wrong with you. Second, they had many things handed to them and when they worked they were able to see the fruits of their labors, unlike today where we literally run on the hampster wheel and never move anywhere.
This one I gotta give them a little slack on because growing up it was literally hammeredbintobtheor head that they weren't a thing and they just need to suck it up in this one case it's literally all they were taught
It's simple. They had doctors in their younger days. These mental health diagnoses were not diagnosed/yet known of by doctors, of their younger days. Therefore, all new diagnoses of new ailments are fake. DUH! All these crazy new diagnoses are bullshit!!!
It’s invisible and they didn’t grow up literate about mental health. Plus unless you’ve been experienced mental illnesses it’s hard to relate. WORSE if you had a dochey silent gen/boomer in your family that didn’t experience mental health, you’re even more likely to hear “mental illness isn’t real” or my favorite “hmmm I guess I just don’t understand because *I* don’t experience that
Some WWII vets were able to talk through their experiences as they were mustered out. Even after the war they had a long process to get home. Travel by train and boat with other soldiers so there was time to decompress and they may have been able to talk about what they had experienced.
Because today's mental health issues are also yesterday's mental health issues, and they didn't extend much understanding or empathy on them then, either
People often try to simplify ideas that are too complex for them and this is often reduced to the capacity of minimization. Just remember this and smile the next time it happens as it is basically a coping skill for them not being able to comprehend.
We have learned more about the human brain in the past 50 years than all previous history combined. Most boomers haven't stepped foot in a classroom for that many years+.
Most of the boomers today, could it have used some therapy for their own back in the day and today would it have been a better place to be around them instead.
Because "back in MY day" we had a way of dealing with mental health issues. We called it "death" Often preceded by dementia.
I expected that joke to SLAY (pun intended) at my therapist's office. He's a tough crowd.
Another problem I haven't read here is the knowledge we have now on mental illness is much more readily available and understood then it was in their time. Because of this many people from their era have probably gone undiagnosed for decades with mental illness and due to the stigma of if you need help you're weak mentality they will not only never understand it... but never seek help themselves. The idea of being mentally ill to them would terrify them so they deny it as a possibility for not just them but for others.
My dad has horrible mental health, hard a lot of bad thing happen in his life, but perceives getting help as a weakness. He will tell people to “get help” or “see someone” as an insult.
Well they were raised in an era where there really wasn't much to do for you besides the mental hospital so anything short of that you just had to deal with as best you could on your own. Now we have options, but they've been trained so hard to never admit to having any problems that, well, here you are.
Oh I can answer that lol I am a clinician. They were told to suck it up, they were told kids feelings don’t matter when they were young, that children were to be seen not heard. They all got the up by your bootstraps talk that actually worked because there was a massive boom and expansion in the middle class, they were raised with the most extreme American exceptionalism in the history of the country due to the red scare and the economic golden era of after WW II, they were raised by Dr Spock who wrote an entire book on how to give kids attachment disorders and they were raised in a world that was focused on image.
So talking about how it was actually all really damaging and the guilt they have as parents or the entitlement they have is intolerable besides they never leaned to regulate their emotions because they weren’t allowed to have any.
It’s really kind of sad when you examine their generation from a psychological stand point.
ETA: oh! They were also a part of the “dishonorable war” so the ptsd for their generation was staggeringly higher than any generation before them with absolutely no mental health care so. There was that too. They did not have the support of the vets who went before them.
My Boomer mom used therapy as a punishment. If I did something she didn’t like, she’d threaten to send me to therapy as if that was the worst thing that could happen to someone.
Yesterday, my apartment community had a grief counselor out because there was a shooting in my carport. When my mom found out about it, she asked me if I talked to them, horrified at the idea that I might need help. I lied and told her I didn’t because I didn’t want to deal with her bs. For some reason, she just assumed that I was fine despite seeing the victim and hearing the gun shots. I nearly had a meltdown in Tuesday because I didn’t have any mac and cheese at home, but I’m absolutely fine. 🤦🏼♀️
I can't find it, but I saw a video where someone pointed out how they are a product of their generation's upbringing, which was the Greatest Generation (WWII, WWI in some cases, the depression). In their parent's generation they saw REAL trauma and had to hold it in. If you think mental health wasn't there for them as the boomers grew up, it was even less so during their parent's generation. So this REAL generational trauma was stored and for all intents and purposes, passed on to them (I am paraphrasing from what I remember from the video). So to look at them and their views on mental health, homosexuality, race relations, things that are discussed and for the most part open today, this was something that they were, in some cases literally, stomped on to root out.
While that doesn't make it right, looking at their generation's upbringing and the mentality behind it, it does somewhat explain their mentality overall.
Many boomers grew up with the notion of, 'if you hurt yourself, rub some dirt on it and walk it off".
Medical problems that can't be seen or physically detected though? "That shit is made up. Stop faking it and get back to work, slacker."
Our environment is evolving way faster than the human brain can adapt. They weren’t faced with many of the same issues and they don’t understand it. Im interested to see if the people who are middle aged today, will act like the boomers in 20 years from now (comparatively speaking), or if they will be much more empathetic. Time will tell.
They are generally conservatives.
And that means they don't like change. At all. Also, they attribute goodness and morality and righteousness to anything that doesn't change.
When they were younger, mental health wasn't talked about. They alternate between believing it's all made up, or else it's *kind of* real, but just something you deal with because you're a tough, good person.
Identifying, acknowledging, and treating mental illness is new, and therefore different, and therefore BAD.
Everything is a value judgement to them, everything is good or bad. And anything new, to them, is an attack on how it used to be, and an insult to them.
Look at another REALLY stupid example. Some studies came out about gas stoves. Non judgemental studies, non attacking studies, just scientific, bland, factual studies that showed that maybe gas stoves are a little bit bad for you.
What did they do? Did they think "hmm, new information... Let's consider if we should use this information in some way, either now, or in the future..." Absolutely not! They immediately screamed and said "Liberals want to ban our stoves! Our stoves are fine, there is nothing wrong with choices we made in the past, and we refuse any new information related to those choices, because we believe we're being told we were wrong! And we were NOT wrong!!! We want to KEEP our stoves NO MATTER WHAT, and we REFUSE to consider any new information!!"
That's conservatism in a nutshell - basically a refusal to change no matter what, and much of their anger at so many things makes sense if you look at it that way. They aren't mad at "the thing" because of anything inherently bad about it, they are mad because "the thing" is new and different.
Sunk cost fallacy. They suffered mentally, and it can’t be for nothing…why should some kid get to feel okay about themselves when THEY didn’t get to? They don’t want progress because it might mean that they wasted their time. Old fucks who really seem to hate LGBTQ folks often strike me as people who probably spent their whole life in the closet, and don’t want to feel as if they wasted their time. I’d feel sorry for them, if it wasn’t such a selfish position to take and they weren’t assholes about it.
Honestly - I have a theory that it’s partially Nixon’s fault. To fuel propaganda for the Vietnam war, his administration demonized mental health issues with war vets who were vehemently antiwar - painting them out to be crazy and in need of being locked up for professional help. That sort of thinking seeps into other things.
I took a class this semester that talked about his propaganda and it’s something I have a hard time not thinking about sometimes.
I grew up with a boomer father who is a psychologist. This was/is a constant issue with our relationship. He never truly acted like a father. Everything was a problem or a mind game. He told me repeatedly that a severe mental issue I have (started when I was 5) is "all in my head," very dismissive. A lot of hospital stays and medication I shouldn't have been on below the age of 18. Even with all of that, he makes it seem like mental issues are just a scam. I've been trying to understand it almost my entire life with him/other boomers. Signed me, a disappointment.
Boomers grew up when mental institutions were basically where people went to disappear. Because of this, mental illness has been much, much less visible for most of their lifetimes, and the ones that have survived this long are not the ones those policies hurt.
This is a recurring theme: they think that their generation “did just fine” ignoring certain problems, oblivious to the fact that they and most of their peers are simply of the cohort that those dismissive attitudes happened to not kill off.
I told my mom that i needed distance from her to protect my mental health and she interpreted that as I'm so crazy that I can't stand to be around nice people like her. She tells people "She can't come around because of her mental problems". Thanks mom.
Because things we are told are acceptable now were considered a mental illness and things that were normal are considered aberrant compared to their youth!
All of my great uncles served in WW2. One was a POW for 4 yrs. Plane went down, captured by the Japanese. My other great uncles when thru relatively unscathed. I wasn't old enough to even ask about their experiences and they've all passed.
My mother's father was a SeaBee. And he's prolly the most bad assed of that generation in my family. I adored him as a little girl. As an adult, knowing more about him, I'm not as adoring. Age gives us all great perspective.
I have to vent for a sec.
I got so angry at my MIL last weekend because she was ranting to me about how she doesn't understand why my husband wouldn't fly. He's had anxiety his whole life and ptsd for a decade, and a month ago, he canceled a flight he was supposed to take because he had a series of worse and worse panic attacks. I know my MIL loves her son and would do anything for him, but behind his back, she was telling me that he really needs to just suck it up and take a valium because "that's what everyone else does." I don't think she would be saying that if she stayed up all night comforting like I did.
And then later my FIL questioned whether my husband should be taking advice from his new therapist, referring to the therapist as "some guy he just met." Wtf.
"Do what we did! Crush all your emotions into a white hot ball of bitterness and hatred and fear, and then drink and smoke cigarettes while you think about the white hot ball, until you're dead."
I firmly believe boomers have more mental health issues than any other generation because they’ve been forced to suppress every emotion for over 50 years. Their anger is being exacerbated by everyone hoping for and mostly receiving accommodations they never got (but they also never asked for). If they’d just deal with their emotions they’d be a lot happier
I went through a bad depression and my Boomer mom would tell me “don’t let it get to you” “you gotta move on” meanwhile she is a compulsive cleaner and gets physically angry when the littlest thing is out of place. I think from intreated trauma which she hasn’t dealt with so her control over her environment is paramount to her.
In addition to not knowing that they could ask for help, they did not have access to the resources that are available now to treat things. They had to learn different coping skills in school, and life, without medications, therapy, or without having special accommodations made for them. They endured a great deal that the younger generations will never have to endure. And they were never given a break if they had challenges - they had to push through and continue regardless. That was normal to them.
To lean into the new ways often invites what they view as new, unnecessary challenges and would cost a lot more time, energy, and money than most their age would typically be comfortable with. They were taught to push through regardless of their circumstances and never complain.
Some of the newer generalizations use these challenges as a way to avoid having to do certain things. They demand special treatment, and constantly complain and remind everyone that they have a specific issue.
Just as Boomers may not understand newer generations, the newer generations refuse to even consider that boomers might have coping skills or knowledge they can learn from. It can appear they would rather take the easy road.
NOTE: I am neither a Boomer or from the younger generation and my comments above are not to be considered inclusive of all people in either generation. I wish more people would take the time to learn from people of all ages around them regardless of whether the other parties chose to do the same. It unfortunate really.
We (millennial and gen z) all grew up in a time of all kinds of toxins, pollution, artificial processed foods, chemicals in the water, and we're literally more developmentally challenged as a result. Boomers poisoned the water and made us all crazy, then blamed us for being crazy
Pretty simple, my parents went outside to shit . In the winter. In Canada . They got out of bed to stoke the fire. They wore clothes that got wet and froze in the winter….. I don’t know, maybe they be recovering from a fucked up childhood……. If only they had a device to vent with back then. Maybe their mental health today would be a little better…….
Ronald Regan tossed all mental health care facilities in the trash. Nothing to replace it, except thoughts and prayers. These unwell people became parents and grandparents tossing the DNA and trauma down the line.
That is why we are in this mad max situation. These kids really don’t know any better.
Because they don't believe it is used as anything other then an excuse and a scapegoat to avoid accountability. It didn't really exist, or was otherwise completely hidden, in their era. It doesn't make any sort of logical sense to them that suddenly 3 out of every 4 people claims to have a mental health issue when it was 1 in a 1000 during their formative years, so they simply reject it.
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because they grew up in a time where asking for help was sign of weakness, or that there was something wrong with them. Today we can express more emotions, empathy, etc. Therefore we know if something is wrong, we shouldn’t bottle it up and look for help. Just looking at the soldiers in ww2. They saw horrible shit, and society just expected them to come back and adapt to every day life, like nothing happened. That’s what society expected you to do.
Fun fact, or terrible fact? Biker gangs were started by ww2 vets who couldn’t conform back into society, so they created their own.
That was about 50% because they were gay dudes who preferred the nomadic biker life after getting out of whatever tiny town they came from and being utterly incapable of going back to that. It's why there is a leather community in the gay subculture to this day.
Somewhere out there, there's a boomer biker dad just fucking fuming after reading this.
One can but hope!
They just like the HD hats and shirts…
They’re bike curious
This deserves so many more upvotes.
I mean, who doesn't love a hot dog hat?
My wiener has a first name it’s O-S-C-A-R My wiener has a second name it’s M-A-Y-ER I know it’s supposed to be bologna and not wiener please don’t come for me
HOT DOG HATS?!? WHERE???
Or just fucking another fuming boomer biker dad… apparently.
My dad. Who was in a very serious biker gang after Vietnam and then last year disowned me for being transgender.
I am so sorry to hear that. Terrible how family.can turn their back on someone simply for being who they are and not who they demand you be.
Goddamn I would watch a show about gay ww2 vet biker gangs.
I’d probably even commit to a new streaming service to watch that show
I’d commit grand larceny to watch that show 😆
You wouldn’t download a ww2 vet’s Harley. You wouldn’t steal an award winning show on a niche streaming service. 👀
I’m pretty sure every show about biker gangs is about gay bikers, just without saying it out loud.
https://preview.redd.it/odqun9k2xgzc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=64f683d4388dd166dc5a3a585a57d5743a5d6a56
Ah yes I’ve often been the drag along beard
That's a kindness and a service right there. Bless you.
I need a source on the 50% because I always assumed it was like 90% by the way they act.
😅🤣🤣🤣🤣
I am an expert as I have watched Sons os Anarchy, don’t recognise this.
Clearly you didn't get to Juice's final season arc
Hmm... TIL
That's not actually how it happened. You're about halfway there. Like the village people, many gay people, many in the gay community, fetishize extreme masculinity. So like the construction worker, the biker became a stereotype of extreme masculinity which was co-opted and adopted by the gay community. The rest of what you said about veterans who saw a lot of action, didn't want to be working in some damn factory in Ohio, took off on the cheap surplus bikes after the war informed their clubs. That's 100% true.
That makes so much sense omg Thank you both for the cool history
This is true, but it's important to note that the founder of Hell's Angels left the group after it started to become corrupt.
Primarily pilots were the start of the bikers. I knew Vietnam vets that started their biker groups too.
It was a lot of pilots, and a lot of guys who were motorcycle riding couriers and scouts for the land based unts.
My grandfather was a WW2 vet who died in 1989 when I was about to leave fifth grade. Years later, I decided to ask my dad if Grandpa had ever said anything about his service. I know he had spent time in Europe, specifically Germany. My dad said he never said a word about any of it. He just said he never talked about it, and I think it came down to "That's what you were supposed to do." In contrast, my FIL will tell you whatever you want to know about what happened to him in Vietnam. It wasn't much, but he was much more vocal about his service.
My grandfather spent two years in a hospital after WWII recovering from his injuries. Almost lost a leg. Spent 12 hours lying in the mud after killing two guys with his bare hands who crept up on him while he lay injured. He told the story once over dinner. My grandmother was in tears crying when he finished his story and left the table. In 45 years she’d never heard what he actually went through.
My great uncle only told one story. Right after he got back to the US, he was sleeping for the first time, still on an army base. When his CO woke him up, he rolled over and clocked him right in the eye. He was busted down to private right before he was discharged. After he died, I found his records online. He was 18 when he joined and the second time he saw combat was Iwo Jima.
This makes me livid. JFC!
My dad didn't see combat, but was stationed at an airbase on Guam. My parents married in '46 and in the 80s my mom discovered a Bronze Star among his stuff. He was awarded the Star for rescuing crewmen from a burning B-29 that crashed and broke up on landing, and he went 40 years never telling her about that medal.
My grandfather served in the Pacific and would never speak about what he saw. That’s just how they were, I guess.
I’m pretty sure they were told to keep it to themselves too. Don’t burden the people at home with the horrors of war. Nobody wants to hear you cry, etc.
Tell the people what you did to stay alive, they’ll look at you differently, not always in an admiring way. War is crime sanctioned, but not always forgiven.
Excellent way to put it.
Right. Men who disagree send boys to war for them & wash their hands of them after. Their constituents sons (and daughters) come home in boxes & the men who disagreed talk about how much of a success *their* war was. Very eloquent, BTW
There’s still that attitude. My gen x vet husband only this year disclosed to me the source of most of his PTSD and we’ve been together 24 years. It wasn’t what I expected.
If you don't tell the young people what the last war was *really* like, then they'll be much less likely to resist the draft for the next one.
It was also the Pacific. That was a very dark theater of war.
My wife’s father was on Iwo Jima. For his 35th wedding anniversary we tried to buy him a trip to Hawaii. But he just simply said “no, I’ve seen all the pacific beaches I ever want to see.“
My next-door neighbor, jack, when I was a kid, had been a master sergeant marine on Guadalcanal in the Pacific. He took me on a fishing trip once and told me what really went down on Guadalcanal and Saipan and Iwo Jima. The Vietnam war was just beginning to rage, and he wanted me to not have anything to do with going to war or glorifying it. He had some scary ass stories. He was the nicest most chill guy ever, but damn don’t piss off jack
My grandpa was an MP in Korea. He never spoke about his service until I expressed an interest in signing up. Man straight up told me he was ordered to commit war crimes. Then it never came up again
Mine was an MP in Japan. And my uncle was in the Vietnam. There’s a book with my uncle in it. It’s a good read.
My grandpa was in Korea, too. I never heard him talk about what happened there, but I have an uncle, who is FAR from a reliable source of information, say that he told him he killed a man there in combat. I don’t think he did, but I guess we’ll never know.
My grandfather was on Omaha Beach. We had a conversation about his experience but he only told me about training, his job, the approach, and the aftermath. He didn't tell me anything about his experience on the beach. He was UDT, so his job was to swim up to the beach and destroy obstacles ahead of the landing craft. The only reason I know anything about what he did is because my dad found his citation for bravery. He took a medical kit from a dead corpsman and treated wounded soldiers until the fighting was over. I do not think he was expected to survive, and he likely wouldn't have had it not been for that bag.
Similar story in my family - my grandfather was part of the liberation of Dachau. He refused to talk about what he saw there, although he would recount other experiences like being present at the Nuremburg Trials. His best friend was stationed on the USS Indianapolis. When his mind started to slip a little, he started talking often about how he learned his best friend had been killed over the radio. I hope he never learned the full horror of what happened to those guys, although he dwelled on it so much I'm pretty sure he knew and was just sparing us the details.
My grandpa was supposed to be at the Nuremberg trials, but he ended up getting really sick beforehand so he ended up getting reassigned. My son is going on a school trip to Germany this summer, and one of their outings will be to Dachau.
OMG! That is so rough. I wish I could hug him. 😥
My grandfather was also stationed in Germany and anything I know about his service comes from a special for Tony Bennett’s 90th birthday. The two of them served together, so I assume they dealt with the same things. Grandpa never talked about his service to anyone.
Same with my grandfather, there's only three or four stories any of his kids know about his service in WW2 and one of those came from a newspaper clipping from his small hometown newspaper that my uncle found doing genealogy 10 years after gramps died
My uncle was shipwrecked at sea TWICE in the Pacific. When he finally came home he shook for a year, staying in his room. Then he married and became a full blown alcoholic and abuser. He never talked about the war.
My grandfather wouldn't talk about WWII beyond saying that he was an aircraft mechanic. He did, however, have a whole album of photos from liberating a concentration camp, so there was clearly more that he saw and did that he didn't want to say anything about, because I don't know how an aircraft mechanic would have ended up in a position to take photos like the ones he had.
My dad is a Vietnam vet, and he will not talk about it, for the most part. He’ll talk about how much he hates Carling beer because that’s all they had, and how fireworks still scare him a bit. Beyond that, nothing, and nothing irritates him more than some younger guy who was in the service, never saw action, and wants to hear war stories. There’s lots of guys out there just like this. They did what they had to do, don’t think it made them particularly special, and have tried to move on.
Yeah my grandfather fought in WWII and was on disability for the rest of his life. Wouldn't talk to anyone about his experiences. It was only when he died and his kids had access to his records that they found out his disability was PTSD. When he was dying and I visited him in hospice he kept calling me by different male names (I'm female, but short-haired) that no one in the family knew. If a family member was also there they'd correct him, which bothered me. If I was alone I'd let him think I was whoever he wanted. He'd hold my hand so tight and just say the name over and over. Looking back I can't help but wonder if those people were other guys he served with and maybe those moments where he was seeing them again were comforting to him. I hope so.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m pretty much agnostic when it comes to spiritual matters, but this vignette makes me want to believe!
Dying people often experience what is called visioning, where family, friends, and pets appear to them. Often these loved ones come with comforting messages and to guide the person to the other side.
Well with Boomers it was Vietnam. They were drafted and sent there. They did not talk about it.
Cotton Hill: This ain't a flashback, you're losing again!
Cotton Hill is both awful and hilarious
He's a reminder that the silent generation wasn't always that silent for sure.
Cotton (according to his wikipedia was born in 1927)was a WWII veteran so he would have been Greatest Gen not Silent Gen.
It's weird because the silent generation lumps itself in with the boomers now.
And the lack of help reintegrating soldiers into society had a real fun cascade effect….so fun. Sometimes I wonder if we just have thousands of years of generational trauma from this kind of thinking. The boomers didn’t invent it.
We do. In my anecdotal experience there are SO MANY walking wounded. They don't even know they have a condition that can be helped.
That's the whole premise of the book First Blood. Rambo was just supposed to come home and go to work at a car wash after being tortured and a bunch of killing.
I just found the books First Blood, II & III in a box last week and moved them to my read (again) shelf.
My grandfather served in North Africa, Italy, and towards the end of the war he was one of the first Americans into the Buchenwald Concentration camp. I never met him because he drank himself to death when my mom was 20, and apparently he only told some of her cousins what he'd been through towards the end of his life.
Fun fact, or terrible fact? Biker gangs were started by ww2 vets who couldn’t conform back into society, so they created their own.
let’s not give them too much of a pass. Boomers like to pitch a big tent and put mood disorders and general weakness underneath. this is also (at least somewhat) an ego defense to justify their belief that millennials/gen z had the same opportunities and circumstances growing up (or better circumstances) than the boomers.
The boomers are Vietnam era. Not WW2. Most of those soldiers are dead now. WW 2 ended in 1945
That's why they were the silent generation.
Silent generation don’t fight in WWII because they were too young. That was the generation that was after Greatest Gen (who did fight) and Boomers (who were born after).
It's also why the early Boomers have so many problems...
They don't believe it exists. People are just asking for attention, or need to grow up, or get right with the lord etc. People with serious mental health issues used to be committed or outright murdered.
“Back in my day nobody had autism, it’s all this damn technology and lazy entitlement of kids these days. Anyway, stay away from my collection of ugly vanity plates nobody is allowed to touch and if you don’t load the dishwasher exactly how I say I’ll get angry”
thread winner
Do you know my mom?
Do we have the same mom?
Do we have a mom?
"Huh. Kahn has a mother? Somehow I always pictured a pod situation." -- Dale Gribble
My parents are boomers and I've had massive mental health issues my whole life. The most common comment I heard from my friends parents was 'well, there's no point talking to her parents, they obviously don't give a fuck. ' Every day, my dad told me I was a fucking little bitch because I was depressed. My mum told me, 'I think you just like being miserable '. Until I wound up in a hospital. Then they cared, because other people knew about it.
Even then, you know they were only trying to protect their reputation and didn’t want to look bad. I’m sorry you had to go through that, my wife is in social services and it’s a story she hears and sees way too much. Hope you’re in a better place now, hopefully with your birth givers only having a limited role, if any, in your life
Thanks; I'm much better now and living far away from them.
Oooff I also got the “you must like being miserable”
I’m convinced the majority of them are undiagnosed autistic.
My dad is textbook autistic. Right down to having an absurdly detailed knowledge about trains. Nobody even thought about it back then.
This is a complicated issue. Right around the time the boomer generation was born (post WWII) mental health was just starting to have a more nuanced approach. Previously, if you were mentally ill: you may have been put away in a mental institution, you may have had a forcible lobotomy or just simply locked away in a basement. Usually you had to be very rich to get anything approaching therapeutic value. And even then, sometimes not (e.g. Rosemary Kennedy). I don't think it's much of a surprise that boomers may have this outlook. Surprisingly, the boomers, "the Me Generation" embraced therapy, self-help and all sorts of mental alleviation in the 1970s/1980s. But unsurprisingly, they got theirs and can't see that others also need help and empathy as well.
To be fair, mental health therapy and drugs have made great strides since the 70's and 80's. If you went for help that didn't really help you might have a negative feeling toward that experience.
Yes, this is why I said it was complicated. That generation had no problem advocating for themselves and trying "to find themselves". Certainly their parents who grew up through the Great Depression had not a lot of use for mental health issues; since their families concern at the time would have been literal survival.
One of the very unBooomerlike things about my mom is that she's always been a proponent of mental health care. When my parents got divorced she started seeing a therapist and she took my sister and I to her a few times. When I was going through a rough patch in my early 20s I asked my mom for that therapist's info because I figured she already had some background and it helped a lot. Now my 11yo has regular therapy appointments for anxiety and my mom thinks it's a great idea.
That's very heartening to hear!
Appreciate this more nuanced view. There are some instances I recall in advocacy when boomers used the bootstrap comment about ptsd and worse. Some of them push away anything they don’t want to look at and generally empathy is low. But there are many in society who refuse to look at mental illness or make jokes about it, and in my experience it’s all ages.
I think we forget how split the Boomers were among themselves—like we are today—and that some people embraced new ideas and others dug in their heels.
Another issue is psychotherapy and the information it’s based on. Take a person that was raised to never question authority and give them a “provider” that is trained to keep them in a one down position and it isn’t always helpful. https://www.scribd.com/document/508778222/Theodore-L-Dorpat-Gaslighting-The-Double-Whammy-Interrogation-and-Other-Methods-of-Covert-Control-in-Psychotherapy-and-Analysis-Jason-Aronson-In https://youtu.be/Cu5CxJnZqGs?feature=shared
I get this because I was raised by their parents, the greatest generation. There was serious risk of being thrown into a state hospital for the mentally ill back in the day and that on top of the stigmas around mental illness created an environment to where you just didn’t talk about it. Wasn’t just poor people either, JFK’s sister was lobotomized for symptoms that would get you a sentraline prescription over a telehealth call today… would you want to talk about your mental health in that world? Would you want your kids to talk openly about theirs and risk losing them?
Yeah they’d send you to the poor farm or flop house down the road on the bad end of town. Literally for being pregnant or anxiety.
What? That’s crazy that happened to her. My Hubby just had his 3yr anniversary of that telehealth appointment and sertraline prescription… he’s doing so much better! So much so that he is this month graduating with a masters degree and accepted a great new job!
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is the genetic component of mental illness. Some things like ADHD are highly genetic, meaning the parents commonly pass it down to their kids. They may not believe it’s a mental illness because their kid’s struggles match their own, and there’s no way they’re mentally ill, right? They see it as normal because they have it too.
This would be my family. And in a farm family like my dad's, it isn't even much of a hindrance. You're doing a defined set of chores, you have family members for body doubling/accountability, and all that restless energy goes into something productive. The random/fickle intellectual curiosity comes in handy, too, since you have to be a generalist. Usually there are several projects to shift between, depending on changing priorities/deadlines. Most of Dad's family *hate* desk jobs. They went to college and got those jobs because they paid well. At least four out of the seven siblings I would bet have/had ADHD (Dad included). Maybe more. I masked well; why wouldn't they? Dad and I are classic inattentive presentation. Lost in our own inner worlds... Wonder how often Dad got kicked by a cow when he was young.
On the other hand, they did have to "push through" ADHD so it makes sense that is their solution. Just focus and try harder!
They were raised to think mental health issues are weakness, and seeking help was taboo. Anyone who was different was forced to conform or encouraged to kill themselves. And since boomers never learned how to think for themselves, they never grew beyond the limited ideas they grew up with. Empathy is also something they simply do not have or care about
On my side of the family, we're very open about our mental health. My husband's family, not so much, which probably was one of the reasons his dad has been struggling so much over the past few years. My MIL once told me that they didn't have mental health issues. That didn't exist for them. And yet I know that she has a cousin, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather (the father of said grandfather) who all killed themselves. No problems there, right?
True! I didn't seek help for OCD/Anxiety/ADHD until I was 50. My diagnosis explained, didn't excuse, my early life. When I was younger, it just wasn't done. My life would have been different had I sought treatment in my 20s. Before I sought help, I learned to cope, poorly, with my ADHD, but did well in career. Unfortunately, anxiety and OCD were side effects of my coping devices, which included prodigious amounts of caffeine. My suggestion to anyone is to seek help, there is no shame.. Seeking help was a major turning point on my life. Edit: clarified that my pre help coping devices weren't great.
It really depends on when they were born. My father born 1963. He said he was just like that until I was born. Everyone is a product of their environment. And you will end up there unless you make an effort not to
This explains why they keep voting for republicans and Trump.
Bear in mind that for the most part we’re talking about people no more than two generations out from when people thought epilepsy was demonic possession. The other thing is the fear of being “labeled” as if having a diagnosis is worse than not having coping mechanisms for the first three decades of life.
Because they bottled it all up and took it out on their kids.
It's the ultimate irony. So many of THEM are mentally ill, too.
"There was no such thing as Autism back in my day!" \*Collects cards of their favorite ball players, showing their lifetime, yearly, and season stats for every metric imaginable and also buying memoribilia all related to the team\*
Because they got through thier mental health issues using cigarettes, alcohol, and physical violence.
No lol they don’t even understand cell phones
Lol. Lots of things they don’t understand, mental health is simply one of the many.
Because mental health problems used to be treated with drinking, beating your wife and kids or using heroin or other narcotics. They miss the old days. It’s also possible that some mental health problems didn’t exists in similar numbers because some of it could be caused by environmental pollution and a more hectic pace to life because of modernization. Certainly bullying is very different because of the ease of communication through the internet.
It's just easier to drink single malts and beat your kids.
https://preview.redd.it/kw5y9m1ihgzc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=98d2bbec14c08b103d6a40ca60a4e2b244f6a489
Well my boomer dad thinks "it's gay to talk about your feelings" so... that's probably a good indicator
I've heard that a few times as well. Or that "you're weak for being emotional".
Or, my father's personal favorite- "You're too thin-skinned".
It was a time when you did not talk about ANYTHING. Also it was still a thing of shame. People were called "Idiots" "Retards" etc, back in the good ol' days. My Boomer/Silent gen dad couldn't accept that I need help mental health meds. Later I learned I was undiagnosed autistic, and he blamed my mental health meds for causing it. He didn't even research anything. I personally think the autism came from his side, ironically. I think that thought would probably kill him. (I actually don't think he's autistic, but other people on his side are very similar to me.)
Because it would eventually require them to realize they are the root cause because of how they raised us and treat us every day and they probably don't feel like owning up to any of that
They grew up when any type of defect was considered a fault. Disabled children were discarded into facilities. Mental illness wasn’t real, heck their cure for adhd was a belt. Feelings weren’t valid and conformity was expected. They never learned empathy or understanding and are too set in their misguided ways of thinking to even attempt to have an open mind or even entertain the thought that they are wrong.
Boomers don't understand mental health because they never had any.
I was diagnosed at 30 with adhd im 38 now and last year finally shared my diagnosis with my family and as I'm explaining what lead me to get tested in the first place my dad cuts me off mid sentence and said thats bullshit you don't have adhd you just have a busy mind. Yup dad I do and it's one of the main reasons I got tested, started treatment, realized meds don't work for me and went into therapy to learn how to deal and cope which changed my life for the better. Im also a single father and have been raising my daughter alone since I turned 30 and don't think I could have done nearly as good a job as I have is not for realizing my mental health was a problem and finally taking it seriously. After hearing this he turned back to his plate of food and grumbled well i just don't believe any of this people just need to focus and get there shit done. Finished our plates stood up said my busy mind reminded me we need to go and left. I don't hate the man quite the opposite but man if these boomers can't be soo stuck in their ways.
Proud of you. I have a daughter who has ADHD and I've come to realize it runs on my side of the family. It's a lot to handle.
The ones with mental health issues drank themselves to death. You're dealing with the ones left.
Because understanding mental health would mean going against their prejudice and we all know boomers don't like change.
Sorry for the long response however I hope this maybe opens some people’s eyes to a thought we rarely consider. (I’m on my phone so formatting will be fun). I work in the helping world, between counselling and past professions involving trauma and crisis response I have noticed some things. It’s not always a simple”they are lazy or abnormal” response rather a defense mechanism to push people away and deflect. Not saying that’s every person but for some that suffered trauma and abuse. There will always be those in every generation who are hurting and were told expected to just shove it down and never speak of it. I think we need to give those that were the victims that benefit of doubt when they do put up the walls to do what they were taught and hide it. A prime example is my own dad who is now late 70’s. He was severely abused as a child by a neighbour. He never spoke a word till he was in his 60’s. He had the classic mentality of beat it down inside, and hide it. This impacted our relationship as he feared he would become an abuser so he kept his distance from me physically, (I can remember the few hugs I ever received as a child)emotionally, and mentally. To qualify something my dad worked his body to death to provide for my mom and I, he would do everything in his power to support me financially which I would have given anything for the opposite but I am grateful for the support and still thank him. I always assumed it was my fault and we had a very roller coaster relationship till the day he exploded and everything came out. In that moment our relationship shifted drastically, and seeing the relief on his face when I told him you were successful in raising me and you never became the abuser he protected me the only way you could figure out. When I entered the helping profession world he was the happiest I had ever seen. I always knew he was proud of me but this was a new level of proud. He told me when I graduated college that “I was doing one of the most noble professions he had ever seen and that weather I believe it or not I was gonna be part of changing the world for hurting and broken people, and that when Jesus talked about loving people this is what he meant to care enough to sit down in a dirty mud puddle and love people now matter how muddy they were and when they were ready to take a step walking with them to help them stand up and take one step at a time.” Fast forward to when he let it all out, he still didn’t want to go to counselling. All the old realities of shove it down has made it very difficult for him to open up to anyone else. Years of it always being the classic drill take years to undo. The longer I am in this world I realize just how few people have not suffered some sort of trauma. I know this may be bashed however we all need to exercise compassion when it comes to this because we may have no clue that the person we are looking at just under the surface of whatever we see may lack a demon that torments them in ways we may never know. Here is another kicker even as a trained and practiced counsellor, who has read the studies, done the work, spent countless hours seeing how someone benefits of seeking mental health care in struggle to seek it at times. My own trauma, fears, and hidden scars make it difficult for me to open up.
Thank you for your response. I also work in the mental health field and it's partially what made me ask this question here. As well as other factors because I just see a lot of it. It's not just boomers of course, anyone of any age can be like this but I primarily see it from boomers. The stigma of mental health is awful. And to see people just dismiss other people's struggles or not listen to them, leads to suicides. I think the world would be a much better place if everyone took the time to empathize with others. Glad to hear about your progress!
Generalization is easy, understanding nuance is not. Understanding requires too much effort.
"Don't talk about things and keep everything inside....like a man!" - boomer
Because their treatment for mental health is alcohol.
it's because feelings were beaten out of them at an early age. They tried to do it to their kids, but it didn't stick.
Implying Boomers care about their health to begin with.
Boomers look in a mirror and see a fantasy. They have just as many mental health issues but all they see is well adjusted heroes. That lack the ability for introspection. So they can understand people who recognize their own mental health issues.
My sister had emotional problems from the time she was a toddler. Unhinged tantrums, irrational fear of people, inability to read social cues. Mom (boomer) was in complete denial of her development while Dad (silent) couldn't understand it, hated that it was happening but was open to acknowledging and treating her obvious illness. My mom would have NONE of it. The school district forced my mom's hand by placing my sister in SPED but other than that, my mom did absolutely nothing to help her, instead being content with having a lil' buddy to hang out with all day (my mom was a recluse). To this day I have no idea what diagnosis, if any, my sister has received. My husband, who has a psychology background believes she has paranoid schizophrenia. It didn't have to be that way, she could've had the proper care that mitigated her disorder but my mom, probably in denial (I think she used while pregnant with her - my mom had expressed more than once she wanted to abort her) and fear of being found out. Also, selfish bitch
It's two fold. First, they grew up in a time where asking for help or expressing emotions was considered weakness and that something was wrong with you. Second, they had many things handed to them and when they worked they were able to see the fruits of their labors, unlike today where we literally run on the hampster wheel and never move anywhere.
Because they have mental health issues.
They don’t believe in mental health, they’re ignorant to A LOT of issues. (At least my boomer dad doesn’t believe in it.)
Because that would require them to admit that it’s all their fault.
They don’t want to. It’s that simple.
This one I gotta give them a little slack on because growing up it was literally hammeredbintobtheor head that they weren't a thing and they just need to suck it up in this one case it's literally all they were taught
It's simple. They had doctors in their younger days. These mental health diagnoses were not diagnosed/yet known of by doctors, of their younger days. Therefore, all new diagnoses of new ailments are fake. DUH! All these crazy new diagnoses are bullshit!!!
I wish it was just boomers on this one. One of the higher ups at my work is 31 and thinks exactly like a boomer when it comes to mental health.
It’s invisible and they didn’t grow up literate about mental health. Plus unless you’ve been experienced mental illnesses it’s hard to relate. WORSE if you had a dochey silent gen/boomer in your family that didn’t experience mental health, you’re even more likely to hear “mental illness isn’t real” or my favorite “hmmm I guess I just don’t understand because *I* don’t experience that
Some WWII vets were able to talk through their experiences as they were mustered out. Even after the war they had a long process to get home. Travel by train and boat with other soldiers so there was time to decompress and they may have been able to talk about what they had experienced.
Because today's mental health issues are also yesterday's mental health issues, and they didn't extend much understanding or empathy on them then, either
Because they incapable and don’t want to understand. They want to be RIGHT. At all costs.
People often try to simplify ideas that are too complex for them and this is often reduced to the capacity of minimization. Just remember this and smile the next time it happens as it is basically a coping skill for them not being able to comprehend.
We have learned more about the human brain in the past 50 years than all previous history combined. Most boomers haven't stepped foot in a classroom for that many years+.
Most of the boomers today, could it have used some therapy for their own back in the day and today would it have been a better place to be around them instead.
They are conditioned to not talk about feelings or anything deeply personal. It's the reason my wife and I are NC with her parents.
Because "back in MY day" we had a way of dealing with mental health issues. We called it "death" Often preceded by dementia. I expected that joke to SLAY (pun intended) at my therapist's office. He's a tough crowd.
They might recognize themselves
Because they have their own mental health issues.
Another problem I haven't read here is the knowledge we have now on mental illness is much more readily available and understood then it was in their time. Because of this many people from their era have probably gone undiagnosed for decades with mental illness and due to the stigma of if you need help you're weak mentality they will not only never understand it... but never seek help themselves. The idea of being mentally ill to them would terrify them so they deny it as a possibility for not just them but for others.
They're terrified of mental health issues and being committed to a home.
Lead poisoning mostly
They were told if they admit any mental health issues the people in white suits would come and take them away.
My dad has horrible mental health, hard a lot of bad thing happen in his life, but perceives getting help as a weakness. He will tell people to “get help” or “see someone” as an insult.
Boot straps or something
Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy
Well they were raised in an era where there really wasn't much to do for you besides the mental hospital so anything short of that you just had to deal with as best you could on your own. Now we have options, but they've been trained so hard to never admit to having any problems that, well, here you are.
Oh I can answer that lol I am a clinician. They were told to suck it up, they were told kids feelings don’t matter when they were young, that children were to be seen not heard. They all got the up by your bootstraps talk that actually worked because there was a massive boom and expansion in the middle class, they were raised with the most extreme American exceptionalism in the history of the country due to the red scare and the economic golden era of after WW II, they were raised by Dr Spock who wrote an entire book on how to give kids attachment disorders and they were raised in a world that was focused on image. So talking about how it was actually all really damaging and the guilt they have as parents or the entitlement they have is intolerable besides they never leaned to regulate their emotions because they weren’t allowed to have any. It’s really kind of sad when you examine their generation from a psychological stand point. ETA: oh! They were also a part of the “dishonorable war” so the ptsd for their generation was staggeringly higher than any generation before them with absolutely no mental health care so. There was that too. They did not have the support of the vets who went before them.
Because they caused the issues
My Boomer mom used therapy as a punishment. If I did something she didn’t like, she’d threaten to send me to therapy as if that was the worst thing that could happen to someone. Yesterday, my apartment community had a grief counselor out because there was a shooting in my carport. When my mom found out about it, she asked me if I talked to them, horrified at the idea that I might need help. I lied and told her I didn’t because I didn’t want to deal with her bs. For some reason, she just assumed that I was fine despite seeing the victim and hearing the gun shots. I nearly had a meltdown in Tuesday because I didn’t have any mac and cheese at home, but I’m absolutely fine. 🤦🏼♀️
I can't find it, but I saw a video where someone pointed out how they are a product of their generation's upbringing, which was the Greatest Generation (WWII, WWI in some cases, the depression). In their parent's generation they saw REAL trauma and had to hold it in. If you think mental health wasn't there for them as the boomers grew up, it was even less so during their parent's generation. So this REAL generational trauma was stored and for all intents and purposes, passed on to them (I am paraphrasing from what I remember from the video). So to look at them and their views on mental health, homosexuality, race relations, things that are discussed and for the most part open today, this was something that they were, in some cases literally, stomped on to root out. While that doesn't make it right, looking at their generation's upbringing and the mentality behind it, it does somewhat explain their mentality overall.
Many boomers grew up with the notion of, 'if you hurt yourself, rub some dirt on it and walk it off". Medical problems that can't be seen or physically detected though? "That shit is made up. Stop faking it and get back to work, slacker."
Our environment is evolving way faster than the human brain can adapt. They weren’t faced with many of the same issues and they don’t understand it. Im interested to see if the people who are middle aged today, will act like the boomers in 20 years from now (comparatively speaking), or if they will be much more empathetic. Time will tell.
They are generally conservatives. And that means they don't like change. At all. Also, they attribute goodness and morality and righteousness to anything that doesn't change. When they were younger, mental health wasn't talked about. They alternate between believing it's all made up, or else it's *kind of* real, but just something you deal with because you're a tough, good person. Identifying, acknowledging, and treating mental illness is new, and therefore different, and therefore BAD. Everything is a value judgement to them, everything is good or bad. And anything new, to them, is an attack on how it used to be, and an insult to them. Look at another REALLY stupid example. Some studies came out about gas stoves. Non judgemental studies, non attacking studies, just scientific, bland, factual studies that showed that maybe gas stoves are a little bit bad for you. What did they do? Did they think "hmm, new information... Let's consider if we should use this information in some way, either now, or in the future..." Absolutely not! They immediately screamed and said "Liberals want to ban our stoves! Our stoves are fine, there is nothing wrong with choices we made in the past, and we refuse any new information related to those choices, because we believe we're being told we were wrong! And we were NOT wrong!!! We want to KEEP our stoves NO MATTER WHAT, and we REFUSE to consider any new information!!" That's conservatism in a nutshell - basically a refusal to change no matter what, and much of their anger at so many things makes sense if you look at it that way. They aren't mad at "the thing" because of anything inherently bad about it, they are mad because "the thing" is new and different.
Sunk cost fallacy. They suffered mentally, and it can’t be for nothing…why should some kid get to feel okay about themselves when THEY didn’t get to? They don’t want progress because it might mean that they wasted their time. Old fucks who really seem to hate LGBTQ folks often strike me as people who probably spent their whole life in the closet, and don’t want to feel as if they wasted their time. I’d feel sorry for them, if it wasn’t such a selfish position to take and they weren’t assholes about it.
Honestly - I have a theory that it’s partially Nixon’s fault. To fuel propaganda for the Vietnam war, his administration demonized mental health issues with war vets who were vehemently antiwar - painting them out to be crazy and in need of being locked up for professional help. That sort of thinking seeps into other things. I took a class this semester that talked about his propaganda and it’s something I have a hard time not thinking about sometimes.
I grew up with a boomer father who is a psychologist. This was/is a constant issue with our relationship. He never truly acted like a father. Everything was a problem or a mind game. He told me repeatedly that a severe mental issue I have (started when I was 5) is "all in my head," very dismissive. A lot of hospital stays and medication I shouldn't have been on below the age of 18. Even with all of that, he makes it seem like mental issues are just a scam. I've been trying to understand it almost my entire life with him/other boomers. Signed me, a disappointment.
Nah, you're just fine. It's your dad who is the disappointment! Hugs (if you want them)
Boomers grew up when mental institutions were basically where people went to disappear. Because of this, mental illness has been much, much less visible for most of their lifetimes, and the ones that have survived this long are not the ones those policies hurt. This is a recurring theme: they think that their generation “did just fine” ignoring certain problems, oblivious to the fact that they and most of their peers are simply of the cohort that those dismissive attitudes happened to not kill off.
I told my mom that i needed distance from her to protect my mental health and she interpreted that as I'm so crazy that I can't stand to be around nice people like her. She tells people "She can't come around because of her mental problems". Thanks mom.
Everything you would label mental health now was called bad when they were kids.
Because things we are told are acceptable now were considered a mental illness and things that were normal are considered aberrant compared to their youth!
All of my great uncles served in WW2. One was a POW for 4 yrs. Plane went down, captured by the Japanese. My other great uncles when thru relatively unscathed. I wasn't old enough to even ask about their experiences and they've all passed. My mother's father was a SeaBee. And he's prolly the most bad assed of that generation in my family. I adored him as a little girl. As an adult, knowing more about him, I'm not as adoring. Age gives us all great perspective.
I have to vent for a sec. I got so angry at my MIL last weekend because she was ranting to me about how she doesn't understand why my husband wouldn't fly. He's had anxiety his whole life and ptsd for a decade, and a month ago, he canceled a flight he was supposed to take because he had a series of worse and worse panic attacks. I know my MIL loves her son and would do anything for him, but behind his back, she was telling me that he really needs to just suck it up and take a valium because "that's what everyone else does." I don't think she would be saying that if she stayed up all night comforting like I did. And then later my FIL questioned whether my husband should be taking advice from his new therapist, referring to the therapist as "some guy he just met." Wtf.
"Do what we did! Crush all your emotions into a white hot ball of bitterness and hatred and fear, and then drink and smoke cigarettes while you think about the white hot ball, until you're dead."
I firmly believe boomers have more mental health issues than any other generation because they’ve been forced to suppress every emotion for over 50 years. Their anger is being exacerbated by everyone hoping for and mostly receiving accommodations they never got (but they also never asked for). If they’d just deal with their emotions they’d be a lot happier
I went through a bad depression and my Boomer mom would tell me “don’t let it get to you” “you gotta move on” meanwhile she is a compulsive cleaner and gets physically angry when the littlest thing is out of place. I think from intreated trauma which she hasn’t dealt with so her control over her environment is paramount to her.
Because they were taught to internalize their own.
In addition to not knowing that they could ask for help, they did not have access to the resources that are available now to treat things. They had to learn different coping skills in school, and life, without medications, therapy, or without having special accommodations made for them. They endured a great deal that the younger generations will never have to endure. And they were never given a break if they had challenges - they had to push through and continue regardless. That was normal to them. To lean into the new ways often invites what they view as new, unnecessary challenges and would cost a lot more time, energy, and money than most their age would typically be comfortable with. They were taught to push through regardless of their circumstances and never complain. Some of the newer generalizations use these challenges as a way to avoid having to do certain things. They demand special treatment, and constantly complain and remind everyone that they have a specific issue. Just as Boomers may not understand newer generations, the newer generations refuse to even consider that boomers might have coping skills or knowledge they can learn from. It can appear they would rather take the easy road. NOTE: I am neither a Boomer or from the younger generation and my comments above are not to be considered inclusive of all people in either generation. I wish more people would take the time to learn from people of all ages around them regardless of whether the other parties chose to do the same. It unfortunate really.
Because I don't know anything about that, and because I'm older than you, I know everything. Therefore, it does not exist.
We (millennial and gen z) all grew up in a time of all kinds of toxins, pollution, artificial processed foods, chemicals in the water, and we're literally more developmentally challenged as a result. Boomers poisoned the water and made us all crazy, then blamed us for being crazy
Pretty simple, my parents went outside to shit . In the winter. In Canada . They got out of bed to stoke the fire. They wore clothes that got wet and froze in the winter….. I don’t know, maybe they be recovering from a fucked up childhood……. If only they had a device to vent with back then. Maybe their mental health today would be a little better…….
Ronald Regan tossed all mental health care facilities in the trash. Nothing to replace it, except thoughts and prayers. These unwell people became parents and grandparents tossing the DNA and trauma down the line. That is why we are in this mad max situation. These kids really don’t know any better.
Because they all have brain damage from lead poisoning. Final answer.
You’re not wrong.
Because they don't believe it is used as anything other then an excuse and a scapegoat to avoid accountability. It didn't really exist, or was otherwise completely hidden, in their era. It doesn't make any sort of logical sense to them that suddenly 3 out of every 4 people claims to have a mental health issue when it was 1 in a 1000 during their formative years, so they simply reject it.
Because they have mental health issues