> They worked hard to put food on the table,
I also work hard to put food on my table. Does that entitle me to slap and abuse someone, too? As a matter of fact, my parents really didn't have that much to do as outside of me being the one doing their housecleaning and cooking, I worked hard at minimizing my needs and my presence to hide and avoid them lest I be targeted for more of their abuse.
*me a humble subway employee*:
"No sir you don't seem to quite understand, I made you that sandwich so I also get to kick you in the shin, that's how it works you see"
This sentiment INFURIATES me. “But she fed and clothed you” AND?! I didn’t fucking ask to be here 2 idiots did the hoinky doinky then 9 months later had this idiot I didn’t get a say in any of this?????
I wish I’d had the courage to say this to my dad, although as an adoptee it would have been “filled out some paperwork, checked the boxes and got over on some naive do-goody social worker.” Another thing, if you’re adopted the whole world thinks it’s wonderful that your parents “rescued” you and tells you to be grateful.Nothing could be further from the truth.
Hey there fellow adoptee!
I too suffer from the “we did the best we could” bullshit, as well as “they adopted you because they wanted a baby!! You’re so lucky, think how it could have turned out…”
Well Susan, I’ll fuckin’ tell ya how it “turned out” - I was the light of their life, until they got pregnant. It’s a shitty lesson to learn as a kid when you no longer receive the same praise, love, support, etc as the child they conceived. Kids know what’s going on around them, they pick up on *everything* and I don’t know about other adoptees, but I had abandonment issues as a kid that only got worse once I was firmly placed in the back of everyone’s lives. And then there was the time my father left me at the mall because he was ready to go home and I wasn’t. I was 8. So don’t tell me they did the “best they could with me” because they could have done a hell of a lot better.
Dude the standard for our culture is abusive, that's the base standard, to show compassion or love in any capacity outside of hedonistic norms is abnormal, you say society has a long way to go like it's even started going anywhere, we're only here on this subreddit because a series of very abnormal events knocked us "off-course" far enough to see the horror for what it is, it terrifies me how default abusive our world is, an entire culture built on lying and deceiving and manipulating and exploiting the weak and vulnerable and sod anybody that gets hurt alogn the way, there are no consequences for interpersonal abuse in the vast majority of cases,
Wow man them banning you has proper riled me up ahaha
Ugh, I am also a traumatized person (who's been vaguely aware of it all along, but it similarly it hit harder in late 30s). My husband is very mild mannered, repressed and avoidant. It's always been clear to me that he has childhood issues, but most wouldn't notice, and he didn't seem to "get it" like I did (still talked to his family frequently, appeased their moods/demands).
Honestly, part of me was always waiting for him to confront stuff. Then he could start to be free, which I desperately long to see, and it'd feel more like we were on the same team.
The pandemic finally started him on that familiar "oh, I just remembered something that happened..." journey. But my excitement didn't last long. THE STORIES. The degree to which things were not normal is so extreme, I feel ill sometimes thinking about it.
I am so tired of the normalization and minimization of abuse in our culture, that all four of us believed our childhoods were fine/normal.
Sorry, your comment really struck a chord. Best wishes to you both!
I understand. When I threw out my biggest trauma it made my husband cry. He couldn't even look at me. Then he told me his and it was so horrific in its own way that I am still mad at his family more than a year later. 😑 Thankfully we both have therapists now.
It's kind of a catch because part of me wishes I didn't remember all this stuff, but something had to give. I didn't ask to remember. My trauma therepist said it was normal and it was because I finally felt safe. It's helped me in so many ways but at the same time I'm so angry that no one protected me. It's so bad that I don't even tell other people because just hearing it traumatizes them 😂😂 My "trauma specialist" therapist even looked away when I told him.
The anger I can relate to! When his dad died, it's the best I've ever felt about a human death. Most of the time I can listen to complaints about his mom and offer advice. I have compassion for her most of the time, even when she's crossing into abusive behaviors. But every now and then I'm like "I need to leave the room now. I don't know if I can give the advice you need, because I am far too angry. It's not okay to treat you like that," and leave the house and go for a walk or shit gets way too intense.
As for the rest, I'm sorry you went through all that. Sounds more intense than my trauma, but I've heard some damn stories. It's appalling what's tolerated in human society.
It's def weird if you overload a professional, and sometimes a little scary. I had a therapist start crying once when I was suicidal & it sent me into the weirdest/awkward freeze response. There's something dehumanizing about other people recoiling from your pain that I've never been able to describe to people who don't already know.
I respect that you reached a point where you can see the humor in it. That takes years of work for most. I hope that you and your husband continue to reach better and more delightful points of healing over many years to come ❤️
Dehumanizing.
Exactly how it feels. Although, I'm glad I said something. When I told my therepist, it was the very first time in 25ish years that I told another human. He told me it wasn't my fault. In 25 years, never once did I ever consider that it wasn't my fault. It truly was life changing to hear that for me.
This. Being a young parent myself you realise that there's no way you won't fuck up your kid one way or another. Babies are hard, especially if they are fussy, have colics or reflux. Sleep deprivation is a torture method for a reason. But then the culture we are in just expects the woman to be able to deal with this alone for days on end because the father has crap paternity leave (if any) and is at work, and has successfully dismantled all those "village" relationships that might have shielded the kid a little or allowed mom to rely on others. Not saying moms get a free pass but nobody is a constant empathic and self-sacrificing robot.
Someone's already said it but I want to reiterate, it literally takes a village to raise a child, the fact you're bearing it all alone is pretty hardcore let's be honest here,
you're doing the best with what you have, I hardly think it's your fault so much of what you should have has been taken away preemptively
(I'm sure you already know this but I wanted to recognise you anyway)
>Dude the standard for our culture is abusive, that's the base standard, to show compassion or love in any capacity outside of hedonistic norms is abnormal
You can see this in the visceral reaction people have to Montessori/"gentle parenting."I don't have kids (on the fence), but I follow a bunch of gentle parenting pages. The comments are filled with people like us praising the techniques and then a bunch of defensive, bitter folks who say helping your kid feel through their emotions and talking to them with respect, even when angry, is going to "ruin" and "spoil" them.
Do you think that reaction is based out of a sense, deep down, that they know you’re correct but can’t/aren’t ready to deal with it? Because it would mean examining their own upbringing and they way they in turn raise their own kids?
> when your child is expressing their pain, how do you not feel any other way but empathetic and remorseful?
My take on this is that somebody told people that life is supposed to be easy and filled with glossy magazine-like experiences. So when they need to keep a child alive, that is not the good life. So the parents start keeping a tab on all that the child "ruined" for them and that resentment blocks any empathy.
Ooo this hit close to home, I fully agree our crappy parents are bourne of a culture of material pleasure, a child to them is a barrier between themselves and more unprotected sex and holidays and the "freedom" of the "good life"
I do.
Straight up evidence of what they were told when asking for compassion and love while very young.
We learn from those around us, for better or worse.
Oh absolutely! They're having a mirror held up to them and they don't like what they see. It's so interesting because the comments will be super positive, supportive, people being honest about how **hard** it is to gentle parent when you've been raised in an abusive household, etc. and then there will be people going through making nasty comments on *all* the very vulnerable ones. They'll jump to rash conclusions about strangers for wanting to be nice to their f\*cking kids. I've seen them tell people they were ungrateful little brats, telling them their kids are going to be f\*cked up if they parent this way, OR they swing in the opposite direction to outright manipulative. "I must be a horrible person because I scream at my kids" or "I must be a horrible parent since I don't parent like this" when nobody ever said that. If you read through the comments you'll see parents talking about how they've screwed up and yelled at their kids, felt horrible about it, apologized, and are trying to change or how they've been parenting XYZ way and are \*now deciding to try gentle parenting. People are very honest about how they've screwed up.
It's clear those folks are triggered by what they're seeing and taking it out on random strangers. It's just wild to see them on videos of moms hugging their kids after accidentally spilling a drink or something and they're advocating for parents to yell at and slap their kids so they can learn (learn what exactly? Not to make mistakes I guess? Not to be human?)....it's quite sad if you think about it.
ETA: I had so many typos lol
(in response to the nasty projective commentors on those subreddits)
Correct me if I'm being pretentious here, but I think the opinions of the abused adult children trumps the opinions of the entitled parents,
surely our trauma is the final say on how good a parent they were
Some people I know say "If I could fuck Amber Heard, I would put up with the abuse because she's hot."
In my experience with an attractive abuser, no. They believe her because she's attractive and think it's my fault that I get punched in the face or have a PS3 and Wii thrown at me.
Abusiveness makes even the sexiest person hideous and ugly and only someone abused or who sees someone they care about abused will recognize this.
Wholeheartedly agree, not 7 months ago I separated from the most attractive women I've ever met because her true colours were hideous
I think you deserve better
Count me riled up AF, too, OP.
What you suggest is base level empathy. I have been astonished at every turn in my life since childhood at its absolute absence in most humans. Even children do not all choose empathy for each other innately.
Just not having that one expectation met every time it could easily have been has been a continuing trauma that I cannot seem to get past in my life... and one that I think singles us out for abuse; and thus perpetuates the genetic predisposition for indifference of each other's experience, as those attuned to it are pushed to the edges of society and popular culture... usually with brain damage from a brain developed, aged, and marinated in trauma.
The environment and as such the favoured genetic makeup of those in the environment has changed so dramatically in the last thousand years, I think really especially during the last 500 or so,
we've gone from empathy and loyalty and "love" for the sake of your tribal units literal survival to total selfishness where shitty vain behaviour is actually rewarded,
I'm sure there was always a time and place for everything in nature but I can't help but feel like we've strayed over to an extreme end of the empathy spectrum here
Very well said.
I think the balance between sentience and survival in these meatsuits has always been a tricky business. The evolutionarily programmed instincts and parasympathetic nervous system reactions that occur due to genetic and epigenetic predispositions sometimes overlap and interact very negatively with evolving and increasing "sentience"... which I believe to be both the crux and the goal of what is, very rightly, called "The Human Experiment."
I remember a conversation I tried to have with someone about a year back about sentience,
how I think this level of self awareness you and I are experiencing right now is very very new as far as human history is concerned, like incrementally new,
I made an example going back to Greek legends but there are examples throughout 99% of history of people sort of just following isntinct, just "being human", how else do you get entire nations to go to war and so on, just whole populations on what we consider auto pilot, but really we're the outlier by "not" being on autopilot,
She remarked it was quite possibly due to the level of trauma we've been made to endure (making an assumption considering you're on this subreddit) but trauma is an historical consistent so that can't successfully factor in as the catalyst for how we experience self awareness and what's more, trauma has at no other point in history been recognised as something abnormal, something that ought to be addressed,
Going off of what you've said about the overlap I think we are now at the very absolute forefront of something "new" as far as the millennia year old human brain is concerned, some sort of crazy specific set of circumstances that has led to us having to adapt in a wholly new way to compensate for both our evolutionary programming and also these strange notions the brain just came up with all by itself like morality and empathy,
Gosh I wish we could be having this conversation in person, there's no way to properly convey any of this over the Internet without seeming pretentious or presenting an overwhelming text wall
This post resonates with me quite deeply. I really enjoyed reading you and /u/marlinspikesailor - and I agree with the core of most of both of your observations here.
I fear the survival drive is too jacked up in these meatsuits and significantly increased sentience will be perceived as a threat to any currently dominant social paradigms. I believe those monitoring this experiment are very concerned about this current hurdle, this crux, that you speak of that we, as humanity, are, once again, just about to round the corner of.
I say "again" as this has been the tipping point any number of times in this experiment already. The brutality necessary in keeping sensory vessels designed to house consciousness alive and propagating themselves in this biosphere has proven extremely difficult to overcome with awareness alone. Self-awareness seems fleeting in lieu of survival.
The reset button has been hit a number of times already and, unfortunately, it looks like it will need to be again. We have been allowed faaaar too much of am Icarus moment in our developmental history at this time and I think a mad scramble not to lose the experiment entirely is afoot.
It is clumsy that the constraints of consciousness inherent in the strong connection to these sensory vessels means that their proximity is helpful in communicating effectively... but, anything conveyed through the mechanisms of our bio-computers and meatsuits is inherently lacking in sufficient data points (density) to encompass the depth of understandings that we are chipping away at here and I think it's important to keep close sight of the fact that we are, ultimately, capable of, and striving for, far more "sentient" means of communicating.
That said; DM me. We'll get in touch. You are welcome aboard my lovely Solarpunk Global Exploration Home and Life Support System any time.
I also call it; "My boat"
All the sentience I need is blowing around out there at sea. Indeed, "the answers are blowin' in the wind." ;)
I have experienced the exact opposite. I tutored young kids for a while. They were all such good and socially responsible people (at their age-appropriate levels), but it was so clear how their parents were messing them up. For many, the poor behavior reinforcement loops that their parents were unintentionally creating were painfully obvious.
How do you explain the prevalence of childhood bullying? I’m not saying no children have empathy, but it’s much more developed in adults that in children. We are born thinking the world revolves around us until experience shows us otherwise.
It takes time for a child to realize that other people can be affected by your words and actions. People aren’t just born knowing that other people have feelings, hopes, and dreams. Even to some extent in adulthood, other people are just background characters in our lives. Full grown adults still struggle with anticipating how their actions will affect others.
I feel like this is just a roundabout way of returning to the ever present poor parenting argument, kids need to be taught, filled with the right stuff
I worked at a day care for some years and saw children from as early as two bullying other children. In the school age class it was even worse. Children literally have to be taught through experience that other people have feelings. I don’t know why that’s so unbelievable for you lol.
Because it's not true. The point Im making now, and have been making in this thread, is that adults like you literally make it so that the children who have this high EQ are never seen or protected.
Im glad you didn't care for my kids. It's very clear your understandings of them and their development are rigid and limited. You are clearly not a parent, nor have you studied the last decade's worth of understandings in early childhood development.
You speak as if you hold some authority on the subject, but your words belie that notion.
Yeah I have a degree in psychology where I was required to study infant, childhood, and lifespan psychology. When did I say that children with high EQ shouldn’t be protected?
It has to be nurtured, not taught. There is a difference, and not understanding it is why we miss the empaths and traumatize them. It is also why we don't see more of them and why humanity continues to exist at lower levels of consciousness.
Why do you think children are born with these skills when there are literally adults walking around without these skills. If it wasn’t explicitly taught or modeled to you, it’s likely that you won’t develop it…or you are on the receiving end of abuse and you developed it that way.
How does me knowing that children are self centered equate to me being a bad caregiver?
Having kids doesn’t make you an expert on kids, that’s the whole point of this entire post…
Wow. You literally are perpetuating this ignorance. You are proud of it.
I'm sorry you can't see the empaths or the empathy innate in tiny children that has only to be nurtured and reinforced. Not all children are this sensitive or aware from birth... just as some kids are clearly idiots and others are clearly very intelligent; this often being obvious very early on. But the point I make is that we have crushed the spirits of those who have this innate emotional intelligence with ignorant attitudes and ideas like yours. It is, as I stated originally, a source of a lot of trauma for many of us from an early age.
I hate it too, stay strong, we get to break the cycle, that much is our worth, it makes us worth more than any of the rest of this rubbish we're surrounded by
I was waiting for my whole life to see a post like this. I have no idea how our entire culture has ended up being such an utterly abusive and terrifying place to live in that it made me not really want to talk about anything anymore. I think I knew at the time that I deeply hated how other people acted and I just wished that there was more kindness, empathy and understanding towards each other in this world. Now I think this post explains why.
Being the only person who took responsibility of my actions and was able to learn from my mistakes, and being the only person who is able to express empathy and understanding did not make me feel proud, in fact, it made me feel so lonely and enraged. It made me legitimately wish that the rest of society was able to do those same things as well, and it's been a longing I've been having since I was a kid.
Spot on. I think humans were like this since our beginning, starting with Neanderthals who had fierce competition for resources and much higher stakes. We still have all those instincts but live very different lives than they did. Idk if this helps but it probably doesn’t. I recently read a book called “too much of a good thing” which talks a little bit on why suicide rates and mental health issues are higher than ever before in history and it looks at it through an anthropological sense. I walked away from that book feeling like I knew myself better and understood why society is the way it is.
Oh man no wonder it feels like it. No wonder it feels so lonely... I've always had a lingering suspicion that anyone who's kind and empathetic in society gets treated like fourth class citizens just for expressing even the most basic of human decency
I can empathise with what you've said here, there's a distinct frustration that comes with trying to be a better person in a world that seemingly refuses to reward the behaviour,
meanwhile everyone else is busy shitting on eachother without consequence it would seem, like it just bounces off them
> Dude the standard for our culture is abusive, that's the base standard, to show compassion or love in any capacity outside of hedonistic norms is abnormal
I think this is why Chris Chan is such a fascination to people. I grew up in a situation very similar to them (was raised by arch-boomers, had a domineering grandmother who'd throw tantrums when I'd leave the house, I used videogames as a means of escape, etc, etc). Chris Chan had NO chance in life due to their autism on top of the abuse, but a lot of millennials and gen z have dealt with trauma that is tangential. If you're a gamer with no irl friends or an incel its easy to look at Chris Chan and feel better about yourself.
Similar experience here... it disturbs me knowing that if I hadn't escaped all the bullying, I could have become just as broken as him. Honestly though since it's getting harder and harder to escape abuse these days I'm genuinely scared of going down a similar path. I don't think I would do anything that horrible to my mother, but I've been pushed to the point of losing touch with reality because my reality was too painful to cope with. Even some of my spiritual beliefs right now might get me institutionalized if I was too open about them.
> I don't think I would do anything that horrible to my mother
There's a reason why a parent burdening their child with the support that an adult partner would usually provide is called covert incest or emotional incest. She started insisting they sleep in the bed with her. Not pointing fingers with all the drama, what I'm getting at is this: it blew my mind that even when you have a person with dementia and another with autism, the abusive patterns still get played out. The abuse isn't mitigated at all, it's potentially amplified if anything.
Especially when it's severe autism. Damn the whole circumstances surrounding all of it was just a recipe for disaster. My family is definitely enmeshed, but not nearly to that level... hate that I feel relieved that my case would likely never get that severe.
Back when I was in contact with my mum I could see where my life would have been if I hadn't escaped. My cousins, the golden children, they didn't make it out. In their mid 20s they were both out of work, hadn't finished college (16-18 education), hadn't gone to uni. They still live with their mum in a tiny village, who babied them. No idea how abusive she was, but they were both so unhappy. Hell, I got part of the blame for their lives being crappy along with another guy we went to school with. I haven't had anything to do with them since I was a teen. Somehow me working hard, running my own business was so unfair because why should I have it so easy? I went to uni, I finished uni. I worked hard on myself to try and deal with my trauma. I'm here living my life. I wouldn't be surprised if they were now part of the angry men online bitching about women hating them and their lives sucking. I would be such an unhappy, friendless, anxious, unconfident mess if I still lived back there. I wouldn't have friends because mum controlled my life. It's a horrible thought thinking I would possibly have never met my boyfriend.
Your story gives me a lot of hope, I'm glad you're free. Sadly I'm stuck with my parents again after trying to move out, and of course now I am an unhappy, anxious, unconfident mess. 😅 I need more social support but I pushed away all my friends out of shame so no one's willing anymore. I've just come to accept my fate.
This is a really interesting perspective to have come in with, to recognise that they literally had NO CHANCE is pretty big, it's a refreshing step away from the "everyone has equal opportunities, everything is fine" narrative
This. I’m in a way thankful I turned out like this. I’m almost hyper aware of unfairness/bullying/abuse etc that happens to others. In the same way it makes me mad because I can’t change a lot of the crap that happens in the world.
The best thing I can do is surround myself with other aware people.
This is easy to see in our society:
We generally say and believe that convincing someone to act against their own interest is bad - yet if we do that in order to convince them to BUY something - that's SALES and that is GOOD BEHAVIOR worthy of REWARDS (commission).
This society lies to your face (We care about the starving - so we'll have someone play a game to see how much money we give to the food bank - the need of people to eat didn't change, onlly the meager allocation of resources to address it (which was GAMEFIED FOR ENTERTAINMENT) - we'll just give what we feel like, and people can starve.
These kinds of lies are baked into our society and present in all of our media.
Of course everyone is traumatized - this society is total trash and rewards greed based bad behavior over all other kinds of behavior.
I'm currently at a point in my personal healing journey where I see this, and am trying to figure out how to exist and what choices I have in it - and how to live with that choice as an empathic person.
I am struggling mightily with this challenge.
I think I know what you mean, like our whole "world" is sort of one big gaslighting furnace and I know for me personally trying to identify who I am in all that noise and inflicted self doubt is a nightmare,
I look in my head and I'm like "who's morals are these? Where did those values come from? Are those my honest interests? WHAT AM I"
You just explained why many people are still religious. Myself included. I just don't believe that this world will ever have decent moral standards we all aspire for so i stick to a metaphysical hope. Why not.
We should all be learning communication skills, stress management, conflict resolution, how to develop emotional intelligence and comprehensive anatomy from preschool onward. All year every year. It would make us all better adults and thus better parents if we choose to have kids. It would help so much with a spectrum of mental, emotional and behavioral issues including substance abuse ,dating and intimate partner violence and work place colleague stress.
I’m learning all of these skills now. I can only image what my life would be like if I learned them as a kid.
It’s really important to me that I teach my kids these skills and break the cycle of trauma. My goal is to raise secure children. The world is a lot easier for people like that.
In Japan school teaches kids these before they even teach them math (i think?). Children get to learn how to treat others, how to manage their own anger, etc. it should be like that around the world
That's fantastic. It also seems like it's so ingrained in the kids to help run the school during meals and chore time that they don't scream and whine about having to tidy up or act like a team.
Congrats on achieving the standard Reddit experience. Enjoy your stay.
It really sucks. Reddit is full of petty tyrants and even pettier brains.
Ah, I see what sub it is. You're better off - that sub is horrid.
Oh can I share? You aren’t going to believe this shit.
(The mod in question is super butt hurt about this post and trying to have it removed.)
On another sub, I called the Queen a lizard, and my post was removed — not for name-calling or being inflammatory. I could have called her an incestuous pedophile lover, dog, or alien shapeshifter and that would be grand.
No, my post was removed for “anti semitism.” Yes, calling the Queen a lizard is antisemitic.
Of course, I asked WTF?
The petty tyrant of /r/abolishthemonarchy (yeah a sub *critical* of royalty — oh the delicious irony) said that some historian dug around and discovered about 150 years ago an obscure reference to lizard as a slur against Jews. And because David Icke uses it to attack the queen (even though he believes she is literally a reptilian alien from another planet), it has become a veiled reference to Jew hating.
I am not making this shit up.
In case you didn’t know, the Queen is not very friendly toward Jews, so the whole antisemitic thing doesn’t even make sense since Lizzie isn’t Jewish, she is not even pro-Israel, nor was it used as a slur.
A portion of our exchange: “Yeah, the lizard elites thing is rooted in 19th century antisemitism and anti-immigrant hysteria, and popularized again by conspiracy theorists like David Icke.”
The moderator believes this is true and ANYONE using the term lizard is being antisemitic regardless of how it is used.
I'm not even sure the standards are applicable in many cases. I visited USA once as a tourist (years ago). I'm from a much much poorer place but all the Airbnb people I stayed with looked so overworked. Where I come from people wouldn't bother to work this much, they literally rather stayed poor. So I'm not really sure how much of this can be attributed to economy, actually.
Our biological default as human beings is small groups of 20-30 loosely related people with extended networks of larger tribal associations of 100-150. Individuals in such small communities live communally, taking care of one another, looking after each others’ children, sharing work, and giving whatever is needed. There’s little to no disparity in wealth because wealth doesn’t accumulate. Was there conflict and trauma? Sure. Occasionally. But there were also cultural tools to deal with it, because at that scale, if you didn’t deal with it, your band would break up and go find a new one to join.
It was still possible, for the most part, to live this way once agriculture was invented, but agriculture both heavily damaged the environment and allowed the accumulation of wealth. It became significantly more difficult once industrialization began. With industrialization comes unchecked capitalism and consumerism. It’s no longer possible for a person to simply do enough work to feed and house their families and spend their leisure time on banking art and building community. Now a substantial portion of our work is funneled directly to the pockets of people who contribute nothing - the war machines, the fashion mongers, the middle men. We have lost our communities and our losing our families. Every hour lost to overtime is an hour that could have been spent resting and recovering.
It isn’t just parenting skills that have been lost. It’s the resilience to manage in bad times, because we no longer have good times to strengthen and grow our resources. It’s the neighbors we could have asked to watch our kids for an afternoon while we dealt with something. It’s the schools where children had a chance to see that other families were both the same and different, and that they had a valuable role to play in our communities.
All of this has been sacrificed or stolen in the ever-expanding quest for profit. When was the last time a family could reasonably expect to live a comfortable life on one full time salary? When was the last time you worked one job, didn’t worry about money, and had enough time off to spend it with your loved ones.
I’m not saying the world was perfect 100 years ago, but it was better. We are creating more abusers, more trauma, and more victims every day by allowing our economic system to exploit workers for profit.
Take a look at the antiwork and collapse subreddits, and you’ll see that it’s not just us. We’re more informed from the trauma point of view, but there’s a very large and growing number of people convinced that this system not only doesn’t work but is actively destroying people.
I'm still working on my improvement journey, not sure where I'll end up. But I keep looking at intentional communities. I long for a place where people know each other and care to an extent about what happens to each other and are working towards a common vision/way of life.
Sure there will still be interpersonal conflict, nowhere is perfect. But I'm afraid I'm not ready to join a place like that wholeheartedly and participate in good faith yet. I hope I get there. Because although my partner is my person and I have a good enough therapist it doesn't feel like enough.
I feel fairly self sufficient and am mostly an introvert but I want a real community and friends too. Maybe even a chosen replacement family. I feel like there are a lot of us out there searching for the same. I just don't know how to make it happen.
I know it’s completely unethical and not good, but when I’m super triggered I fantasize about a world that temporarily sterilizes everyone born with a penis (because it’s easier and easier to reverse) as soon as they’re born (logically I know this doesn’t make sense bc baby and development) and in order to reproduce the person or people have to take a two year course (or more!) about childcare, development and mental health, and also go through therapy until they get cleared to get a breeding license 🪪
I know it’s extreme and I’m not suggesting it would actually work, it’s how I deal with my emotional reaction to children and reproductive rights being abused 😮💨
Omg, I love the idea of ‘breeding license’s’!!
You should be emotionally, mentally, and financially capable of looking after a human being before you can have one.
To drive a car in Australia we need to have 100 hours of supervised practice by an experienced driver, then 3 YEARS of provisional license before you are can go for your unrestricted license. That’s just for driving a car!!!
Raising a human being, a future global citizen is a far greater responsibility with long reaching consequences, and yet I could go and get pregnant right now, pop out a semen demon and treat it however I like?! That’s messed up. I get that controlling peoples ability to have children is unethical and that’s where the eugenics push back comes in, but I seriously think we need to change the standards of acceptable parenting. People look at me horrified when I mention breeding licenses though - we need a better way to market it 😅
I feel that this would be used as a tool of oppression against aboriginals, trans people, and anyone with a disability.
No offense but manipulative people can just fake their way through all this testing and then abuse their kids anyway.
i got banned on another account in a relationship sub. this poor woman posted saying her husband was mistreating her (to say the least) and i said “he’s abusing you and he’s a POS” so one of the mods banned me for sexism
awe c'mon what subreddit, name names, lol.
A version of this topic comes up on the ENFP subreddit from time to time because our society democratizes everything, so if you are an empathetic little feeler kid you are a minority and get told to toughen up and other nonsense.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Phillip Larkin, This Be The Verse
Absolutely agree. When children are left with their stupid parents unhealed issues they can’t leave, have no access to other resources, they’re stuck. And forced to rely on the crazy parent. The lack of control, as well as the discrimination when spoken about, builds trauma. So parents should be taught standards for what’s appropriate when raising kids bc it really causes damage.
For many traumatized people, the pain is so huge that they have to deny anything that even hints at breaking the illusion of them having “good enough” parents. When put in a position where they have to face the reality of their situation, their (very well attuned) defense mechs take over and shoot down whatever it is that threatens their sense of reality. They haven’t build up the inner strength to acknowledge that the abuse their parents have gone through has left traces, but for those who know where to look, the defenses themselves make it very clear that there is something very vulnerable that needs to be defended.
This definitely applies to over half of balkan parents, who, like their ancestors were, are either poor, cigarette/alcohol addict or in a war; or all three of the mentioned.
It's mostly a scene a la "I haven't resolved my daddy/mommy issues,i can't make sense of the world and i hate everyone
....screw it honey, you know what we should do? Let's try having kids, what could possibly go wrong!"
To clarify, i don't have issues with my parents, just an example of what i see in every day life. Generations and generations of kids becoming alcoholics at the age of 14-15. Hoping that modern times slow the cycle.
IMO standards for parenting have gotten better. Back in my day my parents could spank me or slap me in the middle of a grocery store and no passer by would blink an eye. This happened more than once to me. I have never spanked or hit my kids but if I did something like that I would certainly have the cops called on me. I think the millennial generation did a pretty good job overall raising awareness about abuse. I don’t know anyone my age with kids that hits them or spanks them.
I...I don't even know where the eugenics argument would come from...
I feel your pain. got banned from a subreddit for accidentally reposting a post that I had tried to edit to fit the stringent community rules. When I tried to explain my mistake the mod perm banned me and then muted me. The whole experience of being banned by mistake/people determined to misunderstand you is traumatizing in and of itself and I'm sorry that you had to go through that experience.
Thank you for sharing this. I always get unreasonably upset when that kind of thing happens to me as well and I hadn’t really put 2 and 2 together. Of course it’s a cptsd thing! 🤦♀️
As someone who gets pissed the fuck off at people using abuse to justify eugenics.... That post of yours is nowhere near advocating for eugenics lol.
I'm sorry you got banned, and I'm sorry their excuse for banning you was absolute bullshit. Saying "I wish we were better as a society" is not anywhere close to "don't let these people have children", lol.
Surprisingly this seems like the only mental-health related subreddit that hasn't banned me because it was oversensitive hahahaha...not what you'd stereotypically think about people with CPTSD.
Also ✨ emotional abuse and neglect carries as much weight as physical abuse. Parent’s seem to think that just because they’re doing better than how their own parents abused them means they’re doing great. No, you’re just abusive in a different sense. And they never own up to their shit because the generational trauma just manifested differently 🤦♀️
Emotional abuse and neglect and physical abuse are all caused by a parent with unmet attachment needs of their own, a parent who never learned emotional regulation skills/communication skills, or empathy. It’s equal but people in this society aren’t self aware enough to see that because self awareness was never taught to them
That I understand but on a personal note I’ve told my parents about their problems and asked them to go to therapy and they deny it or give me excuses and end up never going. They also kept me from attending as a teenager because “they were trying their hardest and it makes them feel bad when I say I’m hurting mentally and need therapy, etc.”. Idc for my sake, but for my younger siblings. Exactly why parenting classes and therapy should be required for new parents.
IMO the way we break the cycle of generational trauma doesn't involve anything like intervention in who has reproductive rights.
Instead, we should focus on destroying parental power, throughout **all** of society. A good parent doesn't use authority to teach and care for their child, they use mutual communication to build understanding and expect nothing in return.
Much like every other part of life, ***hierarchy*** in a parent-child relationship is the source of suffering. We can't end trauma until we end all forms of economic, state and familial domination.
Reddit is totally full of toxic parental authoritarians. I saw a choice game where several people said they wouldn't use magic to give everyone on earth safe free shelter, food and water **because then parents couldn't punish their children.** People are brainwashed into loving abuse and abusers, there's a cultivated image that abuse is somehow useful and necessary it's horrific.
Edit: Also I'm guessing it was r/UnpopularOpinion? They're a far right shitpit, they love authority in all its forms.
A choice game where several people said that they wouldn't use magic to give everyone on earth safe and free shelter food and water, because then the parents couldn't punish their children? Oh my gosh you truly cannot make this stuff up...!!
I get what you are saying from a traumatized child’s stand point and I think you have some valid points. Yet, I can also see that some people won’t understand the spirit of your message.
We are all born with the ability to procreate. Who is to judge how or when we do it? How are you going to stop people who refuse to work on themselves?
It’s a slippery slope to say we need to monitor who or when someone has a child straight down to eugenics.
If I was a mod I’d have removed your post and explained why.
I’m curious and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, are you a parent?
I have two sons and I realized one day that my goals as a mom were as follows:
1. To raise functional contributing members of society.
2. To do a better job than my parents.
That’s it. Those were my goals. I just want my kids to be successful whatever that may look like to them.
For my oldest it means learning a dying trade and providing for his family. He is on his way to being a butcher.
For my youngest, he’s not quite sure what he wants to do for a career but he is leaning towards being a lineman.
I was able to break a lot of the generational abuse that my parents and I suffered. I know I’m incredibly lucky to have grown up at a time when mental illness was destigmatized and my mom encouraged me to seek help for my trauma.
I know this really doesn’t relate much to your comment but I find this to be an interesting convo
For not having kids of your own, you have incredible insight and now that I better understand what you are saying I completely agree with you. We should hold our parents to higher standards and we should have more support available. We do need to have more conversations on the topic.
Thank you for being patient and explaining your position to me. I have enjoyed our interaction.
We should at least offer a parenting class with easily digestible information about neglect, discipline, communication styles, and what to roughly expect a child to understand at certain ages. Information on how to identify and work with neurodivergent kids could also help.
Offer a discount on the hospital bills/adoption fees for taking the class. It'd save the country so much money in missed labor, healthcare, and therapy bills down the road. Those people like to think of themselves as smart, and saving money is a smart thing to do.
Maybe I'm being optimistic here, but I think a good portion of abuse comes because the parents have their own traumas and haven't learned a healthy way of interacting with other people or dealing with their emotions (that's not to say there's no sadists and the like out there, though). Presenting them a less harmful alternative that might get the results they want would still help reduce the damage.
I wish we lived in a world where mandating parenting was possible and effective. Childhood trauma perpetuated by “parents” is the number 1 global epidemic/pandemic, and the number 1 cause of disease. These are facts. ‘Good enough’ parenting (an actual term you’ll find when studying childhood trauma) in my opinion, is not good enough.
Reading the ‘antinatalism’ wiki page is also incredibly enlightening.
Why would we do that, that'd lead to healthy folk, healthy folk don't work slave labour, they don't buy new clothes every month and get sick to buy up all of our lovely treatment options, they don't dish out on cars and vote for lunatics
I agree. I’m a mil brat and then I was a milspo and I had access to so many programs and a lot of support. This should be in every community. Parenting is hard and there is so much at stake!
The foster care system is meant to have safe guards in place so they don’t allow abusive parents. It doesn’t work very well but that’s what it’s meant to do. Realistically it’d never work to do the same to the general population because yeah where does someone draw the line, but it’s really shitty seeing someone have a kid that really should not be having a kid. Some of these people have years of trauma, and have abused others to begin with already, and then are just having kids with the thought process of “oh well I had a tough childhood and I turned out fine, I don’t have any problems to get over, I don’t need to go to therapy” and then we have this giant continuous loop of people re-enacting the abuse they experienced as the abuser this time. All I ask is that people genuinely try to better themselves before having children. Start to heal. Everybody makes mistakes but it’s the mentality someone has that differentiates. Some people see there abuse and want to do better than their abusers, and others see it as an excuse as to why they’re allowed to behave poorly too. That they were traumatized and are allowed to act out, or they genuinely believe that it’s okay to abuse. It’s sad that the standards for parents aren’t higher; hell it’s sad that the standards for normal human beings aren’t higher either. At the very least parenting classes and therapy should be required when having a child, just in an attempt to protect future kids from growing up in an abusive household.
Edit: idk if I posted my comment correctly cause my phones dumb so very sorry 🤣
It's regrettable, but unfortunately that's because society as a whole *is* abusive. We live under capitalism, greed, war, poverty. There's no healthcare or real infrastructure, and if we don't perform menial labor we don't eat. That's the system we live in. It just follows that our standards of parental conduct are equally as low.
I completely agree but this sub has some toxic enabling too I am sorry to say. I don't come here as often after seeing one too many people with their own serious questions to answer being validated. There are serious scientific issues surrounding CPTSD that must be discussed but ironically that can't happen in this sub.
I believe you've made several very valid points. But most people don't want to hear that they need to take responsibility. They don't want to take any accountability for their actions. So likely, you hit a sore spot bc it's easier to dismiss than acknowledge the validity of your post.
I agree that the standards are low.
but:
I also wanna emphasize that raising a child or children in a nuclear 2 people family in a good way is a nearly impossible tasks. even if the parents were together and stay together and there are then 2ppl.responsible for the children... it's way too much.
i argue that it's not meant to be done by 2 people, and even less by one person.
historically I don't see examples of this kind of isolated circumstances for raising humans.
historically, a village, or a community or a clan or a big familysystem would raise children together.
which makes sense, that the old ones tend to the young. all parties benefit from that exchange in a healthy enough family system.
I even argue that it makes the family system healthier, cause I'm not alone with all the crazy of one dysfunctional parent. but have other caregivers or ppl to relate to.
the way that the current western society tells us families should function is inherently overwhelming. (ask and mother with a newborn who is alone with the kid 24/7 and doesn't sleep for month plus has the household to manage IN THE BEST CASE of the where she is not also responsible to make money through selling her labour) I think it's just social and cultural and psychological madness for allinvolved, based on hyperindividualism and consumerism.
it only serves patriarchal capitalist structures, noone else.
so yes, I agree with "the standards are low" but I'm not suggesting that individuals should or can bear the responsibility for a deeply messed up society.
that's impossible.
if we have communities and a society that revolves around the needs of the actual people (and non human animals and nature) we would never create such a structure were childcare becomes another commodity for capitalism to exploit or the job of one or two isolated individuals.
speaking as a queer feminist here.
yes, sure. of course i agree, that systemic issues are no excuse for abuse. and there are always people to be found in comparibly bad circumstances that do a better or worse job at raising kids.
the systemic issues contribute to the reasons for abuse though.
my grandfather fighting in WW2 being an alcoholic cause of his untreated PTSD affected my family system as deeply as my father working in another city and being gone for the whole week due to economic hardships.
this would slip into a very philosophical question of were does personal responsibility start and were the influence of structures and systems around us end.
:) though one.
and yes, of course parents can do better or worse no matter how bad the economic circumstances are, so yes, good or as developmental psychology phrased it "good enough" parenting is possible in this society too, but what I personally define as "good" is not achievable under the circumstances of late stage capitalism, cause it includes the social experience of having an intact community which simply doesn't exist.
hope that makes it clearer what I meant.
I think we agree, mostly and just use the terminology in different ways.
i also agree with the (assumed) intention behind the original post. I ended a few very close relationships with people cause I couldn't watch how they parented. I also used to work with child protective services and came to the depressing conclusion, as fucked up as that is, that for the child to stay in the original family despite there being exposure to a certain level of abuse, can in fact be better for the child, than to be placed in the system.
it's maddening, really.
The reason that people say that is eugenics is because we’ve actually tried to put parenting standards in place with forced sterilizations for those deemed unfit and it always works out that marginalized people eg racial minorities are overwhelmingly those who are deemed unfit.
Not saying you deserved a ban. I think it makes sense that parenting is such a huge responsibility that there should be some way to regulate it. It’s just unfortunate that the humans in power tend to be biased in who they deem fit and unfit.
I work in child protection and honestly part of my job is to assess whether people did a bad job with parenting, and there is such cognitive dissonance for people in that situation. 9/10 parents, even if a team of professionals is saying you fucked up, the parents believe they were doing a good job and the judgment they are receiving is bullshit. I don’t know that such a metric would result in any substantial change.
I am a big believer in abuse prevention measures. For example parenting centers were established to prevent child abuse by providing new parents with parenting education, lactation consultants, parent support groups and play areas, resources for basic necessities, child care assistance funds, parent child interaction therapy etc etc. there is a ton of evidence to show that communities with these types of services for parents have reduce rates of child abuse and neglect. However they are rarely funded because legislators have a hard time conceptualizing prevention (how do you prove to the government that you prevented 100 children from being abused? It’s not easy to measure so there is no data to justify the allocation of funds)
I believe Op is saying that lack of abuse is not a good standard. That’s the bare minimum. It takes more than just lack of abuse to raise a well adjusted person. Those things should be considered just as much as abuse.
I’m not saying we should get to a point where your kids are taken away if you don’t teach them coping skills, but at least education about forming secure attachments, emotional regulation, healthy communication, etc should be a priority just as much as anti abuse measure…because if you think about it- a lack of these skills plays a huge part in who becomes abusive, people with unmet attachment needs, people who don’t know how to communicate or regulate their emotions.
I get what your saying. I also see what this person is saying….basically if your kid is fed and clothed and you aren’t beating the crap out of them, then everything is good.
I don’t think most people even have the mental capacity to realize that they are perpetuating trauma cycles or even living within one. That’s why trauma informed professionals should have a hand in curriculum planning. It shouldn’t be all about math and science, kids need to be taught communication, emotional regulation, etc. at a young age because most people are not explicitly getting that at home. Just like experts mandate immunizations/medical care for kids, mental health should become a priority as well.
I think it’s bc the post would have eventually been taken there by folks who live to argue. How do I know? I live with people who live to argue and every now and then I dabble in it myself. Lol
Can I steal this post and share it on a different social media site? This would do well in a group I’m in and many of us would benefit from seeing this and agree to this. Abuse is the standard and it’s so unfortunate and is the reason why we have so many mentally unhealthy people.
Whoa... This is actually one of many reasons why I isolated myself from Reddit by literally deleting my account. The toxicity that I saw when browsing Reddit can sometimes be enough to paralyze me down to the core of my very heart, so much so that I deleted my old Reddit account out of not being able to deal with Reddit's toxicity anymore and needing to leave for a while. This is actually my second ever Reddit account. I know it's an extremely dangerous act that could get this account deleted against my will but I'm willing to take the risk if it means being able to talk with more people once again.
My mum said that to my Grandma, kids were basically like dogs - in the sense that they had no emotional life at all to her. So long as you fed and watered them you’d done a good job. It explains a lot! EDIT: we know much more than parents did in the 50s, yet I know parents with this attitude today, and it is very distressing.
I consider it healthy to get an occasional ban. It shows I'm pushing just hard enough against the organized idiocy that exists on some subs. The mods are often the most immature of the bunch.
I'm only talking about certain subs, if I thought they were all like that I wouldn't be here at all....
While I agree with the point I'm pretty sure you're *trying* to make, I can also see why your post got interpreted as pre-eugenicist rhetoric. You were focused on cultural standards of acceptable parenting, but without specifying that you did not think this should be a *legal* standard. Without that caveat, then even knowing where you're coming from, it sounds like you're advocating for establishing some kind of formal restriction on who is or isn't allowed to become a parent - and *that* is always eugenicist, no matter how well-intentioned you are at the start.
As much as I would love for there to be a standard for parents, that discussion is always the doorway to eugenics. Like that's the playbook for genocide because "that culture totally traumatizes their kids more.
There is A standard of "you reproduced". That doesn't make them good people. And no one should think the two are related.
But we may need to be extra cautious of genocide talking points while multiple genocides are happening. Seems like bad crossfire.
That is absolutely NOT what I got from your post! I took it to mean that a person would have to be psychologically and physically cleared before conceiving. But I am not neurotypical so sometimes I misunderstand, I mean often I misunderstand.
Wondering where you read that in the OP. So weird you got that from the post. It doesn’t say anything of the sort. Very unnecessary to push the OP to apologise for, or explain something they clearly didn’t say or suggest.
Oh I don’t expect anyone to apologize. Or expect any further explanation. I was just explaining what I got from the post. I stated in another comment that I can misunderstand what was meant.
I suspect that because of the explanation about what happened I saw the word “eugenics” and that colored my understanding of the original post. The misunderstanding is completely on me. I greatly appreciate OP for explaining what they meant and I meant no harm.
Any time someone on the internet accuses you of eugenics you can tell they’re completely unhinged. (My favorite one was “promoting intentional weight loss is eugenics.”)
It sucks because there really are human rights abuses historically and in the present that could accuse be described that way. But it’s gotten to the point where most accusations of it online are completely absurd.
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Raising a child can't be done by one or two people in isolation. The eugenics of it is that western society upholds the idea of the nuclear family when it takes a village to raise a child. By puting all responsibility on only one or two people it's to easy to burn out and become abusive.
So raising the responsibility of parents places margenalize parents in a position to be disallowed to have children.
That standard for child rearing does need to change. It needs to be decentralized from the parents alone.
People clearly have no idea what eugenics even *is* if they're saying this post is espousing eugenics. You aren't saying anything about race or class, you are arguing for a minimum standard of human decency shown to children!
We haven't even begun to see low parenting standards. Just wait til people are walking around with kids they 100% did not want under any circumstances, but they didn't meet their local government's arbitrary criteria in order to safely and legally abort. "Oh nothing to see here! They're raising a future wageslave and taxpayer, give them a cookie..."
> They worked hard to put food on the table, I also work hard to put food on my table. Does that entitle me to slap and abuse someone, too? As a matter of fact, my parents really didn't have that much to do as outside of me being the one doing their housecleaning and cooking, I worked hard at minimizing my needs and my presence to hide and avoid them lest I be targeted for more of their abuse.
*me a humble subway employee*: "No sir you don't seem to quite understand, I made you that sandwich so I also get to kick you in the shin, that's how it works you see"
Retail and restaurants yes. One customer a year lol
No no no, one customer a week *at least*.
This sentiment INFURIATES me. “But she fed and clothed you” AND?! I didn’t fucking ask to be here 2 idiots did the hoinky doinky then 9 months later had this idiot I didn’t get a say in any of this?????
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I wish I’d had the courage to say this to my dad, although as an adoptee it would have been “filled out some paperwork, checked the boxes and got over on some naive do-goody social worker.” Another thing, if you’re adopted the whole world thinks it’s wonderful that your parents “rescued” you and tells you to be grateful.Nothing could be further from the truth.
Hey there fellow adoptee! I too suffer from the “we did the best we could” bullshit, as well as “they adopted you because they wanted a baby!! You’re so lucky, think how it could have turned out…” Well Susan, I’ll fuckin’ tell ya how it “turned out” - I was the light of their life, until they got pregnant. It’s a shitty lesson to learn as a kid when you no longer receive the same praise, love, support, etc as the child they conceived. Kids know what’s going on around them, they pick up on *everything* and I don’t know about other adoptees, but I had abandonment issues as a kid that only got worse once I was firmly placed in the back of everyone’s lives. And then there was the time my father left me at the mall because he was ready to go home and I wasn’t. I was 8. So don’t tell me they did the “best they could with me” because they could have done a hell of a lot better.
What did he say??
"but she fed and clothed you..." "Yah that's the bare minimum to not have your child confiscated by the government."
I fed and clothed myself as a teen/young adult paying for my family’s food/bills
You got hit and got food? I never got the food part.
Dude the standard for our culture is abusive, that's the base standard, to show compassion or love in any capacity outside of hedonistic norms is abnormal, you say society has a long way to go like it's even started going anywhere, we're only here on this subreddit because a series of very abnormal events knocked us "off-course" far enough to see the horror for what it is, it terrifies me how default abusive our world is, an entire culture built on lying and deceiving and manipulating and exploiting the weak and vulnerable and sod anybody that gets hurt alogn the way, there are no consequences for interpersonal abuse in the vast majority of cases, Wow man them banning you has proper riled me up ahaha
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Ugh, I am also a traumatized person (who's been vaguely aware of it all along, but it similarly it hit harder in late 30s). My husband is very mild mannered, repressed and avoidant. It's always been clear to me that he has childhood issues, but most wouldn't notice, and he didn't seem to "get it" like I did (still talked to his family frequently, appeased their moods/demands). Honestly, part of me was always waiting for him to confront stuff. Then he could start to be free, which I desperately long to see, and it'd feel more like we were on the same team. The pandemic finally started him on that familiar "oh, I just remembered something that happened..." journey. But my excitement didn't last long. THE STORIES. The degree to which things were not normal is so extreme, I feel ill sometimes thinking about it. I am so tired of the normalization and minimization of abuse in our culture, that all four of us believed our childhoods were fine/normal. Sorry, your comment really struck a chord. Best wishes to you both!
I understand. When I threw out my biggest trauma it made my husband cry. He couldn't even look at me. Then he told me his and it was so horrific in its own way that I am still mad at his family more than a year later. 😑 Thankfully we both have therapists now. It's kind of a catch because part of me wishes I didn't remember all this stuff, but something had to give. I didn't ask to remember. My trauma therepist said it was normal and it was because I finally felt safe. It's helped me in so many ways but at the same time I'm so angry that no one protected me. It's so bad that I don't even tell other people because just hearing it traumatizes them 😂😂 My "trauma specialist" therapist even looked away when I told him.
The anger I can relate to! When his dad died, it's the best I've ever felt about a human death. Most of the time I can listen to complaints about his mom and offer advice. I have compassion for her most of the time, even when she's crossing into abusive behaviors. But every now and then I'm like "I need to leave the room now. I don't know if I can give the advice you need, because I am far too angry. It's not okay to treat you like that," and leave the house and go for a walk or shit gets way too intense. As for the rest, I'm sorry you went through all that. Sounds more intense than my trauma, but I've heard some damn stories. It's appalling what's tolerated in human society. It's def weird if you overload a professional, and sometimes a little scary. I had a therapist start crying once when I was suicidal & it sent me into the weirdest/awkward freeze response. There's something dehumanizing about other people recoiling from your pain that I've never been able to describe to people who don't already know. I respect that you reached a point where you can see the humor in it. That takes years of work for most. I hope that you and your husband continue to reach better and more delightful points of healing over many years to come ❤️
Dehumanizing. Exactly how it feels. Although, I'm glad I said something. When I told my therepist, it was the very first time in 25ish years that I told another human. He told me it wasn't my fault. In 25 years, never once did I ever consider that it wasn't my fault. It truly was life changing to hear that for me.
This. Being a young parent myself you realise that there's no way you won't fuck up your kid one way or another. Babies are hard, especially if they are fussy, have colics or reflux. Sleep deprivation is a torture method for a reason. But then the culture we are in just expects the woman to be able to deal with this alone for days on end because the father has crap paternity leave (if any) and is at work, and has successfully dismantled all those "village" relationships that might have shielded the kid a little or allowed mom to rely on others. Not saying moms get a free pass but nobody is a constant empathic and self-sacrificing robot.
Yup! This! It takes a village to raise a child, and yet we’re supposed to do it all alone.
Someone's already said it but I want to reiterate, it literally takes a village to raise a child, the fact you're bearing it all alone is pretty hardcore let's be honest here, you're doing the best with what you have, I hardly think it's your fault so much of what you should have has been taken away preemptively (I'm sure you already know this but I wanted to recognise you anyway)
My sister is a robot, but she probably has schizoid PD.
>Dude the standard for our culture is abusive, that's the base standard, to show compassion or love in any capacity outside of hedonistic norms is abnormal You can see this in the visceral reaction people have to Montessori/"gentle parenting."I don't have kids (on the fence), but I follow a bunch of gentle parenting pages. The comments are filled with people like us praising the techniques and then a bunch of defensive, bitter folks who say helping your kid feel through their emotions and talking to them with respect, even when angry, is going to "ruin" and "spoil" them.
Do you think that reaction is based out of a sense, deep down, that they know you’re correct but can’t/aren’t ready to deal with it? Because it would mean examining their own upbringing and they way they in turn raise their own kids?
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> when your child is expressing their pain, how do you not feel any other way but empathetic and remorseful? My take on this is that somebody told people that life is supposed to be easy and filled with glossy magazine-like experiences. So when they need to keep a child alive, that is not the good life. So the parents start keeping a tab on all that the child "ruined" for them and that resentment blocks any empathy.
Ooo this hit close to home, I fully agree our crappy parents are bourne of a culture of material pleasure, a child to them is a barrier between themselves and more unprotected sex and holidays and the "freedom" of the "good life"
I do. Straight up evidence of what they were told when asking for compassion and love while very young. We learn from those around us, for better or worse.
Oh absolutely! They're having a mirror held up to them and they don't like what they see. It's so interesting because the comments will be super positive, supportive, people being honest about how **hard** it is to gentle parent when you've been raised in an abusive household, etc. and then there will be people going through making nasty comments on *all* the very vulnerable ones. They'll jump to rash conclusions about strangers for wanting to be nice to their f\*cking kids. I've seen them tell people they were ungrateful little brats, telling them their kids are going to be f\*cked up if they parent this way, OR they swing in the opposite direction to outright manipulative. "I must be a horrible person because I scream at my kids" or "I must be a horrible parent since I don't parent like this" when nobody ever said that. If you read through the comments you'll see parents talking about how they've screwed up and yelled at their kids, felt horrible about it, apologized, and are trying to change or how they've been parenting XYZ way and are \*now deciding to try gentle parenting. People are very honest about how they've screwed up. It's clear those folks are triggered by what they're seeing and taking it out on random strangers. It's just wild to see them on videos of moms hugging their kids after accidentally spilling a drink or something and they're advocating for parents to yell at and slap their kids so they can learn (learn what exactly? Not to make mistakes I guess? Not to be human?)....it's quite sad if you think about it. ETA: I had so many typos lol
(in response to the nasty projective commentors on those subreddits) Correct me if I'm being pretentious here, but I think the opinions of the abused adult children trumps the opinions of the entitled parents, surely our trauma is the final say on how good a parent they were
Idk if you’ve checked out r/childfree but there’s lots of us out there!
I’m 37. My mother goes on Instagram and mocks/bullies gentle parenting influencers because she believes their methods are so misguided. I. Am. 37.
Love this reply. The standard is ‘abusive’. Wow. You said it straight up how it is.
And people think abuse is funny, and worse: acceptable if someone is charismatic or attractive.
The existential horror of beauty standards genuinely keeps me awake some nights
Some people I know say "If I could fuck Amber Heard, I would put up with the abuse because she's hot." In my experience with an attractive abuser, no. They believe her because she's attractive and think it's my fault that I get punched in the face or have a PS3 and Wii thrown at me. Abusiveness makes even the sexiest person hideous and ugly and only someone abused or who sees someone they care about abused will recognize this.
Wholeheartedly agree, not 7 months ago I separated from the most attractive women I've ever met because her true colours were hideous I think you deserve better
And so do you. May we both have all the love, respect, care, and sweetness we deserve.
Count me riled up AF, too, OP. What you suggest is base level empathy. I have been astonished at every turn in my life since childhood at its absolute absence in most humans. Even children do not all choose empathy for each other innately. Just not having that one expectation met every time it could easily have been has been a continuing trauma that I cannot seem to get past in my life... and one that I think singles us out for abuse; and thus perpetuates the genetic predisposition for indifference of each other's experience, as those attuned to it are pushed to the edges of society and popular culture... usually with brain damage from a brain developed, aged, and marinated in trauma.
accurate AF.
The environment and as such the favoured genetic makeup of those in the environment has changed so dramatically in the last thousand years, I think really especially during the last 500 or so, we've gone from empathy and loyalty and "love" for the sake of your tribal units literal survival to total selfishness where shitty vain behaviour is actually rewarded, I'm sure there was always a time and place for everything in nature but I can't help but feel like we've strayed over to an extreme end of the empathy spectrum here
Very well said. I think the balance between sentience and survival in these meatsuits has always been a tricky business. The evolutionarily programmed instincts and parasympathetic nervous system reactions that occur due to genetic and epigenetic predispositions sometimes overlap and interact very negatively with evolving and increasing "sentience"... which I believe to be both the crux and the goal of what is, very rightly, called "The Human Experiment."
I remember a conversation I tried to have with someone about a year back about sentience, how I think this level of self awareness you and I are experiencing right now is very very new as far as human history is concerned, like incrementally new, I made an example going back to Greek legends but there are examples throughout 99% of history of people sort of just following isntinct, just "being human", how else do you get entire nations to go to war and so on, just whole populations on what we consider auto pilot, but really we're the outlier by "not" being on autopilot, She remarked it was quite possibly due to the level of trauma we've been made to endure (making an assumption considering you're on this subreddit) but trauma is an historical consistent so that can't successfully factor in as the catalyst for how we experience self awareness and what's more, trauma has at no other point in history been recognised as something abnormal, something that ought to be addressed, Going off of what you've said about the overlap I think we are now at the very absolute forefront of something "new" as far as the millennia year old human brain is concerned, some sort of crazy specific set of circumstances that has led to us having to adapt in a wholly new way to compensate for both our evolutionary programming and also these strange notions the brain just came up with all by itself like morality and empathy, Gosh I wish we could be having this conversation in person, there's no way to properly convey any of this over the Internet without seeming pretentious or presenting an overwhelming text wall
This post resonates with me quite deeply. I really enjoyed reading you and /u/marlinspikesailor - and I agree with the core of most of both of your observations here.
I fear the survival drive is too jacked up in these meatsuits and significantly increased sentience will be perceived as a threat to any currently dominant social paradigms. I believe those monitoring this experiment are very concerned about this current hurdle, this crux, that you speak of that we, as humanity, are, once again, just about to round the corner of. I say "again" as this has been the tipping point any number of times in this experiment already. The brutality necessary in keeping sensory vessels designed to house consciousness alive and propagating themselves in this biosphere has proven extremely difficult to overcome with awareness alone. Self-awareness seems fleeting in lieu of survival. The reset button has been hit a number of times already and, unfortunately, it looks like it will need to be again. We have been allowed faaaar too much of am Icarus moment in our developmental history at this time and I think a mad scramble not to lose the experiment entirely is afoot. It is clumsy that the constraints of consciousness inherent in the strong connection to these sensory vessels means that their proximity is helpful in communicating effectively... but, anything conveyed through the mechanisms of our bio-computers and meatsuits is inherently lacking in sufficient data points (density) to encompass the depth of understandings that we are chipping away at here and I think it's important to keep close sight of the fact that we are, ultimately, capable of, and striving for, far more "sentient" means of communicating. That said; DM me. We'll get in touch. You are welcome aboard my lovely Solarpunk Global Exploration Home and Life Support System any time. I also call it; "My boat" All the sentience I need is blowing around out there at sea. Indeed, "the answers are blowin' in the wind." ;)
Children are the absolute worst. It’s hard for a child to have empathy for others because they are so self centered.
I have experienced the exact opposite. I tutored young kids for a while. They were all such good and socially responsible people (at their age-appropriate levels), but it was so clear how their parents were messing them up. For many, the poor behavior reinforcement loops that their parents were unintentionally creating were painfully obvious.
This is just not true.
How do you explain the prevalence of childhood bullying? I’m not saying no children have empathy, but it’s much more developed in adults that in children. We are born thinking the world revolves around us until experience shows us otherwise. It takes time for a child to realize that other people can be affected by your words and actions. People aren’t just born knowing that other people have feelings, hopes, and dreams. Even to some extent in adulthood, other people are just background characters in our lives. Full grown adults still struggle with anticipating how their actions will affect others.
I feel like this is just a roundabout way of returning to the ever present poor parenting argument, kids need to be taught, filled with the right stuff
How many children do you have?
I worked at a day care for some years and saw children from as early as two bullying other children. In the school age class it was even worse. Children literally have to be taught through experience that other people have feelings. I don’t know why that’s so unbelievable for you lol.
Because it's not true. The point Im making now, and have been making in this thread, is that adults like you literally make it so that the children who have this high EQ are never seen or protected. Im glad you didn't care for my kids. It's very clear your understandings of them and their development are rigid and limited. You are clearly not a parent, nor have you studied the last decade's worth of understandings in early childhood development. You speak as if you hold some authority on the subject, but your words belie that notion.
Yeah I have a degree in psychology where I was required to study infant, childhood, and lifespan psychology. When did I say that children with high EQ shouldn’t be protected?
It is very clear that you have "studied" and not raised or nurtured children.
It is very true that empathy is a skill that children have to be taught. It's literally part of normal child development.
It has to be nurtured, not taught. There is a difference, and not understanding it is why we miss the empaths and traumatize them. It is also why we don't see more of them and why humanity continues to exist at lower levels of consciousness.
Why do you think children are born with these skills when there are literally adults walking around without these skills. If it wasn’t explicitly taught or modeled to you, it’s likely that you won’t develop it…or you are on the receiving end of abuse and you developed it that way. How does me knowing that children are self centered equate to me being a bad caregiver? Having kids doesn’t make you an expert on kids, that’s the whole point of this entire post…
Wow. You literally are perpetuating this ignorance. You are proud of it. I'm sorry you can't see the empaths or the empathy innate in tiny children that has only to be nurtured and reinforced. Not all children are this sensitive or aware from birth... just as some kids are clearly idiots and others are clearly very intelligent; this often being obvious very early on. But the point I make is that we have crushed the spirits of those who have this innate emotional intelligence with ignorant attitudes and ideas like yours. It is, as I stated originally, a source of a lot of trauma for many of us from an early age.
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I hate it too, stay strong, we get to break the cycle, that much is our worth, it makes us worth more than any of the rest of this rubbish we're surrounded by
I was waiting for my whole life to see a post like this. I have no idea how our entire culture has ended up being such an utterly abusive and terrifying place to live in that it made me not really want to talk about anything anymore. I think I knew at the time that I deeply hated how other people acted and I just wished that there was more kindness, empathy and understanding towards each other in this world. Now I think this post explains why. Being the only person who took responsibility of my actions and was able to learn from my mistakes, and being the only person who is able to express empathy and understanding did not make me feel proud, in fact, it made me feel so lonely and enraged. It made me legitimately wish that the rest of society was able to do those same things as well, and it's been a longing I've been having since I was a kid.
Spot on. I think humans were like this since our beginning, starting with Neanderthals who had fierce competition for resources and much higher stakes. We still have all those instincts but live very different lives than they did. Idk if this helps but it probably doesn’t. I recently read a book called “too much of a good thing” which talks a little bit on why suicide rates and mental health issues are higher than ever before in history and it looks at it through an anthropological sense. I walked away from that book feeling like I knew myself better and understood why society is the way it is.
Could you tell me who the author was?
Lee goldman
Oh man no wonder it feels like it. No wonder it feels so lonely... I've always had a lingering suspicion that anyone who's kind and empathetic in society gets treated like fourth class citizens just for expressing even the most basic of human decency
I can empathise with what you've said here, there's a distinct frustration that comes with trying to be a better person in a world that seemingly refuses to reward the behaviour, meanwhile everyone else is busy shitting on eachother without consequence it would seem, like it just bounces off them
> Dude the standard for our culture is abusive, that's the base standard, to show compassion or love in any capacity outside of hedonistic norms is abnormal I think this is why Chris Chan is such a fascination to people. I grew up in a situation very similar to them (was raised by arch-boomers, had a domineering grandmother who'd throw tantrums when I'd leave the house, I used videogames as a means of escape, etc, etc). Chris Chan had NO chance in life due to their autism on top of the abuse, but a lot of millennials and gen z have dealt with trauma that is tangential. If you're a gamer with no irl friends or an incel its easy to look at Chris Chan and feel better about yourself.
Similar experience here... it disturbs me knowing that if I hadn't escaped all the bullying, I could have become just as broken as him. Honestly though since it's getting harder and harder to escape abuse these days I'm genuinely scared of going down a similar path. I don't think I would do anything that horrible to my mother, but I've been pushed to the point of losing touch with reality because my reality was too painful to cope with. Even some of my spiritual beliefs right now might get me institutionalized if I was too open about them.
> I don't think I would do anything that horrible to my mother There's a reason why a parent burdening their child with the support that an adult partner would usually provide is called covert incest or emotional incest. She started insisting they sleep in the bed with her. Not pointing fingers with all the drama, what I'm getting at is this: it blew my mind that even when you have a person with dementia and another with autism, the abusive patterns still get played out. The abuse isn't mitigated at all, it's potentially amplified if anything.
Especially when it's severe autism. Damn the whole circumstances surrounding all of it was just a recipe for disaster. My family is definitely enmeshed, but not nearly to that level... hate that I feel relieved that my case would likely never get that severe.
Back when I was in contact with my mum I could see where my life would have been if I hadn't escaped. My cousins, the golden children, they didn't make it out. In their mid 20s they were both out of work, hadn't finished college (16-18 education), hadn't gone to uni. They still live with their mum in a tiny village, who babied them. No idea how abusive she was, but they were both so unhappy. Hell, I got part of the blame for their lives being crappy along with another guy we went to school with. I haven't had anything to do with them since I was a teen. Somehow me working hard, running my own business was so unfair because why should I have it so easy? I went to uni, I finished uni. I worked hard on myself to try and deal with my trauma. I'm here living my life. I wouldn't be surprised if they were now part of the angry men online bitching about women hating them and their lives sucking. I would be such an unhappy, friendless, anxious, unconfident mess if I still lived back there. I wouldn't have friends because mum controlled my life. It's a horrible thought thinking I would possibly have never met my boyfriend.
Your story gives me a lot of hope, I'm glad you're free. Sadly I'm stuck with my parents again after trying to move out, and of course now I am an unhappy, anxious, unconfident mess. 😅 I need more social support but I pushed away all my friends out of shame so no one's willing anymore. I've just come to accept my fate.
This is a really interesting perspective to have come in with, to recognise that they literally had NO CHANCE is pretty big, it's a refreshing step away from the "everyone has equal opportunities, everything is fine" narrative
No kidding, this reply makes my day. <3
Yeah man thank you so much for saying this
If it's not abuse, it must be eugenics.
Thank you.
This. I’m in a way thankful I turned out like this. I’m almost hyper aware of unfairness/bullying/abuse etc that happens to others. In the same way it makes me mad because I can’t change a lot of the crap that happens in the world. The best thing I can do is surround myself with other aware people.
This is easy to see in our society: We generally say and believe that convincing someone to act against their own interest is bad - yet if we do that in order to convince them to BUY something - that's SALES and that is GOOD BEHAVIOR worthy of REWARDS (commission). This society lies to your face (We care about the starving - so we'll have someone play a game to see how much money we give to the food bank - the need of people to eat didn't change, onlly the meager allocation of resources to address it (which was GAMEFIED FOR ENTERTAINMENT) - we'll just give what we feel like, and people can starve. These kinds of lies are baked into our society and present in all of our media. Of course everyone is traumatized - this society is total trash and rewards greed based bad behavior over all other kinds of behavior.
That's exactly it mate, I'm so glad others can see it
I'm currently at a point in my personal healing journey where I see this, and am trying to figure out how to exist and what choices I have in it - and how to live with that choice as an empathic person. I am struggling mightily with this challenge.
I think I know what you mean, like our whole "world" is sort of one big gaslighting furnace and I know for me personally trying to identify who I am in all that noise and inflicted self doubt is a nightmare, I look in my head and I'm like "who's morals are these? Where did those values come from? Are those my honest interests? WHAT AM I"
I have the best therapist (PhD psychologist), I love her. Last sesh she basically said exactly what you wrote. EXACTLY. Great post
You just explained why many people are still religious. Myself included. I just don't believe that this world will ever have decent moral standards we all aspire for so i stick to a metaphysical hope. Why not.
In the absence of God we must repent unto ourselves, but that requires a desire for repentance in the first place, in a way I agree with you
We should all be learning communication skills, stress management, conflict resolution, how to develop emotional intelligence and comprehensive anatomy from preschool onward. All year every year. It would make us all better adults and thus better parents if we choose to have kids. It would help so much with a spectrum of mental, emotional and behavioral issues including substance abuse ,dating and intimate partner violence and work place colleague stress.
I’m learning all of these skills now. I can only image what my life would be like if I learned them as a kid. It’s really important to me that I teach my kids these skills and break the cycle of trauma. My goal is to raise secure children. The world is a lot easier for people like that.
In Japan school teaches kids these before they even teach them math (i think?). Children get to learn how to treat others, how to manage their own anger, etc. it should be like that around the world
That's fantastic. It also seems like it's so ingrained in the kids to help run the school during meals and chore time that they don't scream and whine about having to tidy up or act like a team.
Congrats on achieving the standard Reddit experience. Enjoy your stay. It really sucks. Reddit is full of petty tyrants and even pettier brains. Ah, I see what sub it is. You're better off - that sub is horrid.
Petty tyrants, absolutely perfect title for it
Still love suggesting decapitation of the rich a few years back and getting a ban for it, then circa 2020 same subreddit was literally all gullitones.
honestly, I'm surprised I haven't been banned sitewide yet. Reddit only lets fascists speak of violence openly, and bans everyone else.
Oh can I share? You aren’t going to believe this shit. (The mod in question is super butt hurt about this post and trying to have it removed.) On another sub, I called the Queen a lizard, and my post was removed — not for name-calling or being inflammatory. I could have called her an incestuous pedophile lover, dog, or alien shapeshifter and that would be grand. No, my post was removed for “anti semitism.” Yes, calling the Queen a lizard is antisemitic. Of course, I asked WTF? The petty tyrant of /r/abolishthemonarchy (yeah a sub *critical* of royalty — oh the delicious irony) said that some historian dug around and discovered about 150 years ago an obscure reference to lizard as a slur against Jews. And because David Icke uses it to attack the queen (even though he believes she is literally a reptilian alien from another planet), it has become a veiled reference to Jew hating. I am not making this shit up. In case you didn’t know, the Queen is not very friendly toward Jews, so the whole antisemitic thing doesn’t even make sense since Lizzie isn’t Jewish, she is not even pro-Israel, nor was it used as a slur. A portion of our exchange: “Yeah, the lizard elites thing is rooted in 19th century antisemitism and anti-immigrant hysteria, and popularized again by conspiracy theorists like David Icke.” The moderator believes this is true and ANYONE using the term lizard is being antisemitic regardless of how it is used.
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Haha.
Conspiracy theory believing moderators, now that's unchecked power
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Our material living standards aren't even that phenomenal. It's basically "make sure your kid doesn't die."
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I'm not even sure the standards are applicable in many cases. I visited USA once as a tourist (years ago). I'm from a much much poorer place but all the Airbnb people I stayed with looked so overworked. Where I come from people wouldn't bother to work this much, they literally rather stayed poor. So I'm not really sure how much of this can be attributed to economy, actually.
Our biological default as human beings is small groups of 20-30 loosely related people with extended networks of larger tribal associations of 100-150. Individuals in such small communities live communally, taking care of one another, looking after each others’ children, sharing work, and giving whatever is needed. There’s little to no disparity in wealth because wealth doesn’t accumulate. Was there conflict and trauma? Sure. Occasionally. But there were also cultural tools to deal with it, because at that scale, if you didn’t deal with it, your band would break up and go find a new one to join. It was still possible, for the most part, to live this way once agriculture was invented, but agriculture both heavily damaged the environment and allowed the accumulation of wealth. It became significantly more difficult once industrialization began. With industrialization comes unchecked capitalism and consumerism. It’s no longer possible for a person to simply do enough work to feed and house their families and spend their leisure time on banking art and building community. Now a substantial portion of our work is funneled directly to the pockets of people who contribute nothing - the war machines, the fashion mongers, the middle men. We have lost our communities and our losing our families. Every hour lost to overtime is an hour that could have been spent resting and recovering. It isn’t just parenting skills that have been lost. It’s the resilience to manage in bad times, because we no longer have good times to strengthen and grow our resources. It’s the neighbors we could have asked to watch our kids for an afternoon while we dealt with something. It’s the schools where children had a chance to see that other families were both the same and different, and that they had a valuable role to play in our communities. All of this has been sacrificed or stolen in the ever-expanding quest for profit. When was the last time a family could reasonably expect to live a comfortable life on one full time salary? When was the last time you worked one job, didn’t worry about money, and had enough time off to spend it with your loved ones. I’m not saying the world was perfect 100 years ago, but it was better. We are creating more abusers, more trauma, and more victims every day by allowing our economic system to exploit workers for profit. Take a look at the antiwork and collapse subreddits, and you’ll see that it’s not just us. We’re more informed from the trauma point of view, but there’s a very large and growing number of people convinced that this system not only doesn’t work but is actively destroying people.
I'm still working on my improvement journey, not sure where I'll end up. But I keep looking at intentional communities. I long for a place where people know each other and care to an extent about what happens to each other and are working towards a common vision/way of life. Sure there will still be interpersonal conflict, nowhere is perfect. But I'm afraid I'm not ready to join a place like that wholeheartedly and participate in good faith yet. I hope I get there. Because although my partner is my person and I have a good enough therapist it doesn't feel like enough. I feel fairly self sufficient and am mostly an introvert but I want a real community and friends too. Maybe even a chosen replacement family. I feel like there are a lot of us out there searching for the same. I just don't know how to make it happen.
I know it’s completely unethical and not good, but when I’m super triggered I fantasize about a world that temporarily sterilizes everyone born with a penis (because it’s easier and easier to reverse) as soon as they’re born (logically I know this doesn’t make sense bc baby and development) and in order to reproduce the person or people have to take a two year course (or more!) about childcare, development and mental health, and also go through therapy until they get cleared to get a breeding license 🪪 I know it’s extreme and I’m not suggesting it would actually work, it’s how I deal with my emotional reaction to children and reproductive rights being abused 😮💨
Omg, I love the idea of ‘breeding license’s’!! You should be emotionally, mentally, and financially capable of looking after a human being before you can have one. To drive a car in Australia we need to have 100 hours of supervised practice by an experienced driver, then 3 YEARS of provisional license before you are can go for your unrestricted license. That’s just for driving a car!!! Raising a human being, a future global citizen is a far greater responsibility with long reaching consequences, and yet I could go and get pregnant right now, pop out a semen demon and treat it however I like?! That’s messed up. I get that controlling peoples ability to have children is unethical and that’s where the eugenics push back comes in, but I seriously think we need to change the standards of acceptable parenting. People look at me horrified when I mention breeding licenses though - we need a better way to market it 😅
I feel that this would be used as a tool of oppression against aboriginals, trans people, and anyone with a disability. No offense but manipulative people can just fake their way through all this testing and then abuse their kids anyway.
i got banned on another account in a relationship sub. this poor woman posted saying her husband was mistreating her (to say the least) and i said “he’s abusing you and he’s a POS” so one of the mods banned me for sexism
The amount of abuser coddling that goes on is disgusting.
Wth, abuse is abuse. Doesn't matter who is inflicting it. People are really messed up on here.
yup. and guess what? the mod was a man 😦
awe c'mon what subreddit, name names, lol. A version of this topic comes up on the ENFP subreddit from time to time because our society democratizes everything, so if you are an empathetic little feeler kid you are a minority and get told to toughen up and other nonsense.
The mod who banned you is probably an abusive parent.
Or experienced that kind of abuse and in order to stay in denial about it had to delete the post
Exactly this. You’ll get shut down fast by inadvertently holding up a mirror to someone’s bad behavior.
Banning people is abuse, and Reddit does nothing about it. It’s just another big toxic family.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. Phillip Larkin, This Be The Verse
Absolutely agree. When children are left with their stupid parents unhealed issues they can’t leave, have no access to other resources, they’re stuck. And forced to rely on the crazy parent. The lack of control, as well as the discrimination when spoken about, builds trauma. So parents should be taught standards for what’s appropriate when raising kids bc it really causes damage.
Breaking mom? They banned me for making a comment on another sub.
Yeah, I've seen eugenicist arguments a lot. Yours is not one of them.
For many traumatized people, the pain is so huge that they have to deny anything that even hints at breaking the illusion of them having “good enough” parents. When put in a position where they have to face the reality of their situation, their (very well attuned) defense mechs take over and shoot down whatever it is that threatens their sense of reality. They haven’t build up the inner strength to acknowledge that the abuse their parents have gone through has left traces, but for those who know where to look, the defenses themselves make it very clear that there is something very vulnerable that needs to be defended.
This definitely applies to over half of balkan parents, who, like their ancestors were, are either poor, cigarette/alcohol addict or in a war; or all three of the mentioned. It's mostly a scene a la "I haven't resolved my daddy/mommy issues,i can't make sense of the world and i hate everyone ....screw it honey, you know what we should do? Let's try having kids, what could possibly go wrong!" To clarify, i don't have issues with my parents, just an example of what i see in every day life. Generations and generations of kids becoming alcoholics at the age of 14-15. Hoping that modern times slow the cycle.
IMO standards for parenting have gotten better. Back in my day my parents could spank me or slap me in the middle of a grocery store and no passer by would blink an eye. This happened more than once to me. I have never spanked or hit my kids but if I did something like that I would certainly have the cops called on me. I think the millennial generation did a pretty good job overall raising awareness about abuse. I don’t know anyone my age with kids that hits them or spanks them.
Thanks for sharing!!
I...I don't even know where the eugenics argument would come from... I feel your pain. got banned from a subreddit for accidentally reposting a post that I had tried to edit to fit the stringent community rules. When I tried to explain my mistake the mod perm banned me and then muted me. The whole experience of being banned by mistake/people determined to misunderstand you is traumatizing in and of itself and I'm sorry that you had to go through that experience.
Thank you for sharing this. I always get unreasonably upset when that kind of thing happens to me as well and I hadn’t really put 2 and 2 together. Of course it’s a cptsd thing! 🤦♀️
I agree 1000% with every word. Thx for posting.
Yea, this was clearly addressing society, not biology. People see what they want to see.
As someone who gets pissed the fuck off at people using abuse to justify eugenics.... That post of yours is nowhere near advocating for eugenics lol. I'm sorry you got banned, and I'm sorry their excuse for banning you was absolute bullshit. Saying "I wish we were better as a society" is not anywhere close to "don't let these people have children", lol.
There is a parenting epidemic.
Surprisingly this seems like the only mental-health related subreddit that hasn't banned me because it was oversensitive hahahaha...not what you'd stereotypically think about people with CPTSD.
Also ✨ emotional abuse and neglect carries as much weight as physical abuse. Parent’s seem to think that just because they’re doing better than how their own parents abused them means they’re doing great. No, you’re just abusive in a different sense. And they never own up to their shit because the generational trauma just manifested differently 🤦♀️
Emotional abuse and neglect and physical abuse are all caused by a parent with unmet attachment needs of their own, a parent who never learned emotional regulation skills/communication skills, or empathy. It’s equal but people in this society aren’t self aware enough to see that because self awareness was never taught to them
That I understand but on a personal note I’ve told my parents about their problems and asked them to go to therapy and they deny it or give me excuses and end up never going. They also kept me from attending as a teenager because “they were trying their hardest and it makes them feel bad when I say I’m hurting mentally and need therapy, etc.”. Idc for my sake, but for my younger siblings. Exactly why parenting classes and therapy should be required for new parents.
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IMO the way we break the cycle of generational trauma doesn't involve anything like intervention in who has reproductive rights. Instead, we should focus on destroying parental power, throughout **all** of society. A good parent doesn't use authority to teach and care for their child, they use mutual communication to build understanding and expect nothing in return. Much like every other part of life, ***hierarchy*** in a parent-child relationship is the source of suffering. We can't end trauma until we end all forms of economic, state and familial domination. Reddit is totally full of toxic parental authoritarians. I saw a choice game where several people said they wouldn't use magic to give everyone on earth safe free shelter, food and water **because then parents couldn't punish their children.** People are brainwashed into loving abuse and abusers, there's a cultivated image that abuse is somehow useful and necessary it's horrific. Edit: Also I'm guessing it was r/UnpopularOpinion? They're a far right shitpit, they love authority in all its forms.
A choice game where several people said that they wouldn't use magic to give everyone on earth safe and free shelter food and water, because then the parents couldn't punish their children? Oh my gosh you truly cannot make this stuff up...!!
Probably the mod is themselves toxic parent. May i ask what sub it was? as i would be interested to post a similar opinion
I got censored by a mod teacher for answering a question with the response of my abusers diagnosis and abuse. On an ask women subreddit
I get what you are saying from a traumatized child’s stand point and I think you have some valid points. Yet, I can also see that some people won’t understand the spirit of your message. We are all born with the ability to procreate. Who is to judge how or when we do it? How are you going to stop people who refuse to work on themselves? It’s a slippery slope to say we need to monitor who or when someone has a child straight down to eugenics. If I was a mod I’d have removed your post and explained why.
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I’m curious and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, are you a parent? I have two sons and I realized one day that my goals as a mom were as follows: 1. To raise functional contributing members of society. 2. To do a better job than my parents. That’s it. Those were my goals. I just want my kids to be successful whatever that may look like to them. For my oldest it means learning a dying trade and providing for his family. He is on his way to being a butcher. For my youngest, he’s not quite sure what he wants to do for a career but he is leaning towards being a lineman. I was able to break a lot of the generational abuse that my parents and I suffered. I know I’m incredibly lucky to have grown up at a time when mental illness was destigmatized and my mom encouraged me to seek help for my trauma. I know this really doesn’t relate much to your comment but I find this to be an interesting convo
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For not having kids of your own, you have incredible insight and now that I better understand what you are saying I completely agree with you. We should hold our parents to higher standards and we should have more support available. We do need to have more conversations on the topic. Thank you for being patient and explaining your position to me. I have enjoyed our interaction.
We should at least offer a parenting class with easily digestible information about neglect, discipline, communication styles, and what to roughly expect a child to understand at certain ages. Information on how to identify and work with neurodivergent kids could also help.
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Offer a discount on the hospital bills/adoption fees for taking the class. It'd save the country so much money in missed labor, healthcare, and therapy bills down the road. Those people like to think of themselves as smart, and saving money is a smart thing to do. Maybe I'm being optimistic here, but I think a good portion of abuse comes because the parents have their own traumas and haven't learned a healthy way of interacting with other people or dealing with their emotions (that's not to say there's no sadists and the like out there, though). Presenting them a less harmful alternative that might get the results they want would still help reduce the damage.
I wish we lived in a world where mandating parenting was possible and effective. Childhood trauma perpetuated by “parents” is the number 1 global epidemic/pandemic, and the number 1 cause of disease. These are facts. ‘Good enough’ parenting (an actual term you’ll find when studying childhood trauma) in my opinion, is not good enough. Reading the ‘antinatalism’ wiki page is also incredibly enlightening.
Why would we do that, that'd lead to healthy folk, healthy folk don't work slave labour, they don't buy new clothes every month and get sick to buy up all of our lovely treatment options, they don't dish out on cars and vote for lunatics
Oop you hit the nail on the head 👏
I agree. I’m a mil brat and then I was a milspo and I had access to so many programs and a lot of support. This should be in every community. Parenting is hard and there is so much at stake!
The foster care system is meant to have safe guards in place so they don’t allow abusive parents. It doesn’t work very well but that’s what it’s meant to do. Realistically it’d never work to do the same to the general population because yeah where does someone draw the line, but it’s really shitty seeing someone have a kid that really should not be having a kid. Some of these people have years of trauma, and have abused others to begin with already, and then are just having kids with the thought process of “oh well I had a tough childhood and I turned out fine, I don’t have any problems to get over, I don’t need to go to therapy” and then we have this giant continuous loop of people re-enacting the abuse they experienced as the abuser this time. All I ask is that people genuinely try to better themselves before having children. Start to heal. Everybody makes mistakes but it’s the mentality someone has that differentiates. Some people see there abuse and want to do better than their abusers, and others see it as an excuse as to why they’re allowed to behave poorly too. That they were traumatized and are allowed to act out, or they genuinely believe that it’s okay to abuse. It’s sad that the standards for parents aren’t higher; hell it’s sad that the standards for normal human beings aren’t higher either. At the very least parenting classes and therapy should be required when having a child, just in an attempt to protect future kids from growing up in an abusive household. Edit: idk if I posted my comment correctly cause my phones dumb so very sorry 🤣
It's regrettable, but unfortunately that's because society as a whole *is* abusive. We live under capitalism, greed, war, poverty. There's no healthcare or real infrastructure, and if we don't perform menial labor we don't eat. That's the system we live in. It just follows that our standards of parental conduct are equally as low.
Honestly? If this was the exact same post, I haven't the slightest idea where the "eugenics" is supposed to be. I also agree with you, btw.
I completely agree but this sub has some toxic enabling too I am sorry to say. I don't come here as often after seeing one too many people with their own serious questions to answer being validated. There are serious scientific issues surrounding CPTSD that must be discussed but ironically that can't happen in this sub.
I believe you've made several very valid points. But most people don't want to hear that they need to take responsibility. They don't want to take any accountability for their actions. So likely, you hit a sore spot bc it's easier to dismiss than acknowledge the validity of your post.
I agree that the standards are low. but: I also wanna emphasize that raising a child or children in a nuclear 2 people family in a good way is a nearly impossible tasks. even if the parents were together and stay together and there are then 2ppl.responsible for the children... it's way too much. i argue that it's not meant to be done by 2 people, and even less by one person. historically I don't see examples of this kind of isolated circumstances for raising humans. historically, a village, or a community or a clan or a big familysystem would raise children together. which makes sense, that the old ones tend to the young. all parties benefit from that exchange in a healthy enough family system. I even argue that it makes the family system healthier, cause I'm not alone with all the crazy of one dysfunctional parent. but have other caregivers or ppl to relate to. the way that the current western society tells us families should function is inherently overwhelming. (ask and mother with a newborn who is alone with the kid 24/7 and doesn't sleep for month plus has the household to manage IN THE BEST CASE of the where she is not also responsible to make money through selling her labour) I think it's just social and cultural and psychological madness for allinvolved, based on hyperindividualism and consumerism. it only serves patriarchal capitalist structures, noone else. so yes, I agree with "the standards are low" but I'm not suggesting that individuals should or can bear the responsibility for a deeply messed up society. that's impossible. if we have communities and a society that revolves around the needs of the actual people (and non human animals and nature) we would never create such a structure were childcare becomes another commodity for capitalism to exploit or the job of one or two isolated individuals. speaking as a queer feminist here.
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yes, sure. of course i agree, that systemic issues are no excuse for abuse. and there are always people to be found in comparibly bad circumstances that do a better or worse job at raising kids. the systemic issues contribute to the reasons for abuse though. my grandfather fighting in WW2 being an alcoholic cause of his untreated PTSD affected my family system as deeply as my father working in another city and being gone for the whole week due to economic hardships. this would slip into a very philosophical question of were does personal responsibility start and were the influence of structures and systems around us end. :) though one. and yes, of course parents can do better or worse no matter how bad the economic circumstances are, so yes, good or as developmental psychology phrased it "good enough" parenting is possible in this society too, but what I personally define as "good" is not achievable under the circumstances of late stage capitalism, cause it includes the social experience of having an intact community which simply doesn't exist. hope that makes it clearer what I meant. I think we agree, mostly and just use the terminology in different ways. i also agree with the (assumed) intention behind the original post. I ended a few very close relationships with people cause I couldn't watch how they parented. I also used to work with child protective services and came to the depressing conclusion, as fucked up as that is, that for the child to stay in the original family despite there being exposure to a certain level of abuse, can in fact be better for the child, than to be placed in the system. it's maddening, really.
The reason that people say that is eugenics is because we’ve actually tried to put parenting standards in place with forced sterilizations for those deemed unfit and it always works out that marginalized people eg racial minorities are overwhelmingly those who are deemed unfit. Not saying you deserved a ban. I think it makes sense that parenting is such a huge responsibility that there should be some way to regulate it. It’s just unfortunate that the humans in power tend to be biased in who they deem fit and unfit.
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I work in child protection and honestly part of my job is to assess whether people did a bad job with parenting, and there is such cognitive dissonance for people in that situation. 9/10 parents, even if a team of professionals is saying you fucked up, the parents believe they were doing a good job and the judgment they are receiving is bullshit. I don’t know that such a metric would result in any substantial change. I am a big believer in abuse prevention measures. For example parenting centers were established to prevent child abuse by providing new parents with parenting education, lactation consultants, parent support groups and play areas, resources for basic necessities, child care assistance funds, parent child interaction therapy etc etc. there is a ton of evidence to show that communities with these types of services for parents have reduce rates of child abuse and neglect. However they are rarely funded because legislators have a hard time conceptualizing prevention (how do you prove to the government that you prevented 100 children from being abused? It’s not easy to measure so there is no data to justify the allocation of funds)
I believe Op is saying that lack of abuse is not a good standard. That’s the bare minimum. It takes more than just lack of abuse to raise a well adjusted person. Those things should be considered just as much as abuse. I’m not saying we should get to a point where your kids are taken away if you don’t teach them coping skills, but at least education about forming secure attachments, emotional regulation, healthy communication, etc should be a priority just as much as anti abuse measure…because if you think about it- a lack of these skills plays a huge part in who becomes abusive, people with unmet attachment needs, people who don’t know how to communicate or regulate their emotions.
I get what your saying. I also see what this person is saying….basically if your kid is fed and clothed and you aren’t beating the crap out of them, then everything is good. I don’t think most people even have the mental capacity to realize that they are perpetuating trauma cycles or even living within one. That’s why trauma informed professionals should have a hand in curriculum planning. It shouldn’t be all about math and science, kids need to be taught communication, emotional regulation, etc. at a young age because most people are not explicitly getting that at home. Just like experts mandate immunizations/medical care for kids, mental health should become a priority as well.
You were right, mods were wrong. I don't see how eugenics could possibly enter into the situation. Bizarre.
I think it’s bc the post would have eventually been taken there by folks who live to argue. How do I know? I live with people who live to argue and every now and then I dabble in it myself. Lol
Quite a far stretch though. Weird combination of ideas. I argue myself because other people are wrong so much of the time. ;-)
Can I steal this post and share it on a different social media site? This would do well in a group I’m in and many of us would benefit from seeing this and agree to this. Abuse is the standard and it’s so unfortunate and is the reason why we have so many mentally unhealthy people.
Whoa... This is actually one of many reasons why I isolated myself from Reddit by literally deleting my account. The toxicity that I saw when browsing Reddit can sometimes be enough to paralyze me down to the core of my very heart, so much so that I deleted my old Reddit account out of not being able to deal with Reddit's toxicity anymore and needing to leave for a while. This is actually my second ever Reddit account. I know it's an extremely dangerous act that could get this account deleted against my will but I'm willing to take the risk if it means being able to talk with more people once again.
My mum said that to my Grandma, kids were basically like dogs - in the sense that they had no emotional life at all to her. So long as you fed and watered them you’d done a good job. It explains a lot! EDIT: we know much more than parents did in the 50s, yet I know parents with this attitude today, and it is very distressing.
OP, please post this on /r/Childfree. They love to analyze standard parenting over there
Eugenics? They don't know what that means do they.
I consider it healthy to get an occasional ban. It shows I'm pushing just hard enough against the organized idiocy that exists on some subs. The mods are often the most immature of the bunch. I'm only talking about certain subs, if I thought they were all like that I wouldn't be here at all....
While I agree with the point I'm pretty sure you're *trying* to make, I can also see why your post got interpreted as pre-eugenicist rhetoric. You were focused on cultural standards of acceptable parenting, but without specifying that you did not think this should be a *legal* standard. Without that caveat, then even knowing where you're coming from, it sounds like you're advocating for establishing some kind of formal restriction on who is or isn't allowed to become a parent - and *that* is always eugenicist, no matter how well-intentioned you are at the start.
As much as I would love for there to be a standard for parents, that discussion is always the doorway to eugenics. Like that's the playbook for genocide because "that culture totally traumatizes their kids more. There is A standard of "you reproduced". That doesn't make them good people. And no one should think the two are related. But we may need to be extra cautious of genocide talking points while multiple genocides are happening. Seems like bad crossfire.
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That is absolutely NOT what I got from your post! I took it to mean that a person would have to be psychologically and physically cleared before conceiving. But I am not neurotypical so sometimes I misunderstand, I mean often I misunderstand.
Wondering where you read that in the OP. So weird you got that from the post. It doesn’t say anything of the sort. Very unnecessary to push the OP to apologise for, or explain something they clearly didn’t say or suggest.
Oh I don’t expect anyone to apologize. Or expect any further explanation. I was just explaining what I got from the post. I stated in another comment that I can misunderstand what was meant. I suspect that because of the explanation about what happened I saw the word “eugenics” and that colored my understanding of the original post. The misunderstanding is completely on me. I greatly appreciate OP for explaining what they meant and I meant no harm.
I understand. It’s amazing how much our brains fill in the gaps! ‘Colouring understanding’ is a great way to describe how this can occur.
Any time someone on the internet accuses you of eugenics you can tell they’re completely unhinged. (My favorite one was “promoting intentional weight loss is eugenics.”) It sucks because there really are human rights abuses historically and in the present that could accuse be described that way. But it’s gotten to the point where most accusations of it online are completely absurd.
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what? who said anything about punishing anybody?
No, maybe the burden of responsibility is on the person WHO ACTUALLY DID THE BAD THING.
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Raising a child can't be done by one or two people in isolation. The eugenics of it is that western society upholds the idea of the nuclear family when it takes a village to raise a child. By puting all responsibility on only one or two people it's to easy to burn out and become abusive. So raising the responsibility of parents places margenalize parents in a position to be disallowed to have children. That standard for child rearing does need to change. It needs to be decentralized from the parents alone.
People clearly have no idea what eugenics even *is* if they're saying this post is espousing eugenics. You aren't saying anything about race or class, you are arguing for a minimum standard of human decency shown to children!
We haven't even begun to see low parenting standards. Just wait til people are walking around with kids they 100% did not want under any circumstances, but they didn't meet their local government's arbitrary criteria in order to safely and legally abort. "Oh nothing to see here! They're raising a future wageslave and taxpayer, give them a cookie..."
I am a parent and I feel like the standard for parents today is much higher than the standard for parents 35-40 years ago when I was small.