In actuality, there are very few absolutes in life, unless you are a 2nd gen... and then absolutes come in a swath: GPAs, degrees, personality, job types, significant others and so on.
In my mind, though, there are a few absolutes that 2nd gen kids should know and claim for themselves. After all, when you are being pushed to be reach that ever-moving bar, there seems to be no absolute rule to know when you will finally be "good enough."
Here they are:
1. It is never acceptable for your parents to use their death or health as emotional leverage against you.
2. Weight, reproduction, skin conditions such as acne, are not topics that should be readily up for discussion the way the weather is.
3. Anger, sadness, jealousy, rage are not bad. They are emotions. We have them for a reason. Feeling them is not the problem. Acting upon them is.
4. Good people feel angry, sad, jealous, rageful, and bitter. Good people are not happy, perfect, and loving 100% of the time.
5. It is better to express how you feel than to bottle them up or try to convince them to go away. The key is to express them in a sincere and honest way.
1.04.2013
1.02.2013
Setting the doubt afire
I was talking to a good friend a few weeks ago who recently went through a divorce. It was a difficult and protracted experience for him and painful for me to helplessly watch him go through it. As the marriage neared its end, I knew that he had exhausted every possible answer or solution, and his acceptance of the inevitable marked the end of not only their union, but what had previously been an unflagging sense of hope, determination, and commitment.
Which is why I was aghast when my friend told me that his parents were chastising him - for letting the marriage fail, for not taking back his ex-wife, especially as he was getting older and probably couldn't find anyone else to marry.
The first reaction I had was - What ever happened to parents being the champion of their children?
But then, what really pushed me over the edge is that, after listening to months and months of this haranguing from his parents, my friend finally lost his patience and retaliated against the verbal garbage by getting upset. Upset because it was hurtful, upset because he could do nothing about it, and upset because it made him feel bad. And that is when they laid it on super thick and started accusing him of having a bad temper. So, in other words, he was "bad" for getting upset at some hurtful, mean, and unhelpful things that were being said to him persistently and relentlessly.
He described it as psychological warfare. For you who don't know, it is a form of emotion sabotoge, and it's called gaslighting. It's something psychologists use quite a bit and the term originates from a 1944 film (Gas Light - hence the word) starring Ingrid Bergman in which a wife is slowly driven to madness by a husband who insists that strange phenomena she is actually seeing is really a function of her own descent into insanity. So, naturally she does go a little insane - how else do you account for something you know to be real, only to be told that it's not real?
How does this relate to the above example? Well, my friend knows that his feelings of being hurt and attacked are real, and that his emotional reaction of being angry and upset is logical and necessary. It's a natural form of self-protection. And yet, when he starts to react this way, his parents tell him that it is wrong and that he's a bad person to do so.
And so the message is - take the abuse, and if you strive to protect yourself, you're a bad person for doing so. Thankfully, my friend is old enough to know better. But I know this happened to me and to many of my 2nd gen friends as children; we were taught that fighting back or standing up for ourselves was a bad thing to do. Some of us still feel like we are doing something wrong when we have impulses to defend ourselves, because then we are being bad. And who wants to be bad?
Some of us also feel guilty, because our parents claim that everything they do is done out of love. They are only saying these things because nobody else will, and when they die, who will tell us the truth of how awful and flawed we are? Might as well take it now, because they only want the best for us. And us getting angry is totally showing how unappreciative we are to their love. How could we disregard their love and return back their care and good love with anger?
So, we are then left without a way to defend ourselves against whatever useless drivel comes our way. In my mind, it's probably the most insidious way of rendering an individual completely helpless and unequipped for the cruelties world. Of course, it also leaves an emotional hook in you. It's a free access pass to the guilt and fear we all have of being a bad person.
The solution?
Accept that we are all flawed and imperfect, but you are not wrong in the way your parents tell you you are. Accept that feelings of anger and guilt are normal and healthy when you are being attacked.
Accept that your parents do love you in their own way and that they can never love you the way you hope they would.
Spend a lot of time, and I mean a lot, being brutally honest with yourself about the points on which your parents are right or wrong. And if they are wrong, and you know it, be willing to accept the costs of your decision and stick to it. That's the only way you'll learn.
Find really good mentors and friends. For the latter, I'm not talking about activity partners. I'm talking about the type of friends who will tell you honestly what kind of person you are and be there for you when you really need them. Make a group out of them, sample their viewpoints, and begin building a new perspective of yourself. Depend on them, and not your parents for a reflection of who you are.
Which is why I was aghast when my friend told me that his parents were chastising him - for letting the marriage fail, for not taking back his ex-wife, especially as he was getting older and probably couldn't find anyone else to marry.
The first reaction I had was - What ever happened to parents being the champion of their children?
But then, what really pushed me over the edge is that, after listening to months and months of this haranguing from his parents, my friend finally lost his patience and retaliated against the verbal garbage by getting upset. Upset because it was hurtful, upset because he could do nothing about it, and upset because it made him feel bad. And that is when they laid it on super thick and started accusing him of having a bad temper. So, in other words, he was "bad" for getting upset at some hurtful, mean, and unhelpful things that were being said to him persistently and relentlessly.
He described it as psychological warfare. For you who don't know, it is a form of emotion sabotoge, and it's called gaslighting. It's something psychologists use quite a bit and the term originates from a 1944 film (Gas Light - hence the word) starring Ingrid Bergman in which a wife is slowly driven to madness by a husband who insists that strange phenomena she is actually seeing is really a function of her own descent into insanity. So, naturally she does go a little insane - how else do you account for something you know to be real, only to be told that it's not real?
How does this relate to the above example? Well, my friend knows that his feelings of being hurt and attacked are real, and that his emotional reaction of being angry and upset is logical and necessary. It's a natural form of self-protection. And yet, when he starts to react this way, his parents tell him that it is wrong and that he's a bad person to do so.
And so the message is - take the abuse, and if you strive to protect yourself, you're a bad person for doing so. Thankfully, my friend is old enough to know better. But I know this happened to me and to many of my 2nd gen friends as children; we were taught that fighting back or standing up for ourselves was a bad thing to do. Some of us still feel like we are doing something wrong when we have impulses to defend ourselves, because then we are being bad. And who wants to be bad?
Some of us also feel guilty, because our parents claim that everything they do is done out of love. They are only saying these things because nobody else will, and when they die, who will tell us the truth of how awful and flawed we are? Might as well take it now, because they only want the best for us. And us getting angry is totally showing how unappreciative we are to their love. How could we disregard their love and return back their care and good love with anger?
So, we are then left without a way to defend ourselves against whatever useless drivel comes our way. In my mind, it's probably the most insidious way of rendering an individual completely helpless and unequipped for the cruelties world. Of course, it also leaves an emotional hook in you. It's a free access pass to the guilt and fear we all have of being a bad person.
The solution?
Accept that we are all flawed and imperfect, but you are not wrong in the way your parents tell you you are. Accept that feelings of anger and guilt are normal and healthy when you are being attacked.
Accept that your parents do love you in their own way and that they can never love you the way you hope they would.
Spend a lot of time, and I mean a lot, being brutally honest with yourself about the points on which your parents are right or wrong. And if they are wrong, and you know it, be willing to accept the costs of your decision and stick to it. That's the only way you'll learn.
Find really good mentors and friends. For the latter, I'm not talking about activity partners. I'm talking about the type of friends who will tell you honestly what kind of person you are and be there for you when you really need them. Make a group out of them, sample their viewpoints, and begin building a new perspective of yourself. Depend on them, and not your parents for a reflection of who you are.
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