‘Secondary gain’ or as @joinanimus has called it hundreds of times, the secondary emotional payoff. You’re addicted to your issue. Else, everyone would simply choose to fix them.

Why are some people's kids fucked up? Long thread for all parents or anyone planning to become a parent or anyone that has parents. I was recently turned on to a new blog by a mutual called The Last Psychiatrist. I’m pretty familiar with the blogosphere and this is a topic I’m interested in so I was surprised I never heard of it. I have been reading through the blog start to finish and I recently came across my favorite post by far. It’s called ‘What Goes Wrong in a Psychiatrists Family’. Essentially the author has noticed a trend in the families of his fellow Psychiatrists. Their kinds wind up messed up and in psychiatric care themselves. The thesis he proposes is one I have been thinking about for years now. He says the mistake the psychiatrist parents make is focusing on the behavior rather than judging the child themselves. My summary translation is that they are wanting to save the kids from the pain of feeling bad about themselves or viewing themselves badly so instead they only focus on the child’s behavior rather than personalizing it to the child. *QUOTE* “They teach them what they are allowed to do and what they are not, what is acceptable and what is not-- but make no judgment on the kids themselves. Doing this denies the kid's identity, which is the whole purpose of childhood to begin with. Rules then exist in an invented framework, or worse, in a vacuum. There's no internalization of the rules; there's no superego. Just some arbitrary limits on id. If you tell a kid that a behavior is unacceptable, the kid has learned nothing about himself; he's only learned that this one thing is something he can't do. But if you make the kid own it-- make the behavior part of his identity, then he has a chance to change his identity. Instead of learning it is unacceptable to take his brother's potato chips away, he can learn that he has a choice: to be the kind of person who takes chips, or the kind of person who doesn't. I understand the trickiness of this; you don't want to make the kid feel like he is a bad person. But you do have to find a way to teach him that if he does that thing again and again, then he is a bad person. Is that what he wants? Who are you, kid? Who do you want to be? This also allows him to take personal credit for doing something good: And you can see the creation of a future borderline here. For God's sake, will someone please tell me who I am? Give this storm of emotions some context? Right now, I get angry/sad/thrilled/terrified over nothing, it just comes over me-- I wish I could be angry/sad/thrilled/terrified over something. But all people ever do is tell me what I can and can't do. If I do something bad, people freak. If I do something good, no one even notices. No one likes me for me, they just over/underreact to what I do. There's a second lurking trouble: parents' control of their affect. The psychiatrist isn't supposed to get mad at his patient; but then he comes home, and tries very hard not to get mad at his kid-- just tells him the behavior is unacceptable, gives him a time out, whatever. But guess what? The psychiatrist is exhausted, eventually his patience runs out, and BAM! a tsunami of anger. calm&firm...calm&firm...calm&firm...EXPLOSION. The explosion part can come at any time, depending on how much patience the parent has that day. And that's exactly the problem. What does the kid learn? That this ethereal rulebook for what is acceptable and unacceptable only has two, binary results: no affect, or all affect-- and you never know what you're going to get. In the biz, this is called inconsistent parenting. What the kid needs to know are the rules of the game; they need the parent to be consistent, predictable, so that they can be safely chaotic, experimental, exploratory off of your foundation. You want her to know exactly how you'll react if she tries pot, you want a superego so well constructed you're superfluous. And you want levels of emotion, different things get you more or less angry. We know you went berserk because your boss is a big jerk whose been riding you all day, but your two year old thinks you went berserk because she spilled the milk. Geez, sorry. May as well try heroin, what's the difference? It doesn't necessarily mean you have to be an angry parent-- your predicted reaction could be anxious acceptance or loving disappointment-- but it has to be predictable. And it has to be about the kid, not the behavior. The kid needs to know you're connecting with them, not what they do, or else they'll think that the only way to connect is by behaviors. You can see the further development of a borderline here: what the hell do I have to do to get some emotional response from you? Kill myself? Keep pushing until you finally blow up? I don't even feel like I'm alive, but I'm not sure that you are either-- or is it just me, that I matter so little that I can't even get a little affect? You're insanely jealous if I talk to another guy, but you totally ignore me when I'm with you. At least with jealousy you're being real with me. Etc. Trust me on this: at age 2, a kid feels your rage and your love the same. It's exciting, and they haven't yet learned to fully differentiate the two feelings. What counts is the amount of emotion, not which emotion. (Horror movies and porn are the same to a 14 yo for this reason.) Fast forward 20 years-- that all-out screaming match with your boyfriend felt weirdly relaxing. And so you have a scenario: busy psychiatrist, often tired, can't generate much emotion past anger-- and it can come at any time. No deep connection with the child as a person-- as their kid, yes; as the sum total of their behaviors, yes-- but not as a developing individual. The kid learns that as long as some things are done correctly-- e.g. school-- they can get away with other things that the parent won't notice, e.g. pot. Oh, and this is the best part: if the kid (adult or child) becomes a psychiatric patient, they now have a bond with their parent-- and the parent's over-involvement in their kid's psychiatric care is the framework for a relationship. It's analogous to helping them build a go cart. And that's all the kid ever wanted anyway” *END QUOTE* This post landed heavily with me because I myself have been trying to calibrate the correct approach to these things. I know the data on raising stable kids in a stable home with stable parents etc but I think many people have trouble calibrating the complexity of the emotional affect. We all know extremely calm kids with stable families from poor and working class parents and we know spastic erratic kids from wealthy families. The common thread no matter the class is that calm kids come from parents who don’t emotionally dump on the children or conversely who don’t emotionally ignore the children or like the author mentions only shows them emotion in blow ups. I go back to what I know about emotions and how parents emotions relate to the children. Essentially you can’t hide your level of emotional regulation from kids. From a young age, they can sense subconsciously your ease or tension. If mom is uncomfortable with something the kids will know it and they will be uncomfortable with it. Be it a real external threat or an internal emotional threat. So, essentially your level of emotional comfort, ease or regulation is what you transcribe to the children but the last bit of the puzzle that I wasn’t able to fully flesh out is what the author touches on about how to personalize kids own actions with them so they can internalize the identity understanding about themselves to develop over time. If you are afraid to make your kids feel badly about themselves it’s a boundary issue of yours that translates into a lessened sense of identity for the children. Of course anything psychological can go too far and like the author mentions you don’t want the child to only feel like they are bad/wrong. People who feel that they are bad people will inevitably grow up to not be comfortable asserting themselves because they will believe they can only be harmful to others and by avoiding asserting themselves they will lean into a cycle of hurting themselves and others MORE as the issue grows and spirals. I think the takeaway for me is to continue to foster an environment of emotional openness in the home where kids are encouraged to express themselves. The focus for us as parents is to increase our emotional capacity to increase our emotional comfort so that we can express ourselves without discomfort and the children can learn to do likewise. We have a sort of socially unorthodox approach in my house. My kids are allowed to say true things even if they are hurtful to other people. We *attempt* to not emotionally shame kids into desired behaviors with shaming tactics like "not nice" and "fair". We try to take the time to explain why we ask them to do certain things like 'we have the clean the home now because we want to live in a clean home that we can be proud of and is relaxing to be in'. When a child has done something wrong, don’t try to save them by focusing only on the action but tell the child why they were wrong and let them feel the sting of feeling badly about themselves so they can develop a firmer identity about who they are. Take the time to try to explain to them why the action was wrong. “when you tell a lie it shows that you don’t have the confidence to own up to your actions” or “when you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are showing your lack of regard for other people, their bodies, their property”. Again, like the author points out, you are giving the child a decision to either be the type of person who lies, cheats, steals or not to be. Over time this is what develops the identity and creates the ability for them to lead the kind of life they want. All the mainstream, mommyinfluencer, advice tells you to focus on the action rather than the child. It creates a situation where parents are constantly talking about the kids emotions and trying to affirm them but the kid never learns to actually deal with the emotional states themselves. We have a very bad relationship with anger. Many dads think it’s never okay to be angry in front of their kids but if you aren’t comfortable with your own anger, you will as a result create the blow up dynamic that that author talks about. When you do show that you are okay being angry and with anger it teaches children that they can trust you and also they will learn to trust themselves and be accustomed to their own anger. Some of the great old school advice that so many parents acknowledge the wisdom of but have a hard time actually implementing comes into play here. Things like not doing something for a child they can do for themselves and not getting in the middle of disputes between kids. The more you try to save your kids from ‘negative’ feelings, when you get involved in disputes and issues they have, the more you lessen their ability to self-determine. At both ends of the spectrum it creates a dynamic of emotional blowups, anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide, etc like the author mentions. The child is not comfortable with themselves and looks for means of escape or ways to feel that emotional rush that they became accustomed to. Now all this kind of begs the question of how parents can become more emotionally regulated themselves but this thread has already gotten too long 😃😃 Hope you enjoyed this write-up. Please comment with agreements, criticisms, questions or your own experiences with these topics.