To follow this allegory through:
You can get the tools to work on the foundation.
Will it be cheap, easy? No. Require lots of learning, effort, time, fuck ups, and sacrifice? Yes.
At some point you become responsible for the damaged foundation. No, you are not responsible for how it got cracked or who damaged it, but it’s yours to leave broken or try to repair, hopefully not make worse or pass on to someone else.
To follow this allegory further:
Sometimes the foundation is fucked up beyond repair. You’ve brought in specialists, gotten quotes, made repairs, tried old and tested, new and modern, but the experts have told you the foundation is simply fucked and the building is not safe and it never will be with this foundation.
At some point you become aware the damaged foundation is irreparable. The building isn’t safe and it never was, it’s amazing it’s somehow still standing even now.
So do you go build a new building and hope your experience in broken foundations can help you build a strong resilient one? Or do you do what you can to avoid ever being responsible for another foundation out of fear and understanding that you can’t maintain strong foundations and don’t want to put other buildings at risk?
36 years is long enough to have started something to try and fix the foundations though. Like some kind of ground stabilising cementitious grout injection.
Maybe try that with your life?
Only if you haven’t surrounded yourself with other like them. The thing about discovering how screwed up your family is involves distancing yourself from them. The more you discover how those silences you experience with others are them being shocked at your fun family stories is a real eye opener.
So bury your parents in cement
Word.
He accidentally made an argument for not blaming your parents since you’d move out of the building rather than continue moving to various floors in it.
Yeah, at a certain point, you can continue to blame them, but the responsibility to fix it ultimately falls on you regardless. Go ahead and blame them, but don’t use it as an excuse to not work on yourself and improve.
Like most difficulties in life, be it trauma, neurodivergance, or any number of other issues; they’re explanations, not excuses.
Much like mental illness. Your depression doesn’t stop you from working out or going for a walk, but it might make it really really hard to start. You can use that as an excuse and never start or you can acknowledge this is why you never want to start. You just have to do it, or rely on someone to get you to do it like a good friend or partner.
If you let depression stop you from walking you’ll never walk and get the benefits from it which could help you beat or mitigate depression. Maybe after 2 years of daily walks you won’t be depression free, but its almost guaranteed you’ll be doing better.
Wow thanks I’m cured.
Or you can just die which depression sometimes leads to – like it’s a disease. How come some people survive cancer and some don’t? The disease is different for each person. Same with depression.
Not doing things like walking or other things that have been proven good for mental health when you have depression is akin to not getting treatment for cancer. Some people still die from cancer while on treatments, but a lot more of them survive than the ones that don’t attempt treatment.
Yes but you’re missing the fact that some people with sever depression just can’t make their bodies go for a walk the same way someone with a severe cancer diagnosis might not be able to just make their body go for a walk.
Depression fucks with your brain such that you dont think it makes sense to do something that is good for you, if it was that simple nobody would ever hurt themselves, but they have a disease that messes with their brains’ ability to think clearly.
I get what you guys are saying, but at some point you got to do something. If depression makes you just sit around staring at a wall for 2 years, I get it. Explanation.
If you do it for 10 years however, you’re really just saying “I can’t. I’m depressed.” Excuse.
Blame is a mechanism specifically designed to absolve oneself of responsibility. “Hey, I just wanted to let everyone know this fucked up thing I do is because my mom didn’t tie my shoelaces properly.”. The people affected by your actions don’t need to know why you do this fucked up thing, they just want you to stop doing it to them.
It can be, and is often used that way, but it doesn’t have to be.
And, generally, knowing the root causes of problems helps in best figuring out how to fix them.
My therapist mentioned its 80% awareness, 20% adding effective skills. But it can take a long ass time to rewire the engrained habits with new neuropathways habitually remembering and applying effective skills
There are some things that can’t be fixed. Being physically impacted by a decision your parent made can’t just be undone, depending on what it is. It could be intentional or it could be an accident, but it’s still permanent.
Or, better yet, rather than blaming, realize they are flawed like all people, and that they accidentally or purposefully instilled some bad qualities in you - the sort all people have.
Be mindful of the origin of those bad qualities and how you have acted over the years to reinforce them. Then, knowing the origin of your bad behaviors and ways of thinking, you can improve.
Yeah basically all my problems were my dad’s fault, but fixing them was my responsibility. The blame is fine for diagnosing the issue, but it’s not a solution.
Go on then, fix the foundations of society… Fix the whole economic/political system of Capitalism.
Do it. It’s clearly about generational problems and the wealth structures of society.
I’ll stick to myself thanks. That’s enough of a challenge.
You can’t really move out though. The metaphor is that your parents construct the lower floors of your building based on how they raised you. In real life, you can’t un-raise yourself or rewrite history, so moving out and into a new building with better foundations isn’t an option. Best you can do is get some outside help to throw in some external supports for those shaky lower floors.
As a 50+ yo that cut contact with his parents decades ago, I know that you can most definitely move out. I am aware that many of my negative behaviors were formed in my early years due in large part to my upbringing but there came a point in my life where I was aware they were due in totality to me choosing to continue those behaviors. Although I will never be confused with a saint, I’m a much better person and my choices in how I behave have absolutely nothing to do with my upbringing. The old building with the bad foundation hasn’t been part of my life for decades.
The analogy is the embodiment of victim mentality, meant to help a person feel powerless regarding why they make poor choices. Staying in that building is a choice each person makes. It’s not a prison.
In the metaphor, the house is you. You can’t move to a new house, you are always you.
If your interpretation of the metaphor is correct, it’s an even worse metaphor than originally thought. “Your life can be compared to a chocolate candy bar. You can never get rid of the candy bar, you will always have it and you absolutely must partake of the candy bar whether you like chocolate or not, your only option is that you can bite from the other end of the candybar. Because metaphor.”
Sadly, we have to work with the metaphors we’re given. In the case of the fictional house with many floors, I can most definitely move from it to escape a shitty foundation. You, it seems, can not. I can’t help you with your house, I can only worry about mine. Best of luck on your house.
There is no correct really, its all up to our interpretation. Its a form of storytelling. It can be hopeful to me and upsetting to you, and thats alright. Make up your own story and tell us about it.
You can find new role models, you can build new supports for those weaker floors and maybe even completely renovate some of them with enough work. You can theorize the new floors you want to build and rework your existing floors to get there.
If each floor of the building is a year in your life, what does moving out mean in this metaphor?
Self termination
Therapy? Self-Realization? Ego Death?
Adoption?
Moving out? In this economy???
So you don’t understand metaphor?
Go on then - “move out” and build a new society… Whilst you’re at it, stop aging or “moving up floors”.
Fucking how are people so munted they don’t understand metaphor?
That reads like you most often breathe through your mouth.
I think we are at a time to start calling illiteracy out.
Believe it or not, some people can read and write without having to mouth the words.
Ooh and you downvote, what a chad!
Okay.
Upvoted.
Honestly, this is very validating to hear since I’m about to cut contact with my mother and elder siblings.
Thats a hard decision to make, congrats on having the courage to take that step in your life.
Thanks! I ended up homeless twice because of them. Once at 19, and now again at 22 years old. I mean, I’m in a nice emergency shelter with my own bedroom and cooked meals, but still.
At least my family cares if I have a roof over my head, even if I had to couch surf at a friend’s house and hide from the landlord and then come into this shelter again (they gave me a place last time, too). I slept in the basement during the last night before coming to this shelter again, just to take extra precautions.
Mind you, I’m not a criminal beyond jaywalking and streaming media for free. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m one of the most straitlaced people at this place. I don’t smoke/vape (beyond the once in a blue moon hit of weed), I don’t drink alcohol, no other drugs, I don’t drink coffee, no energy drinks, and I’m not known for getting into fights.
I read a book about cutting ties to toxic people. I wrote a list and included my parents. Absolute night and day on my mental health and my professional health.
I didn’t “cut them” like full on ghosting. But keeping my distance and chatting with them once a year.
I’m rooting for your success.
Thank you :). I’m living in an emergency shelter, so I appreciate all the support.
Exactly. If you’re 12 and you can’t legally be employed and independent, you can very much blame your parents for a lot of your circumstances. As you age this gets less relevant. I have a couple friends in their 30s whom live at home and never really had jobs or finished school. A lot of them still blame their upbringing which could have put them on this path, but at this point the path they continue to walk is their responsibility. Its gonna be hard, its gonna suck sometimes, you’re gonna have to take risks and things might get worse before they get better, but taking your own responsibility for it is often your best course of action.
Sometimes being able to blame yourself for certain things is good, it can help you grow and learn. If your parents have failed you for 30 years, why are you still banking on them as part of your plan? Not to say you have to abandon them full stop, they may still be worth keeping in your life but you have to start directing your own life and taking your own responsibility for it.
Maybe your parents didn’t care enough about school when you were a kid, as an adult its time to take that into your own hands, many places offer free high school equivalence programs to catch up and often help get you employed afterwards. It might be a shitty job, but its not their fault you waited til 30 to start and now have no relevant skills or experience to advertise. Work that shitty job for a few months and at least it becomes a point on your resume for the next job. It can let you develop universal skills like time management and meal planning which can better prepare you for future positions.
I can’t blame you if you didn’t get a head start, but i can blame you if you don’t even participate in the game.
No no, is everyone else’s fault. Take no blame yourself! That’s the key!
It’s from this special which is on YouTube.
Edit: it’s an amazing special. Hilarious throughout.
Well, at 36 i was still begining to understand how they fucked me up lol, still working on getting over it lmao
That’s sure one way to sit in a chair lol
Next thing you know you’re noticing his elbows!
I mean by this logic, they can blame the parents for teaching them to sit like that?
Half of my problems stems from my parents, the other half from all the bullying and a system that lets it perpetuate. I’m so fucked up in the head because of all that and I’m still trying to come to grips with it. Cannot afford therapy so it’s a lone task.
Honestly, this. My current work place does a lot to be supportive, but after so many years of abuse and misunderstanding from crappy authority figures it’s really hard to trust that they’ll have my back.
How do you dare to tell me that I’m my father’s son
When that was just an accident of birth
I’d rather look around me, compose a better song
'Cause that’s the honest measure of my worthYou can stop blaming them if they are dead or no-contact, sure
Their choices still leave last effects, not just on you, but on society. I mean boomers tend to vote a certain way. Generational issues tend to cause the “bad foundation”.
I’m not arguing with that
But you need sort your brain until development is thru, 39 years old.
The word “all” in this post says “all” you need to know about how pathetic OP (as in who initially wrote it) truly is
Nah, just me trying to cope while I’m homeless and about to cut contact with my mother and elder siblings. I’m trying to survive and am actively working on myself, but suffer from legitimate disorders resulting from trauma–one of them is severe enough that I can’t hold down a job, even though I’ve actively tried.
Now that I can understand and even relate (previously homeless, NC with one of my parents) so I get the need to cope in that situation, even if you know the statements aren’t 100% accurate
Bro what are you being such a dick for?
