@jeffowski yes, indeed. Hearing two messages at the same time is so frustrating!

@jeffowski Single tear 😢 followed by cool runnings slow clap that builds to momentous applause.

@jeffowski I wish I could boost this more than once all across the world.

@jeffowski
Good to get this in my mind before i become a father. 🤘

@jeffowski FAO progressive movement building. Most people do not secretly yearn to be hazed, have a kink for being treated like shit, or have much willingness to subject their friends and family members to awkward and miserable interactions.

@jeffowski apparently the olofahere Tumblr blog is inactive? It would be nice if you could tell us more about them.

@jeffowski Many don't enjoy being around ones family and it's the families fault. If they want that family member around treat them better.

@jeffowski

Huh, my family and childhood and teenaged friends were more common in their behaviors than I realized.

Years of therapy helped.

@jeffowski Anyone experiencing this should consider whether they are the family scapegoat.

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/family-scapegoat/#:~:text=A%20family%20scapegoat%20is%20a,our%20own%20actions%20and%20mistakes

@jeffowski The story of my childhood

@jeffowski

Strained relationship with a parent. "Hello stranger" as an opening gambit on the phone when I finally CALLED YOU, not the other way round, just added another 3 anxiety filled weeks to the gap between our next communication

Dead now. Missed out on so much by being like this. Your loss not mine. I see my kids every day. You saw them less than their dentist

@jeffowski

I see a lot of this sort of behavior when people are shitty to others who acknowledge they were wrong and someone else was correct.

If you take that opportunity to be shitty be prepared for that being the last time anyone says you were right about anything.

@jeffowski I didn't like drinking water when I was a kid. Who wants water when there's soda around? The only time I even drank milk was sleepovers at my aunt's house and that was what she served with dinner. Up into my 30s probably I could count on one hand the times I willingly drank water. Point is, I didn't always make the healthiest choices. Anyway, whenever I did drink water, my mother and my aunt would say to each other, "she's gonna get poisoned!" Guess what that made me not wanna do? 1

@jeffowski Amen !

@jeffowski
My favorite is when your success is met with the attitude of "oh good, you're not completely useless anymore" because that just kills it. Nevermind, I don't care about whatever it was anymore, I will just go do something that makes ME happy instead. You can start being part of my past now.

@jeffowski This also applies in the world of policy. If somebody from the other side sees the light and joins you, you don't have to announce to the world that you disapprove of WHY they converted. That doesn't mean you have to accept all of their other views, but when you get a W, take it.

@jeffowski My favorite example is people whose dog gets loose, so they call the dog and when it comes they hit it. WTF???

@jeffowski This happened all the time in our house growing up. We make a conscious point of not doing it with our kids.

@jeffowski I've been quite aware of this, and it still ends up being very discouraging when making an effort and really struggling to do so, that there's a lot of, "why can't you do this all the time?" sort of thing.

@jeffowski Once upon a time, my mother was away for many weeks (months?). The plan was for my father and us three kids to rotate making dinner. My siblings chose to stock up on frozen pizzas. I tried to make some soup. The soup failed because I didn't know how to cook. Everyone laughed. I gave up and got pizzas. My father ended up cooking every night. I refused to cook anything ever again (this lasted until I moved out 10+ years later and had to feed myself). The end.

@jeffowski no matter their mood, it's always true to tell my child "I'm glad you're here." One of the many important lessons I learned from Alfie Kohn's "Unconditional Parenting"

That was ten years ago, and reading that book (and a few others) has proven to be one of the best things I've ever done for my kids and myself.

@jeffowski I feel like the people doing this don't even see their snarkiness as punishment or harmful. But it is.

@jeffowski this is really useful. Will try to internalize.

@jeffowski i remember in the final days living with my abusive father it was just a lot of this
i stayed in my room because the internet was my only access to anything that let me escape the real world for a bit
but when i did come out of my room i got the snarky bullshit and yeah it just drove me further back in

@jeffowski the time it took for my family to not comment on me shifting my picky eater behaviour to the better.

@jeffowski So so so much this!

@jeffowski

This is a really hard lesson to learn as a parent and so fucking vital.

@jeffowski Even sub- “mental health” criticality level this is good parenting advice, good advice for communicating with spouses, friends, colleagues and… well, everyone.

@jeffowski When I was a kid, I was shy about saying hello to people. Then later I was not so shy about it anymore, but I was expecting that if I said it, my parents would make a big deal out of it, saying “finally, he started saying hello,” so I was still not saying it.

Anyway, I don’t know where this fear was coming from, because it didn’t happen.

@jeffowski it's a sure fire way to condition your kids into perfectionists which means they can't accomplish anything because they can't meet the standard so they mentally punish themselves into exhaustion

Source: my brain

@jeffowski Please go 40 years back in time and shout it into my mother's ears until they bleed.

@jeffowski yes, oh my fucking god

@jeffowski @cas Right but what do you do when authorities do these things?
E.g. child services, doctors etc.

@jeffowski @cas Right but what do you do when authorities do these things?
E.g. child services, doctors etc.

@jeffowski@mastodon.world so much this! I rarely talk about my emotions or what I really want to do bc my parents keep making these snarky comments if I do. I know I should try to change this but it's hard

@jeffowski See also: "ah, you see you can do it when you REALLY want to! Now was it that hard?!?"
Like there aren't dozens of parameters than can influence how hard a task is and that can totally vary from moment to moment
#ADHD #ActuallyAutistic

@jeffowski I often think that a person ought to raise a puppy prior to being a parent. Might learn something.

@jeffowski the "finding out that success and failure are both punished" makes it so hard to get up in the morning. Literally. If I get up early, I get an earful about it, if I get up late, I get an earful about it. I just want to eat my breakfast in peace god damn it.

@jeffowski see also: "you can do better"

@jeffowski thank you for sharing

@jeffowski The saddest part of this is that one could be on both sides of the picture. At the same time.

@jeffowski
*download screenshot*
*save to folder called Wisdom*

@jeffowski this, too, with animal training. We must encourage incremental good behavior and not shut down anything unless we're certain we'll never want it!

@jeffowski Catch them doing well! 👍

@jeffowski when nothing you do makes them happy you have a tendency to say fuck it and do what you want.

@jeffowski

Exactly! My ambition to learn to speak Chinese when I lived in Shanghai was crushed by some very close friends laughing their socks off every other time I said something.

@jeffowski I really don't like any of these remarks. I'd like to add "Why can't you be more like _________ (insert name of sibling, cousin, friend, parents' friend's kid). Ugh!

@jeffowski Punishing both ways is done out of ignorance and not deliberately. Fine. So apologize! Don't pretend it didn't happen. The person on the receiving end learns something when they are "damned if I do, damned if I don't."

They learn to stop trying. Eventually, they learn to stop listening. It goes downhill from there.

Apologize! Don't alienate when you don't mean to alienate.

@jeffowski this slices in many directions, not just introversion, so I think this insight is really worth sitting with

@jeffowski My response to that kind of cruelty is to say "They say i'm mentally ill. What's your excuse for being so rude?"

@jeffowski and when strained-family-relationship members spend so much of our time in each other’s company commenting “we never see you” and whining about how I don’t call them enough… they’re wasting the time they supposedly want to have together?

why would I continue to put myself in situations where there is little hope of any genuine connection AND I’ll be harassed for the absence of this connection.

nah.

@jeffowski I know it wasn't malicious from most family members, but this definitely happened when I was growing up. Now they wonder why I'm such a hyper private person 🤦‍♂️.

@jeffowski I had that happen recently when I was asking how to embed an existing webpage into a window on my homepage. After the 12th "That's easy, just go look it up" I finally just asked ChatGPT (not proudly, I admit) and I got the quick code snippit I needed to paste into Wordpress.

@jeffowski That could have been written by my mother.

@jeffowski a couple of those I do to myself a lot and I'm probably echoing stuff I learned as a kid but no matter where I got it from it's still pretty negative self talk. Like. I use "finally" a lot, probably not only self-referentially but I do use it then. I think I will try to actively change that one.

@jeffowski

Don't complain about how it's not enough. Don't
bring up previous stuff.

wow this part resonates particularly well with me

@jeffowski Or, gods, turning the least step into a big, humiliating production.

@jeffowski Truth right there.

@jeffowski
No matter what I did it was never enough.