0:00 - Introduction to the Podcast
0:26 - The Shrink's Dilemma
2:01 - Understanding Helping Habits
3:29 - The Impact of Childhood
6:51 - Win-Win Relationships
8:53 - Navigating Win-Lose Situations
13:50 - The Alchemy of Parenting
In this episode, I respond to a thought-provoking inquiry from a mental health professional who reached out after my recent live stream. The question at hand was a reflection of a perplexing contradiction: why can one be highly skilled at helping others yet struggle with their own life? This comment sparked a deep exploration into the dynamics of personal identity, parental relationships, and the patterns that emerge from them.
I break down the complexities of this predicament by first identifying a prevalent mindset. The essence of the issue lies in a learned behavior stemming from childhood, where the individual, often conditioned by their upbringing, instinctively prioritizes the needs of others over their own. This habit is not merely a personal failing; rather, it is a survival mechanism that often originates from having parents who demanded emotional support and problem-solving capacity from their children, leaving the children's own needs unaddressed. This recurring theme of parental exploitation becomes a central focus of our discussion.
As I delve further, I outline how this pattern is entrenched. In the early years of life, children are often conditioned to negotiate their existence by serving the emotional and practical needs of their parents. When a parent’s anxiety or dysfunction is at play, a child may learn that their survival hinges on maintaining the parent’s stability—an element that can lead to the sacrifice of their own identity and well-being. This scenario creates a dangerous imbalance where one grows adept at aiding others while neglecting their self-care, resulting in a cycle of emotional disarray.
I emphasize the significance of win-win relationships and the existential balance that should exist between mutually supportive interactions. Through practical examples, I illustrate how children learn to articulate their needs and negotiate for care. I touch upon personal anecdotes, such as observing the nurturing exchanges with my own daughter, which serve as a model for healthy relational dynamics. The charm of these interactions underscores the natural trajectory towards mutual support—something that starkly contrasts with the win-lose dynamic often rooted in dysfunctional family systems.
Addressing the specifics of the therapist’s question, I articulate the concept of learned helplessness in these win-lose scenarios. This mindset reveals itself when individuals repeatedly prioritize the needs of others to their own detriment—often a legacy of childhood conditioning by self-absorbed caregivers. It begs the explanation that, fundamentally, no one is inherently inclined to operate in such a detrimental mode without it being meticulously modeled or taught, typically in the formative years of life.
Ultimately, I want to convey that these patterns are not an indictment of moral character but are instead reflections of learned behaviors that can be unlearned. The power of this understanding lies in recognizing how these dynamics can be rewritten to foster healthier relationships with oneself and others. By shedding light on this complex paradox, I aim to provide clarity not only to the mental health professional in question but also to anyone grappling with the challenge of helping others while neglecting their own life.
In summary, self-reflection and seeking mutual support are essential steps toward breaking free from the confines of these childhood lessons. As I conclude, I extend an invitation for deeper exploration of these themes, encouraging listeners to engage with these ideas and the ways they can redefine their relational dynamics moving forward.
[0:00] Hey, everybody, hope you're doing well. Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. So yesterday, all my troubles. So I had a call, a message in my live stream from last night, Wednesday Night Live. This is the next day, Thursday.
[0:13] And a shrink, he referred to himself as a shrink, means psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, something like that. So he wrote to me in the live stream, and he said, Stef, why is it that I'm able to help my clients, but my own life is kind of a mess?
[0:26] How am I so good at helping other people, but not fixing my own life and I said well the results of that would result from why you would be like that is because as a kid your messed up family demanded that you provide resources to them and solve all their problems which came at your own expense so you're very good at helping other people without sorting out your own life anyway so he wrote to me and I won't read the whole thing and I won't get into details but he wrote to me and he said staff the great staff how do you do it no seriously how the actual f do you do it I'm the shrink who posted on Wednesday how can I be so good at helping others but effed up myself? In 10 seconds, you stripped me naked, hit the nail on the head. Totally, I mean, how? Yes. And then he goes into details about his family and he says, I managed all of this, keeping the peace on my way through all of this and all of that, got top grades, became a shrink, started my own business. And I kick ass, but you, my friend, nailed it. You are some sort of superhuman. Thank you. I donate roughly every month and generously wish I could donate a million times more from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. And that's a great question and I appreciate, obviously I appreciate the very kind words and I'm very, very thrilled and happy to have helped as I always am and intend to. So, if you want to know, how do I do it? What is the mysterious, super.
[1:41] Of this. And I'll sort of break down how I do it and use this power for good, not evil, as best you can, as I try to use this power for good, not evil, as best I can. And I think I do a pretty good job. So when someone says, why am I so good at helping other people while my own life is a mess?
[2:02] What I do is I basically follow the following methodology. So first I say to myself, So what is the principle at work here? The principle at work here is that I have to fix other people and I don't have to fix my own life or I can't fix my own life. I focus on helping other people and don't focus on helping myself. self. Okay. So that is a habit, right? That is a mindset. And the mindset is I am there to help other people. Other people are never there to help me. In fact, in fact, to even think of reciprocity is dangerous, right? So if you're there to help other people, but other people are never there to help you and you're not there to help yourself, then that is a habit. And where would that habit Well, that habit would come from having parents who demand that you solve all their problems, work to fix their issues, who use that kind of emotional tampon that sometimes dysfunctional parents, well, I mean, almost all dysfunctional parents do it. You have to solve their problems. You have to fix their lives. And they never think about you. And so because you're focusing on fixing other people's lives, your own life turns to crap.
[3:22] So when you say, all I do is fix other people and my own life is a mess, well, why would that be the case?
[3:30] Well, it has to be something that happens early on in life that instills this habit. And it has to be a deviation from the norm.
[3:38] Just to reiterate, I've mentioned this before, but it's been a while. We are all, you and I and everyone you see moving around ambulatory north of the six foot dirt nap, right? Everyone who's alive and moving around is alive and moving around because we were inconvenient to our parents, because we cried three or four times a night in order to get fed. So we all start focusing Focusing on our own needs, and we all start and survive by inconveniencing other people.
[4:10] Now, of course, the goal over the long run is for you to go from focusing only on your own needs as a baby, which is exactly right and exactly what has been selected by evolution and mental health and all that sort of stuff. So we all have to start off by focusing on our own needs. Now, by focusing on our own needs, we are focusing on our parents' needs, obviously not consciously. So mothers, in general, want their children to survive. They want their babies to survive. So if the baby had, I don't know, some weird excessive mutant empathy, then the baby would say, oh, gosh, well, I've already woken up mom once. Once tonight, I should let her sleep. She's probably tired. She's recovering from an episiotomy or whatever. So she's tired. I'm going to let her sleep. Well, then as a baby, you might not make it, right? You might die of not getting enough nutrition or liquids or dehydration, or you might die overnight, in which case your mother would be beside herself with grief, misery, agony, and upset.
[5:15] So by being selfish, you are serving your mother by only thinking of your own needs and crying until you are satisfied, you are actually serving the needs of your mother. There's no particular contradiction there. Or to put it another way, would your mother prefer another hour or two of sleep or a dead baby? Well, of course, she would prefer to give up the hour or two of sleep in order to keep her baby alive and healthy and happy and all that, right? So we start off with a symbiotic relationship with our mothers where serving our own selfish needs also serves the needs of our mothers.
[5:49] Now, the terrible twos are when we learn that we can say no, that we can, that there's a conflict between our needs and our parents' needs. And the purpose of parenting is to teach children how to negotiate for win-win situations because win-win situations are pair bonding. Pair bonding is when you are both better off of being in each other's company so if you can't negotiate win-win relationships you cannot pair bond because if a twin lose sooner or later the quote pair bond disintegrates because one person gets sick and tired of being exploited now either they physically leave the relationship and bail out and all of that or they emotionally leave the relationship by becoming dissociated, by becoming passive-aggressive, by only reacting, by becoming emotionally absent. So they check out of the relationship either physically or emotionally. So you cannot maintain sustainable relationships without being able to find win-win solutions.
[6:51] So the purpose of parenting is to create the foundation for the families of the the next generation by teaching your children about win-win situations. So what you do is you're kind and generous to your kids and you do what they like and what they want. And after a while, they figure out that they also have to do what you like and you want, and you start negotiating for win-win situations, right? So if you are stuck in the process, and this happens It happens very early on, right? I remember when my daughter began feeding me back. She was very young, like, I don't know, six months or whatever, right? So I'm feeding her, and then she wants to feed me back, right? So she recognizes, oh, I, she's just pre-verbal for the most part, right? So she would say in her mind, I'm hungry. I feel better when I have food. I have a mouth. I eat. My father has a mouth. He eats. Maybe he's hungry, and I'm sure he'll feel better when he gets food. right so this is.
[7:54] Pretty clear how this works out pretty, pretty often. And of course, when babies do something that makes their parents laugh, then they want to do that again, right? They want to do all of that again to make their children's laugh even more. And parents do the same thing. So it's looking for a win-win, right? I remember when my daughter was very little, I would pretend to spray myself in the face with a plant sprayer and she just would giggle hysterically. And so we just sort of went back and forth and she does stuff that makes me laugh which makes gives her pleasure so it's win-win right so given that we start with our needs are the most important thing and that serves our parents needs and then the purpose of the parenting is to negotiate win-win well in this.
[8:40] Situation where the shrink was sending me something on the live stream clearly this was a win-lose lose situation. In other words, his patients were winning, his own life was losing.
[8:53] So why would someone get into and maintain and not know the cause of a win-lose situation? Now, of course, he was winning insofar as his patients were paying him and so on. So why would someone get into a win-lose situation? The natural state of things between all members of families is win-win. That's the natural state of things, is win-win. So why would somebody be in a win-lose situation where he's helping other people, but his own life is a giant tureen full of spicy messiness.
[9:25] Well, it would be because he has been trained in win-lose interactions. Now, when someone is trained in win-lose interactions, who trains them in that? Well, in general, their parents. I mean, you could think of priests or teachers or others, an extended family, but it almost always, I'm just is going to go with the vast majority, the real meaty center of the bell curve, it's the parents.
[9:48] So if you're serving other people's needs at your own expense, where would that come from? Why would that be such an ingrained habit? Well, because it was the only way you could survive as a child was to serve your parents' needs at your own expense, to focus on propping them up and keeping them going at your own expense. Now, if your parents are selfish and chaotic, then serving their needs does serve yourself. Because as a kid, in particular, I mean to some degree the physical health, but certainly the mental health of our parents is absolutely essential to us as children, which is why crazy parents tend to have such conformist children. Because if your parent goes crazy, like seriously crazy.
[10:34] Can't tell reality from fantasy crazy. If your parent goes crazy, you're going to die as a kid because you might get ostracized. They may say something stupid. You might get kicked out. You might be sacrificed. They might be considered demonically possessed and you might be considered the spawn of a devil. Terrible, bad, negative things can and usually will happen. Or your parent just won't take care of you. They won't feed you and whatever. And maybe there'll be be some suspicion from the tribe as a whole. So maintaining the mental health of your parents is an absolutely essential survival mechanism for children. So you give up your identity and yourself and your own needs in order to keep your parents sane. I mean, I was part of this whole project. I kept my mother as sane as humanly possible until I could take the reins of my own adult life at the age of 15 or so so serving your parents neuroses trying to prop up there if your parent is depressed let me think of my famous presentation the truth about robin williams about how he learned how to be super funny because his mother was depressed so he's trying to keep her from sliding into the bottomless pit of depression so he learns how to be funny and make jokes and all kinds of crazy stuff right that's why there was a certain manic driven energy to his comedy.
[11:57] So you have to prop up your parents' mental health at your own expense emotionally because it keeps you alive physically. Or to put it another way, as usual, the children who refuse to prop up their parents' mental health generally were not selected for survival and reproduction. Because remember, everything that happens to you as a child happens before you get a chance to pass on your genes.
[12:20] So the way that I do that is say, well, if all you do is help other people and your own life is a mess, you must have been trained to do that by someone. It's not natural. It's not normal. The normal thing is for your parents to be concerned about your needs. And then through that, you learn to be concerned with other people's needs because your parents are saying, we're concerned with other needs of others. And then you learn that language and you grow up concerned with the needs of others, but not only with the needs of others, right? So, because with parents, it's win-win. It's supposed to be Win a win. I would not have ducks if I didn't have a daughter who really liked ducks. I would not have ducks. However, my daughter's pleasure with the ducks is part of my pleasure, so it's win-win. Now, I'm not going to go out and sit with the ducks for eight hours a day, but I'll do some sometime. So in terms of how do I do it, this is the pattern. If you are... I mean, I'm so habituated by this that... Or this way of thinking that this happens in an instant. But the general pattern is, if you focus on serving the needs of others at your own expense, someone taught you that. And the people who are overwhelmingly likely to have taught you that are your own parents, which means that you had to survive.
[13:41] By serving the needs of your parents at your own expense, at your own mental health expense, but for the survival of your life.
[13:50] So that's the magic alchemy of what it is that i do we are born serving the mutual needs of baby and parent by crying in order to stay alive serving the needs of the baby serving the needs of the parents our parents should be focusing on serving our needs not at their own expense.
[14:08] And therefore we should grow up to learn how to serve mutual needs so if you're in a situation where you're serving the needs of another it's because you were exploited as a parent as a child by your parents. In other words, they relied upon or survived upon your absolute lack of alternatives, right? If you've got one jailer who gives you food and you're, you know, unjustly imprisoned, then you have to focus on keeping that jailer happy. Once you get out of jail, you don't really have to focus on keeping that jailer happy, right? Because you can get your food somewhere else. So they rely on the monopoly control that they have as parents in in order to extract attention and resources and support from you by threatening you with destruction if they go crazy, right? Keep mommy and daddy sane, otherwise you're going to die is a pretty compelling case for working on other people's mental health. They got you hostage, right? So you care about the health of a guy who's got you locked in a basement because if he dies, you die, right? You care about his mental health. You don't want him to go mad. You don't want him to go crazy.
[15:10] So that's the general magic, if you want to call it that way, or the general alchemy is to say, okay, if you have a habit called, I fix everyone and my life is a mess, well, that must come from your parents. And it must come from the fact that you had to prop up your parents and keep them from going completely insane at your own expense. In other words, at the expense of your own long-term mental health, but for the sake of surviving in a physical sense in the immediate moment as a child. So I hope that makes sense. That's the general magical alchemy that is going on in my brain. And I'm certainly happy to explain more if needed, but I hope that's enough. Freedomain.com slash donate. Thanks a million. Bye-bye.
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