In this episode, I respond to a thought-provoking inquiry from a mental health professional regarding the paradox of being skilled at helping others while struggling with one's own life. I explore how childhood conditioning, particularly through parental relationships, leads individuals to prioritize others' needs over their own. This discussion delves into the dynamics of learned behaviors, the sacrifice of personal identity for parental stability, and the emergence of win-lose relationships rooted in dysfunction. I emphasize the importance of mutual support and provide practical examples to illustrate healthy relational dynamics. Ultimately, I advocate for self-reflection and the unlearning of harmful patterns to foster better relationships with oneself and others.
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GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND AUDIOBOOK!
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Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hey, everybody, hope you're doing well.
00:01Stefan Molloy from Free Domain.
00:03So yesterday, all my troubles, so I had a call,
00:07well, a message in my live stream from last night,
00:09Wednesday Night Live, this is the next day, Thursday,
00:12and a shrink, he referred to himself as a shrink,
00:16means a psychologist, psychiatrist,
00:18therapist, something like that.
00:19So he wrote to me in the live stream,
00:21and he said, Stef, why is it that I'm able to help
00:24my clients, but my own life is kind of a mess?
00:26How am I so good at helping other people,
00:29but not fixing my own life?
00:30And I said, well, the results of that would result
00:33from why you would be like that,
00:35is because as a kid, your messed up family demanded
00:38that you provide resources to them
00:40and solve all their problems,
00:41which came at your own expense,
00:42so you're very good at helping other people
00:44without sorting out your own life.
00:47Anyway, so he wrote to me, I won't read the whole thing,
00:50and I won't get into details, but he wrote to me,
00:52and he said, Stef, the great Stef, how do you do it?
00:53No, seriously, how the actual F do you do it?
00:56I'm the shrink who posted on Wednesday,
00:57how can I be so good at helping others,
00:59but F'd up myself?
01:00In 10 seconds, you stripped me naked,
01:02hit the nail on the head, totally, I mean, how?
01:05Yes, and then he goes into details about his family,
01:09and he says, I managed all of this,
01:10keeping the peace on my way through all of this,
01:13and all of that became, got top grades, became a shrink,
01:16started my own business, and I kick ass,
01:18but you, my friend, nailed it,
01:19you are some sort of superhuman, thank you,
01:21I donate roughly every month, and generously wish
01:23I could donate a million times more
01:25from the bottom of my heart, thank you,
01:26and that's a great question, and I appreciate,
01:28obviously, I appreciate the very kind words,
01:29and I'm very, very thrilled, and happy to have helped,
01:32as I always am, and intend to, so if you want to know,
01:37how do I do it, what is the mysterious superpower of this,
01:42and I'll sort of break down how I do it,
01:44and use this power for good, not evil, as best you can,
01:49as I try to use this power for good, not evil,
01:52as best I can, and I think I do a pretty good job,
01:54so when someone says, why am I so good
01:58at helping other people, while my own life is a mess,
02:02what I do is, I basically follow the following methodology,
02:07so first, I say to myself, what is the principle
02:12at work here, the principle at work here is that,
02:15I have to fix other people, and I don't have to fix
02:19my own life, or I can't fix my own life,
02:21I focus on helping other people,
02:24and don't focus on helping myself, okay,
02:27so that is a habit, right, that is a mindset,
02:32and the mindset is, I am there to help other people,
02:35other people are never there to help me,
02:37in fact, to even think of reciprocity is dangerous, right,
02:44so if you're there to help other people,
02:46but other people are never there to help you,
02:48and you're not there to help yourself,
02:50then that is a habit, and where would that habit come from,
02:54well, that habit would come from having parents,
02:58who demand that you solve all their problems,
03:01work to fix their issues, who use you as that kind
03:04of emotional tampon that sometimes dysfunctional parents,
03:07well, I mean, almost all dysfunctional parents do it,
03:10you have to solve their problems,
03:11you have to fix their lives, and they never think about you,
03:15and so, because you're focusing on fixing
03:17other people's lives, your own life turns to crap,
03:22so when you say, all I do is fix other people,
03:26and my own life is a mess, well,
03:29why would that be the case, well, it has to be something
03:31that happens early on in life that instills this habit,
03:34and it has to be a deviation from the norm,
03:37so just to reiterate, I've mentioned this before,
03:40but it's been a while, we are all, you and I and everyone,
03:43you see moving around ambulatory north
03:45of the six foot dirt nap, right, everyone who's alive
03:49and moving around is alive and moving around
03:52because we were inconvenient to our parents,
03:54because we cried three or four times a night
03:57in order to get fed, so we all start focusing
04:02on our own needs, and we all start inconvenience,
04:06and we all start and survive by inconveniencing other people,
04:11now, of course, the goal over the long run
04:15is for you to go from focusing only on your own needs
04:19as a baby, which is exactly right,
04:21and exactly what has been selected by evolution
04:25and mental health and all that sort of stuff,
04:28so we all have to start off by focusing on our own needs,
04:31now, by focusing on our own needs,
04:34we are focusing on our parents' needs,
04:37obviously not consciously, so mothers in general
04:41want their children to survive,
04:43they want their babies to survive,
04:44so if the baby had, I don't know,
04:46some weird excessive mutant empathy,
04:49then the baby would say, oh, gosh,
04:50well, I've already woken up mom once,
04:53once tonight, I should let her sleep,
04:54she's probably tired, she's recovering
04:57from an episiotomy or whatever, right,
04:58so she's tired, I'm gonna let her sleep,
05:01well, then, as a baby, you might not make it, right,
05:03you might die of not getting enough nutrition
05:07or liquids or dehydration, or you might die overnight,
05:10in which case, your mother would be beside herself
05:13with grief, misery, agony, and upset,
05:16so by being selfish, you are serving your mother,
05:19by only thinking of your own needs
05:21and crying until you are satisfied,
05:23you are actually serving the needs of your mother,
05:25there's no particular contradiction there,
05:27or to put it another way,
05:29would your mother prefer another hour or two of sleep
05:31or a dead baby, well, of course,
05:34she would prefer to give up the hour or two of sleep
05:38in order to keep her baby alive
05:39and healthy and happy and all that, right,
05:41so we start off with a symbiotic relationship
05:45with our mothers, where serving our own selfish needs
05:47also serves the needs of our mothers,
05:50now, the terrible twos are when we learn
05:53that we can say no, that we can,
05:55that there's a conflict between our needs
05:57and our parents' needs, and the purpose of parenting
05:59is to teach children how to negotiate
06:02for win-win situations, because win-win situations
06:05are pair bonding, pair bonding is when you
06:09are both better off of being in each other's company,
06:13so if you can't negotiate win-win relationships,
06:17you cannot pair bond, because if it's win-lose,
06:20sooner or later, the, quote, pair bond disintegrates
06:23because one person gets sick and tired of being exploited,
06:25now, either they physically leave the relationship
06:28and bail out and all of that,
06:30or they emotionally leave the relationship
06:33by becoming dissociated, by becoming passive-aggressive,
06:37by only reacting, by becoming emotionally absent,
06:40so they check out of the relationship
06:42either physically or emotionally,
06:44so you cannot maintain sustainable relationships
06:48without being able to find win-win solutions,
06:52so the purpose of parenting is to create the foundation
06:56for the families of the next generation
06:57by teaching your children about win-win situations,
07:01so what you do is you're kind and generous to your kids
07:04and you do what they like and what they want,
07:07and after a while, they figure out
07:09that they also have to do what you like and you want,
07:12and you start negotiating for win-win situations, right,
07:17so if you are stuck in the process,
07:22and this happens very early on, right,
07:24I remember when my daughter began feeding me back,
07:29she was very young, like, I don't know,
07:30six months or whatever, so I'm feeding her,
07:32and then she wants to feed me back, right,
07:34so she recognizes, oh, I,
07:37she's just pre-verbal for the most part, right,
07:39so she would say in her mind, I'm hungry,
07:42I feel better when I have food, I have a mouth, I eat,
07:46my father has a mouth, he eats, maybe he's hungry,
07:49and I'm sure he'll feel better when he gets food, right,
07:53so this is pretty clear how this works out pretty often,
07:58and of course, when babies do something
08:01that makes their parents laugh,
08:03then they want to do that again, right,
08:05they want to do all of that again,
08:07to make their children's laugh even more,
08:09and parents do the same thing,
08:11so it's looking for win-win, right,
08:13I remember when my daughter was very little,
08:15I would pretend to spray myself in the face
08:17with a plant sprayer, and she just would giggle hysterically
08:20and so we sort of went back and forth,
08:22and she does stuff that makes me laugh,
08:24which gets her pleasure, so it's win-win, right,
08:27so given that we start with our needs
08:33are the most important thing,
08:34and that serves our parents' needs,
08:36and then the purpose of the parenting
08:37is to negotiate win-win, well, in this situation
08:41where the shrink was sending me something on the livestream,
08:46clearly, this was a win-lose situation,
08:50in other words, his patients were winning,
08:52his own life was losing,
08:54so why would someone get into and maintain
08:58and not know the cause of a win-lose situation?
09:01Now, of course, he was winning
09:02insofar as his patients are paying him and so on,
09:04so why would someone get into a win-lose situation?
09:07The natural state of things
09:08between all members of families is win-win,
09:12that's the natural state of things, is win-win,
09:14so why would somebody be in a win-lose situation
09:18where he's helping other people,
09:20but his own life is a giant tureen
09:23full of spicy messiness?
09:26Well, it would be because he has been trained
09:29in win-lose interactions.
09:32Now, when someone is trained in win-lose interactions,
09:36who trains them in that?
09:37Well, in general, their parents,
09:38I mean, you could think of priests or teachers
09:40or others in an extended family,
09:42but almost always, I'm just gonna go
09:43with the vast majority,
09:44the real meaty center of the bell curve,
09:47it's the parents, so if you're serving
09:50other people's needs at your own expense,
09:53where would that come from?
09:55Why would that be such an ingrained habit?
09:57Well, because it was the only way you could survive
09:59as a child was to serve your parents' needs
10:03at your own expense, to focus on propping them up
10:06and keeping them going at your own expense.
10:08Now, if your parents are selfish and chaotic,
10:12then serving their needs does serve yourself
10:16because as a kid, in particular,
10:19I mean, to some degree, the physical health,
10:21but certainly the mental health of our parents
10:23is absolutely essential to us as children,
10:26which is why crazy parents tend to have
10:29such conformist children because if your parent
10:32goes crazy, like seriously crazy,
10:34like can't tell reality from fantasy crazy,
10:38if your parent goes crazy, you're gonna die as a kid
10:42because you might get ostracized,
10:44they may say something stupid,
10:45you might get kicked out, you might be sacrificed,
10:47they might be considered demonically possessed
10:50and you might be considered the spawn of a devil,
10:52like terrible, bad, negative things can
10:55and usually will happen.
10:57Or your parent just won't take care of you,
10:59they won't feed you and whatever, right?
11:01And maybe there'll be some suspicion
11:02from the tribe as a whole.
11:04So maintaining the mental health of your parents
11:09is an absolutely essential survival mechanism for children.
11:13So you give up your identity and yourself
11:16and your own needs in order to keep your parents sane.
11:20I mean, I was part of this whole project.
11:22I kept my mother as sane as humanly possible
11:25until I could take the reins of my own adult life
11:28at the age of 15 or so.
11:30So serving your parents' neuroses,
11:34trying to prop up their, if your parent is depressed,
11:37I mean, think of my famous presentation,
11:40The Truth About Robin Williams,
11:41about how he learned how to be super funny
11:43because his mother was depressed.
11:45So he's trying to keep her from sliding
11:47into the bottomless pit of depression.
11:48So he learns how to be funny and make jokes
11:51and all kinds of crazy stuff, right?
11:52That's why there was a certain manic-driven energy
11:55to his comedy.
11:57So you have to prop up your parents' mental health
12:01at your own expense, emotionally,
12:04because it keeps you alive physically.
12:06Or to put it another way, as usual,
12:08the children who refuse to prop up
12:10their parents' mental health generally were not selected
12:13for survival and reproduction.
12:14Because remember, everything that happens to you
12:16as a child happens before you get a chance
12:17to pass on your genes.
12:20So the way that I do that is say,
12:23well, if all you do is help other people
12:25and your own life is a mess,
12:26you must have been trained to do that by someone.
12:29It's not natural, it's not normal.
12:32The normal thing is for your parents
12:34to be concerned about your needs,
12:35and then through that, you learn to be concerned
12:38with other people's needs because your parents are saying,
12:40we're concerned with other needs of others,
12:42and then you learn that language
12:43when you grow up, concerned with the needs of others,
12:45but not only with the needs of others, right?
12:49So because with parents, it's win-win.
12:51It's supposed to be win-win.
12:54I would not have ducks if I didn't have a daughter
12:58who really liked ducks.
12:59I would not have ducks.
13:00However, my daughter's pleasure with the ducks
13:02is part of my pleasure, so it's win-win.
13:05Now, I'm not gonna go out and sit with the ducks
13:06for eight hours a day, but I'll do some sometime.
13:11So in terms of how do I do it,
13:13this is the pattern.
13:14If you are, serve, and all, I mean,
13:18I'm so habituated by this that,
13:21or this way of thinking that this happens in an instant,
13:24but the general pattern is,
13:25if you focus on serving the needs of others
13:28at your own expense, someone taught you that,
13:31and the people who are overwhelmingly likely
13:34to have taught you that are your own parents,
13:37which means that you had to survive
13:40by serving the needs of your parents at your own expense,
13:44at your own mental health expense,
13:47but for the survival of your life.
13:50So that's the magic alchemy of what it is that I do.
13:56We are born serving the mutual needs of baby and parent
13:59by trying, in order to stay alive,
14:01serving the needs of the baby,
14:02serving the needs of the parents.
14:04Our parents should be focusing on serving our needs,
14:06not at their own expense, and therefore,
14:09we should grow up to learn how to serve mutual needs.
14:11So if you're in a situation
14:13where you're serving the needs of another,
14:14it's because you were exploited as a parent,
14:18as a child by your parents.
14:19In other words, they relied upon
14:22or survived upon your absolute lack of alternatives, right?
14:27If you've got one jailer who gives you food
14:32and you're unjustly imprisoned,
14:34then you have to focus on keeping that jailer happy.
14:36Once you get out of jail,
14:37you don't really have to focus
14:38on keeping that jailer happy, right?
14:39Because you can get your food somewhere else.
14:41So they rely on the monopoly control
14:43that they have as parents
14:44in order to extract attention and resources
14:46and support from you by threatening you with destruction
14:50if they go crazy, right?
14:52Keep mommy and daddy sane, otherwise you're going to die
14:55is a pretty compelling case
14:57for working on other people's mental health.
14:59They got you hostage, right?
15:00So you care about the health of a guy
15:04who's got you locked in a basement
15:05because if he dies, you die, right?
15:07You care about his mental health.
15:08You don't want him to go mad.
15:09You don't want him to go crazy.
15:10So that's the general magic,
15:14if you want to call it that way,
15:15or the general alchemy is to say,
15:17okay, if you have a habit called,
15:19I fix everyone and my life is a mess,
15:22well, that must come from your parents.
15:24And it must come from the fact
15:25that you had to prop up your parents
15:27and keep them from going completely insane
15:29at your own expense.
15:31In other words,
15:32at the expense of your own long-term mental health,
15:34but for the sake of surviving in a physical sense
15:36in the immediate moment as a child.
15:38So I hope that makes sense.
15:39That's the general magical alchemy
15:42that is going on in my brain.
15:43And I'm certainly happy to explain more if needed,
15:46but I hope that's enough.
15:47Freedomain.com slash donate.
15:48Thanks a million, bye-bye.