#adult children supporting adult children

[performing-personhood]

Any other former children wanna talk about the things our parents told us that we wouldn't realize was pretty messed up/completely totally incorrect until we were adults??

I'll go first:

My mom, the stable one of my parental set and eldest of six irish-catholic kids, used to say "After the age of 25 you're not allowed to blame your parents for your life anymore! You're an adult now and you have to take responsibility for your own life."

Which, like, sounds rgood in a vacuum? And is maybe even, to give the lady some credit, a teensy-weensy bit true? (Especially when my helpless father is taken into consideration.) Because assuming responsibility for one's own bullshit is a super important thing to do if one ever wants to properly perform stability and independence.

The problem here is that this logic completely ignores the generational trauma, while both absolving the guilty parties and placing the blame for lingering emotional damage onto the traumatized person. And that is fucked up.

Yall. I'm three years deep into weekly AEDP therapy and I am still learning that [refers to note cards] "It Is Okay To Be Upset About Your Childhood And Hold Your Parents Responsible For Your Lingering Emotional Damage Even If Your Parents Tried Their Best And Were Generally Upstanding People."

Repeat after me: It's okay to be angry at your parents for how things turned out. It is okay to be low-contact or no-contact with those same people who tried their best, especially if they won't change despite your best efforts to change with them.

Because guess what buckaroo? That's what taking responsibility for your adult life looks like: it looks like protecting yourself from people who would do you harm. Whether or not the people intend to or willfully inflict harm on you does not factor into this equation.

[perditty]

The Shavepate has a harder heart than mine. They had fought about the hostages half a dozen times. "The Sons of the Harpy are laughing in their pyramids," Skahaz said, just this morning. "What good are hostages if you will not take their heads?" In his eyes, she was only a weak woman. Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? -ADWD, Daenerys IV

[mahmoudabushaban]

Hello, I am Mahmoud, I do some recreational activities for children in Gaza, such as drawing on their faces, to bring joy to their hearts and get them out of the atmosphere of wars.❤️

If you like to watch such activities, you can support me for more❤️

I do this work personally without any help❤️

@timetravellingkitty @deathlonging @briarhips @mazzikah @mahoushojoe

@rhubarbspring @schoolhater @pcktknife @transmutationisms @sawasawako

@feluka @fiqranas @irhabiya @commissions4aid-international @wellwaterhysteria

@deepspaceboytoy @junglejim4322 @kibumkim @neechees

@mangocheesecakes @kyra45-helping-others @tortiefrancis

@toiletpotato @fromjannah @omegaversereloaded @vague-humanoid @evillesbianvillain

[furiousgoldfish]

Growing up with abusive parents, there was a lot of religious grooming going on, a big emphasis was put on being 'a good person', and I was told often about how god is watching me and judging my every move, and of course, he always agreed with my parents judgment, conveniently for them.

Being a good person meant a lot to me, so I did try very hard to be kind and do good deeds, only when I did this, my parents were very much not satisfied. Instead they would find reasons why my good deeds were, not actually good. I'd get told that I only did things to look good in front of others, or to get the attention, or to get something out of it. This hit me hard at the time, my character was already attacked on all fronts, and now I had to second-guess my every move to judge weather me doing good deeds was only attention-seeking, manipulative and selfish behaviour.

This in turn taught me that I should never expect anything back, never seek any attention, never consider how it makes me look or feel to do good things for others, and, this was still not enough. I was still being told that I did everything so lousy, that it would have been better if I hadn't done anything at all. My thoughtfulness, my attempts at being helpful, obedient, grateful, convenient, generous, supportive and kind, it was always degraded or explained away as 'the least I could do'.

I struggled with analyzing my own actions and the motivations I had for them, and worried that I might be a horrible, self-serving, selfish person. At this point I was already doing everything anyone asked of me, while being polite and mild-mannered about it, and I didn't complain about being overworked, neglected, exhausted, lonely, and tormented by the abuse. I was so focused on scrutinizing my own actions, whether I could have done anything better, whether I was doing it all for wrong reasons, that I couldn't see a simple truth behind this charade: people who were constantly telling me off for not being a good enough person, have never even tried to be good themselves.

My parents, so quick to berate me for not having the right 'motivations' for my kindness, were not bothering to be kind at all. The amount of good deeds they've done for nothing in return is zero. They always had ulterior motives, they only did things to look good, they held others in obligation for every gift, every gesture, every word given to them. They upheld every little 'good deed' they did as a proof that they can do no wrong, used it to get leverage, to get trust and illusion of goodness. They only did good things when convenient and easy, with large payoff. They did things, good and bad, for attention only. I wasn't supposed to notice that. I was supposed to put my head down and feel horrible for everything I ever did.

I've had time to clear my head, and think about how much I should scrutinize my own actions. Even if my standards are still impossibly high for myself, I seem to be very forgiving towards others, finding them good people even if all they do is live for themselves, and find happiness and pleasure for their own benefit. Just not doing harm to others, is good! People are not selfish for wanting to be happy, and focusing on their own happiness, it means there are more happy people on the planet, which is what we want.

The way I was taught to go about being a good person was all about sacrifice. Give away your everything for nothing in return, and then, maybe, if everyone feels you've given them enough, if nobody is left behind, if nobody is left dissatisfied, maybe you'll be considered good. Which is impossible, because you cannot please everyone, you cannot rip yoursef into enough pieces to fix everyone's problems. It's a way to get torn and used and exploited and then have everyone abandon you completely after they've used all of the pieces to their full extent. It's not something a human being should be put trough. It's a devastating mission with no fulfillment, no happy ending, no possibility of it turning okay.

I've started to consider that tearing myself apart for others is not only wrong, but actively a bad thing to do, because it harms me. Is something really good if it harms a person? I am a person. My deeds should not cause harm to myself. Sacrifice is romanticized in both religion and media, but should people want someone to be sacrificed for their own happiness? Is it okay and normal to have a portion of people suffering and torn apart so another portion would be happy? It's a bad system! We shouldn't live like this. People who want to benefit from other's sacrifice are not good, and should not be even given the chance to benefit from it.

Nobody should be sacrificed. Nobody should be bearing other people's burdens indefinitely. Nobody's life should be degraded to another person's convenience.

And children should not be scrutinized for their good acts. Children don't yet have a developed sense of morality, they often copy what they're seeing others do, and they follow their basic instincts of curiosity, desire, boundary testing, wanting to try things out. Their little experiments will often not turn out great, but it's the only way to learn. Being shamed so badly at this stage, for 'not being good enough' can only paralyze them, ending their learning process, forcing them to stop developing their own thinking. So they accept the grooming instead, they accept what is told to them about good and evil, without having the chance to test it and decide for themselves.

I got told I was being bad and I believed it, without ever being able to see how others are benefiting from my desperate obedience. It destroyed my sense of self. Learning this as an adult is much more complicated, because you first have to undo everything that's been done to you before, every belief placed in your head so you'd give up on your own interests and do as you are told, every fear placed in you if you disobey. And then you have to experiment and test your thoughts, see what happens, which again, feels embarrassing as an adult, to have to learn the basics like that. And also at times, scary, because you still hold the trauma of being punished for testing anything, you might feel like your life is on the line if you allow yourself some mischief. Even when others are doing it constantly, carelessly, and get no punishment whatsoever.

They put us trough all this just so they could benefit from us when we were children.

[borntogayz]

I’m fully supportive of drivers talking about their mental health and that includes Lando!!! but remember that Lewis and Max have also spoken out with their struggles… Lando is not doing anything revolutionary or singular.

Many of the drivers have talked about their nerves, mental health, eating disorders, etc but just because it wasn’t in a presser or a video’d interview doesn’t mean they never spoke out. Marks book! Maxs’ documentary/show!

I’d love for formula 1 to give these drivers a better and more supportive platform to speak out on these issues but for the most part the opinions and personal issues of drivers are mainly shared in their own content. It’s good that lando is outward with his struggles but at the same time let’s remember that other drivers also face the same or similar challenges.

[plushpile]

Currently frustrated (again) abt how little it feels like we can talk about certain things in the plush community, mainly when it comes to politics and stuff like that

A huge example on my mind rn is the whole squishmallow/jazwares thing

It frustrates me to see ppl in my servers and on other sites continuing to buy squishmallows right now, and I feel like it's only gonna get worse as the holidays get closer

I can't help but think that a lot of these people just don't know (I mean shit, posts about it were literally hidden/deleted on the main squishmallow subreddit), and I want so badly to tell them but in multiple places that's not allowed, because of the nature of the community and people wanting to keep it a certain way

In a way I get it, but the silence is deeply upsetting when support of genocide and disgusting misinformation is what's on the table

I know a lot of us are in this community for comfort, or to connect to childhood, whatever it could be but as adults in this community we should not let our own comfort take precedence over the lives of innocent people, it doesn't matter if you're political or not

On the other hand, I feel like we're avoiding this topic to specifically avoid discourse, but frankly I don't care because I don't want to share a community with anyone who would oppose the beliefs fueling the boycott of this company

I don't want to share a community with people who would defend genocide, specifically the killing of innocent people in Gaza, for any reason, and it's disheartening not knowing who I could be rubbing shoulders with in this community because of the specific lack of conversation about these important topics

I don't really have any profound point here, I don't have a solution, I'm just frustrated and disgusted

Fuck Jazwares, stop buying squishmallows, and FREE GAZA

[riickgrimes]

it just really breaks my heart that most of the discourse has to focus on dying children in order to humanize palestinians as if fully grown adult human beings don’t also deserve your attention, empathy, respect, and care

[caitlinjohns77]

Some good news after reading stories of parents having their kids taken for not putting them through gender surgery and hormones

[repurposedmeatlocker]

On one hand, I agree that there should be a more diverse field of subject matter utilized in "adult animation". Not all "adult animation" should be used as an excuse to revolve around shock content and gratuitous potty humor. At this point in time, stuff like this being seen on prime-time television is no longer out of the ordinary. And, from my observation, is done well even less frequently. There should be more films that treat themselves seriously and explore an array of topics rather than just comedy with a middle-school idea of mature subject matter.

ON THE OTHER HAND. I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with animated movies and shows with lots of drugs and boobies and sex and gross jokes. I think cartoon characters having freaky sex is funny af. Both have the right to exist together. Art should not be pigeon-holed through a lens of "respectability" in order to be taken seriously. Demanding adult animation be "palatable" for an "adult" audience ultimately strips it completely of what makes it a unique medium for expression in the first place.

[cakemoney]

brennan: so you're in the last standard exam in an alien realm and in the stands you see a bunch of arthur agueforts, they're cheering for you, they're talking to each other, they've got your names written on their chests

editors: zooms in on the two arthur agueforts who are making out because they know how we are

[truecampbell]

So true.

[obsob]

ik you use to draw a lot of harry potter...i was wondering what your opinion of it is now?

this

[nebula-nonhuman]

Everyone please hope that my medical appointment tomorrow goes somewhat well.

Doctors are usually really mean to me for reasons I cannot comprehend (perhaps they are like horses and will kick the shit out of you if they sense you're afraid of them, idk) so I'm like,,,super scared.

Especially because this is about a deformity that I'm very embarrassed and insecure about

[cr-pplepunx]

mental health, physical disability, and youth advocacy are so closely intertwined due to a shared social status but the moment our disabled and mentally ill youth start that conversation they are flooded with accusations of infantilization. most notably, from lower support needs folks or non-disableds!

[engagemythrusters]

“Neurospicy” lends itself to those who are able to be viewed as “quirky” by society. By using it as a replacement for “neurodivergent,” you are alienating a large population of the people who fall under that category.

[1-800-cuupid]

out of pocket omori theory ahead //

i fully believe that sunny was an unwanted child and thats why his parents are like that with him and then when the incident happened they just decided they want nothing to do with it (him) and just goes with whatever he says happened without examining further

omori spoilers ofc!!!

Hell nah, it ain't out of pocket....

I don't know if Sunny being unwanted is 100% legit in my mind, BUT I can see where it comes from!

After Mari's death it's clear that the, already emotionally unavailable, parents completely check tf out. Which leads to Sunny suffering alone.

I feel that's just as bad as being unwanted.

The dad is just completely out of the picture when the events of game start. I really doubt Sunny's father talks to his ex-wife, let alone Sunny himself.

For the mom, I feel like she half cares about Sunny by leaving him some food and the voicemails. However, the other half of her keeps that distance. Continuing to be emotionally unavailable by leaving him alone in a house for days and choosing to go shopping over checking to make sure he's alright.

I couldn't imagine being a mom and doing that to my child.