As someone with good parents, I get very demoralized hearing about how ungodly awful most peoples’ parents were. It’s so ubiquitous that I almost (almost but not quite) subscribe to the philosophy my friends have where they hold that children should (literally) be raised “by the village” rather than by two parents, which in theory would minimize the effects of one imbalanced mind having full control over the children.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of books on narcissism and have been picking up on the idea/notion/possibility/viewpoint that narcissism is a spectrum like autism is. In autism, which itself is incredibly common due to the fact that it’s multiple genes/processes/whatever performing multiple parts of a spectrum (think a carpet representing humanity and a shattered cup on the carpet, I use the shards in this visual to represent pieces of the spectrum scattered across humanity, apologies if anyone thinks a shattered cup seems like a negative comparison, I don’t), you have the majority of humanity having some variance in it, which goes to demonstrate there’s no such thing as a neurotypical. As in, if a scouter was invented that instead of scanning your power level scanned your autism level, everyone would have their very own signature number. I would be over 9000. Same with narcissism, if this view is correct, as it would be another shattered glass on the carpet that is humanity, with the shards from both glasses overlapping in their territories (which when you think about it makes the family dynamics in The Good Doctor all the more awkward, it’s one spectrum at odds with another in a show where the main character is a medical savant with autism). And again, not trying to make an awkward comparison, I have friends who openly confess to me they’re deep on the narcissism spectrum, and these people at least are trying their best in life, as well as showing narcissism is a neutral condition that just happens to seem more negative in modern urban situations.
Consider this the sequel to my last such question which had a similar idea to it. What’s the most narcissisty your parents ever come or came, even if you hold them in generally good regards?
Not the most but probably one of the last ones. When I decided to move to another country my mother refused to help in any way, even though the money necessary would make no difference in my parents life. Not only that, but she actively sabotaged every effort I made and in my last day she asked me to talk to her. She cried and cried and said: “I fought so hard for you to stay here. Who is gonna take care of me now?”
And that’s how I moved to Canada in February without a winter jacket and had only 20 dollars in my bank account after paying the initial expenses.
Expecting your parents to pay for you to move ironically seems narcissistic
Remind me of bratty kids growing up, partiality including me.
It made me sad that she refused to help me out because at the time, in her words: “it’s too much money”. And that was fair, it’s her money and her choice. It could have saved me from a lot of trouble, stress and put me in a much better situation in life, after all the money was to pay for college. What really pissed me off was her real reasoning for not helping me out that came out in the last second.
Fair