Why Do Parents Hate Their Kids?

[Abstract]

difficult(impossible?) to love other people if you hate yourself

Hmmm... I don't think this is true for me actually Eleanor. I have always hated myself and yet I have felt genuine love others. Such as my niece and nephew. Maybe it depends how able one is to seperate different aspects f functioning. I don't know. I have always done something else that should be impossible. Have genuine empathy for others without being able to identify my own emotions.

right brained.

Your post made me think Mercy. I am only left brained when it comes to my past and this stuff. Emotion is too frightening. As a person I am much more as you describe. Very lateral thinking too. On the Myers Briggs scale I am ENFP although very low in extroversion. More recently I have wondered how much of my scattiness is dissociative though.

Raven, I like all your quotes!

 

[Pencil]

I don't think this is true for me actually Eleanor. I have always hated myself and yet I have felt genuine love others. Such as my niece and nephew.

Thanks for saying this - I've often felt / thought the same.

 

[raven123]

Eleanor & Abstract & Pencil,

I'm not sure I "loved" other people as much as I denied myself everything for the benefit of everyone else, as I was taught to do all of childhood. Consequently, thought about this strongly last night and a lot of nights recently, my first 40 years of life has been stolen by my abusers. It's also why doing for others left me even more empty, lonely and full of self-hate. And, it made me hate life even more. People usually help others to feel good. I helped because I was told I was worthless and everyone else mattered but me. It's also bankrupted me financially and physically (I'm still sick with thyroid issues).

I get panic attacks even being nice to myself. That's how much I was denied my needs as a kid. Heck, I was denied my need to be heard by all those useless shrinks I had. They didn't want to discuss my sex abuse and child abuse. They avoided it.

I have a ton of shame. Shame as in I don't even feel worthy of even looking others in the eye. And, I don't for very long. I recoil at hugs and being touched. I really don't like handshakes. Nobody has hugged me since like 2005. Sex has been my only touch. None of that sex mattered. I wasn't there. Sex abuse teaches you that you're only worth is their sexual gratification. I did the same as an adult. I rarely enjoyed it if at all.

 

[Pencil]

Raven, I relate more than you'll ever know.

 

[Eleanor]

I have always hated myself and yet I have felt genuine love others. Such as my niece and nephew. Maybe it depends how able one is to seperate different aspects f functioning. I don't know. I have always done something else that should be impossible. Have genuine empathy for others without being able to identify my own emotions.

Thank you Abstract (and everyone else too!) for challenging this set of ideas - Since I am a "data driven" sort of person, and I totally believe you guys and your reports - there must be something wrong with the model/theory. So the question for me then becomes, "How is that possible?" I admit, my first impulse is to say "But Abstract, you don't really hate yourself." But that seems so totally WRONG - because who could possibly know better if you hate yourself than you do? The bit about empathy for others without feeling your own emotions is a real puzzler - because the usual way of thinking about this is that we "echo" or "sympathetically vibrate" or something with others and that's how we "get" them. But if that's wrong, then empathy seems EVEN MORE mysterious than it already is (which is saying a lot.) Or perhaps language is failing us all here and we are talking about different things with the same words? I suppose it might be possible that what one means by love coming from the experience of abuse, vs. the experience of nurturing, vs. the experience of neglect might be totally different things? Could there be "windows" in emotional development just as there are in physical and perceptual development?

Didn't mean to derail the thread, I'll go muse by myself now...:alien:

 

[Pencil]

Could there be "windows" in emotional development just as there are in physical and perceptual development?

Most definitely. And I think (but it is Raven's call, of course) that this is still very relevant in terms of parents and kids and hate ... and the universe :).

I totally fuss over my daughter when she is ill. When I'm ill I hardly notice. This is just one very simple example of how I have more empathy, love, whatever, for others.

 

[Mercy]

Not very clever of the Dalai Lama, he should have been expecting it seeing that the US is a Christian country ;)

As a Christian country we should have been recognizable by our love of neighbor through cooperating with Our Lord Jesus Christ. That the Dalai Lama didn't see that is shame on us. The quote above is an offensively prejudicial remark that disrespects the variety of beliefs on this Forum.

 

[Pencil]

The quote above is an offensively prejudicial remark that disrespects the variety of beliefs on this Forum.

NO Mercy, it is not. One of the basic tenets of Christianity is that of original sin (I think it is called. English is not my mother tongue and don't read the Bible in English.) According to Christianity, we are conceived and born or delivered into / unto sin - sorry, I can't quote in English. This is because WE, as Christians, believe that the universe is ordered along the good/evil divide. As a committed Christian I am NOT anti-Christian. I expected the Dalai Lama to have shown greater awareness of the basic tenets of Christianity when he crossed the boundary from East to West. I know that one of the Noble Truths of Buddhism is 'Life is suffering'. (In fact, I think that is the first of the Noble Truths.) Therefore, if I go to a Buddhist country, I will not be surprised by a worldview that expresses that.

So, my criticism was not aimed at Christianity, but at the Dalai Lama - and NOT for his beliefs, but for what appears to be his lack of acknowledgement of how a God view necessarily informs a world view. And THAT is freedom of expression.

I really don't want to get into arguments about religion. Especially if they are based on misconception and misunderstanding.

 

[Mercy]

agreed. Thanks for your answer and decision to let this drop. There are so many different 'Christian' view points, I think you are wise to let us just be comfortable with each other.

 

[Pencil]

Thanks Mercy, I'm glad we could resolve this.

 

[raven123]

Note: I get "warnings" for quoting people so I clip and paste quotes instead. sorry.

Pencil,

"I totally fuss over my daughter when she is ill. When I'm ill I hardly notice. This is just one very simple example of how I have more empathy, love, whatever, for others."

My mom would take care of me when sick. But, she'd say things like, "why are you always sick?" I injured my knee at school when I was 15 and my sperm donor yelled at me in the ER for getting injured. Mom didn't stand up for me and said something about it, too. I forget what. Of course, since I was military, I had to sit injured (knee blew up with fluid) at the school for 3 hours till someone would come take me to the ER on base some 30 miles away. The coaches acted like they could care less and left me in some sports storage room alone. There was no school nurse. Finally, someone drove me to the base. Not parents. I forget who. I didn't remember this till just now.

Logging off. This just gave me a panic attack.

 

[Eleanor]

I've been thinking about this thread a lot. (bulldog philosopher gene expressing itself, I'm just going to keep worrying the thing until it is good and dead...:eek:)

So here is what I've come up with:

"Love" and "Hate" are both really really imprecise terms.

Both can be actions (as in doing "self-love" or "self-care" activities, or in "self-harming") so they can describe and categorize behaviors.

Both can also name a variety of feelings of attraction and repulsion. This is especially confusing because "love" strictly speaking is not an emotion that I can tell. What people are usually meaning when they talk about love is "attraction" or "lust" or "affection" or "fascination" or something like that. "Hate" however, might be an emotion. "Disgust" is certainly an emotion. "Anger" and "loathing" are emotions.

Both can name psychological biases toward their objects, and as such indicate a certain disposition of how we will feel about the object in positive or negative ways.

Both can name commitments or habitual actions toward their objects - how we intend to/habitually treat them, regardless of how we feel at the time.

Reading back over these posts I get the sense that there is not one of these meanings that is predominant...

@ raven, Sorry you got triggered badly.:( What poor excuses for adults you were surrounded by. This:

since I was military,

leads me to wonder about boundary issues between you and your folks, and how the context might have made it really really difficult to draw those boundaries for yourself. You, after all weren't (strictly speaking) in the military. Your parent was. So yours was a military family, but you were just a kid. My dad was a hospital administrator - that didn't make me a "hospital kid" or "medical." I come from a family with lots of military in it, so I know how people talk about this, and it does blur the lines and it IS thought of as an identity - which in some ways it is - and it is a specific sub-culture. Old news to you, I'm sure, but the phrase was striking to me...