Tag: coping mechanisms | A Banana Peeled

Try to see it from my point of view

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I have more to say about family dysfunction, dating, points of view, and other things related. In the last post, I was saying what was my deal-breaker in dating someone. It’s not race, religion, or gender (to a certain extent). It’s political affiliation, specifically being a Republican. That can expand more widely into cishet white dudes because there are so many layers of privilege going on that it tires me just to think of it.

I want to say up front. This is not saying that all cishet white dudes, some of my best friends are cishet white dudes, blah blah blah. But. I just don’t have the heart for it any longer. Trying to relate to them, I mean. I think everyone should be treated with decency and respect, yes. That doesn’t mean I need to give everyone a chance in the dating world.

Side note: This is something I firmly believe–you don’t have to date anyone you don’t want to date. I don’t think it’s cool if someone is prejudiced against, say, black people, I think it’s perfectly legit not to date them. More to the point, it’s a service to black people to not date them if you aren’t attracted to them because who wants someone dating them out of pity/guilt? I had white women who felt they should date me to show how progressive they were, and believe it or not, I was not turned on by that. At all.

Here’s my point. Everyone looks at things from their own point of view. The trick is to realize that other people don’t necessarily think the way you do. And, if you want to be advanced, you could try to imagine where the other person was coming from.

This is the problem in describing abuse. There is just no way to give the complete context other people need in order to understand what has happened. Each individual instance may not be a big deal in and of itself, but oftentimes, it’s the death of a thousand paper cuts.

Dyfunction dysfunction, what’s your function?

Posted on September 21, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

One thing rarely talked about when discussing abuse is how coping mechanisms that have been developed to deal with the abuse are faulty in healthy situations. It’s something that comes up on Ask A Manager on a regular basis because she talks about how being in a toxic work environment can warp you to what is ok and what isn’t. The wildest example I can think of is the letter writer who bit a coworker and in the update, said it was considered ok by her colleagues because the guy is a jerk. The LW’s conclusion was that people with normal jobs found them boring and hated it, so, yeah, her work environment was toxic, but, hey, at least it was interesting. Many commenters pointed out that the LW was getting warped by the toxic environment.

I bring this up because abuse does the same. In the last post, I mentioned that I was resigned to managing my parents because they weren’t going to change. The way I deal with them, though, is not something that would work well with healthy people. Basically, I just placate them and get through a conversation as painlessly as possible. I keep it as surface-y as possible as well. The goal is to not say anything of importance unless I absolutely have to.

You can imagine how this would not work well with people I actually want to be close to. You can’t shine off a friend and expect them to be happy about it. A true friend, I mean. Not just an acquaintance. When the tragedy happened in February, I told my close friends about it. I was devastated and needed the comfort/support. I would not think about holding back with them, which is the normal and healthy way to deal with it.

The longer you’ve been in an abusive situation, the harder it is to recalibrate your thinking. I am low-contact with my parents, but it’s still enough contact to keep me off balance. I have a shield up around them that I can’t afford to let done. Explaining that to other people is futile.

I’ve said it before, but it’s a matter of context. For people who have loving parents, it’s nearly impossible to imagine parents who don’t love their children. Or rather, it might be imaginable, but it’s not something that can be understood if you haven’t been in the situation. Like anything else that is the outlier, really.

Compassion is hard

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I touched on how we humans make things harder on ourselves. This is true in general, and even more so with family dysfunction. What we grew up with was the norm, and if it was unrelenting, then it can be hard to break free. In my family, women were subjugated to men (rather, my mother prostrated herself in front of my father. But, weirdly, she also argued with him incessantly about him staying out until all hours of the night. She told me not to tell him certain things, but she also stood up to him when he wanted to spank my brother. She also pushed to get my brother an Apple computer at a time when it was prohibitively expensive because my brother was techno-minded).

My mother has always been an odd mixture of rampantly sexist in general and believing herself to be above those rules. I guess that’s not odd, actually. Many people have a ‘not for me’ exception to their rules. “Oh, this is how things should be–except for me.”

It’s partly because people have plenty of context for their own behavior/ideas/views, but they don’t for other people’s. So something that they could justify for themselves, they would not do so for other people. In other words, it’s ok for me but not for thee.

My mother has dedicated her life to propping up my father’s ego. It’s really sad when you think about it from afar. I also think it has emotionally crippled him rather than helping him. Never allowing him to tolerate a moment of discomfort did not help him grow. Was he able to grow? I don’t know. Doubtful. But we’ll never know because my mother wrapped him in gossamer silk and never let him out.

It’s not entirely her fault. He was (and is) a difficult man. A full-fledged narcissist who did not think about anything other than himself. He had affairs from the time I was very young, and he and my mother fought about it endlessly.

Here’s the bottom line with that. My mother knew. She knew he was stepping out on her, and she accepted it. Yes, she fought with him about it, but she did not leave him. She did not enact any consequences for his bad behavior, so he learned that if he just waited it out, he would win in the end.

I can’t help thinking that her life would have been so much better if she had left him before my brother and I were even born, but that was never going to happen. My mother’s chidhood made it so she would never leave my father. Not just the sexist Taiwanese culture, but the fact that her mother was so domineering and withoholding of love.

Personalized anxiety quirks

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I was talking to my mother the other day–by the way, I curse my brother for teaching her how to Zoom. Not because she’s using it, but because she hasn’t quite got the hang of Zoom etiquette. She called me and asked if Zoom was working. She had sent me an email with an invite, you see, and I hadn’t clicked on it. I had to explain to her that if I wasn’t expecting an email, I didn’t check it–especially not that one. She kept rambling about Zoom and making sure it worked and she had sent me an email, and I had to tell her to chill the fuck out (not in those words, obviously) as I was clicking on the link.

Side Note: My mom has always been an anxious talker, but it’s gotten worse in the past few years. My brother and I were talking about it how you literally have to talk over her because she just won’t stop.

Side Note to the Side Note: This is actually true of both my brother and me as well. Not the anxious talker part (though that’s me), but just the talking part in general. My mom has complained to me about my brother talking so much as well, and I know that once I get on a tear, it can be hard for me to shut my trap as well. The difference is that I’m aware of this. I am working on it. I am pretty sure that’s not the case with either my brother or my mother. Oh, and my father also likes to pontificate from time to time, and he definitely has no idea when he does it. I just don’t talk to him as often as I do to my mother and my brother.

Back to the first side note. My belief is that it’s because my father has retired. I have no proof of that except that the chattering started about the same time he retired. My hypothesis is based on the fact that her whole life revolves around him. Now that he’s home the whole time, she’s probably talking to him more than not. He needs attention all the time, and she’s the one who gives it to him. He’s a very cruel and exacting person in that he’s both overweeningly arrogant and excruciatingly thin-skinned. He’s suspicious to the point of paranoid about people talking about him, and he can find something to take offense at in anything anyone says. So, my mom has to walk softly and constantly couch what she says in a way that he won’t take offense. It doesn’t work, obviously, which means more talking and frantic explanations.

Tag Archives: coping mechanisms