Reddit reviews Families and How To Survive Them

White Guilt ist auch nur eine Instanz eines tiefer liegenden psychologischen Problems, das sich in vielen verschiedenen Ausprägungen manifestieren kann. Ich kann nur immer wieder das Buch "Families and how to survive them" von Robin Skynner und John Cleese (ja, dem John Cleese) empfehlen. Was die regressive Linke angeht hat das nichts mehr mit Politik zu tun, das ist reine (pathologische) Psychologie.

Have you ever seen one of those Indian guys riding their elephants?

That's you.

Seriously, I think this metaphor goes a long way to understand what's going on in the mind.

You are that little guy (the neocortex, i.e. your rational mind), sitting on top of this huge elephant (your limbic system, i.e. your emotions and automatic behaviors), trying to ride it and tell it where to go.

What happens when the elephant goes crazy? What can you do about it? Well, not much, really. The elephant is much bigger, and much stronger than you. And hitting a scared elephant with a stick probably isn't very productive.

Interestingly you used the word "mindful" there. Don't know if you're aware of it, but ... "mindfulness" is actually a thing. Generally it's associated with a certain type of meditation (which I recommend in any case), but there's another aspect to it which is very helpful here.

The idea is to learn how to simply observe what your elephant is doing. Instead of hitting it with sticks every time it gets scared and freaks out and does something stupid, try to learn what triggers those states. Learn how your elephant works, and then you can learn how to ride it.

For example, there are probably certain specific things that trigger the bitch behavior in you. The unproductive thing is to beat yourself up over this or - even worse - feeling like a victim of some thing or another. You're of course free to do that, but it won't get you anywhere. The productive thing, on the other hand, is to accept that this is the way things happen, this is reality. Observe what your elephant is doing, that it freaks out in this or that situation. Notice it, remember it. Learn how the sequence goes. "This happens, then that emotion comes up, then those thoughts come up, then I do this, then I feel like shit and then I feel bad about feeling like shit." There are patterns that work in similar ways every time. Patterns that have probably worked at one point or another (most of them come from childhood, like for example feeling intentionally bad in order to emotionally blackmail your parents into buying you stuff) that your elephant is still clinging to, but aren't useful any more. You need to know those pattern. Don't judge them morally (don't beat the elephant with sticks!), judge them simply on a basis of "helpful" or "unhelpful". Don't feel bad about anything, this is unproductive. Simply observe that you do and learn how the sequence goes.

Over time, you'll become better at this. You'll notice situations as they unfold, and you'll learn where exactly the process goes wrong. For example, you'll notice something like "wait a minute ... this emotion right here is me preparing for punishment I receive for disagreeing; however, I'm not in a situation anymore where I am exposed to punishment, so this emotion, albeit probably useful at one point, isn't useful to me anymore and I can let it go."

It's quite a process, but that's how you can learn how to ride your elephant, at least from what I can tell. If that's helpful to you I suggest looking up mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and developmental psychology (I find this book very helpful in particular).