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Comment by voisin | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, I think your life would be vastly improved if you can turn the anger evident in your post into sadness for whatever caused her to act like that in the first place. It’s worked for me. Pity feels like a healthier emotion to experience than anger or bitterness.

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I’m sure you are trying to be helpful so I’m not trying to criticize you personally or devalue what you are sharing! More of a general gripe for me:

Anger and sadness are both very helpful, understandable and ok emotions. There is nothing wrong or dysfunctional about either of those feelings.

I think the cultural norm that certain emotions are “bad” and that we can “change” our emotions is extremely destructive for many people.

We can control (and our responsible for) our thoughts and actions.

I don’t think people can actually control their emotions however and making people feel ashamed or unhealthy because of their emotional reactions is unfair. This is actually one of the symptoms of abusive parent-child relationships that I think many people have unavoidably internalized.

A lot of people have experienced serious emotional trauma due to cultural norms and an unhealthy value system about how parents treat their children (as well as by being parented by traumatized people who have grown up in similar circumstances)

There are a lot of good books about it if you search for Complex PTSD. One that I think covers a lot of information holistically is “Healing Developmental Trauma” by Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre

thank you for the recommendations.

I see people downvoting so I just wanted to say, as a person with anger towards my dad, this makes some sense to me. He was a terrible father, and surely a large part of that is due to something like poor mental health from a rough upbringing. It really sucks that my siblings and I suffered from it, but I can also sympathize with what he went through.

It's still really tough to know where to go from here. I feel like I've learned from his mistakes, but is the same true for him? Why hasn't he tried to change, is it the society/culture he grew up in? How much is his fault? Still figuring out how to deal with these questions. But I can be angry, and have pity too.

If your old man did you wrong Well maybe his old man did him wrong -mewithoutyou, Allah Allah Allah

Never thought I’d see a mewithoutyou lyric on HN. This community never ceases to surprise me! (:

The Fox, the Crow and the Cookie is still one of my favorite songs.

I was in the same position. Asking the same questions. Is it his fault? It's probably not. Whatever he did has stopped me from seeing him as a parent. I think of my parents as team members I can't fire yet. They might be lazy, unskilled, or unwilling to change. But attacking them won't solve any problems. What you need to do is get into their head. Act, think, and see the same way they do. What would I want others to do that will get me motivated to change?

I give them targetted praise whenever they do something I want. Give treats for wrong decisions but drilling what they did was wrong. Make them feel important and special. Let them feel guilty for not being able to live up to the expectations you build around them. Let them see the perfect human you see them as. Use metrics and numbers that are easy to parse, use social signaling. Instead of giving your opinion about something, point towards someone they might be interested to hear about or care to change them.

Say you love them the way they are but point towards changing societal expectations.

Again, you aren't the bad guy who wants them to change. It's the society or someone else. It is easier to get through the head.

Push them into groups with opposite view to them. People behave differently under group pressure compared to when you are talking to them one on one.

Whenever they come across material that re-enforces their existing belief, try to distract them. Change their environment. Offer to clean their room and remove harmful material. Change places that remind them of their previously held beliefs.

Or maybe they've learned to channel that anger in some positive way.

Not everything that works for oneself will "vastly improve" the lives of others.

Didn't seem angry or bitter. Just honest.

Calling someone a "gaslighting c*" didn't seem angry to you?

Not necessarily. Gaslighting can simply be descriptive, and different subcultures associate different emotions and intensity with c*, particularly outside of the US. (But also inside the US.). For example, it can convey dismissiveness, not anger.

Akin to how “bless your heart” can (operative word: can) take on two VERY different meanings depending on what part of the US it’s being uttered in.

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