Why a 30 year old Son is Uncomfortable on Mother's Day
It's Mother's Day.
A Holiday, a day to be celebrated, sometimes - for me - a day to dread.
I'm 30 years old and I don't see my Mother too often, maybe twice a year. However, sometimes I've gone years without seeing her. This isn't typical, and some may read the words I type and wonder if I'm a rude or uncaring son. I hope that's not the case.
As with any situation you encounter, beneath the readily perceived surface is an invisible depth of history; a story to reveal the reasons for why I'm not a fan of Holidays, particularly Mother's/Father's Day.
Holidays seem to typically be family-centric, and my experience of family history is an incredibly unpleasant one. I have a YouTube channel through which sometimes I talk about how to increase focus and productivity in your life. There are a lot of factors that can contribute to someone having a lack of focus. Personally, I've had a few: Lyme disease, anxiety, stress, etc.
While recognizing, researching, and correcting some of the contributing factors to my lack of focus & productive in my professional life (which led to a decently successful YouTube channel,) there's something else I've learned very recently that also contributes to this problem: a series of mental structures I've built because of prolonged childhood trauma that primarily occurred in the home. In other words, defense mechanisms that served me in the past and harm me today. I've never written about this online before, and never talked about it during my 10 years on YouTube.
Another symptom of this, also which I've learned only recently, is the life-long development of an avoidant attachment style: primarily with family.
When I text, or call, or am physically present with family, it's as if there's an automated process built within me that begins to shut many of my mental processes down - and - if I attempt to resist this process, experiences of panic and dissociation occur. Not something someone who is educated in Psychology, helping others, wants to be experiencing. The first hand experience certainly adds to my credibility, but takes away from it if it's something I do not address.
Mother's Day in 2019
I've been in psychoanalysis for a year, which has assisted me in realizing some of what I've explained above. I know that the next steps are beyond me learning/studying about my self, my mind, and my problems. The next steps involve experientially confronting the angry Shadow within me and making the strong effort to reconnect/heal with my family within a manageable, yet consistent, pace.
So maybe next year, I can do more than send a text or make a phone call to my Mom.
"You can't give up on family. Never. I mean, what else is there?"
―Donald Margolis to Walter White in S02E12 of Breaking Bad
Dude, what I'm seeing is you being stressed about not being/feeling like the hallmark commercials tell you you should. Manufactured holidays are fucking stupid. They're part of our dystopian, capitalistic system. But, I digress...
I don't know about your reasoning, but if I don't disable part of my brain when I'm around my mother, I will start flipping out when she starts talking about creationism, superstition, wildly inaccurate portrayals of other cultures, what's wrong with things/people today, and just all around total nonsense. Do you know what my religion is? It's the Truth. Her existence is a fine example of the Truth, but her beliefs and how she arrived at them are an affront to it. It only starts to make sense when you think about things in the context of the purpose they serve and that people are slightly improved(debatably) monkeys.
Anyway, It's ok to not have a storybook relationship with family. If you feel the need to go home for the holidays, that's why we have booze. Drop the guilt, pick up a 6 pack, and say to yourself slowly and deliberately, 'everything's gonna be all right.'
I agree. I like to think of these holidays as commercial ploy to get people to buy stuff for their family members. Your parents shouldn't expect a gift from you, since they should already know that you love them.
I feel you. I've had a hard family life as well, but that automated process you talked about never seems to go away. You mentioned you have a relatively successful Youtube channel; I'm curious have you told your subscribers about Steem? And are you on Dtube as well?
I'm one of his subs. I found his steemit through his YouTube channel.
Thanks for sharing. And yep, I have and I am!
That's great. A Youtuber was how I learned about the Steem platform. Youtube is one of if not the biggest entertainment hubs right now, so having Youtubers endorse Steem is HUGE!
Yeah! It took some time to build the 22k subscribers I have on YouTube, but I recently ran into an issue where their automated systems kept taking my videos down and even terminated my channel for 3 days.
It makes me nervous to continue putting time into a platform that seems to be willing to delete my content & following on a whim. So I've been on here & DTube the past month experimenting with ways to make my content work here :)
Any tips?
Yeah I have a few tips. The number 1 thing you need to do besides for creating good content (obviously) is commenting on posts. It may seem odd, but it gets your name out there. Whether it's just a passing reader/viewer who sees your comment on a piece of content and follows you because they find you interesting, or even better find a piece of content that's directly related to your own content so you can plug it in your comment, but you want to make sure to make a meaningful comment. People aren't going to appreciate spam. Also it's best to publish content between noon and 6pm. That's when the largest amount of Steem users are typically online. One last thing you definitely need to do is reinvest in Steem Power. There's a number of reasons why: 1: it deflates Steem and increases its value; 2: it increases the value of your vote not only for voting for your own content, but catching the attention of other content creators with your vote so you can network. Btw I'd really appreciate if you could resteem one of my posts in exchange for the information I've provided.
I done it since your comment was useful to me.
Although I cannot relate to you regarding my childhood and family life, as a physician, I can tell you that mechanisms of defense are a core part of our behaviors
I know this situation very clearly. It forced me to leave my family and not look back over 15 years ago. I do NOT agree that we CAN'T leave our family. Sometimes it REALLY IS the best option for survival (unfortunately). I also sensed (no offense) that there are some unresolved subconscious issues going by observing you on YouTube. Don't worry, I say this as an empth/intuitive/psychic - and OF COURSE, basically EVERYONE has stuff going on. But it's interesting how you can sense it in people. Keep up your efforts (as we all are) to keep moving forwards and upwards. Steemit is a good place to do that...