Whenever I mention that I watch Dr. Phil, people begin to snob over me in a way that makes me suspect they only interrupted their rereading of Baudrillard to notice my blog for two minutes.
Of course, there are many silly Dr. Phil segments but there are also very important ones where Dr. Phil educates the woefully ignorant audience about some basics of human psychology.
To give an example, the favorite argument of the proponents of “there is no connection between the process of parenting and its results” philosophy is that children who grow up in the same family are always very different. Often, these idiots claim triumphantly, one sibling is good and another is bad, so what is this if not proof that some people are born bad and nobody is responsible for their badness?
In yesterday’s segment, Dr. Phil explained to the stunned audience that roles are assigned inside families and children have no choice but follow the script. Many families have a black sheep because it’s easier to revel in one’s goodness against the background of losership or evilness the black sheep provides.
We’ve all known families where one sister is pretty and the other one is bookish or one brother is athletic and another one nerdy. In reality, neither we nor these siblings know what they really are like. They are playing roles handed to them (mostly, but not always, without consciously meaning to do so) because it’s easier to control them this way. Pretty and Smart will always feel too different and too resentful of each other to form a profound relationship. And people who lack an ally are easy to control.
This is also a strategy that induces a permanent sense of guilt in a person who feels that s/he can never be all s/he needs to be. Athletic will feel guilty for not being as smart as Nerd, and Nerd will feel clumsy and unpopular next to Athletic. People who are perennially guilty and who feel not good enough are, again, very easy to control.
You don’t need to have siblings to be part of this dynamic. A super neat mother might have a messy daughter who’ll never even suspect that her messiness is nothing but a way to please Mommy by letting her cleanliness shine brighter against the background of the hapless daughter. A professionally successful father might have a deadbeat son who has no idea that his incapacity to hold down a job is a favor he keeps doing for Daddy. And so on. It’s important not to be confused by the protestations of Mommy and Daddy that they want the exact opposite of what they are getting. What we really want can best be seen in what we actually have (constantly and not situationally, of course) and not in our protestations.
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It sounds as if one can always say “you only think you are nerdy / not social / messy / insecure, in reality you fulfill your parents’ wishes.”
Also, if somebody is following a script for 20 years, doesn’t it become a part of one in reality? Isn’t “real me” socially conditioned to a large extent anyway?
If one accepts your post, how can one know where one begins vs following parents’ script? Or we are always following scripts and the only problem is when some script makes one unhappy, and then thinking “it is a script” helps one to change?
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“It sounds as if one can always say “you only think you are nerdy / not social / messy / insecure, in reality you fulfill your parents’ wishes.””
“Also, if somebody is following a script for 20 years, doesn’t it become a part of one in reality?”
Inside everybody resides a happy, healthy, content, joyful individual who really really wants to be free to enjoy life already.
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Are there any that are making you feel unhappy, uncomfortable, guilty, sap your energy, make you feel deflated when you contemplate them?
This is interesting. I would say that my only good quality is that I am smart (you can guess, I was The Smart One growing up), but even so there are many smarter people. I feel pretty inadequate in everything else – not pretty enough, not thin enough, not nice enough, not patient enough, not neat enough. On top of that, I should be grateful for all the good things in life, yet I am often grumpy and insufficiently appreciative of my good fortune. And yeah, spending too much time inside my own head, comparing self to others and other self-defeating stuff.
I do think I am not a bad mom, as the kids seem happy and healthy, but who knows? Maybe I am squandering their will to live without not knowing it?
This is some heavy stuff for a Saturday morning! 🙂
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“This is some heavy stuff for a Saturday morning! ”
“And yeah, spending too much time inside my own head, comparing self to others and other self-defeating stuff.”
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This must be very exhausting.
You have no idea…
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A super neat mother might have a messy daughter who’ll never even suspect that her messiness is nothing but a way to please Mommy by letting her cleanliness shine brighter against the background of the hapless daughter. A professionally successful father might have a deadbeat son who has no idea that his incapacity to hold down a job is a favor he keeps doing for Daddy. And so on. It’s important not to be confused by the protestations of Mommy and Daddy that they want the exact opposite of what they are getting. What we really want can best be seen in what we actually have (constantly and not situationally, of course) and not in our protestations.
I get the concept of “secondary gains” but I can’t quite wrap my head around it.
They are playing roles handed to them (mostly, but not always, without consciously meaning to do so) because it’s easier to control them this way. Pretty and Smart will always feel too different and too resentful of each other to form a profound relationship. And people who lack an ally are easy to control.
“I am the Martyr and you are the Selfish Sinner. I always have to do everything around here and you don’t do anything. I am the only competent person. ”
“I don’t understand why your brother kept saying he wishes he was smart like you.”
flashcut to memory montage of parents calling brother stupid and me secretly cringing
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“flashcut to memory montage of parents calling brother stupid and me secretly cringing”
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I had the role of the smart and well-behaved one in my family, though I think the role assigning in my family was very much driven by my maternal grandparents who lived close by and drove my parents and my mother’s siblings crazy. I do think I have been able to free myself from that childhood conditioning to some extent, but it didn’t really start to happen until my late 30s and involved a rather extended period of crisis.
The implications for me as an adult have been that I am often too concerned about pleasing people and making the right impressions. I have lots of trouble saying ‘no’, I don’t handle criticism particularly well (though no one really notices, because I usually just fall apart internally), and I sometimes worry to much that people will notice if I make a mistake. I’ve also had a lot of trouble over the years figuring out what I really want and want to do, versus the things that other people think I should want or want me to do or think I should be doing.
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“Dr. Phil explained to the stunned audience that roles are assigned inside families and children have no choice but follow the script …”
Interesting — I didn’t know that Dr Phil was a follower of Claude Steiner’s script theory within transactional analysis.
BTW, I suggest you find a copy of Steiner’s “Scripts People Live” if you’d like an upgrade to Eric Berne’s “game theory” within transactional analysis.
[… of course, if someone would come up with a book on the systems theory of containment as it applies to broken people who you should never try to fix, I’m sure it will sell reasonably well …]
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I don’t know who Steiner is 🙂 but this is a foundational idea in psychoanalysis.
As for trying to fix people, that’s always useless. People need to choose to get better on their own and actively pursue that goal. It’s like the joke about the number of analysts needed to change a light bulb. The answer is: only one but the light bulb really needs to wants to change.
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“Ah, but all of the analysts are needed to change the light bulb, and that’s because the light bulb needs a good screwing …”
Fixed that with Freud for you. 🙂
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Funny. 🙂
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