His father did a great job while his mother did a piss-poor one, that’s what went wrong.
Social and professional success = great father.
No anxiety, feeling comfortable in the world, feeling that the universe loves you = great mother.
Obviously, you need both to function well.
is the equation the same for male children and female children?
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Yes. Mother is comfort in the universe. Father is comfort in society.
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I’m curious about that myself, I’m satisfied with my job and salary but I’m also prone to anxiety, don’t feel adequate in my family and can’t relax around family unless my mother isn’t around and my brother is preoccupied and I can have a bourbon in peace. I’m a female and maybe this dynamic is similar or not a male
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“i have anxiety every damn day, tight chest, hard to take a deep breaths, intrusive thoughts, always feeling not enough”
Some level of occasional anxiety is completely normal, we’re not that evolved past having to worry about leopards jumping out of the darkness to feel completely at ease all the time.
But consistent, regular anxiety is a sign something is wrong. My guess is that his subconscious is picking up on something his head nanny can’t let him consciously deal with yet.
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Of course, occasional is normal. What this guy is describing isn’t. But he’s got a big advantage over many, which is that he realizes that what he feels is anxiety. Many people can’t identify it or figure out that it’s not a reaction to outside circumstances. They read their anxiety as a reaction to sexism-racism, for example.
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I have questions.
As a general principle, your interpretation makes total sense.
But I just went through a solid week of totally irrational, completely atypical, *extremely specific* attacks of anxiety, which (along with some other weird symptoms that cropped up at the same time but weren’t obviously related) turned out to be an allergic reaction. Fixed it with a few days of Benadryl and PepcidAC (I had no idea before, that it was an antihistamine).
Sometimes feelings are feelings, and sometimes they are some freaky physiological thing.
So it’s worth asking about his upbringing, sure… but I also think it’s worth asking if he’s got mold in his house, what supplements and medications he’s taking, what’s the state of his digestion, if he’s ever had periods where he *didn’t* feel this way, and if they had any correlation with where he was living, his diet, etc.
-ethyl
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“I also think it’s worth asking if he’s got mold”
Well looking at his twitter, his header gives his business model…
“automating TikToks that drive traffic to your website”
Given that… I’m likely to believe one of the first comments to show up is on the money: “you understand subconsciously that your work is a net negative on society”
He dismisses it, but… I think that’s as likely an explanation as any (and more likely than most), especially since he seems to be describing a long term thing and not a sudden onset….
Or it could be engagement farming…
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Hmm interesting theory.
I’m quite successful despite having a poor relationship with my father (we’ve been no contact for 4 years now, at his initiative, and considering the emotional and physical violence I experienced from him I’m not going to go out of my way to reboot the relationship).
I could ‘blame’ this on having a very positive father figure in my maternal grandfather. I was pretty much raised by my mother and her parents for the first 10 years, and I was the apple of my grandfather’s eye.
But then how did my father manage to be profesionally and socially successful, considering that *his* father was a sociopathically violent alcoholic?
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The substitute father figure works. Your grandfather gave you a great father complex, thank you, grandpa.
Only your father knows who did the same service for him.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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