- cross-posted to:
- socialism@lemmy.ml
- anarchism@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- socialism@lemmy.ml
- anarchism@slrpnk.net
Archive link: https://archive.ph/yACYC
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I really dislike the nu-therapy psuedo-scientific truisms that people repeat these days about “self-care” and prioritizing oneself over everyone else, encouraging people to entirely cut-out anyone from their life that causes any kind of emotional turmoil or stress. While it’s true you don’t want to be involved with legitimately abusive people, there is a scourge of people just diagnosing everyone around them with psychological/therapy terms like “narcissist” and then justifying that to excise their family members, friends and co-workers from their lives. This alienates and isolates not only the person being cut off, but the person doing the cutting off. Estrangement should be a last resort for legitimately violent or abusive individuals, but instead it’s become the first resort of everyone as we withdraw into ourselves.
You can see this trend clearly in younger people who prefer to “ghost” friends, family, lovers, etc. over a formal break-off, or continued relationship with different boundaries. Any time anything gets uncomfortable, the default is to just cut it off and move on without any consideration of what that does to them or to oneself to treat humans so callously and in such a transactional, clinical manner.
Humans are social creatures and we require others to have proper dialectics. Once we withdraw into ourselves we spiral instead of move forward, with no other party to be on the other end of the dialectic. People have been conditioned to believe that if there is any pushback against them whatsoever, even pushback that is valid and helpful, then the solution is to excise that pressure to exist in some sort of vacuum instead of working through it to emerge better off for it.
In my experience, the best “self care” is care for others which is then reciprocated. It feels good to be wanted, loved, esteemed. It feels good to give that to others. It doesn’t feel so good to wallow in my own mind, in my own problems. That only leads towards unhealthy behaviors like abuse of substances, consumerism, etc to try and fill the gap which is what usually ends up being the so-called “self care”
You can see this trend clearly in younger people who prefer to “ghost” friends, family, lovers, etc. over a formal break-off, or continued relationship with different boundaries. Any time anything gets uncomfortable, the default is to just cut it off and move on without any consideration of what that does to them or to oneself to treat humans so callously and in such a transactional, clinical manner.
I don’t think this is your intention, but this criticism ends up carrying a huge amount of water for abusers. Obviously, just cutting and running from every relationship isn’t healthy, but abusive families in particular are way more common than people think and specifically the overwhelming majority of parents who get “ghosted” by their kids are abusers who are in denial about being abusive.
Did you read my entire comment? I said if somebody is abusive than this does not apply. “Ghosting” is a social phenomena happening en masse, it’s not just a tactic for abusers but a widespread action being used across the board. Ghosting can just as easily be a tool of abuse, alternating between withholding and neglect and lovebombing.
I did. My point is that like 80% of people who complain about being cut off are legitimately abusive and prop up the other 20% to justify their position that it shouldn’t be socially permissible to distance oneself from abusers.
80%? Pulling numbers from your ass. Ridiculous, if you have any kids you know they ghost each other constantly. It’s happened dozens of times to every single kid. Are they all abusers? If anything, ghosting is used more often as a tool of abuse and bullying to isolate victims. The popular kids will get everyone to ghost the same kid and it causes extreme shame.
I see, you’re talking about literal children who don’t have coworkers or the means to excise people from their lives. Your wording there led to me assuming this was the typical gripe about 30 year old “young people” having agency, not that you were exclusively talking about people whose ages are on a clock.
I’m so used to 100% of conversations about this having all the air sucked up by aggrieved “unjustly estranged parents” making up fake stories.
more nonsense percentages pulled from nowhere lmao
I don’t have much to add except “yeah, I feel ya”
The last five years I’ve been more isolated and have also, unsurprisingly, been dealing with more issues because of it. For me it was a combination of people moving away and scattering, and myself not putting in enough work to keep in touch with everyone or meet new people.
At the risk of sounding like an old grouchy man yelling about “kids these days” I also have worried if there’s some growing tendency to cut people loose too soon. But I’m also not a young person anymore so I can’t really speak for them in any authentic way. And I don’t want to come across as saying there aren’t situations where you should remove actual toxic people and dangerous people. But I do notice, online, more of that tendency. As well as a more self-centered approach to mental health. And as someone already trying hard to not spiral further into self isolation, it hurts to see.
Yeah I too hesitated on that remark because I didn’t want to come across as a ‘kids these days’ groucho, but I don’t mean it as an indictment of young generations but as a canary in the coal mine - that this is how we are conditioning people in our current society to behave, which reflects some underlying sickness
Everyone would agree with this if you phrased it differently. “Do you think a community where everybody supports and looks out for each other is a happier community than one where everyone primarily pursues their own interests?” is something everyone would agree to, but once you use words such as “collectivism vs individualism” the brainworms come out.
It is because the dichotomy of “collectivism v.s. individualism” is a false dichotomy that spins out of legitimate discussions of the origin of rights, as ‘formalized’ primarily by Ayn Rand, who is considered a legitimate philosopher in the West because we are completely trash at philosophy.
What community? There’s only individuals and families.
Its too bad we’re in a post-facts based western order disintegrating into mass esoteria otherwise I’m sure this well researched academic work would help move the needle for cosmically propagandized western masses
Golly gee, who would have thought?!
