Thanks for these posts. I actually print these replies out because they mean a lot to me. During this Summer, I joined a youth organization for the Summer camp and I ended up volunteering and become more involved with the activities that are held by the organization. I felt like I wasn't alone and I'm trying to express myself more.The organization is based on Chinese youths and how to overcome their weaknesses and help them accomplish their dreams. I still feel sort of different from the rest of the other people because I'm really quiet. It seems like I have trouble keeping eye contact with the person I'm talking to. I just feel like looking away. Sometimes I have this long pause before answering someone and sometimes I just answer them with yes, no, not sure, I agree.... I'm fine with asking questions and helping out, but I seems to have trouble expressing myself. A mentor who guild me through this organization suggested me to write a daily blog or a diary to help me with it. My dad is still really rude and puts me down. Before, I went downstairs to pour myself a cup of coffee and my mom asked me a question on the computer. Then my dad came downstairs and took away the laptop and the router and turned off the kitchen lights. My mom and I were quiet in the dark for a few seconds feeling depressed. I find this unfair that my dad keeps getting away with this. He keeps telling my family that I'm dumb, but he's the one who's causing all the family trouble.
I've been rereading this thread, and there's one thing that is still unclear to me.. We all agree that the environment that you currently live in is quite toxic, and you are unnecessarily negatively affected by it. But we never really dwelled into identifying the root of the problem in your household. I'm sure people will say the root of the problem is your dad, but I want to go further with it. This anger your dad expresses, is it due to an illness? Is it due to stress? Was there some event that served as a catalyst to spark this anger? Is it some sort of disorder? Has he seeked help and diagnosis for it (even though I'm sure he'll be too angry to do it)? Important: don't be making assumptions as to the root cause of this. You need to refer to the expertise of a therapist. What you or your mom may perceive as the root problem may not be accurate. There's two things I think that needs to be done. The first being that you should protect yourself and work on improving yourself (as we spoke about in this thread and as you are currently doing). The second is to mitigate the problem source, as that will negate all of the hard work you have done into improving yourself. That is, we need to figure out why your dad is so angry, and address it. If that is unsuccessful, at the last resort, move out. Remove yourself from the toxic environment. However, I think something must have served to trigger your dad's anger (whether it's stress, illness etc), and I think it really needs to be uncovered (by your family) for things to start getting better.
IMHO, from the beginning of this thread, the OP's main complaint has always been about his dad. While mom may be an enabler (as she allows this), dad is the primary problem. Everything stated thus far indicates to me that this is an individual that cares little for anyone else. He totally disrespects everyone else within the family unit and will never be able to see their point of view or even consider them as people. In my experience, individuals like this seldom change as they become very comfortable in such a familial dynamic, as dysfunctional as it is. Dan is correct in his assessment that there need be professional intervention as the evidence of emotional casualty here is plain.
Yea sure I get that. It's pretty evident to anyone that this is a selfish and disrespectful individual. But my question is why has this behaviour manifested? Sure we can stop at the conclusion that "hey, he's the problem". I get he's the problem, but I want to know why he became the problem in the first place.
Of course, that's the 64K dollar question for which there are no ready, easy answers. Who we are as individuals is often complex, the distillation from not just culture, but personal experience through a lifetime. Some guys are timid and meek in public, but at home, they rule their "castle" like a medieval baron. Familial dynamics too, is a learned process that requires acclimation by its adherents. Over time, we each learn our place and thereafter, act accordingly. Typically, in dysfunctional family units, they adapt patterns of behavior that temporarily alleviates stress but in the long term is rather unhealthy. The OP in this case, suffers in silence for fear of escalating the situation, while the mother is caught between allegiance for her husband and her son, refusing to take sides even if she feels a wrong is apparent. The father in this case is clearly maladaptive; while not using his fists, his words and his disrespectful actions are nonetheless his weapons, which have pummeled his son for an entire lifetime. Why is he this way? Like I had alluded to before, maybe his father was exactly the same (adage of a fruit not falling far from the tree). Typically, parenting skills, even abysmal ones, are a learned behavior. From what the OP stated, it seems have been a facet of his dad's upbringing too.
What you need to bare in mind is that everyone has their own unique way of raising their children, some ways may differ than others and be seen as being different. what is most important is to stop the blame and pointing the finger and to live your life. It is up to you to make sure that the things you think were wrong or mistakes do not happen again, you learn from them and move forward.
What you need to bare in mind is that everyone has their own unique way of raising their children, some ways may differ than others and be seen as being different. what is most important is to stop the blame and pointing the finger and to live your life. It is up to you to make sure that the things you think were wrong or mistakes do not happen again, you learn from them and move forward.
Not everybody that has children can be a parent and have the proper means and technique to raise them. IMO Marsh's dad seems more of a provider than a real parent. If he's not being a real father figure guiding, motivating, providing, and raising his own son properly, he's just there; a financial support.
Your parents are a typical product of the environment where they came from. Their actions (on you) are what they see as "normal" from their decades of upbringing in a tough working environment. Probably your parents and grandparents had seen riots, civil unrest, hurricanes, land slips and appalling living conditions in HK. Nevertheless the Cantonese language, negativity and hyperbole are the more extreme of South East Asia. Moreover the HKers suffer from syndromes of insecurity, suspicion and interventionism hence you are experiencing what you told us about. It is very tough to moderate their behaviour, I would suggest that you seek a more external lifestyle (less indoors) so as to develop your personality and skills, I don't know what age that you are, but one thing that's for sure, any problem about you exist only in the heads of your parents. E.g. if they forced you to study, then the consequence of problems not studying exist in their heads which may or may not happen in future. Your parents are a tiny part of a huge business community around your neighbourhood and country. They can influence you but the influence of the external world is far greater. HK people and Chinese people believe gold is to be found in books and university excellence. However the reality some people are born to work with their hands in a trade and some work with their mind on paper work and documents. Lastly if your parents say that you are stupid, then you can be sure genetically, you are not the first one in your family to be stupid through the millennium in your family ancestry. Other historical stupid and lazy ones had survived in the past and why should you! Besides the main thing is do well in your own capability. In Canada and USA there is not such a divergence of rich and poor so one should get a reasonable living.
I lol'd. That's like saying "hey you're stupid, but it's okay to be stupid". Maybe not as prominent as in 2nd and 3rd world countries, but that divergence does exist.
A stupid person is just a name but every one can become a Buddha. Parents may call their children stupid one moment or clever another time. But a parent's perception of the world is different from other sentient being and more importantly the so called "stupid" person. Everyone does stupid things but we all keep quiet about them. Ignorance and stupidity can be useful even for a smart clever person. For peace and for less ear ache and heart palpitation one can conveniently plead "I don't know", "I know nothing". "I don't know how to do it". From my personal experience, as relationship matures, excess of negativity and scolding fulfill their purpose of realising the stuplidity and ignorance in a person even when this person is not to other or to oneself. As to an opinion of whether a parent had raised hie/her child well. I don't believe there is an objective measure of what is "well enough". Each person cannot live independently, therefore A affects B and B affects A and so on. If A were to raise B badly, then by dependence a badly raised B person would affect A directly or indirectly. Whence the suffering in A is of self hurt. This is karma.
Sure. I'm a Buddhist as well, I get that. Sure, I understand that as well. Although you could probably just simplify that as just saying "people" instead of "sentient being", because every single person is sentient. Though that in itself opens up a new can of philosophical worms. Now this I highly HIGHLY disagree with. This notion of ending a discussion with expressions like "I don't know", "I know nothing", "I don't know how to do it" promotes complacency. If there is anything I hate more than stupidity and idiocy, is complacency. There is no use for complacent people in an evolving world. Far too many people use the excuse of stupidity and idiocy to avoid facing an issue. No it doesn't generate peace, it stalls the conflict and delays it further. It doesn't eliminate ear ache and heart palpitation, it merely transpose it to another time. If you use stupidity and idiocy as an excuse, I find it very pitiful. This logic is not quite sound. If A were to raise B badly, B receives the negative results from the bad upbringing. However there are two cases to A: Case 1 where A actually cares about B's upbringing, and Case 2 where A does not care about B's upbringing. It follows that B's effect on A is dependent on whether or not A cares about B's upbringing or not. If A does not care, then B's upbringing doesn't affect A at all.
Hey guys, thanks for your support and encouragement. I do feel like I have improved socially, but I still don't think it's good enough. I believe it's because I don't have experience in doing anything, so I can't really express myself through conversation. My parents seems to be selfishly controlling me. So, when they are not controlling me, I really don't feel like doing anything. I can wake up at 3pm and I don't even care. My friend introduced me to go to church next week. I hope that goes well. I recently recorded an audio of my dad abusing me and posted it on Youtube, but this time, I sent the audio to my aunt. I was scared of sending it out at first, but it seemed like the right thing to do. My grandma knows about the recording. I wasn't there to hear what my grandma had to say, but I've noticed my dad doesn't really yell at me anymore. He acts immaturelly when he's not yelling. I guess that's one factor of why i can't express myself because I'm kind of immature. I'm not trying to threaten anyone, but I currently don't feel happy at home.
Thanks for the update! Best advice I can give is to move out as soon as possible. Independence and self-sustaining for yourself gives you the opportunity to grow as a person, and forces these bad habits out. It helps to get out of this toxic environment. And living independently, it forces you to find your own social opportunities, or you'll go crazy. If that's not possible currently, force yourself to find ways to be independent, and expose yourself to social opportunities. Go to coffee shops to do work or read. Join clubs and meetups, stay away from the computer as much as possible. Find ways to meet and talk to new people. Pick up an exploration-type hobby like outdoor photography. Basically find new things, try new things. It helps you find new interests, and from these interests you meet new people that share this interest. Go out, find ways to have fun and explore. Discover for yourself what you enjoy, and expose yourself to opportunities that allow you to practice socially, via these interests.
Hey guys, I'm currently working at McDonald's and I do see some improvements in myself where I'm able to interact with the customers. I do get frightened sometimes but that's something that I can work on. And of course, I was able to buy things where my parents didn't want me to buy because of the cost. I found that life is a bit different at home after reporting my dad, but he sometimes he speaks like a six years old possibly because he doesn't know how to express himself. I don't like how my parents are afraid of everything. Afraid of failure, my parents won't let me own a pair of our house keys because they are afraid of me losing it, They are too afraid of life, afraid of using money, afraid of me walking too fast down the stairs, afraid of trying new things, afraid of failure.
I know we all have problem here and there because of how we raised up by our folks. I am not going to challenge that but deep down dont we wish we could start over in another life style. i know wish thinking. Since we cant change who we are and how we were raised, lets us do our best and hope for the best. i dont usually believe in god or fate, but lets see how this life of mine will unfold.
