Miscellaneous notes about accepting bad feelings.
[First in a series.]
Vladimir Putin purportedly has a video of Donald Trump directing two whores to pee on a bed that Barack Obama slept in.
Some people think it’s scandalous.
I think it’s hilarious.
Some days ago, I had a mind to post on Facebook that Trump himself is the bed wetter.
Were that so, it might explain a lot about him.
Especially depending how his parents raised him.
If bed-wetting were something a child could control, certainly the embarrassment and inconvenience of having to wash oneself and change one’s clothes, sheets and blanket each time, would be punishment enough in themselves to discourage the habit.
One parent may take it in stride, and so teach the child by example to take it in stride also. Simple.
Another parent may not take it in stride, but respond with alarm, even anger. If the parent either doesn’t know or won’t accept the fact that the child has no choice about it, she or he may think the incident’s embarassment and inconvenience themselves aren’t punishment enough. He or she may think it’s necessary to add punishment, whether in the form of scolding or spanking or whuppin’.
That complicates things immensely.
It teaches the child: (1) God is not love, but wrath. (2) God punishes you for things you can’t help. (3) If you make a mess, even by accident, you’re going to get it. (4) Accidents and mistakes are to be feared.
What a cruel parent!
Now I look at myself and wonder. On the one hand, I have long been especially sensitive to stories of cruel parents and child abuse. (Link.) On the other hand, I have my own special fear of the unknown, of uncertainty, of risks, of making messes, making mistakes, of things I can’t help, of fear itself — to the extent it impedes my desire to do or want good things for myself, even to look for work.
What kind of parent have I been to myself?
Bed-wetting was never an issue for me. But I do have OCD, and those exaggerated fears as mentioned. Freud taught that OCD comes from harsh potty training. There is a case for this, in that many OCD patients are obsessed with cleaning up after a BM. I am.
Now, it must be that some people’s stools are normally more messy than other people’s stools. Maybe that’s a part of OCD in itself. Or, it’s logical to assume that some people who have messy stools have OCD also; some have messy stools without OCD; some people likewise who have nice, neat stools have OCD, and some do not.
It’s one thing if a parent takes the stench and mess of after-BM cleanup in stride, and so teaches one’s child by example to take them in stride also. It’s a different thing if the parent has a posture of dis-acceptance of the offensive situation, and so teaches the child by example to stress out over the same things also.
In my case, albeit I have no specific memories of crises during potty training, it’s possible. My father had an unusual attitude toward filth. For example, he referred to feces as “dirt,” which caused some confusion throughout our lives together, as I would not have used the word that way. If we bought bananas at the store, he insisted on washing them in “hot soap suds” before letting them be put on the table. So it may be my potty training was — special.
But at some point, a child needs to grow up, in more ways than one.
Political correctness in the 1970s taught baby boomers to blame all one’s problems on one’s parents. So, when my father passed, when I was 36 years old, I still harbored a lot of anger toward him for things I thought he’d done amiss in parenting me. On the day of his memorial service, I shared that with my siblings. My middle brother counseled me to not be so harshly judgmental. My father was, after all, a mere man. This brother had two daughters of his own, and said, about these things, “Not a day passes when I don’t do something I regret.”
The time comes to stop blaming everything on one’s parents, and instead take responsibility for oneself as an adult; including, being the parent toward oneself that one’s biological parents never had the chance to be.
How harshly judgmental have I been when I myself do something I regret?
How often do I create some offensive, stinky mess?
Several times a day, one way or another.
One needs to accept the repulsive, the revulsive; to take one’s own mess-ups in stride; as it were, to forgive oneself for one’s own sin.
All sin.
All sin.
All sin.
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Next post: Life in the looney bin (For release 04/29/17.)
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