HealthyGamerGG - Dealing with Toxic Families

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

Dr. K dives into family, being a "good kid", conversations, consequences, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you are trying to get your family involved in changing the household, you have to give them some latitude and what the solutions are. You can't tell them, hey, this is the standard to which the kitchen is going to clean. I need all y'all to listen. If you want to exert financial power, you can do that. But the whole point is that I don't think that's going to work very well. How can I self-improve while living in an environment very uncondusive to it? My environment, I-26M, live with my parents. I'm not broke. They are. They need my help. So from the beginning, we have responsibility trapped. My dad is in his own. his early 60s and basically retired. He has no retirement and fund and lives off of Social Security

checks and food stamps. He's kind and supportive to me, but beyond that, he's a very annoying person to deal with with his whole personality is watching conspiracy theory videos and he lets that affect his real life decision making. Not getting the vaccine, even though mom is immunocompromised, not saving money because he thinks banks are going under and wasting a thousand plus year on a garden because he thinks the food supply chain will be destroyed. My mom is is late 50s and dying. She has multiple medical conditions, some out of her control, some stemming from being a chronic smoker. Her father died when I was in high school, and ever since she fell into a deep depression, stopped working and gave up. We've tried to get her some form

of income in the form of disability income, but she's extremely uncooperative with doing the paperwork, and we also believe the window for getting that has passed. I don't know how terminal her conditions are, though I did Google one of them, and it says she'll be lucky to make it five years. My brother 21 also lives with us, but the pandemic disrupted his plans to start college. He's fallen deeper and deeper into his video game addiction. He eats extremely unhealthy because of my parents' laissez-faire style of parenting, let him do whatever he wants to without discipline or direction. His diet is literally peanuts, pretzels, cheese, cheese its goldfish, and chips. I've offered him $100 plus to try new foods and he refuses.

This means that a nearly unlimited supply of those junk food are in the house at all times. I beg my dad to give him some tough love, threatened to take away his video games if he doesn't start doing stuff like getting a driver's license and applying to college, but he won't. My brother is well over 300 pounds and on the path to die at 35. He literally has a free ride to college waiting for him through FAFSA, but refuses to go. The moment my parents die, the free ride goes away and he's either going to have to drown in debt or go get a shit job that doesn't live up to his potential. For some reason, he doesn't see this massive risk to him, though, because he's never been

given any consequences his entire life. So essentially, my environment is crap and there's nothing I can do. about it. Don't tell me to move out. They can't afford the mortgage without me, and I'm not going to let my mom go homeless her last few years of life. I'm not going to let my brother go without having one person in the house who cares about trying to motivate him to fulfill his potential. My dad, honestly, I wouldn't feel bad about forcing to handle the consequence of his own decisions, but I won't turn my back on my brother and mom. However, this comes with sacrifices that make it incredibly difficult to fulfill my own potential. There's junk food and unhealthy meals around me

24-7. If I want to not binge eat, it takes pure willpower. There's no just bringing in bad food to the house. I have massive anxiety about catching and bringing home the virus because my mom and dad are on vaxed. This stresses me and leads me to do things that I want to not want to. Sorry, not doing things I want to. I dodge the whole environment issue by constantly not being at home, work in the office, study at coffee shop, et cetera, but that exposes them to more risk. I live 40 minutes from my work and friends. It's very hard to date. As kind-hearted as helping my parents out is, me not having a place to go hook up is an attraction killer. Like it or not, being a 26-year-old man who lives at home with his parents in America, no matter how valid the reason, is a deal breaker for a lot of

quality independent women. I pay $200 a month more in rent to my parents than I did at my last place. Additionally, there are gas costs. Anytime there's a major, my mom knows how to guilt me into buying her every last comfort item she wants. Basically, anytime I go out to eat fast food, I'm buying for two and she's gilding me about it. Anytime there's a major expense for them, it's me. The electric bill goes too high. I'm paying it. My parents' dogs need inoculations. I'm paying. Dogs can get vaccinations, by the way. Our internet modem gets struck by lightning. I'm buying the replacement. It's financially draining to me. I don't like the city I live in. It doesn't have access to the types of concert sporting events or even young, ambitious, diverse people I want to be friends with.

My city also has very limited job prospects for my field of study. I could easily go to a bigger city where I find a job where I earn 2x my income, but instead I'm stuck in a crappy entry-level job trying to do everything I can to angle my way up the ladder without blowing a chance at one of the few companies in my area who offers the jobs that I want. The house is very dirty, and while I've put substantial work into making my room a clean space, being one person trying to clean up the mess made over years by four people is extremely difficult. This also means I have to work from home in my room, which is difficult space to be productive in. They've refused to give me an office despite me asking at least once a month. You're the average of the five people you spend the most

time with, and three of these five people are issues that I described, or people with issues I described. I'm not trying to blame my current state, 5-8, 260 pounds, struggling in career, depressed on my family. I want to do whatever I can to help both help myself and them at the same time. But living in this environment isn't helping whatsoever. What can I do to find a way to work on improving myself while also living in an environment where almost every obstacle imaginable is put on a daily basis, is put up on a daily basis, and the people I live with couldn't care less about self-improvement. So this is tough. We don't talk about the situation enough. I'm a good person. I'm trying to put my life together. I have a job. I'm going to do what a good son does. I'm going to

help out my family, right? I can't abandon my mom. Like she's ill, potentially terminally ill. If I don't pay them rent, they can't afford the mortgage. I'm not willing to let my mom. become homeless. My brother is moving in the wrong direction and someone's got to try to help him. And it ain't going to be dad because dad spends his whole time, you know, like watching conspiracy theory videos. Mom won't do the paperwork to get additional income, won't do the paperwork to file for disability. Brother refuses to go to college, plays video games all day, eats like crap and parents enable his bad behavior. And he doesn't even try to help them, right? So he enables their bad behavior. They enable his bad behavior. You've got one person in the house.

who's trying to keep it together and they're drowning. So what a lot of people will do in this situation is say there's no way you can help people who don't want to help themselves. Leave. Get out while you can. They'll even do things like we'll say things like, oh, if you can earn twice as much in a separate city, move out of the house, earn twice as much and send money back to try to support your parents. Right. There are all kinds of solutions that people will offer. Just stop doing X, Y, Z. Abandon your family. But this person is very clear, I'm not willing to abandon them, right? Is this guilt? Are they victims of guilt? Because we do know that this person gets emotionally manipulated. The guilt gets the better of them. But how do you draw the line between

doing your duty as a family member and not abandoning your family versus avoiding guilt and being manipulated by guilt, right? Because that's like, it's subtle, it's important. So what we're going to do today is talk about how to approach this situation. There's going to be a lot of details. There's going to be a lot of like nuts and bolts of conversations. It's going to be hard to follow. It's also most likely not going to work out the way I, I'm going to explain it, right? So I expect a lot of difficulties. But the truth of the matter is that there is a way to have a conversation to work with your family, to get on the same page. I've seen it happen. It's a hard tightrope to walk, but there is a tightrope. And because it's so hard to walk, no one tries to walk it. Everyone says

don't even bother, just live for yourself. Okay? So let's dive in. The first thing that you have to do is have conversations, okay? You have to have a space and a time and a regularity of conversations. This is the first goal because you can't, what a lot of people will also suggest is that you use your financial power in a relationship to enforce compliance, right? So this person is even saying, dad use tough love. Like people can say like stop paying for stuff unless they start doing things. And we'll get to boundary setting and like reinforcement and stuff like that. But there's sort of this idea that like if you're the breadwinner in the household,

you can use your power to enforce behavior for other people. That's going to be really hard. Not saying that it isn't worth doing. But first of all, this person gets emotionally guilted. It seems like they don't really have a good role model for how to do that. So let's assume for a moment that we want to use power as a last resort. Let's assume for a moment that we're going to try to make it. work in this household. So how do you do that? The first thing is you have to have regular conversations.

And what I would do is these conversations need to be kind of meta level and they need to be avoiding judgment. So what I would do is I would ask everyone in your household, hey, I think we should start sitting down and talking a little bit about the direction that this family is going in. And like whether if we're happy with things, great, let's continue doing them. If we're unhappy with things, we should at least sit down and kind of talk about it. Now already your family will be on the defensive because they'll think that this conversation is about them. You got to ask them, hey, are we willing to, like, can we all just get together and talk for one hour a week for the next four weeks, just about how things are going? So you have to demonstrate some amount of leadership in this situation. You have to frame a conversation.

Now, getting them to come is a real problem because if they choose not to come, what is the stick that you're going to use if a carrot doesn't work? And I wouldn't start bribing them with money and say, hey, I'll give you money if you come. I would just say, hey, this family is important to me. Like, there's some stuff that I'm concerned about. I think we should start talking about it and working on it together as a family. You got to get everyone in the room. Once you do that, you have to be kind of careful. Because remember, everyone's going to be defensive, right?

They're like thinking I'm going to talk about, you know, he's going to blame me because I'm not doing something right. Because your whole family knows that they're not doing things right. Everyone knows. So then what you've got to do is you've got to ask them questions, open-ended questions, non-judgmental questions. Hey, I'd love to hear from everyone what they like about how we do things at home. So, mom, can you tell me a little bit about what you like?

Dad, can you tell me a little bit about what you like? Brother, do you tell me a little bit about what you like? Next thing you're going to do is you're going to ask a question, okay, does anyone think that I could be doing things differently? Or the things that I do or say that you think make it hard to live here that bother you? So you're going to start by opening actually up to your own faults, right? We need to disarm the defensiveness from your family. So you can say, okay, what can I do better? Now, you can't start by asking your mom, hey, what can mom do better?

We're absolutely we need to get to that conversation. But you have to start by sort of pointing out to yourself, okay, what are your flaws? Okay, so mom thinks I could be doing this better. Mom thinks I could be doing this better. And then you're going to model something else. Once they say stuff, you're going to add stuff to the list. You're going to say, in addition to that mom, I notice that sometimes I'm not quite as generous when I eat out with fast food. So one thing that I'm going to work on is not making you feel like you have to beg me if I'm going to get food.

Because I don't like the way that, you know, that creates like emotions between us. So I'm going to work on that. You're going to model for them that people can point out things about you that are not perfect. and that you can accept their feedback and you can try to work on them. Because I don't see this in the family. I don't see a structure of if there's a problem, let's be intentional about diagnosing it and fixing it. Everyone just kind of lets things.

So once you have that conversation, this could be over the course of two weeks, so we've already met twice. Week number three, you need to start talking to people about what they're unhappy with, with the house. When I'm going to get to specific people. How do you all feel about the kitchen? Do you all like living in this kitchen?

What about the living room? What about this room? Then what you've got to ask your family, is what do we want to do about this stuff? We can all agree that the kitchen is a mess. What do you all think we should do about this? And this is really important. When you live in a family and you know everything wrong that people are doing,

brothers playing video games all the time, dad is watching conspiracy theory videos, mom is not taking care of her health and continues to smoke. And y'all are having financial problems and your mom is a chronic smoker, those things could be related. Can you all even afford cigarettes? You see all the problems in your family. But if you go in there and you start charging about,

hey, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong. No one's going to listen, right? And then you get fed up with frustration and you post about it on the internet. You're like, I've tried to help them. Everyone's like, you've done your best. Let them go. Go be independent. You've tried everything you've tried. So this is really important. If you are trying to get your family involved in changing the household, you have to give them some latitude and what the solutions are. You can't tell them, hey, this is the standard to which the kitchen is going to clean. I need all y'all to listen. if you want to exert financial power, you can do that. But the whole point is that I don't think that's going to work very well.

So you've got to ask them, what do you all think we should do about the kitchen? And you want to get everyone's input. Because if they suggest something, then they're more likely to listen, right? Obviously. So then you listen, you write these things down. Okay, dad thinks we should do this. Maybe we should all, like, eat together and clean together for five minutes. Brother thinks that we should do this.

So as you get these different kinds of solutions, you put them down on a piece of paper, and then you ask people, okay, like, who is willing to take responsibility for this? Ask the question to your family, whose job is it to keep this place clean? And then people will basically like point to anyone but themselves, right? They'll say like, oh, it's like, it's the woman's job. And then mom will say, but I'm ill, I can't do it. And then your brother's like, well, I can't do it for this reason. And so then you're going to just point that out to people and say like, okay, what are we

going to do about this as a family? Because no one wants to accept responsibility for this. I work. I have to drive 40 minutes. Mom is sick. Dad doesn't know how to do it. Brother doesn't get around to it. And so what are we going to do about this?

this. So this is really important, but you sort of need to be the leader here, but you can't tell people what to do. The way that you're going to be the leader is by framing the conversation. And you're going to let them come up with the answers. Because now you know, like, what amount of fuel your family is going to give you. And if people say like, okay, like, we're going to do this, this and this. You've got to be super careful here because people will make big, big promises. So then you need to have another conversation, maybe week four now. So people have said they're going to do particular things. What happens when someone doesn't do what they say they're going to do? And this is where all kinds of things could happen. People could get defensive. They're like, well, you don't do what you say you're going to do. And you're like, yeah, I completely understand that. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else here. What I'm saying is as a family, what is our system of accountability. If someone says they're going to do something, they don't do it, like, what happens. And then people are going to kind of shrug. And you're going to say, okay, so like, I think I'm seeing a problem is that this, as a family, we don't really hold each other accountable, really at all. And so people get to do what they want to, which is,

exactly why the kitchen is a mess. Because no one's accountable. What do you all think about that? Is that fair? I'm not blaming any one of you because we all do it, right? We all participate in it. We're all like guilty in this together. The question is, do we as a family want to change? And if so, what are we willing to do? And what kind of consequences are we willing to impose? There's also, like, other, like, really basic stuff that you're going to have to talk about with your family, like finances. So this is we're going to get everyone together and we're going to say, okay, so like, I'd like to talk about finances, I'd like to understand what we as a family are going to do. Like, let's try to figure this out. Like, who's open to trying to figure it out? I'm not blaming anyone.

I'm just trying to figure out what's the money we have coming in. What's the money we have going out? So this is where, especially if you grow up in a household with financially irresponsible parents, you as a kid, this is completely foreign to you. Some kids take this for granted because, like, their parents automatically taught them how to do it. They were given allowances. They were given certain amounts of money. They were taught financial responsibility from a young age. But if your parents don't know how to be financially responsible, you certainly don't know how to be financially responsible. So you've got to figure it out and then you've got to teach them. So I would start with something as simple as a budget. Every month, what is all the money that we have coming in to this household?

What is all the money that we have going out? How much do we spend on food? How much do we spend on mortgage? How much do we spend on electricity? How much do we spend on cigarettes? And then what you're going to do is you're going to point out, okay, what is everyone's responsibility here? So I'm bringing in this much. Dad is bringing in this much. Brothers bringing in nothing. Mom is bringing in nothing. It looks like we don't have enough money for stuff.

So like I'm paying for most of the stuff here. Like, what do you all think about that? And then this is where this is what I'm willing to do, but I can't do it myself. Or let's talk about that. Are you all expecting me to essentially financially support? This is where you turn to your brother, right? Who's the video game addict? And you ask him, like, what's your plan?

Are you expecting me to, is, I just want to be clear. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just asking, what are you expecting from me? Ask your family, what are you all expecting for me? Are you all expecting me to continue to financially support this family? And if something needs to be paid for, I need to know whether that's a burden that's on my shoulders, or that's something we're sharing. This is where people are going to feel guilty.

They'll start to make excuses. Like your brother will be like, yeah, I'll get around to it. And so this is where I think now we get to some of the hard questions. So you turn to your mom and you can say, she's like, I'm sick. What can you do? Because I'm struggling. Is there anything you can do to help me? And if she says, no, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do to help you.

You can say, well, what about filling out paperwork to get on disability? Well, I can't do that because I'm sick. I mean, I think you can fill out paperwork. So let's just understand, you can't fill out paperwork. And the result of that is that I have to spend eight hours a week working additionally because you can't fill out forms. I just want to make sure that we're clear that that's what's going on. You can even turn to your dad or your brother and ask them, is that what y'all are seeing here?

And then dad or brother will say, okay, like you can't blame her for that. She's sick. So it looks like mom isn't going to contribute at all. What about her expenses? Is there anything we can cut back on expenses? What do you all think about expenses? So you've got to just talk to people about the expectations, lay it out, this is what we spend, this is what we get, like, what's the system here?

Let's call it what it is. As judgment-free as you can, chances are there's going to be a lot of guilt on their end. So you're going to see all kinds of weird things like people will stop showing up to the conversation and things like that. All kinds of stuff can happen. And that's where you've got to talk to them and you can say, look, we need to talk about finances. I don't know how else to say this. Like, how are you all expecting this to work?

You have to have these kinds of conversations, budgeting things out, asking people for their opinions about what they can contribute. Your brother's like, okay, I'll start college like next year. Okay, so like, what are you going to do in the meantime? I'm going to, like, are you going to play video games all day? He's like, fine, I'll do whatever you want. I want to know what to expect from you. So don't fall into the trap. They're going to try to trap you this way. They're going to be like, I'll do whatever you want. Fine, tell us what to do. We'll do it. Anything to stop the conversation, don't fall into the trap. Because if you tell them to do something, they're not going to do it, especially if you're not willing to induce consequences. What they want to avoid is the conversation,

and that's exactly what you need to create. You need to create this frame of the conversation and then don't provide solutions. Do as best as you can to sit in that vacuum and pull the solutions out of them. Ask your brother, just tell me what you're willing to do. And then your brother's like, fine, I'll clean the kitchen. Then you're going to say, okay, what happens if you don't?

And you're like, why? You want to punish me? No, I'm asking you like, what's the accountability? So you can't provide answers to your family, but you have to force the conversation. And you create a vacuum where all of y'all are working on this together, you're not the saint, you're not the one with all the answers. They need to come up with the answers themselves, and you're going to do your best to force the conversation.

So the goal here is that you cannot, I don't know how to say this, you cannot lift up your family by yourself. And what I see in situations like this is like, people are trying to lift up the whole family. I'm trying to get my mom to do stuff. I'm trying to get my brother to do stuff. I'm trying to get my dad to do stuff. And not only are they not listening to you,

they're actively sabotaging your efforts. Not intentionally, but there's no responsibility. And then the less responsibility they take, the more you put on your shoulders. And the more responsibility you put on your shoulders, the more AFK they become. Right? Because like, if the internet modem breaks,

your brother who's like addicted to video games, like he doesn't have to worry about getting it fixed or paying for it to be fixed because you're going to pay for it to be fixed. Your dad who spends all day watching conspiracy theories, if he doesn't have the internet, then like, how is he going to watch conspiracy? Oh, you'll take care of that.

And so the goal here is to have shared responsibility as a family. And even before we get that far, this is what's really hard about this. is these conversations have to happen slowly and consistently, where everyone wants to jump to solutions and start making changes. For one month, no changes. Just talk. And then what you'll notice is as you have the conversations over and over and over again,

a certain energy will be pent up. And then you pick a small thing. You can say, okay, you're going to clean the kitchen. If you're not cleaning the kitchen, what's the consequence? You're going to ask your brother. You're not going to impose the consequence. You ask him. So then if he's like, I don't know, what do you think?

You'd say, okay, I think it's really simple. We can just shut off internet access or take the power cord away from your PC until things are cleaned. What do you think about that? He's going to hate it, but you'll get him into a corner. And then you can say, okay, when I do this, when I shut off your internet access or when I take away your power cord, what are you going to do or say? Ask him ahead of time, right? So you have to get people to voice their own consequences, which then you as the leader may have to impose. And you want to ask him ahead of time when you impose the consequences. What are you going to do? Are you giving me permission to do this? applies for your whole family, right? And you should be held, they're going to get angry at you. They're going to try to hold you accountable. Well, what are you going to do? And if you want to be straight with it, you can say, I will continue making it so that we aren't homeless. That's what I'm willing to contribute. I'm going to give us a roof over our heads. And if they're like, that's not enough, you can say, like, okay, well, maybe I can leave then. I'm going to go ahead and move out. Good luck. So that's where you've got to be careful. You don't want to make those kinds of threats unless you're willing to follow up with them, which it's not really a threat. It's a boundary. And that's the kind of thing where if you're not emotionally ready to do that, don't do that. The right way is to say,

okay, like if I'm not accountable, then this is what I'm willing to sacrifice. You can play that game, right? It's okay. Like, you have limits that you want to eat healthier, right? So you can get your family to help you do that. So that's number one. I know it's a big number one. But it's essentially we have to have a conversation with our parents because you cannot lift up a family all by yourself. You absolutely need their help. They have to take some amount of shared responsibility. How do you do that by framing a conversation about, okay, like, what are we doing as a family? Like, where is this ship headed? Let's all sit down and at least think about it. and decide are we okay with this or are we not okay with this?

And you use the energy of their dissatisfaction to fuel whatever small steps you can, right? You ask them, what are you unhappy with about the family? What are you unhappy with about our direction? What are you unhappy with about yourself? And if your brother volunteers, I'm unhappy being overweight, then you can say, okay, what do we as a family want to do to help them with that? How can we help you? It's not about power.

It's not about punishment. It's not about independence. It's like you love your family. You care about your family. you'll have shared problems and you need to work on them. Mom is sick and can't do her paperwork? Well, can you help Mom do the paperwork? What is the value of y'all sitting down and doing the paperwork?

It turns out to be, let's say, $500 a month. Could we use $500 a month? If you're telling me that you can't do that and what it's costing us is $6,000 a year, if this is not worth $6,000 a year to you to figure it out, that's fine. I guess there's nothing we can do about it. And they're going to say, oh, I don't know how to do it. And you can say, well, I don't know how to do it either.

I've never done this before. mom is like, I don't know how to do it. It's confusing. That's where you turn to the family and you ask, okay, what is this? Is it worth $6,000 a year for us to figure this out? And then they're going to be like, well, yeah, obviously. It's like, okay, so then the two of you all figure it out. Why don't you'll get started? Let's see how far we can get. And then next week when we meet, we can talk a little bit about what kind of obstacles you're running into and maybe dad and I can help. Has to be shared responsibility. Second thing to do if you're in this situation, explore your own emotions. So this is really, really, really important. So if you say, I'm not willing to abandon my family because I don't want my mom,

I'm okay, kind of abandoning my dad, but it's like, I don't want my mom to be homeless. This is really tough, but I would encourage you to really explore where is the line between duty and where is guilt motivating your action. So the two are very closely tied together, right? When I don't do my duty, I feel guilty. But especially in a situation where we know there's emotional manipulation going on, you have to be very careful about guilt. And people may ask, okay, how do I tell the difference between healthy duty and unhealthy guilt. There's one really key thing. That has to do you shouldn't feel guilty for anything that is not in your power. So should you feel guilty for not doing your duty? Absolutely. But what is the extent of your duty? How do we draw the boundaries around

your duty? Your duty is what you can do. It's not my duty. It's a ridiculous duty to fix the earth and solve climate change, let's say. But what I can do is not litter. So I can feel guilty. I Emotions will irrational by nature. So I can feel guilty about all kinds of stuff, but the question is what's truly in my power. And that's what you should really focus on. That's how you figure out, okay, can I force my brother to stop playing video games?

Can I force him to stop eating? If the answer is no or I'm unwilling to, if I'm unwilling to, and then that's my fault, I can feel guilty for that, that I'm not willing to use my power. That's fine. You can feel guilty about that. But be very, very careful.

Explore your guilt and really ask yourself, what am I willing to do? What can I truly control in the situation? Now, here's the other thing is as you do that exploration, and as you try number one, which is sitting down with your family and trying to create a system of shared responsibility, something could happen, very reasonable, which is that you will fail spectacular. Because here I am telling you how to do things, but to be honest, with families like this, it takes years of professional experience to be able to navigate these issues with families. I say this as a professional who does this with families that are stuck. And it's like sitting down with them and trying to get them to figure out the chance. chances of you succeeding as an amateur who's watching this thing once are very low. And yet that's where

we have to start. There's a certain amount of practice. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but it is the right move. So then the question becomes, okay, so like then what? Right. So now we're going to talk a little bit about like what you can kind of do in this situation if it doesn't work. Dr. Kay says, okay, sit down with them one hour a week and talk about these kinds of things and talk about shared responsibility and accountability and stuff like that. That's great. But they don't even show up. Now what do I do? And as you try these kinds of things and your family puts in more and more and more roadblocks, you will begin to see that I can't actually fix this for them. You will begin to see the futility of your efforts. You will begin to see that I can only do so much. And I can't carry my

family to success. They have to want to do something to. As you come to that realization, do not push it away. Because that is ultimately how are you, you are going to conquer the guilt. and conquering the guilt is going to be very, very important. And once you start to walk that road, then you can start to really think about, okay, what kind of what kind of limits am I willing to set? What kind of boundaries am I willing to enforce? Because in trying to enforce a boundary when your family knows how to make you feel guilty is an exercise in futility. Not only is that an exercise in futility is actually harmful.

It's better that you do nothing at all. And then you may ask, wait, wait, hold on a second. That's crazy. Why would it be worse for me to try to set a boundary and fail as opposed to should I even try? No, here's why. When you set a boundary and it is not enforced, what are you actually teaching your family? What are you actually enforcing? Reinforcing. You're reinforcing the concept that your boundaries can be ignored. You're teaching them the lesson that they don't have to listen to you. And this is a huge problem that a lot of people get into is that they'll arbitrarily start setting boundaries. They'll be like, if you don't do this, I'm not going to buy, pay for groceries.

And then when time comes around and they're like, I'm hungry and I have nothing to eat, the guilt gets better of you. buy the groceries anyway, because you're not going to let your mom starve. That's ridiculous. She spent her last money on cigarettes. I'm not going to let her starve. And so what is your mom actually learning? She's learning, oh, guilt is a useful tool to get what I want. You're actually reinforcing manipulation.

You're teaching her how to be more manipulative, because the only thing that works is guilting you. And then you get this situation where you're being guilted constantly by your family, because you try to set a boundary, and what you actually reinforce is that when they guilt you, they get what they want. So it's best not to set the boundary at all. So be prepared for whatever kind of stick you want to enforce.

Or is it going to be money? Like, you have to, like, internally, you've got to decide what you're willing to do and what you're not willing to do. People on the internet will tell you, oh, just do this. Don't pay for it. If she buys cigarettes, she doesn't get to eat. That's not your mom who's coughing while you're eating a cheeseburger that you picked up on the way home.

And your mom is, like, looking at you because she hasn't eaten in 24 hours. Like, the people on the internet don't have to deal with that. So you've got to figure out what are you willing to enforce. And you may decide, this is very healthy, that you're not willing to enforce. force much. That's just not who you are or how you operate, which is totally fine. But as you try to go down this path, what you will discover, and this is what's kind of challenging, is that one of two things will happen. Either they'll get on board, they'll accept some shared responsibility and your life will start moving in the right direction. Fantastic. Or they won't. And then what can happen is,

I hope you are able to be more at peace about leaving them. Because ultimately, I think that's where things probably should go, right? You can keep on rolling the dice until mom passes away or brother randomly gets this crap together. But at some point, I think this is the key thing, is like, we don't want to abandon our family, right? We don't want to give up on them. There's a huge difference. If you feel guilty for abandoning your family, there is one way to deal with that guilt

100% and abandon them anyway. The way to do that is to try everything that you can do. So that when you leave the home, you can leave knowing that I tried for two years to get these people to clean the fucking kitchen. And they would not even do that much. I tried so hard. I tried everything in my power to try to move my family in the right direction, and they just turn me down at every turn.

And then you can leave and you can feel okay about it. You can be sad. You can be upset. And this is where we've got to be really careful because shared responsibility means shared responsibility. Because if your mom ends up homeless, whose fault is that? You think, oh, it's mine. It's partially yours.

But she wouldn't be homeless if she'd filled out paperwork. She wouldn't be homeless if your dad decided to start working. She wouldn't be homeless if your brother helped out by getting some job. Why are you accepting all the response? because they give it to you and you take it. So the core of the problem here is that as our family gives us more responsibility and we take it, paradoxically, we become more powerless. Because they give you the responsibility, but they don't give you the power. They won't actually listen to what you say. They won't let you restrict how many cigarettes she buys, but they will absolutely make you responsible

for being able to afford food when your mom buys too many cigarettes. So power and responsibility have to go hand in hand. And as you give your family the fairest possible shot, you can. As you learn how to talk to them and give them every opportunity, and if they fail you, time and time and time again. We move on to point number three, which is that unfortunately, you probably have to go. And you say, but they will be homeless. Well, it's kind of interesting, right? Because as long as you're protecting them from homeless, they don't have to get their shit together. That's the other problem is that by supporting all this bad behavior, you're actually allowing them to not take responsibility. And you'd be surprised at what human beings are capable of

when they're given responsibility. You're supporting them, right? If you move out of the house, there's a decent chance your younger brother will actually step up. There's a decent chance that after a long time as you have these conversations with mom, you can say, look, at some point,

I'm not going to be able to do this anymore. So if you want to fill out that paperwork, I think that would be a really good idea. It'll help out the family a lot. It'll help me out a lot. If you're unwilling to do it, I can't do it. What do you mean you can't do it?

What are the steps you've tried? I don't know where to start. How do you figure out where you start? Right? you've got to be like, like, break it down into steps. She may not know how to do it. So what are we doing when we don't know something? How do we approach that?

I don't know how to do it either. She's like, I need your help. I've never done it before. How are you imagining that I'm going to figure it out? Because I've never done it before. Well, you're good at figuring things out. Yeah, that's, and why aren't you good at figuring things out? I don't know.

It's confusing. I think maybe the reason you're not good at figuring things out is because anytime you struggle with something, you dump it on me. And then I learn how to figure it out because someone's got to. And then the more that you, leave me to figure things out, the better I get at it, and the less of it you do. This isn't fair to me. You need to start taking some responsibility. Tell me whatever you can figure out, and younger brother, can you help? And if none of that crap works, we get to point number three.

It's really hard to understand this when you're in the situation. But you have a life so easy to forget. It's not about being a good son or a bad son or doing your duty or whatever. Your mom has a few years left to live. Your dad after that will be whatever. Your brother after that will be whatever. And so the question is, you're 26 years old right now, when you're 28, not 29 when you're 30. What then? You have a life after them. So the question is, what do you want to put in place for that? Or you can just put your life on hold, not learn anything about yourself and get drowned and not build up. You know, this person wants to like go to concerts and they want to meet friends and it's hard for them to date. Like, let's say that your mom lives for another five years because we don't want

her to pass away by any means. And now you're 31 and you haven't dated for a decade. This is the other thing to understand is that it's fine to make sacrifices for your family. Like I'm a huge fan of that in theory. Just understand what you're doing and where it's going, right? So this is my way of sitting down with you and asking you, let's think about this. Think for a second. What is this doing to your life? And then you could say, well, like, it's like sacrificing my life. So that's a good thing, right? Sacrificing your life for the sake of your family is only a good thing if it actually helps them. Sacrificing your life to keep them barely afloat while they continue to engage in unhealthy behavior and you enable their negativity. And then you all, you end up drowning with them.

You can jump onto a drowning boat and start bailing the water. But the point of jumping onto a drowning boat and bailing water is if everyone's bailing and you can save the boat. Jumping on just to drown with them is not worth it. Should you sacrifice your life for the sake of another? Yes, absolutely. But only if it's worth it. This is what you'll learn as you try to help them is you'll see whether they're willing

to accept the help or not, whether they're willing to do their part. Because I hate to break it to you, but you cannot fix a life that is not yours. They have to take some responsibility. So at the end of the day, in many of the situations, I do think the right move is moving out. But we can't jump straight to moving out because that's abandonment. You got to give it everything you can. And once you give it everything that you can, then you'll start to realize internally, this is just not going to work.

I can stay, but it's not worth it. It doesn't actually help them. And that's a conversation that you have with them as well, right? This is not the stick. If that doesn't feel right to you, like, I'm going to threaten with moving out and then y'all are going to be homeless. Now, what you can say is, look, for three months, I've been trying to get y'all to sit down and talk about this stuff and give direction to our life because we're drowning here.

We're in a financially desperate situation. People are sick. This guy's 300 pounds. I'm 250 pounds. We're barely making ends meet. I can't save anything even though I'm working my ass off. And for three months, I've tried to get all four of us in a room for one hour a week. And we can't even do that much. I just want to let you all know I'm going to start looking at other places to move out. It'll probably take me a couple months. I'm going to start looking for jobs here because I can't fix this family on my own. I just can't do it. And they can say, okay, but tell us what you want us to do. And this is where you got to, I'm going to teach y'all some techniques, turn it around them. I've been saying what I want y'all to do. What have y'all heard? I've been saying it for the last

three months. Don't answer the question then. Ask them. I don't know. Tell us now. And then you say, this is the crux of the problem. It's for months and months and months I've been speaking and no one's been listening. And that's why I'm leaving. No, tell us, I promise we'll do something. Okay. So here's what I want you to do. Over the course of the next week, I want someone, in this household to take responsibility for getting all four of us in a room for one hour together. Does that mean that you're not going to leave? No, I may still leave. I'm telling you all that I've been trying this. It's not working. But if other people start taking responsibility, if things start moving in the right direction, I may consider staying. Let them take the responsibility. And then it's up to

them. They're like, oh, shit. And if they decide to get together, and then you're going to leave it to them say, okay, let's try this one more time. But you yourself should not change your behavior. And even if they start doing everything right and you find a job and you have an opportunity to move out, that's where things become really tricky. Because if you decide to sacrifice yourself for their sake, you could see now that the threat is gone, all of the bad behaviors will return. So as best as you can, I think the right thing to do is even move out then. Say, hey, I'm really happy that y'all are putting your life together. I'm still moving out because y'all just started this. If I take that off the table,

it seems like what really motivated y'all is the fear of me moving out. So once that fear goes away, I'm afraid that all the bad behaviors will return. No, they won't. Okay, great. So I'm going to move out. Let's see if y'all can stay on top of the stuff.

I'm happy to send some money from time to time to help y'all pay for expenses. Having a family that doesn't do their fair share. And we love our family, right? So we talk about how I'm drowning trying to take care of my family. And when we share our troubles with the internet, the internet tells us, abandon them.

easy for them to say, they're not the ones doing the abandoning. Many of them actually have, right? They say, that's what I had to do and it worked out great for me. And so I think that sometimes moving on from your family is the right move because you can't make them do anything. But if you're feeling guilty and feel like you can't abandon them, I think you should make every effort to put them on the right path. And then if you do decide to leave, you can do so with a clear conscience because you gave

it 18 months of dedicated effort. And not only did they not help, they threw up whatever roadblocks they could. And so this is not a solvable problem. And so sacrificing yourself for the sake of your family worth it, only if it helps them. Otherwise, it's just stupid. So Tony Gondel is asking, I feel like everyone else around me is drowning. Friends, family, I'm highly empathetic and it's starting to affect me. How do I disconnect from it?

So there are a couple of things to remember. The first is that if you're a highly empathic person, the simplest way to control what comes into you is through your indrias or your sense organs. So there's stuff about this in the current guide that's coming out now in seven days. has a lot of stuff about the endriyas. But it's just to realize that if you're empathetic and you're around people, you're going to do some of that absorption. So that's one thing to understand.

Second thing to understand is that there are some techniques. So generally speaking, like, I think Nadi Shuddi or cleansing braonayams can be really good for like processing negative emotions as well as Moneypuri Chakra practices. That's not really scientifically valid, by the way. But in my experience, both as a clinician and as a meditation teacher, I think those help. But at the end of it, like, you know, disconnecting starts with the sense organs. So if you're still spending time with these people, you need to be a little bit intentional about that. What's the right amount of time that I can handle?

Emmett Fasium is asking, going by the same vein of what can you do to improve your life when others are sabotaging you? What advice would you give to people with health issues or disabilities and without external support systems that are trapped in abusive situations and want to leave, but are financially dependent on the person they're trapped with? So that's a really challenging situation, unfortunately, far too common. So I'd say three things. The first thing is that if the situation is that you're financially trapped by an abusive person, the goal is to get financially not trapped, right? It's sort of like, what advice would you give to someone who's starving? I'd say eat. Now, this is where things get really tricky because a lot of people will say like, well, I can't eat, right? If I could eat, I would. Obviously, duh. If I could become financially independent, I would. And that's where it's unfortunate, but what I've seen time and time and again by people who are trapped in abusive situations is that the abuser makes you think that you cannot be in. independent. That's their abuse tactic 101 is make people feel like they're trapped. So oftentimes what you'll find is that people are not nearly as trapped as they think they are, which is staggering, right? You're like, of course I'm trapped. I'm disabled. There are support systems for disabled people with

disabilities. They're subsidized housing. There's all kinds of stuff out there. But the whole point about by the abuser is that they've trained you to think that you're completely powerless. So you have to be a little bit critical of that and see what kind of financial opportunities are available. I'm not saying are necessarily, but it's worth revisiting the issue before accepting the conclusion, is what I'm saying. Second thing is, as you're working that stuff, you have to understand that a certain amount of the effect of abuse is your response to it. So there may be some things that you can do or say, but a lot of it is going to be like internal strength. So that's where like even meditative practices or things like that can help in terms of like purifying and like letting things go and stuff like

that. I mean, it's challenging. You can also look at doctrines like stoicism and things like that to try to resist the impact of it. But it's really tough. The other thing that I would say very concretely is even if you don't know what to do and you feel like you're stuck in an abusive situation, there may be other people out there who are willing to help you. It's just about getting access to those. And so how do you do that? That's where it's like kind of depends on where you live and what's going on and stuff like that.

But oftentimes there are resources, right? So mental health centers, things like that. Social workers can help you find housing, help you apply for grants and get disability payments and all that kind of stuff. So there's like there resources out there, depending on where you live and what your situation is, that people may be able to help you figure it out.

So I'd say the last thing is ask for help. Maybe not to your abuser, but to someone else.