As someone with good parents, I get very demoralized hearing about how ungodly awful most peoples’ parents were. It’s so ubiquitous that I almost (almost but not quite) subscribe to the philosophy my friends have where they hold that children should (literally) be raised “by the village” rather than by two parents, which in theory would minimize the effects of one imbalanced mind having full control over the children.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of books on narcissism and have been picking up on the idea/notion/possibility/viewpoint that narcissism is a spectrum like autism is. In autism, which itself is incredibly common due to the fact that it’s multiple genes/processes/whatever performing multiple parts of a spectrum (think a carpet representing humanity and a shattered cup on the carpet, I use the shards in this visual to represent pieces of the spectrum scattered across humanity, apologies if anyone thinks a shattered cup seems like a negative comparison, I don’t), you have the majority of humanity having some variance in it, which goes to demonstrate there’s no such thing as a neurotypical. As in, if a scouter was invented that instead of scanning your power level scanned your autism level, everyone would have their very own signature number. I would be over 9000. Same with narcissism, if this view is correct, as it would be another shattered glass on the carpet that is humanity, with the shards from both glasses overlapping in their territories (which when you think about it makes the family dynamics in The Good Doctor all the more awkward, it’s one spectrum at odds with another in a show where the main character is a medical savant with autism). And again, not trying to make an awkward comparison, I have friends who openly confess to me they’re deep on the narcissism spectrum, and these people at least are trying their best in life, as well as showing narcissism is a neutral condition that just happens to seem more negative in modern urban situations.
Consider this the sequel to my last such question which had a similar idea to it. What’s the most narcissisty your parents ever come or came, even if you hold them in generally good regards?
My mom was so dead set about molding me into her idealized version of a hippie kid that she wouldn’t let me cut my hair as a young child despite the trauma of all the homophobic shit and actual fights I endured in kindergarten.
She to this day refuses to accept her part of responsibility for my complicated relationship with gender and social norms while also robbing me of a somewhat normal childhood even if it was reactionary social pressure that motivated me to want to conform to gender norms.
Everyone should get decide what battles they want to fight. Putting your own battles onto a child is not ok.
Accepting a social norm is a healthy approach for things you don’t give a crap about, like say, your hair style or length, and not turning it into a unnecessarily big thing.