What Your Childhood Taught You About Love

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]All right. So, we left off on page 80, you can't trust anybody at the bottom of that page.

[00:00:09]And um she was saying that remember she left the therapy group and we were trying to think of like what you would tell her if you were in the therapy group. Remember last week that she left the group and then if you're the other group member, what would you say to her, right? To try to maybe talk some into her about maybe staying in the group.

[00:00:28]And then no matter what anybody said, she didn't want to stay. She didn't want to stay in the group, right? [laughter] Okay. [snorts] So, I'll just read a little bit from the bottom of that page.

[00:00:38]Um, it said, "I still remember the sadness I felt the night she announced she was leaving group. I reminded her that she knew this work was going to be painful, that pain was part of the process. For a split second, she looked as if she might consider. But then she said, "Look, I don't want to give up my dad. I don't want to get angry with him, and I don't want to keep defending him to you. My dad and I really need each other. Why should I trust you more than him? I don't think you or anybody in this group really gives a beep about me.

[00:01:14][laughter] I don't think any of you will really be there for me [snorts] when I get hurt.

[00:01:25]Jod's group was composed of other adults who had been abused as children, and they understood what she was going through. They were extremely supportive and loving with her, but she couldn't accept that. To Jodie, the world was a devious place full of emotional vandals.

[00:01:42]She was convinced that if she let anyone get too close, they would hurt her and let her down. The irony is that these beliefs would have been very accurate in regard to her father. Isn't that interesting?

[00:01:59]So, it's almost like the father, you know, the father made that initial impression in her that he's because of his drinking and not being there for her, he chronically was letting her down. So now it's like she's wearing those glasses just looking at whoever it is and she's sure they're going to let her down, you know. But most people will let you down if you're expecting too much from them. That's the thing.

[00:02:22]How can somebody let you down if you don't expect anything from them?

[00:02:26]That's the trick, you know. But if we have a wound from childhood where mom didn't give us or dad didn't give us something, then we're going to get let down a lot because we have this expectation, these unmet needs from mom or from dad that were projecting onto other people with these glasses like that. See, I know they're going to let me down. See, they did it. They let me down. And it's like, well, yes. Would this also suggest that with such childhood wounds then an adult has also too high expectations?

[00:03:02]>> Yeah.

[00:03:02]>> Towards others.

[00:03:03]>> Yeah.

[00:03:05]We really shouldn't have any expectation. I mean unless you've hired them and you're paying them for a job and you're like you're going to be here from 9 to5. you're going to make the pizza and don't, you know, don't use rotten food and go to the, you know, don't, you know, whatever the standard rules are for the job. But if you haven't hired them and you're projecting all these expectations that they should be here mostly as the one who's going to validate you emotionally, you know, you didn't notice that I was this or that or you said that thing and that upset me.

[00:03:36]So that why why does it matter so much if some person other person how they are? Who cares if they don't see you?

[00:03:42]Why is it their job to see you? You know, that's why I always make the joke about I I I always bring it down to the toilet humor, but it's because it's practical. I mean, are you going to ask some anybody to like bring you to the bathroom and take care of you in the bathroom, you know? So, why would you ask them to take care of your messy emotions?

[00:04:00]And not that we ask, but why would you expect that? It's a very deep, subtle thing that we're doing most of the time. And that's why we don't like people, you know? That's what instead of just being like that's that's fine.

[00:04:12]That's how they are. Not like that's how they are, but that's how they are. It's okay. They also have their wounds. They have their thing, but I don't need something from anybody cuz I'm taking care of myself. I know how to take care of myself. So, if they're like that, they're like that. Obviously, they have a wound, too. You know that saying like hurt people hurt people. So, if they're hurt, you think they're going to be bringing you a pot of gold? No. If they're hurt, they're going to also probably hurt you. But that doesn't mean you don't like them. You could also have compassion for them, right? If you don't need something from them, you can have compassion for them.

[00:04:49]But what happens is that it's almost like, you know, imagine that these are like, you know, see how you can see through these pretty clearly, but you can see through these, right, to the other side. But imagine most glasses don't have that. You can't see through them. So imagine they're like all dark blue or something, you know? That's these samscara lenses. And you're seeing everybody dark blue. Everybody's dark blue. All the ways you weren't there for me. You didn't see me. You hurt me. But it has nothing to do with that. Of course, people are going to hurt you.

[00:05:18]Why? They have th their own aankara.

[00:05:22]They're trying to get from point A to point B and you happen to be a spot, a little blip on the road that they can dance with for a little bit. But we see it as like we need to make some deep bond with them. We need to be very connected and seen by them.

[00:05:39]Why?

[00:05:40]It's just some person who's a bump on the road along the way. You know, why do we have that need to make such a deep bond with another adult?

[00:05:51]If you really look at it, it's because there's some wound in us we're trying to get filled.

[00:05:56]Cuz the true deep bond is when you're giving to another, which means when you don't have any expectation because you're full and you're giving. But other than that, there's two kinds of bonds.

[00:06:06]Either you fulfill my emotional needs or you fill my sexual needs, my bodily needs pretty much or both.

[00:06:13]So that's about me eye centered, you know.

[00:06:21]Malikica, you have okay over there?

[00:06:24]You're like okay.

[00:06:28]>> There's someone online ret.

[00:06:30]>> Sure.

[00:06:32]Jatas or I can't read Hari Krishna.

[00:06:39]>> Um it's a question clarificatory question.

[00:06:42]Yeah. At that early stage of childhood is it really expectation or is it dependence? And I know I'm talking about that formative stage whereby sort of by nature's own construct the child has a dependence for care for nurture for nourishment >> appreciate that >> expectation may get formed but I'm just trying to understand the difference between uh dependence by nature and expectation.

[00:07:21]>> Good question. So the first 18 years we have needs. They're not expectations.

[00:07:27]First 18 years of life we're still getting formed. You know, we're like in the factory, you know, still getting formed, still getting the pieces put on.

[00:07:35]And that means we need 100% of mother and father's attention. And those needs need to be met. And that doesn't mean we're needy. It doesn't mean we're demanding. It doesn't mean we're selfish. It doesn't mean we even have expectations. It's just what's required to basically grow a human being.

[00:07:52]But then if the parents did their job now when you're like 19, you're baked.

[00:07:57]You're you should be good. So then from there then it's expectation time. And if there start have you start having expectations of others usually to meet your sexual or emotional needs then that's when the problems start in human relations.

[00:08:12]Up until then it's the parents job. They should be taking care of you. You're not that's why they call you a minor. You know you're not an adult yet. you don't have all that figured out.

[00:08:24]But parents often are like, "Oh, my kid is, you know, they'll bring them to therapy with me because the kid's so spoiled, the kid's so demanding, you know, the kid is like so needy." I'm like, "Oh my god, of course they're needy. They're a baby, you know. Yeah, they're very needy."

[00:08:40]But that's because the parents have expectations of the kid when it really boils down to it. they had the kid for their own need to be someone, [clears throat] right? Or some to live through them in some way. So then they think, "My kid's so needy." And it's turns out it's because they didn't want the kid to actually bring a human being into this world to to take care of and nurture and to have them contribute to society.

[00:09:06]It turns out they wanted the kid to be someone for them to make them look good or feel good, you know?

[00:09:18]Thank you very much.

[00:09:19]>> Yeah, thank you. Good question. Anything else or should we read? [clears throat] Read. Okay.

[00:09:28]So, let's see what else we have about our friend here. So, she was convinced that if she let anyone get too close, right, they would hurt her and let her down. And the thing is, whatever you're you're however you're seeing it, whatever you're sure of, you can find it, right? So, if she's sure that people are going to let her down, then that's what she's going to see. Number one, because of her expectations, but number two, she's she's wired to see it. Even a tiny flinch of the face muscle, you know that they didn't smile at me. See, they let me down. They didn't she didn't smile at me. She doesn't like me. Right? They they will analyze the micro movements of your words, of your face, of your every last thing to to prove their point like a lawyer in the court or something like you know really proving see I told you they let me down you know but then there's other people who are so wired to see something else. It just depends on your wound that's how you can tell the wound of the person what they keep talking about what they're wired about and it probably doesn't have anything to do with you letting me down someone in my adult life. So then you can trace it back to mom or to dad probably or to whoever that primary caregiver was that was there in your life in those early years, you know.

[00:10:44]Okay.

[00:10:46]So um and then the therapist said the irony is that those beliefs would have been very accurate in regard to her father, which is even more interesting, right? So, she has the father on a pedestal and she doesn't want to continue with therapy because it would mean she's at the crossroads now.

[00:11:02]Either admit the dad was not who she thought he was or drop the group, you know, in a group of loving people that were healing and looking at the truth of their childhoods. She had to choose. And it was too painful cuz it's kind of an illusion she has about the father. he's on this pedestal, but he can do no wrong, you know, and he's the only one who has my back.

[00:11:26]So, she chose that one even though she's in therapy, even though she's with other people who are healing, you know, it's a very hard choice to go on the road that you haven't been on yet to go on that path of unknown. You know, because when it's unknown, it means your childhood.

[00:11:43]Many people's childhoods were unknown. I mean, in other words, they were volatile. They were unpredictable. So at least with her father, she knows what what she's getting with him. He's not there for her. He's an alcoholic. But at least she knows that's her her familiar, you know. But this group, it's like too scary. It's unknown. Number one, and number two, they're too nice. What is wrong with these people? It's like a little too right. Remember last week I was saying allergic to love. It's like, what is wrong with these people? Will one of them just be a jerk? You know, I want some drama here. People start fighting. I want to see some slapping, you know, or just some some rude person, you know, and if she stayed, she probably would have created the drama in the group.

[00:12:27]She would have made a drama that wasn't there and then the whole group would have gone all messed up. That's why group work can be very tricky sometimes, you know, because if if it's too smooth and it's too nice, she's not going to purposely be like, "Oh, today I'm going to screw the group up." But she will. If it's too nice for too long because of if you if you had to map her pattern, her childhood pattern with the father, it might look like this, you know, it's very erratic. Okay, he's drunk now he's screaming, now he's beating now, you know, it's like that, you know, and maybe there's a nice time when he's being all kind to her the next day, you know, when he's not drunk or she gets to care for him because he's hung over. So maybe it's a little stable, but it's not very stable for very long. So this is her pattern of what love is and what life is. So then how do you think she's going to go in a group when it's smooth and a therapist is running it nicely and smoothly? She can't take it. So she's going to do something to make it go like that and then she'll be like, that's how it goes. And she's not going to see that at all. And if the therapist said, "You just did that. You just destroyed the whole group. You disrupted the whole group." She'll freak out. No, I didn't. So and so looked at me in a weird way. It's like that's not We don't have to handle it like that. Just cuz she looked at you in a weird way or just cuz somebody said something you didn't like doesn't mean you have to throw a stink bomb into the whole group, you know, but she'll do it to match that pattern and then she'll be comfortable and then she'll twist it onto the therapist. No, you you know, see, I knew it that you would What was her thing?

[00:13:55]Whatever her thing is, the therapist is like that. Her friends are like that.

[00:13:59]The groupmates are like that. Everybody is like that except for her father.

[00:14:05]And that's why it's so hard to get out of the the problem. You know, Jod's inability to trust was a major casualty of her father's alcoholism. If you can't trust your father, then whom can you trust?

[00:14:19]Trust is like the runt of our emotional litter. Under harsh conditions, it's usually the first to die. Do you know what a runt is?

[00:14:29]When you have a, at least I knew because I grew up with cats. You know, when you have a group of cats or dogs, puppies or kittens, you know, the littlest one who's probably not going to survive.

[00:14:38]Sometimes there's one who's so little and looks skinny and malnourished and maybe it will die. You know how sometimes Ronnie has puppies and like a lot of them make it, but one of them is too skinny and little and you have to That's called the runt. The runt of the litter and the litter is what's called of the group of the baby puppies or baby kittens. And what she's saying is that, you know, trust is the runt. It's, in other words, it's the one who dies first.

[00:15:02]It's like the puppy who can't make it.

[00:15:04]So trust when you when when you're young is one of the first things to go, the runt of the litter, the runt of the emotional litter under harsh conditions, the first to die.

[00:15:19]Because you know you have to trust your parents to survive you know and if you can't trust them then you have to wall off your heart and become super strong and super smart and figure out how to navigate the next 10 to 15 years or whatever you know and that's how our personalities get formed based on trust or lack of trust you know so all the things when you see somebody and you're like that person is so annoying to me why is That person's so annoying.

[00:15:51]Probably they've had to learn a coping mechanism, which is their personality, right, to survive and they're still doing it. It's not they're like, "Okay, cool. I'm out of the house now. Let me just forget all that wiring that got made." It just keeps going and going the rest of their life, whatever, however they survived that childhood. You know, it's like, you know, imagine you're on a a really big boat, like you're going on a cruise ship and it's sinking and you have to jump off and you have to get on that life raft to survive. But imagine the life raft gets stuck to you and you wear it the rest of your life. You're walking around with a life raft stuck to your butt, you know, and you're like, "Hey, what's up? No problem." And you're knocking things over, [laughter] you know? That's how it looks. these coping mechanisms, these personalities we don't need, but we don't realize it's stuck on my butt, you know, and I'm knocking things over and I'm It probably smells really bad by now, you know, [laughter] and it's like just taking up space and hitting people along the way and you just don't realize it, but that's how it looks. It's just your defense mechanism to survive the childhood, you know, but it's too scary to take it off. you'll feel like totally naked, you know, because it's been attached to your backside for, you know, 30 years maybe.

[00:17:10]So anyway, so she doesn't trust. Trust is a common casualty among adult children of toxic parents. Listen to Glenn. I was always scared when my wife would want to do anything without me, even just going out with the girls for dinner. I was afraid that she'd abandon me.

[00:17:29]I just didn't trust her. I was afraid she would find somebody better than me and leave me for him. I wanted to control her so she'd always be around and I wouldn't have to worry all the time. Jealousy, possessiveness, and suspicion are recurrent themes in the relationships of many adult children of alcoholics. They learned early that relationships lead to what? Betrayal.

[00:17:54]Relationships lead to betrayal. And love leads to what? pain.

[00:18:02]So, imagine that you're our friend Glenn, okay? And the wife wants to go out with the girls just like her girlfriends for a dinner. They're married.

[00:18:13]They're married.

[00:18:15]And you're Glenn and you're like already worried she's going to, you know, with the girls, then she's going to meet some guy. She's going to hook up with that guy. She's going to drop me her husband.

[00:18:25]Imagine that you're him.

[00:18:28]What would you say to your wife to try to convince her not to go out with the girls?

[00:18:34]You're feeling that she's going to abandon you. Worst case scenario, she meets someone else. But best case scenario, she forgets about you for 2 hours.

[00:18:43]She actually has fun without you, which means you're invisible and you're nobody. And there's a chance that she'll not she will never come back to you because that's the that's how it feels when you're abandoned by your mother emotionally as a baby. And one or two hours if mom leaves you is it feels like one or two days.

[00:19:03]Little babies need mom 24/7. They need the even the touch of her skin. You know, they need her to feel close and warm and hear her heartbeat. So if she just ignores you for two hours, it can feel excruciatingly painful. even if she does it one time and that can be enough to break a trust to feel betrayed you know that's that um that experiment the stillface experiment you guys can look it up it's on YouTube if you haven't heard of it or seen it it's called the stillface experiment and they did it at Harvard they did it at Harvard and they they're teach they were trying to show actually if they knew about some scars I don't think they would have done it with a baby just because they did it doesn't mean the experiment's over in that baby's mind. I'd love to see how that baby turned out as an adult. You know, it's not a funny experiment, but what they did is they made the mom have a still face completely like she doesn't recognize her own baby. I think the baby must have been like 6 months old. It was little, you know, and maybe six or nine months. And it's like looking at the mom and mom's like this, >> right? And the baby starts freaking out, starts crying and whailing for the mom to recognize me. Look at me. Look at me.

[00:20:13]And the mom's like this.

[00:20:15]And the baby gets more and more escalated, freaking out and crying, you know, and then the psychologist says, "Okay, now you can recognize her, you know, and she had to calm the baby down quickly. It's okay. It's okay." But can you imagine what went on in the baby's head? That was just a fun experiment for the Harvard psychologist, but the damage it did to the baby, I'm that's not something that she's ever going to forget. She won't consciously probably remember it because she was young, but it will play out in her relationships for the rest of her life.

[00:20:45]one time because remember the way some scars are made is not only repetition but also separately could be combined repetition and emotional intensity or it could just be one time but very emotionally intense. So you're a baby and you're completely dependent on mom and she's literally looking at you like she doesn't even know that you're there or who you are and you're freaking out and she's not responding. That's [clears throat] going to be a very damaging deep samscara.

[00:21:13]So then imagine she's like later in life. I mean she could be like 35 years old and she's sitting, you know, with her partner and the partner has a drunk stare, you know, drunk. Not that he's he's probably something like that. Like something where he's just not acknowledging her that can send her into a tizzy. She could start crying hysterically, you know. That's it's very deep that that that when you don't recognize your own baby even for that one minute, you know.

[00:21:42]So, um, okay. So, what would you guys say if you were Glenn? Because he obviously has some deep samscara around let letting his wife go away for even one or two hours with her friends. So, imagine you're Glenn and you're like, "Oh my god, she's going to abandon me. She's going to betray me. She's not going to come back. She's going to be at the dinner with her friends and meet some other guy." I mean, he's really insecure about that. So, what would you try say to your to your wife to try to convince her to not go?

[00:22:17]>> I think he would try to say anything to make her feel guilty.

[00:22:21]>> Okay. Like what what would you say if you were him?

[00:22:23]>> Like, why are you leaving me? Why are you going without me?

[00:22:28]>> Yep. Definitely a why is a good way to make someone feel guilty and put them on the defense of like, why? Already it's like, well, why not, right? So why are you leaving me? Right. It's a good one.

[00:22:39]Any other ideas? What would you say if you were a Glenn? So make her feel guilty.

[00:22:44]>> I could um try to find some reasons that for her not to go like that. I need some help in something.

[00:22:51]>> I need help. Okay. So be a little more like sly. Don't admit the that you're feeling maybe already jealous and possessive. maybe already, you know, but instead be like, "Oh, I need some help around the house." That's a good trick.

[00:23:08]Moini, you had one.

[00:23:12]>> I want to say something similar like suddenly I feel sick, you know, some bodily problem. I have, you know, I have a sharp pain here or there. And you're so, you know, expert in this, you know, you did this before you helped me. Can you look at it? You know, can you help me?

[00:23:27]>> [laughter] >> So I have a sharp pain and you're an expert, right? Praise his praise her ego, right? You're an expert and I have a sharp pain. Help me. Help me. He might like that. Okay. I mean she she might like that. It's the wife going out.

[00:23:39]Yeah.

[00:23:40]>> I would say like I am also never leaving you. I also never do this behavior with you. So why are you >> Why are you leaving me? I never leave you.

[00:23:54]Velas ni and >> okay >> maybe first >> nry what would you say >> I would say that um your friends are not real friends so I don't think it's a good idea to >> pick on the friends that's a good one pick on the friends right in other words we're good but you're friends they're not real friends don't roam around with them Good retach.

[00:24:28]>> Nicely beat me to [laughter] it.

[00:24:31]>> It's the same. Thank you very much.

[00:24:34]>> Okay, so pick on the friends is a good one, right? Pretend like you're sick is a good one. What What else was it? Make you feel guilty, right? What else? What else would you say if you were desperate? You felt like he was abandoning you.

[00:24:46]>> Kamala.

[00:24:47]>> Um I [clears throat] would say I look >> I mean she I keep saying she would Yeah.

[00:24:51]>> Yeah. I look at the weather forecast and then they announce that there will be a very big storm and I'm worried that something >> the weather is the weather to you.

[00:24:58]>> It's the [laughter] weather. It's the weather.

[00:25:01]>> Yep.

[00:25:01]>> So, and then you know that I don't feel so good so I cannot even come to pick you up. Why you don't just postpone it?

[00:25:07]>> Yeah. Postpone it. And the weather's bad. This is dangerous. I can't come get you. You put three in one.

[00:25:12]>> The weather, you know, I can't come get you. Well, you should postpone.

[00:25:15]>> You should postpone and then >> it's gonna be dangerous for you. Yeah.

[00:25:18]>> I'm looking out for your best interests.

[00:25:20]That's that's a good one.

[00:25:23]Okay, Malikica.

[00:25:26]>> I could or he could also say um well, you know that our son today he was not feeling well at school, so you should stay at home to take care of him. You know, otherwise you are neglecting me.

[00:25:37]>> Oh yes, blame the child. Perfect. Bring the child in. Right. It's not me. I'm completely healthy and satisfied on my own. But our child needs you. You know, the child wasn't feeling well and you'll be such a bad wife. It's your It's your son. It's your daughter. You should stay home for her.

[00:25:54]Yeah.

[00:25:56]So, what would you do if you're the wife and you want to go out? How would, first of all, how would you feel hearing this?

[00:26:01]If your husband's telling you these things, how would you feel? You're excited. You're going out with your girlfriends, you know, let off some steam. It's different when you go out with your girlfriends, right, than if you go out with your husband. The whole different kind of feeling. How would you feel if your husband's saying these kind of things to you?

[00:26:22]>> I think you feel guilty.

[00:26:23]>> Guilty.

[00:26:24]>> And >> you feel bad. You feel like you're a bad mother and a bad woman >> wife. And >> Mhm.

[00:26:36]>> I will feel controlled and say, "Oh my god, again, this guy doesn't even let me breathe." You know, it's not [laughter] that I'm going every day. It's just once in a month maybe.

[00:26:47]>> Yeah.

[00:26:48]>> And now he has so many excuses again.

[00:26:50]You know, is this too heavy?

[00:26:52]>> Yeah.

[00:26:53]>> Controlled like caged in suffocated, right? It's like I can't even just have a little bit of fun.

[00:26:58]>> And what is there? We are just going to eat that. We are going to >> do something special. Maybe two hours.

[00:27:04]>> Yeah.

[00:27:05]>> Yeah. And if you could if you could um rebel in a way against this controlling husband, what would you do?

[00:27:13]>> I say, "Wait, I will bring you a nice piece of cake. You just relax in front of TV, drink your beer, and be quiet. I will come back."

[00:27:22]>> Okay.

[00:27:22]>> I will come back soon. Don't worry.

[00:27:24]>> That's a nice rebellion.

[00:27:26]>> Yeah. Wow.

[00:27:26]>> That's a pretty nice one. What would you do if you were being a little more rajasic type of rebellion or a little more aggressive? Like that's kind of nice. You have your beer and have your cake or whatever and I'll be back, you know. But what if you're a little bit angry if you're feeling controlled and suffocated? How would you slap back?

[00:27:44]What would you say?

[00:27:46]>> I would go [snorts] >> I would go I'll come see you after I hang out with my girlfriends. Then I'll come home and we'll we can have a beer together. Okay, that's nice. Right. I want to hear a mean one. What would you say if you're not sugar coating it, Mallet? Let it rip. Let it rip.

[00:28:07]>> If you continue in that way, they I will not come home at all. There we go. Now we're talking. Just that's true. That's how it feels, right? That's what I wanted to show you that if you're feeling he his core issue is feeling abandoned, right? But his very behavior is making her want to abandon him. And that's what people don't realize when they have the abandonment sims scar.

[00:28:27]Many people have that abandonment simcar. And I always try to go one slide back in their story because the story always starts with this person abandoned me. And I always say out of the thin air they just walked around and they picked on you or you or you to abandon. No.

[00:28:41]Most likely is there's something in your behavior that's making them want to take distance from you. Can you think of what that could be? And they're like, "No, I can't." Because it's so deeply ingrained in them. But basically, it's the neediness. It's the possessiveness. It's the suffocating controlling behavior, manipulating behavior that nobody likes that. I haven't met anybody yet who likes that. You know, you feel like your wings are clipped and you feel caged in.

[00:29:02]So, as soon as somebody does that, that's actually what you feel. The other things you guys are saying is nice, but that's not really how you feel when somebody's controlling you to that extent that you're married and you can't go out for two hours with your girlfriends. You don't feel like that, you know? So we might be conditioned to make it all nice with our controlling partner because we got trained probably by our mother or father how to do that.

[00:29:23]But the truth is we would want to just be like I'm not going to come back at all. You want to talk about abandon?

[00:29:29]Guess what? Find a new wife or a new husband or whatever you know. So that's the the very reaction that they are so fearful of getting they're actually creating in the relationship by their behavior. Isn't that interesting?

[00:29:43]It's a very interesting dynamic that we don't often see.

[00:29:46]The thing we're the most afraid of, we're actually creating.

[00:29:50]Okay.

[00:29:52]Anything else?

[00:29:54]>> Huh?

[00:29:55]>> Okay. NRI.

[00:29:58]>> Yeah. I just wanted to say how would I respond to >> Okay. Sure.

[00:30:04]>> So, I think I would say if I would be wife, I would say that um um don't try to control me. Whenever you want, you can go with your friends and when I'm it comes to me, you don't let me go wherever I want. This is ridiculous. And I would go.

[00:30:19]>> That's ridiculous.

[00:30:21]>> Yeah, I would go and if you have so much money, you can go out, hang around with your friends. I'm going to go.

[00:30:26]>> So, you sound angry, right? You get pissed. You're going to get pissed, especially because it's not the first time that that um he's acting like that.

[00:30:33]They're married. It's probably a chronic problem, right? So you get fed up and you're just like but meanwhile if he's feeling lonely he probably goes out with his friends if he wants to feel connected and she's not there or something or maybe he just leaves her sometimes to be with the friends but now he has a double standard where she can't go.

[00:30:50]Yeah. So it'll make you eventually just get pissed off. Sometimes people even cheat in their marriages because of that reason because the other person's so much on top on on their head and possessive and also jealous and also just controlling so much that the other person's like I can never win with this person you know I can never win so I just give up forget it you know good anything else okay so then we were talking about our friend Jodie so um and then we talked about what Glenn and what Glenn said, right?

[00:31:25]And then this piece um jealousy, possessiveness, and suspicion are recurrent themes in relationships of many adult children of alcoholics. They learned early that relationships lead to betrayal and love leads to pain. So, I'm reading that again. It's most of the way down on page 81 because Baba highlighted that all in red. So, he must have thought that was an important piece there.

[00:31:50]Um Um on page 81 it says uh it's kind of almost halfway more than halfway down the page it says jealousy, possessiveness and suspicion are recurrent themes in the relationships of many adult children of alcoholics.

[00:32:08]They learned early that relationships led to betrayal and love leads to pain.

[00:32:14]So now the next se section says but yesterday you said it was okay. Carla, a tall, soft-spoken dental hygienist, came into therapy at the recommendation of her physician, who suggested that her recurrent headaches might have a psychological basis. Since headaches are so often a symptom of repressed rage, one of the first things I asked her was, "What are you angry about?" My question took her by surprise, but after a moment, she answered, "You're right. I am angry at at my mother. I'm 47 years old and my mother's still running my life. Like last month, I was all set to go to this terrific go on this terrific trip to Mexico. I was really excited about it. But 3 days before I was supposed to leave, I got a call from mom right on cue. I wasn't even surprised. I could tell she'd been drinking because her speech was real slurry and she sounded like that she had been crying.

[00:33:18][clears throat] She told me my dad had gone on a two week fishing trip and she was real depressed and could I just stay with her for a few days.

[00:33:29]I told her I had this vacation planned and she started to cry. I tried to talk her into visiting my aunt, but she started saying how I didn't love her and how and one thing led to another and before I knew it, I promised to cancel Mexico and come out.

[00:33:49]I wouldn't have enjoyed myself anyway knowing she was in the pits again. I told Carla that this sounded as if it was an old story for her and she agreed.

[00:34:00]Yeah, it happened all the time when I was a kid. I always had to take care of her and she never appreciated it. She was always ragging at me. I never knew which one of my mother's [clears throat] many faces I was going to see at any given time. And I could never figure out what would please her from day to day. I remember getting a D in history and being afraid to come home. A D was good for about 4 hours of being told that I was worthless, ungrateful, failure, and no man would ever want me. When I finally got home, it turned out she was in a good mood.

[00:34:41]She just signed my report card and she said, "Oh, you're smart. You don't have to worry about grades." I couldn't believe it. But then she had her usual four cocktails, four alcoholic drinks for dinner that before dinner that night. I set the table and I forgot to put out the salt and pepper. When she sat down, she exploded as if I'd caused a world war or something. I couldn't understand how she could stop loving me just because I forgot the salt and pepper.

[00:35:12]Carla's mother's behavior ranged from smotheringly loving to excruciatingly cruel depending on her mood, her alcoholic consumption, or as Carla put it, the phase of the moon. Carla told me there was rarely any normal everyday middle ground with her mother. So Carla was constantly trying to second guessess how to get her mother's approval.

[00:35:36]Unfortunately, the flood kept shifting beneath her feet. the same behavior would please her mother one day and set her off the next. Do you see what I mean, you guys? When I was describing like this thing, that's her childhood.

[00:35:47]And it's unpredictable. I mean, she got a D and she was expecting her mom to explode and the mom said nothing. Oh, you got good grades and she signed it and then she forgot the salt and pepper, which is a very minor thing, and the mom explodes, you know. So, how can you imagine? You know, you're building a human being. The brain is getting wired by your experiences mostly with mom and dad. So, how is it that you're going to be wired in a in a nice way, in a stable way with parents, with a mother who's acting like that? It's not possible. Your ground is always going to be shaking as an adult.

[00:36:20]And that's why I was saying you're going to feel like it's shaking when you're not. And when it is solid, you're going to shake it yourself cuz it's uncomfortable. You're going to go in and just like if there's a nice house of cards, you're going to go like that to the whole house [laughter] of cards. And then you're going to say, "He made me do it."

[00:36:38]Because you have to have that. You have to constantly have that. It's like babies, you know, unfortunately when I worked at that hospital with the kids, some of those babies were born addicted to crack cocaine and other things, you know, because their parents were drug addicts and they were in the custody of the state, which means and they had serious mental, you know, health issues.

[00:36:57]So they were living at the hospital. The hospital I worked at was residential, meaning that they lived there 24/7, sometimes for years. A lot of my patients had been there for years. They had not been outside of those gates, you know. So some of them were very young and they you could tell they had they they could not regulate their emotions because they were addicted. They were born addicted. So it was always like you know and then their personalities became like they they wanted things to give them a high in a way even if it wasn't the drug they needed that you know they they were in the womb that way you know so that's what whatever you get wired to do is what you're going to continue to how you're going to see things and the kind of feel you're going to want you know so if it's up and down and up and down you will go for that and things will seem so boring if you go to a place that's stable place meaning physical like a like a setting or a family, you know, or just in a relationship. If it's if it feels like too stable, it will feel very boring to you. You'll feel like this is, you know, so many times when I'm working with clients who are dating, they're in that chapter of their life, they're dating, you know, and they'll say, um, I can't find anybody good.

[00:38:18]They're all boring. And I'm like, are they is is that a bad thing? And I'm like, sometimes they even, you know, bring their dating profiles and we analyze together or they talk about the dates or they show me. We even go online and look and I'm like, I think that guy looks nice.

[00:38:32]Yeah, but he's not exciting. I'm like, yes, that is a good sign, you know, that means he's stable. Stable. That's a good thing, you know. But if we had this, how is this going to be nice? You know, how is this going to be nice for you? It's none.

[00:38:49]you know.

[00:38:52]Okay.

[00:38:54]So, um so yeah, very unpredictable mother and that makes the whole life feel unpredictable and every relationship feel unpredictable, you know. So, it's all your fault. All parents are inconsistent to some degree. But the it's right one day and wrong the next syndrome is dramatically intensified by alcohol.

[00:39:20]Because the signals and rules change so often and unexpectedly, the child always falls short. The parent uses criticism as a means of control. So no matter what the child does, the parent will find something to criticize. The child becomes an outlet for frustration, a scapegoat for all that is wrong with his parents. This is an insiduous way for alcoholic parents to justify and ventilate their own inadequacies.

[00:39:47]The message becomes, if you wouldn't do everything wrong, mommy would would not have to drink. Isn't that sad? And you see how it it's playing out in her adult life. The mom is calling her crying, you know, and telling her to basically cancel her own vacation, her own vacation to Mexico, something she was looking forward to and planned, you know, so she could go take care of the mom.

[00:40:10]And that's the story of her whole childhood. She's the caregiver for mom.

[00:40:14]That's what I was saying. A lot of most parents that I've met, you know, [clears throat] are having children for their own benefit either because I feel lonely or, you know, there's some reason why other than the fact that, you know, I'm happy and I'm healthy and my partner and I want to, you know, have a child.

[00:40:38]Okay.

[00:40:40]So, so mommy, so if you wouldn't do everything wrong, so it's the kid's fault that the mom's drinking, right?

[00:40:47]Mommy wouldn't have to drink. As Carla put it, I remember when I was about seven, my mother had been going at the bottle pretty heavy one morning. So, she's drinking even in the morning, waking up drinking alcohol. So, I invited a friend over after school. I usually didn't invite people over because I never knew just how drunk she'd be. But this time, I figured she'd be sleeping off breakfast by mid-afternoon.

[00:41:11]My friend and I were playing dress up, wearing her shoes and putting on her lipstick. Oh no. Oh no. I'm already seeing that this might not be good. Um, [clears throat] and stuff. When suddenly the door banged open and my mother, she lurched out. I was so scared. I almost wet my pants. Her breath could have knocked us out. She went crazy when she saw us touching her things. and she started screaming, "I know why you brought your little friend over here to spy on me." Now, can you imagine how old is this girl? She's seven. Do you think that she's inviting her friend over to spy on the mother and seven-year-olds are so innocent, you know? She's just playing. But you see how the mom, that's her samscara. She's like paranoid and wired in that way for who knows what happened to her, but that's what she thinks. And she's telling the little her daughter that, you know, and then she says, "You're always spying on me.

[00:42:05]You're always spying on me. That's why I have to drink." You see, all roads lead back to it's her child's fault. And you could drive anyone to drink. Imagine you're seven, you're getting that made as your samscara that it's your fault that your mom's drinking, you know, because you're spying on her. Do you see how that story is like so out of touch with reality? But whatever your parents version of any story, whatever they're thinking in their head, they're putting it in you. And you as a child, there's no, remember, there's no buddhy working at that time. There's no intelligence to say you're drunk and crazy. Like now, if somebody told you something like that, you'd be like, "What? I think you're having a paranoia problem or something, right?" But as a little girl or a little boy, you take that in directly in with no filter, no stopping, no buddy. Buddhi is not there to say this is your intelligence is not there because the intelligence at that point is coming from mom and dad. You don't have it yet to think this is crazy. This doesn't make sense. So you think, "Oh my god, it is my fault. I'm a horrible person and I need to do better. So I have to take care of mom now. I I really have to take care. I'm so horrible. I am a spy. I should stop." Oh, you know, you just start feeling depressed and like down on yourself like you're a very bad person, you know, and you believe that.

[00:43:32]My question is so people with manipulative parents like that that maybe due to drinking or other reasons told their kids certain things that they went on believing.

[00:43:46]>> Is that a reason why in their adult life they start to self-sabotage and go through that pattern of oh if everything is so calm for a little while >> I have to disrupt it or It couldn't be.

[00:44:02]>> Yeah, it could be because you those programs that you have in you, for example, you're bad and you made me drink. So, it's now now imagine you're with somebody or you're in an environment where nobody's telling you you're bad. It's like that doesn't match my story. My story is like this and it's like this, you know, beating myself up.

[00:44:19]So if mom's not there to do it, either we'll find somebody else who's critical of us or we just do it to oursel if we don't find somebody else or we do both, you know, but that samscar we have to keep alive, not consciously. We're not like, "Oh, here's all my crappy some scars. Let me keep them alive." It's just how we're how we run, how we're operating.

[00:44:40]So, but the thing is is that we don't realize when we're sabotaging ourselves.

[00:44:43]We're not going to think that. You know, we often don't think that. It's hard to look at to see that when it's happening, you know, because it's just our norm.

[00:44:53]It's just like the air we're breathing.

[00:44:54]You know, mom was like that. So, I'm gonna either find an environment like that or create one, you know.

[00:45:03]Okay. So, um where did we end there?

[00:45:10]I wanted to just finish that thing. Um Carla's mother. Okay. That's why I have to drink all the time. You could drive anyone to drink. Carla's mother was totally out of control. In addition to humiliating her daughter, she blamed her for her alcoholism. Carla was too young to see the holes in her mother's logic.

[00:45:28]So, she accepted the blame. That's what I'm saying.

[00:45:32]>> It's so sad. You know, whatever you're blamed for, you're going to believe when you're a kid. Unconsciously, Carla still thinks she's responsible. That's the thing. Unconsciously mean some scar is in your chitta, you know, which means you can't see it. So, she still thinks it's her. It's she's responsible for her mother's drinking. And that's why she's willing to go to such lengths to atone.

[00:45:52]She's going to cancel all of her vacation plans just to go take care of the mother.

[00:45:57]She canceled a long awaited vacation just to make a feudal stab for her mother's approval. The family scapegoat is an all too familiar role children and alcoholic families. Some try to fulfill their negative self-image by resorting to self-destructive, right, self-sabotaging or delinquent behavior. Others unconsciously find ways to punish themselves with various emotional and even physical symptoms such as Carla's headaches.

[00:46:25]So, we'll leave it at there. You can see how how um what a big responsibility it is to be a parent. It's such a huge responsibility. you know, you you're making the the life of another person >> in the first, you know, seven years is the most important, but those other years all the way till you're 18, you're you're creating how they're going to think and feel and behave. You know, you're setting the tone for them for their whole life and just in those a very short amount of time. I mean most people live quite many more years beyond those first 10 to 15 or 18 years you know and as parents we don't realize whatever impressions we made on them that sets the direction for for the rest of their life and it's so hard to get out of it. It's so hard to get out of that way of thinking whatever it is that however it is that made they made you think you know and that's why this vic psychology is so powerful because if we can identify and call it what it is okay that's a samscara then we realize oh that's not me and it's not true and now I can tell a different story and if I tell it with emotion you know then it will go very deep and it will replace that old heavy heavy one with emotion and with repetition and that's why we work with the inner child because emotion the inner child is very emotional about what happened. If we can if we can tap into that you know then we can actually make a change at the emotional level and then it changes your whole machinery you know your whole architecture of your of your chitta.

[00:48:03]Yes. Moini.

[00:48:22]Um do you think the parents we get this is due to karma and that we already were wired from our past life and that we fit with that kind of samscara pattern?

[00:48:37][clears throat] >> Yeah. I mean we have vasas you know so it's not random the parents we got it's from our karma but it's also um there's a lot more we can do in this life you know but the past is definitely coming from it's not random. It's not that we just hit the jackpot and I got this good parent. It's our karma and it's and it's stuff we can work through. That's the good part. [clears throat] >> How do you reconcile this with the Indian approach? I mean uh I hear that in the Indian approach they check the kundali the astrological chart and then they do some rituals they feed some cows but it's not for the bad what is occurring in their life but that's not um on the level of samscara work but that somehow still works I mean people who have a bad marriage they don't work on the level of samscara but they work it out with um astrological charts and the depths you have to pay back. So, how do you see that?

[00:49:40]>> I don't know. That's not my expertise. I can only talk on what I'm the expert in, which is this vic psychology and the the whole you that what you're talking about is probably very deep and I don't want to cheapen it by giving like some answer that I don't really have. It's a good question, but I don't know. J, you have an answer?

[00:50:05]Well, this astrology is also related to our past life.

[00:50:10]But when you But in this astrology, you do some um there are like um remedies where you give uh something to the water to get rid of that, but you don't really work on the samscaras. And somehow that also I don't know but people do that.

[00:50:37]>> Can we stop this because I don't see how it's related to >> Yeah, that's what I was trying to say.

[00:50:42]So I'm sure that it's a good topic but this topic is um I mean the part I can teach about is what I know which is what I've already said. So what I want to do now is end the class. Um thank you guys for being here. We had a very good semester, very deep. And um this summer we won't have it, you know, so we'll start again in November. So what I what I what I think I told you last week is that I'm starting a couple new groups and that's where my attention is going to be. So if you're interested, we have um the VDIC psychology study group. And some of you know what that is, but it's kind of similar to what we're doing here, but we're just doing it through deeper lenses. Some of you are already in it. Um we're starting not this Saturday but it's every Saturday but next Saturday we're going to be analyzing the Epstein files the Epstein files through the lens of Vadic psychology and it'll probably be three or four months of that. So when we do a new case study whenever we do a case study we do it through someone like you know something interesting. So before we were doing Sandy Hill Pittman some of you may have heard of her. She was one of the first women to climb Mount Everest, right? And she had a pretty bad reputation for what she did in order to make it to the top. A lot of people died on that expedition. And they're blaming her because she was a selfish narcissist. All this stuff. But we're trying we were trying to look at it in the Vic psychology study group like through a l an empathetic lens and to say maybe she wasn't so selfish. Maybe it was her suaba that you know she was the sahasik type the actual mountain climber and maybe anyway. So I'm just saying that it's very interesting how we do it through the Vic psychology lens.

[00:52:16]We look at the mind type, the suaba, the samscaras, the hankar and we apply it to the case study. So we'll start the epste is it ep Jeffrey epste or epstein >> epste epste. Epstein. So epstein files. Um and we will start analyzing. Many of you have heard of it. That's why I picked it because it's like it was very interesting where we're going to start picking apart the aankara not only of him but all the victims like how is it that some of these very kind of like successful people you know how did they get fooled by him? What was going on in their psychology? And then what was going on in his psychology that he kept doing it? He kept going and what was he must have been thinking? What was what some scars did he have that drove him to do that? And what was going on with his aankara? And so we're going to have some fun doing that. We meet every Saturday for one hour and that's basically what we're going to be doing. Um, and we're offering uh usually, you know, it's a for a month that you pay, but because it's a new thing, we're we want to introduce more people to our group. So, we're offering one class that you can come and and it's going to go out in an email today. So, if any of you are registered in the book club, you will get the email that's like a special offer to join one class for like a low price instead of joining the monthly subscription and you can see if you like it. So, that's one thing we're doing that I would encourage you to do because we don't have any more groups for the next six months. Okay. Um, and if you're not registered, go on our website and you can register for the um, Vic Psychology Book Club, which is free.