To be more specific, my parents raised my siblings and me to “respect” them, saying "yes sir, and “no ma’am” to everything they said. Spankings, all of that. Typical super conservative evangelical parents. Before I learned better, I was that way too. I went to college and since then have embraced the left more and more.
They’ll say things now and then that are really distasteful politically. Today I made an Instagram post about DeSantis lying about liberal states allowing post-birth abortions and I got several family members railing against me. I’m tired of staying quiet when this happens. I think that, because how my parents raised me, I’m afraid to speak my mind to older family members. Fuck that though.
Has anyone else had this experience? I wonder if therapy would help. I just don’t know how to explain it.
I don’t argue anymore. You can’t logic them out of something they didn’t logic themselves into.
My father is too far gone and considered an “intellectual” man. My mom thinks she’s “not that smart” (cool, thanks da), but she’s become so much more open and accepting as she’s gotten older and has shifted a lot of her views to be more progressive. Maybe because she realizes that my father, despite being very intelligent, is also an absolute moron who wrecks all his relationships. They’re still together, though.
Therapy can help you cope with the situation, yeah.
My siblings are almost fully split on our views on religion and stuff.
Youngest to oldest: pastor, party girl, anxious wreck withdrawn from society, ex-military, brow-beaten family man, severe mental-illness-ridden mother, literal cult member, golden child/took over family business, ex-Rainbow gathering stereotype, and depressed IT guy who loves drugs, dogs, and the outdoors.
Things get better when you get far away from parents like this. Seriously.
I don’t. We don’t talk. Relatives of mine, including one of my parents, sank into vaccine conspiracies, then followed that pipeline to Qanon, and then explained to me how they were waiting for Trump to lead his secret army to take down the government of my non-english-speaking, european country.
I gave them their keys back, I got my keys backs, I blocked them everywhere, I nuked my accounts on the social media they use (and where their posts steadily got worse). It’s a hard decision, I still think about it often still (it’s been nearly two years), but I will never talk to them again.
Ugh. My mother is a Qanon victim. She still spouts conspiracy theories to me half the time I talk to her.
“Victim” is an interesting term, but quite accurate. There’s such a an effort and investment into converting people to that cult. I wish you the best with your mother, hopefully the other half of your conversations is more pleasant and eventually overtakes the conspiracy theories.
Most conversations are great and make hearing the conspiracy theories worth it.
Then I am happy for you
Granted, your parents are still alive, but I feel like the only appropriate response is to say that I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you. It does feel that way.
Try to understand why they believe what they do. Ask them about their sources, and their experiences. Be friendly, and ready to question your own convictions, if you want a dialogue and not a fight.
Make understanding your main objective, don’t expect to change their minds. Understanding why they think like they do will make your life easier. Them understanding your motives, that you’re not simply a brainwashed woke brat, will make your life easier.
I know why they think the way they do, and it’s brainwashing from being raised Christian. I was raised that way so I do understand the thought behind it, but it’s so hard to have compassion for people who never care to try to understand people who don’t believe in that. I’ll try though.
Aye. Understanding it doesn’t make them easier to get along with.
My da has unprocessed trauma yet refuses to address it, saying that his mental illness is cured because of Jesus. And if I was a good Christian, I would be cured, too.
Like… my dude: a big part of my mental illnesses stem from my upbringing with you, but okay.
The days of trying to be understanding to the other side are long over.
- shiveyarbles ( @shiveyarbles@beehaw.org ) 1•11 months ago
I understand that they have become a dangerous enemy
Well, things went well for a while because we didn’t talk about things. Now we don’t talk at all.
I ended up going very low contact with my arch-conservative family. Parents, sister and brother are all very right wing and loud about it. I haven’t spoken with my siblings in over a decade and speak to my parents about twice a year.
It has made my life calmer and more peaceful.
For context I’m left, and most of my relatives are some flavor of far right christo-fascist, white nationalist, or literal neo-nazis.
I openly speak out against their bullshit when they start spewing it.
I also did this with any of my relatives.
Of course at this point most of my relatives openly wish to hunt people like me (lefty queer folk) so most of us have blocked each other. Funnily enough primarily they’ve blocked me rather than me blocking them.
Something about calling them snowflakes when they’d inevitably lose their shit when faced with facts seemed to trigger them.
Edit: Here’s a bit of advice more people should take to heart and something that I learned as a teen. Family is the relationship, blood doesn’t matter. So if your relatives are terrible people, feel free to no longer consider them family.
Dad and my stepmom are handled in radically different ways. I can talk with dad. When it comes to politics, we don’t agree on much, but we have similar ideas of right and wrong. He’s intelligent and thoughtful. I often ask him for his perspective on things in the news. We’ll usually come to different conclusions, but he can explain his point of view in a respectful way. I appreciate that. We probably both look at each other and think “he’s a knucklehead sometimes, but at least his heart is in the right place”.
My stepmom is something else entirely. There are a lot of things I like about her, but I absolutely can’t stand her politics, or her manner of “discussing” them. She can’t even say the name “Biden” without sounding like she’s spitting out something rotten. Her idea of “discussion” is a shallow, mindless summary of the last thing she saw on Fox News, and she interrupts you if you disagree even slightly. She gets louder, more emotional, and even more harsh and defensive the longer the conversation goes on (the most I’ve been able to withstand is about three minutes). I go out of my way to avoid mentioning anything political when she’s within earshot.
I remind myself that compared to a lot of people, I have it easy.
One of my brothers is in an interracial gay marriage, my sister is in an interracial international gay marriage, and I married a trans woman. So they’re kind of running out of things they can bitch about in front of us.
We discuss it and agree to disagree on some things. We don’t disagree on all things. But my parents are generally a bit more liberal than me on certain things.
Interestingly the biggest things we disagree on on subjects that generally require deep technical knowledge to understand and where the talking points often completely miss that.
So things like privacy/telecom/technical regulation (ie Patriot Act stuff), guns, tax/economic policy etc.
In the subjects I’m not well versed on, my reliance on more simplistic talking points often don’t pan/scale to the nuance. And the same goes the other way.
It’s a good question and you’ve gotten some good answers. I’m going to lock this as it is getting political and we don’t have the bandwidth to mod it well.
There are two types of respect - respect of a human, and respect of an authority/superior. Parents demand the second, but that kind of respect is earned. You don’t owe it to anyone.
“I carried you for nine months! I raised you! I poured love, time, and effort into, and this is how you repay me?” - they think they have earned it,and some of them do.
“That’s the bare minimum expected of a decent parent. If you think that even minimums should be treated as something exceptional, let’s talk about minimum wage.”
The response to that type of that phrasing needs to be “so what?” Or “yeah and?”
They’ve done legitimately the lowest amount of effort needed, carry a child to term.
I disagree that carrying a child to term is low effort. It absolutely wrecks a woman’s body. Really what you should respond with is, “I didn’t ask to be here. I didn’t consent to being born.”
- BrooklynMan ( @BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml ) English4•11 months ago
we haven’t spoken in years, and my life is much better for it.
The book “Nonviolent Communication” by Marshall Rosenberg has a lot of wisdom to offer this issue. The author moderated and helped to resolve political tensions between countries, for example. His work honestly changed how I view talking to others with opposing beliefs.
There’s a book about talking to people on different sides of the isle by Justin Lee, I recommend it! But otherwise I prefer to just show love in whatever ways they can receive. I’m fine with respectful discussions but will happily excuse myself from arguments I didn’t sign up for.
we respect each other views and then talk about a singular policies rather then views