While on the topic of  not wasting so much time and energy wishing other people weren’t themselves, why not really go for it and give parents permission to be themselves?

Which brings us to the infamous Triple Blame Whammy.

And, no, you don’t get the Triple Blame Whammy at Dairy Queen.

Part one of the Triple Blame Whammy:  “If only my parents had loved me enough… (and showed me appropriately)…I wouldn’t have the problems I do now.”

Take a look at the photo.  See how young these people are?  Your parents were them.  Yikes!

There was a time a few years out of graduate school when I was ready to switch professions.  This was the era when ’hospitals’ sprang up in every neighborhood for the treatment of addictions and insurance paid big money for 28 day programs for ’co-dependents’, ‘family jesters’, and ‘scapegoats’.  Each family member was given a title to identify with and each was encouraged to take time out to remember all the ways they’d been wronged by family members… and how these wrongs caused their current problems.  The ‘theory’ was that by family members (courageously) taking turns describing just how they’d been terribly wronged, some sort of change miracle was supposed to happen.

And, as is true in lynch mob behavior, most participants do, for the moment, feel as if something life-changing has occured(I guess for the lynch-ees, something life-changing events has taken place), when all that’s happened is a big burst of emotional togetherness (momentary closeness based on fusion and group think) and…people swinging in nooses.

**Self-loathing alert!  I’ve vented with the best of them, justifying myself the whole time.  Pitching my version of victimhood…ala the family from my point of view…Oh, my view isn’t reality?  This is not a case to pretend nothing bad happen–our goal is to get free of  the powerless position of hanging on to ‘reasons’ we are the way we are…that define us into mindsets wasting time and energy and even hope.**

After all, can we really buy that we are the first generation of adults having children who have tried their hardest and done the best they could by the children?  Are we so arrogant as to think such a thing?  Are we really so different?

Of course, the relentless Emotional Guidance System encourages false superiority.  Could be…parents are products out their emotional systems just as we are.  Not that much worse, not that much better.  If this is too scary, you can cheat a little and hang on to the illusion of functioning way up the ladder from your parents. But it is kind of annoying.

Cheater phrase when others or self tempts you into discussing what messes your parents are and how they messed up your life….” Oh well. I guess everyone comes by who they are naturally. Say, did you here about that guy who tied a bunch of weather balloons to his aluminum lawn chair and floated up into the flight path at the local airport?”