TRANSCRIPT
Not infrequently, people tell me stories of living in impossible situations, untenable situations. Living with their families, perhaps when they’re adults, and having no way to get out. Living in countries where they are discriminated against, treated terribly. Living in situations that are horrible, impossible, hateful, abusive even. And they say, “What do I do? How do I get out of these situations?”
And often, I’m like, “I don’t know either.” It’s like I may not have any good ideas any better than you. In fact, I probably have fewer good ideas than you do. But then I think about it. I take a step back and I think, well, there are some general things that I can share from my own experience of having lived for many, many years as a child in an impossible situation. A family system where I could not be seen for who I really was by my parents. Could not be loved by them because they didn’t have it in them. Was at the mercy of my dad’s, you know, violence occasionally, and meanness and cruelty, and my mom’s perversity. And I didn’t have any better role models. And I was really trapped. And so trapped, in fact, that I didn’t really even know how to love myself very well.
I had to internalize their projections onto me. I had to be who they wanted me to be in order to survive and meet their approval and get whatever crumbs of love I could get from them. Yet I did figure out how to get out. I did figure out how to escape, how to become independent, both emotionally and financially. And I will say this, especially on the financial side, it was like a little easier because I live in a first world country and I’m a white guy. And I could figure out how to get a good education. But that was a big part of it. Yet that wasn’t the whole story.
And so I’d like to just riff now. I didn’t prepare notes before this, but just riff on what I think pretty much anybody can do to try to get out of impossible situations.
1. Avoid Substances
Well, one, don’t use substances. Don’t use alcohol and drugs and cigarettes. They waste your money, they waste your time, they cloud your thinking. They make you more vulnerable in a lot of ways. And a lot, a lot for a lot of people, they lower people’s judgment, remove their ability to relate to their own feelings. So that’s one.
2. Be Healthy
Be healthy. Exercise as much as possible. Keep your body as strong as possible. Nurture your physical self as much as possible. Now, how does that help someone get out of a situation that’s impossible? Well, I’m not really sure, but I don’t think it’s going to hurt you. That’s one.
3. Find Allies
Also, try to find good, healthy allies. There may be no healthy allies in a person’s world around them, but maybe even find some on the internet. Find some people who are healthy and respectful.
4. Education
I think another thing, I’ve heard a lot of people say this, especially women. Once upon a time, a long time ago, I’ve heard a lot of people say they had to marry anyone to get out of their family. I think that’s really sad. Marry some random person who they don’t love or may not even be attracted to, may not even like. I don’t think that’s a very good idea, but I’ve heard some people do this. But I wonder what else could someone have done?
I definitely am all for getting a better education, not only externally because education gives people more opportunity, but because knowledge, knowledge is power. When we know more, we can make better decisions for ourselves. We know more about the world. I think learning other languages can be very helpful. I think also it can help people to learn about laws, what laws are going on in one’s own country.
I’ve also heard people who say they need to figure out how to escape their country. I’ve actually given people some pointers and tips. Well, maybe you can do X, maybe you can do Y, maybe you can do Z. Learn about different laws in different countries. I’ve seen some people become refugees, get asylum in other countries where the laws are more to their advantage for all sorts of different reasons. I think that can be one way to escape an untenable situation.
5. Self-Therapeutic Process
I also think it can help people to engage in a self-therapeutic process. A process of becoming more of a self-contained self, even when a person is living in a world that totally denies their right to be a self. To very privately, even secretly, build that self. Know yourself.
On the other hand, I acknowledge that it can be very dangerous to become more of a self in an unsafe situation. Because when people are in really unsafe situations, a lot of times the people who control their lives and manipulate their lives and feel they even own this person can have very clever and sensitive radar to the rebelliousness of a person. And when a person starts to develop a self, sometimes people can pick it up and say, “Ah, this person’s becoming independent, and I want to crush them even more.” So I would say this: if you’re going to develop more of a self, if you’re going to become stronger in yourself, be very careful about how you share this.
I’ve also seen this sometimes when people develop more of a self. They quite logically and naturally want to defend themselves. And I would say this: if you’re in an unsafe place, don’t fight with idiots. Don’t fight with people who don’t love you and don’t respect you. Really protect yourself sometimes by being very private about the self that you are developing.
6. Acknowledge Complexity
I’ve also seen this, and this is really sad, but I’ve seen some people who know they’re in an impossible situation, in a situation that’s denying them, denying the truth of them, even still continuing to violate them. But some part of them feels guilty, even still loves their abusers in some way. We are complicated creatures, we humans.
I mean, I’ve broken from my parents. I haven’t had any contact with my mom in more than a decade. Haven’t had more than just a couple of emails, a few emails with my dad in more than a decade. And I see how horrible they were to me, how maybe they even wanted me to die rather than become a true self. And yet there’s some part of me, I can’t help it, that sees some of their good sides still because they weren’t all bad. And yet it’s a trap. I don’t want to fall for feeling sorry for them, feeling pity for them, or going back to them because 10% of them is good. Because 90% of them would do what it always did and would try to kill me all over again.
So I would tell this to people: if you’re in an impossible situation, don’t start thinking from the perspective of what is good for people who don’t love you. Don’t start loving your abusers because they will take advantage of that, and it will hurt you. Yes, it’s not an unfair thing or an unrealistic thing to put your abusers in perspective and say they’re 80% bad, 20% good. But don’t fall for that 20% because it can really hurt you.
7. Create a Long-Term Exit Strategy
And I think the main thing, the main suggestion I would give to people who are in impossible situations, situations where they can’t grow and can’t manifest who they really are, and this is speaking from my own experience, is create a long-term exit strategy. There may be no short-term exit strategy. There may be no way out within a week or a month or a year. You may have considered everything, and there may be nothing.
I think of myself at age 10. There was no short-term exit strategy. There was nowhere I could go that was better than where I was. It was all the same. My exit strategy was many, many years in the future. I knew I needed to do well in school. I knew I needed to develop friendships that loved me more than my family. I knew I needed to develop a secret and private world that my parents had no part of. And through all of this, someday I might be able to get out. And I put my gambling side of my personality that someday I would be able to get out. And I think that’s really important for people to think long-term when there may be no short-term solution. Think long-term. Do research. Don’t come up with any quick answer that might just work now.
If the odds are totally against you, I think it’s more important to be strategic. To think of long-term, what are the best odds? Save your money. Also, if you can save money, find ways to build financial independence, even if it’s really, really small. Build good financial habits. Don’t spend money on nonsense to make yourself feel good in the short term if it will not help you in the long term.
I know so many people, people even in this first world country where I live right now, who are massively, massively in debt to feed their unhealthy habits. They have put themselves as adults in these untenable living situations. They have no freedom. They have no good future because they’re feeding bad eating habits, bad gambling habits, bad alcohol and drug habits, bad financial spending habits. They always want a fancy car, fancy clothes, fancy house, fancy vacations that sacrifice their growth.
I think in some of the cases, perhaps in a lot of the cases, they say they want freedom. They say they want growth. But really, if they’re really going to grow inside and really heal inside, it’s going to be very painful. And so maybe they’re killing their financial freedom to avoid feeling that pain. They’re not admitting to themselves that really becoming free and really growing and facing the truth within them is too painful. Better to just distract in all sorts of different external ways.
But that’s what I would say for people. If you really want to grow, if you really want to become independent, think long-term strategy. Think long-term health. Make sacrifices now for your long-term future and really give it a lot, lot, lot, lot of time and energy to think how in the world you might be able to extricate yourself from a situation that in the long run might not be trapping you as much as you realize.