Comedy Centered

Hello. Happy Sunday. It's comedy centered. What's up? Hey, Dr. Sherry. Hello. How are you? Welcome into the chat. Happy, happy Sunday. Sorry, I just kind of skidded in here real fast. I realized right before I was starting the live stream, I'm like, I need some water and something to drink. So. Oops, sorry. So, you know, but that's how we kind of do it here on Cadre. You know, sometimes we're just sliding the chair underneath the table as soon as the guests arrive, but you'll always get something fun.

Hey, Ray. Ray. Welcome to the group. And Stacy, come on in. We're just getting started. I know. We've got some new members joining. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I hope you find it as cool as I have. My name again is Tiffany Norton. I. I'm a standup comedian. I've been doing that for about 17 years. And without giving away my age too much, I am late diagnosis, Neurodivergent attention deficit disorder, non hyperactivity. And just for a little extra bonus, I also have cptsd, which is some people, most people are familiar with the term ptsd.

CPTSD is complex post traumatic stress disorder. And so a lot of the things that we talk about in this space. Well, anyway, with my neurodivergent awakening, let's just say at 50 years old, I found out. And the reason why I was even able to get to that space is because I had begun detaching alcohol from my life. And after seven months of absolute no alcohol, I was the most miserable I'd been in my life. And I'm like, there's more going on than just, you know, And I think that that's a natural thing.

I think we all want simple answers for complex problems. And so what comedy centered is, is I try to blend, when I can, my sense of humor using my comedy chops or whatever you want to call it, mixed in with some personal stories. And I try to bring some information that I just personally find impactful. You can take it, you can leave it. You know, I am not a licensed psychologist. There's a lot of great people on this app that are far above my pay grade. But I come to this space with the attitude of and the perspective of someone is trying to unpack a lot in and around recovery and my misuse of alcohol for many, many years.

And really, why did I do that? Why did that become my coping mechanism of choice? And we all, we all have our choice coping mechanisms, right? So that's a lot of the stuff that we explore. So if you're new. Hi, welcome in and drop a hello in the chat. Introduce yourself. I'm always thrilled to know where people are signing in from. I am coming to you from Wisconsin, but I'm right on the border of Minnesota. I'm right just outside of the Twin Cities on the Wisconsin side. So Midwesterners, they're all really bummed.

It's been rough. The Vikings are out, packers are out, Lions are out. I usually give some kind of a football update at the beginning, but that's gonna end soon because we're almost done anyway. So tonight I was like how do we kick it off tonight? And people who have been in this in Comedy center before know a lot of times I just go to a book something that I find helpful. So this one was speaking to me today and I'm one of those bad people that you don't like. I write in my books and highlight stuff and whatever.

I, I so anyway, I like to go back and revisit things found interesting when I read them the first time around and it was kind of funny. I don't know why I was looking at my pile and for some reason this gravitated towards me. And so the book I'm going to talk about a little bit is by an author. Her name is Nina Brown and it is called the Children of the Self Absorbed. Okay. And so here's a little brief synopsis of kind of what the book's about and I'm only going to talk about one little aspect of it, but I think you'll see why in this book Nina Brown provides hope to those who struggle to overcome the negative impact of self absorbed parents.

Anyone? Self absorbed parents, okay. She presents down to earth practical strategies for gaining insight into the parental toxic effect and developing approaches to overcome it. The information in this book can also be valuable to anyone working with adults trying to understand how their parents still negatively influence with them as adults. Fun. So if this is surprising to you that this is the subject for tonight and you're like I did not sign up for that. I do not feel bad when people leave my I've been a comics for 17 years.

People do leave sometimes so it's okay. But this is why I'm bringing it up. So I, I always also along with some info there's usually a personal story that kicks off the reason why I I went searching for what was that thing about that book that I saw that one time that's a little the attention deficit. So I am in the middle family wise. I have, you know, a child who's 26. And then I've got, you know, parents that are aging and there's been a lot of stuff going on that regard. And then I have a stepfather who is 98 and still kicking, doing really good actually, but had a fall, had another fall.

And, and so, you know, he's got to get rehab. It's just a whole thing. Right. And you know, the thing about unpacking some of this stuff, especially in high stress situations like medical stuff and I know a lot of my friends are going through this. Right. It's tough to. When you're working on yourself and you're working on your own recovery and boundaries, it, it's really, really hard to navigate the love and loyalty and respect that you have for your family with your own needs. Right. So I'm just gonna read a little bit from it.

Right. And then I'll touch on it along the way. And I encourage you to, you know, get a copy if you think that it's interesting and I'll, I'll, I, I don't. There's not a chat moderator so I'll try to. At the end I'll, you know, anyway, if anybody wants to. Children of the self absorbed. Actually if anybody is listening and wants to put this in the chat for everybody, that would be great. If anybody wants to act as my chat mod, that'd be awesome. Just like on Tick tock. Oh God, the Tick Tock thing.

Everybody's freaking anyway, I'm not going there. Not going there. Anyway. Children, the self absorbed now. Okay, so responses to self absorbed parental types. Okay, so this might be, this may resonate, this may ring a bell, it may not. There are two categories of responses the children of self absorbed parents can employ to try and protect themselves from the more destructive aspects of their parent compliance and rebellion. Basically those are your choices. You can comply or you can rebel. I know which one I chose well, actually I used to go back and forth.

Anyway, now we'll show how each of these types of response can react to the four different types of self absorbed parents. Okay, so I'm going to read you a little bit of snippet of each of the four types. And then as I'm going through just to kind of engage with everybody what I love as they're coming in, if they're. And I'll number them, let me write, you know what, they don't come with numbers, but I'm writing numbers in there because otherwise I'll goof it up and then I'll just have you drop in the chat if one of these sticks out to you and which one?

Okay, number one. Responses to a needy parent compliant response. So going along, going with the flow. Compliant children who have a needy self absorbed parent may even as adults be overly sensitive to others needs. Some of their unconscious responses can be constantly monitoring others for signs of distress, trying to discern other people's unmet needs and trying to read other people's minds. Attempting to know how to respond or how to behave is even before a request is made. Such adult children are often still very anxious and fearful of disagreements or other forms of conflict.

And they're. They're afraid that this will subordinate their own personal needs. Most of the time they feel guilt and shame when others are disappointed and they. Let's see here. Oh, I goofed up how that sentence went. Anyway, so okay, when they. When others are disappointed and do things that they don't want to do in an effort to please others. Basically sacrificing what you want to do or what you think is right for someone else for harmony. Group harmony let's say. In doing so they can be easily seduced and often become enmeshed in other people's feelings.

Right? Do you ever have that friend? When they leave you just feel like ugh. I mean no offense but sometimes like some people's energy you're just like woof. Just a meshed. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Okay, so that was number one a compliant response. All right, two Rebellious response. Children who are who respond rebelliously to the behavior of the needy narcissistic parent as adults will tend to keep others at a distance, often refusing to connect or engage. These adult children of self absorbed parents may be insensitive or may ignore others needs.

They tend to openly disagree with others but then withdraw from conflict. They are resentful when others try to seduce or coerce them. Oh Ray, Ray, you chiming in? Not just me. Okay, good, good. See, See I don't know how any of this plays. Isn't zoom. I can't see any of you guys. Which is also the cool part about it. Cuz you don't have to do a thing to show up here. You don't act, your camera doesn't accidentally. Come on. God, that's the worst, right? It's like ah, it happened to me last week. Scared the out of me.

Anyway, thanks IT guy that sent me the new updated chat messenger thing. You knew. Anyway, I was dressed. It's fine. Right. So rebellious. So I'll just tell you right now I am number One. And number two, so far I have, I have, I have employed both these strategies for sure. Let's keep going. Let's, let's, let's keep digging. Responses to the prickly parent compliant response. Okay, so this is children with prickly self absorbed parents who tend to have a compliant response will and as adults, try hard to please and can be fearful of conflict.

Right. Compliance. When they become adults, they tend to be perfectionists, but they feel like imposters for their achievements and are unable to accept or believe accomplishments. As both children and adults, they cringe at the slightest hint of criticism or blame. They're susceptible to being bullied and try to discern what is expected and comply. Okay, I've done that too. All right, all right, check. All right. Rebellious response to the prickly parent. Children who respond rebelliously to a prickly parent are defiant, tend to be combative, and are overly defensive in response to comments perceived as criticism.

And this behavior continues into adulthood. They attack it as a first offense and are not concerned with pleasing others and do not recognize or accept other. Or support from others. Huh. Probably done that a little bit. Okay, let's keep going. Responses to a conniving parent. So this is that manipulation stuff. You know, it. It's funny how we have these words that words are a big thing to me. Obviously I'm a comic and a writer, but I'm always curious about what words grab and like all of a sudden become a thing.

Right. And gaslight, we've heard it a million times right now. Well, the term gaslight was originally. It's from a movie and it was called Gaslight. And it's from like the 20s, I think, something like that. It's a silent film. And in the movie, basically everybody around her, every time she says something is real, they tell her, no, it's not. And everybody in the whole movie is in on it. If you've seen the movie Rosemary's Baby, it's the same thing. Everybody's in this covenant. She doesn't know about it.

They're all in on it. It's a big, It's a big con. Everybody knows what's going on except for the person who's being gaslit. Right. So when we're talking about gaslighting, because when this book came out, this is, this book has been around for a time. This is the third edition of it, but I think I bought this, the original 20 some years ago. This is not a new book. A lot of my stuff, a lot of my psychology books come from the 90s. And 2000s because at this point every Tom, D*** and Harry thinks they can write a book.

Sorry, not everybody, you know what I mean? So anyway, I don't know why I went on that rant. Rant anyway. Responses to the conniving parent Compliant response the compliant responder to a conniving self absorbed parent responsible will have a facade or a false self that is also presented when the child becomes an adult. Being overly complimentary and ingratiating, but also sneaky and loose with the truth. This person can be easily seduced or coerced, is fearful of being rejected and is anxious and never confident about what to expect.

Okay. Rebellious response to the conniving parent. Children who respond rebelliously to a conniving self absorbed parent are wary of others and tend to mistrust others motives. They may be hard to get to know because they fear that other people are trying to coerce or seduce them. Because they were coerced and seduced by the conniving parent, they're terrified of that happening again. They think that others are trying to take advantage of them and are constantly on guard for others hidden agendas.

Me, me, me. I have that as well. Okay, why do I do this to myself? Why do I read these things? Why do someone tell me why I read these things anyway? Because I'm trying to figure it out. Responses to a grandstanding parent compliant response Children who respond compliantly to a grandstanding and a grandstanding, if you're not familiar with the term is basically just like. Or you know, grandstanding is kind of. It's like oh look at me, I know everything kind of a deal. Anyway. Self absorbed parent will tend to be submissive, self effacing and self depreciating.

They will always be on edge trying to anticipate the unexpected, fearful and expecting the worst. And they are unable to protect personal psychological boundaries. I'm going to go through that again because I kind of butchered it a little bit. Okay. And the compliant response to a grandstanding parent. I'm just going to read it verbatim. Children who respond compliantly to grant to a grandstanding self absorbed parent will tend to be submissive, self effacing and self depreciating. They will always be on edge trying to anticipate the unexpected, fearing and expecting the worst.

And they are unable to protect personal psychological boundaries. Okay. The rebellious response to a grandstanding parent. Children who respond rebelliously to a grandstanding self absorbed parent tend to engage in risky behavior that can be self destructive. They use flattery as a tool and may Appear cooperative, but they often have quiet or hidden defiance and have considerable resistance to others ideas while being adept at concealing their true feelings. Crap, I got that too. But see, that's why I marked it.

See, that's why I marked it. It has a little sun on it so I wouldn't forget it. Crap. Right? Fun. I didn't say it was gonna be fun. I said it was gonna be funny. Hopefully at some point, but. So you can drop any reactions that you have in the chat. Thank you so much for the hearts and everything, not just me. Happy Sunday. Thank you for joining in, Luke. Love to hear anybody's thoughts. Do, do, does any of that, you know, how can I do this in a good measuring system? Like I wanna, I wanted to do it by numbers.

Like if anybody has any suggestions, like I don't know, I guess like one to five. One didn't really apply to me but five definitely applied to me. Just let's do it like that. Drop it in the chat, one through five. One good story. TIFF 5 it was, you know, like I got it, I got something out of it. Three, four, whatever. I won't take it personally. Don't worry. I'm judged all the time. I'm a comic. Don't worry about it. I'm looking. And then while you guys do that, actually buys me some time because I had something else bookmarked.

Here we go. Okay. Oh, five. Oh. Okay. Hey, like I said, I mean. And I don't know if these things are on like audiobook or anything. I didn't look or anything before this. But like I said, children of the self absorbed. Okay, good. Okay. Difficult situations and how to cope. Okay. And I'm not gonna, you know, we run about a half an hour on this, so we've got about 11 minutes left. So if anybody has any questions in the chat or wants to add anything, please, I want, you know, keep it open so that I can.

And I always want to, you know, if there's any shares or anything I missed in the chat, I'll catch up at the end of it so that, you know, we can talk about if you want to, no pressure. Difficult situations and how to cope. Hang on, this is a big paragraph. Hang on. Always have your emotional support. Beverage. I can't tell you as someone in recovery, real talk, if I know people are going to be partaking, which is fine. And I can be around it now, you know, as long as, you know I'm in a good spot.

Right. I don't care how trashy I look. I bring. I can't. I'll walk into any restaurant with a Diet Coke in my hand right now. I leave a good tip. Tacky. Don't care. I need my emotional support. Beverage. That's. How do you think I was raised? By someone self absorbed? Telling on myself. God, there's new people. Tiff. Come on. Okay. Chapter four Flash out of this. Okay. Difficult situations and how to cope. Sorry, I'm trying to bring some levity into this. Okay. This is a story, an anecdote. Sylvia, her husband and their children had stopped at her parents home to wish them Happy New Year.

Sylvia's mother met them at the door and her first words to Sylvia were to say how tacky Sylvia's clothes were and that her hair was a mess. Fun. Her mother then seemed to remember that New Year had started and wished her son in law and grandchildren a Happy New Year. Sylvie was at a loss for how to respond to her mother and felt angry, frustrated. You think so? Why are these situations difficult? I don't know. I thought I looked good until five minutes ago. But difficult interactions with your self absorbed parent can trigger your negative feelings.

Huh? Such as anger, guilt and shame. It would not be unusual for your response to be ineffective because you are trying to protect your essential inner self while trying to think of an appropriate response. That's not easy. Difficult situations include ones where other people are present. When your parent makes unfair comparisons or accusations, or belittles you or makes comments designed to highlight your inadequacies. Good times. The situations can occur at family gatherings or even at public events where you and your self absorbed parent are present.

Under these circumstances, some people, and maybe you, will try to get the parent to change the behavior, but this never works. However, the failure seldom deters you from continuing this futile effort. Good on ya. This parent will not change because you want the parent to change. Let me say that one more time. This parent will not change. Because you want the parent to change, does not accept that they need to change, thinks that you're the only one that needs to change and is not reluctant to continually point this out to you, thereby exacerbating the effect on you.

Okay? You will be much more effective and serene when you can accept that this parent will not change. When you build your essential inner self to be less unconsciously dependent on your parent. Subconsciously less dependent. This is not fighting with them. This is not screaming. This is not any of that. Less unconsciously dependent. Whether that means emotionally, financially, whatever it is. And when you are more centered, grounded, strong and resilient okay? That's what that's going to nurture in you.

We're talking about just a mindset, shift of acceptance. People do not change unless they want to. And as someone who misused alcohol for a very long time, I'm here to tell you there's something else. Anyway, I'm not gonna go into Prince quotes, but wasn't like people did it. Wasn't like I didn't know. Wasn't like people didn't tell me. You know, it's a bad sign. You tell people that you quit drinking and literally no one, no one does the thing. They prepare you in recovery rooms. They're like, well, you know, you're gonna tell people you quit drinking.

And then some people in your life go like, no, no, you don't really have a problem. You're cool, you're all right. Literally no one did that for me. Everybody I told that I was quitting drinking thought that was a good idea. So there's that. Okay. Wonder why. All right, where did I leave off? She has really long sentences. Just. Okay, all right, let me hit my stride again. Okay. Oh, good. Everybody's okay. Good. Okay. Parable. Not change because you don't want it to change. Okay. Your feelings can be managed, and this is true whether they arise from within you or are projected by someone else and you incorporate and act on them.

You can control what you feel to a certain extent, the feelings intensity and whether or not to verbalize or otherwise act on your feelings. You have more power over your feelings than you may think. And this power can help you navigate difficult situations and events with your self absorbed parent. This chapter begins with some more information about that. Okay. And so then she kind of goes on, and like I said, this is. I could. I could do this for weeks. We could just do a book club on just this baby.

Maybe we should. Maybe we should just start a book club on this guy. Because, I mean, just the chapters are great. Chapter one, Infuriating, Critical, Demanding and Unreasonable parents. Okay, there's a story. Okay, I'll do this. I'll leave it on. I'll leave it on this story. Okay? Betsy had lunch with her father to talk about her desire to go back to college, get a degree in English education, so that she could become a teacher. I love that. At lunch, her father made it clear he was not supportive of her becoming a teacher and was insistent that she become an accountant.

He was also disparaging of her previous choice of college major and of her subsequent jobs. He told her that he would be very Disappointed if she did not take his advice since he was far more knowledgeable and successful than she was. Betsy left the lunch feeling defeated and demoralized. She wished that she could tell her father that he always made everything about him. His wants, his needs, his demands. He insists that everything be done his way or it isn't acceptable that he knows what is best for others and never considers others perspectives.

Whenever Betsy didn't do what her father wanted, he was angry and withheld his approval of her. That's a lot to take in because that's that childhood stuff, you know, I mean, we are wired, hardwired to want our parents to not be mad at us. We're hardwired to wanting to be accepted. And the hardest thing to rectify, I think in life for anybody and the fact that you're here. First of all a good for you for showing up. Very few people will ever take the time to put themselves in the path of new information, to maybe challenge some old paradigms they might be operating on and to kind of roll up the sleeves and do the work and look under the hood if there's something in your life you're working on, be it, you know, health, wealth, you know, mental health, all that stuff.

You know, it starts with being gentle with yourself and understanding that a lot of this stuff was wired from day one, you know, and we all do the best that we can to operate and show up in a way where we'll be accepted in our family groups because we are again, 97%. We're monkeys. We're basically chimpanzees. You know, we've talked about the correlation again in the book determined. There's a wonderful, wonderful. Well, I won't go on about another book anyway, keep it, keep it on something. But I mean like we, we, we, we behave more based on our current hormone levels than we actually do on like free will or like thinking things out.

Right. A lot of this stuff is hardwired and a lot of it is because we had to get our needs met. So how did you have to show up in your family? Which one of those characteristics, which one, which, which strategies did you have to use to implement to get your needs met? And we all want to survive, you know, we all, we all want love, we all want acceptance, you know, but at the end of the day we all, you know, we're gonna do what we've got to do to, to fit into the group, you know, because that's who we are as humans.

We're nothing without community. That's why people are dying from isolation, you know, because we can't get past these. These boundaries. And the thing is, I know, you know, I've shared many times. My brother is very, very deeply troubled man. You know, his paranoid schizophrenia, it's very, very serious. And he goes on and off his meds and I can't control that. I love him dearly, but we can't. We can't write other people's stories. We can only look at ours and remember to do it with grace for yourself.

Oh, thank you for the hearts. Seriously. No, thank you, guys. It's not easy, but like, I always like to bring it back to Gabor Mate when he. That this is something that just blew my mind and I'll kind of end it on this tonight, but it was the first time someone gave me permission. Not permission, right. But made me so. Gabor Mate is a. Is a. Is a good. Is a very well regarded psychiatrist in that anyway. But what he said about his studies in addiction and addiction recovery was that all addiction is an attempt to solve a problem.

And it worked for a while until it didn't. And so the question you need to ask yourself is, what problem am I solving with whatever my addiction is? And you know, when you can look at it like that, when you can look at it as that it was a coping mechanism to stress, which is what it is. It's an escape from the stress because you couldn't figure out what else to do, you know, so go easy on yourself. It's not easy. There's a lot of. This is a crazy, crazy, crazy, weird, weird, weird time we're going through right now.

And I know a lot of people are not at ease and neither am I. But, you know, this is a great country and I love it and I love people and I think we're better behaved than this. I hope we are. I hope we can. I hope. I hope people can treat each other with decency again. That's what I would like. But. Because we're all going through something and we're all just sitting here flying on a rock trying to figure it out best we can, you know. So on that happy note, okay, you guys. Man. Oh, sorry. I know a deep one and.

Right. Okay, so, hey, I'll see you guys next Sunday. Stay centered, okay? And journal it out. Always journal it out. And always remember, you can always burn it, get rid of it. You don't have to show anybody, but it's kind of tacky and gross to say, but word vomit is good. Just, Just even. Just. And then get out. Have a good night, everybody. Oh, someone's reading Gabor's book. Yes.