To think personal responsibility no longer exists

[Wondermule]

I know this is going to be a controversial post, so I’ve got my hard hat on 🪖

It has really dawned on me how little personal responsibility people take now. Every other thread seems to be someone posting to offload their problems (financially dependant relationship, COVID worries due to high BMI, hellish mother in law among the most common) yet there is always an excuse about why they can’t the advice given, usually drip feeding something about anxiety or mental health. Please don’t see this as me making light of mental health issues (sufferer here myself), but it doesn’t change the fact only you can make changes to your life.

Also many posts citing ‘lack of support’ - this one inspired by the chocolate button debacle! - a mum feeding her 3 month old chocolate buttons just didn’t have the ‘support’ or ‘education’ to make healthy choices apparently. Never mind the healthy start vouchers for fruit and veg, maternity grant, free weaning courses at children’s centres, all the help available online... it’s all the state’s fault. I feel ‘lack of support’ will be cited until the government send someone to prepare all her meals and police her shopping trolley.

I feel in being too sympathetic, it is just providing excuses for people not to take responsibility for their own choices. Or am I wrong??

sst1234 I think your views are just as much a coping mechanism as anything else, but I expect that will be annoying for you.

Now this is an interesting article re Personal Responsibility;

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/11/judge-criticised-over-warning-to-drunk-women

( Retires to don tin hat )

@HereComesATractor

sst1234 I think your views are just as much a coping mechanism as anything else, but I expect that will be annoying for you.

Well, everything anyone does and says ever can probably be analysed and traced back to some kind of external influence it negative experience.

But where’s the good in doing that? What will it change? Nothing and that’s my point.

@HereComesATractor

The zoo thread... it doesn’t really help your argument because no one who isn’t anxious, who is self assured and confident etc, would post that - it’s self selecting. They would either say to family “back off you’re crowding us” or to themselves “it’s fine, they’re just excited, we’ll have a busy day, might feel a bit overwhelmed, but we’ll get through it” or similar. You can’t really go by MN threads because you’re getting the ones who need reassurance by definition

Completely agree with this.

OP I think you're becoming abit attacky towards those with mental health issues. Rather than people that just want to avoid being self sufficient.

Orangutan, how do you tell the difference?

But where’s the good in doing that? What will it change? Nothing and that’s my point

What a defeatist attitude.

I’ve had some seriously negative experiences and it’s helped me immensely to deal with the situations.

It’s really interesting that in not wholly supporting the OP I’m being portrayed as one of those who might be “triggered” or whatever, and attempts to ridicule me. As though there can be no middle ground

@HereComesATractor

sst1234 I think your views are just as much a coping mechanism as anything else, but I expect that will be annoying for you.

No because I don’t get upset at comments from random strangers on the internet, neither do I find them goady. Neither do I feel the need to open a thread, read it all while feeling goaded, and then attack it. But hey, everyone’s different.

I hate myself for it sometimes, but I am very irritated and dismissive of how many posters her seem to have anxiety and use it as an excuse not to be able to cope with relatively minor issues. We all have lost jobs, lost relationships, lost friends and so on, but we just get on with it. I didn't have parents I could run home to so had to endure years of an abusive marriage. Many times I wanted to give in to the despair but I had to carry on for my children's sake and to get myself into a position with a good job and money to get out.

Whoever told us life is easy and not a struggle has a lot to answer for.

YOU don't take responsibility for being rude, vicious or lazy in your surface level judgment of the situations people are in. You've seen a few disconnected things and put them into one over riding theory because you have sloppy and lazy thinking. Maybe take some time to explore some data first? You are assuming a trend based on a handful of complaints on line. But fear not, a future in writing for the Daily Mail might be yours if you really let the bigot out. Best of luck!

You sound lovely op.

OP are you the same poster who started the "everyone has the same opportunities to get on" thread?

I'm instinctively 'stiff upper lip' when it comes to our 3 boys all now 18+ and touch wood they are all doing ok. But ever since my friend's boy committed suicide at 19 I've been absolutely tormented so have gone from stiff upper lip to wanting to wrap them in cotton wool. So middle one at university was stressing over an exam and I wanted to say oh just come home darling and I'll cook you lots of nice meals and look after you! I didn't but I wanted to. I am terrified that encouraging resilience comes at a price.

OP I hear you 100%. While there will always be exceptions and some genuine reasons people are unable to get themselves out of difficult situations, in normal day to day stuff it strikes me that a lot of folk just expect to be taken care of by an authority of some kind and spoon-fed information rather than being proactive and learning how to do 'life' for themselves.

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old gimmer, I despair at the whining 'no one told us' I hear from the younger generation sometimes!

I work with kids in a very deprived area. Kids living in poverty, kids made homeless over night, kids that have been abused and traumatised and neglected in so many ways ,kids in care,kids with SEN , kids being young carers, kids that have been abandoned and rejected and now their parents have other kids that are keeping etc.

And those kids still come in nearly every day and try to get on with it. Despite it all, they'll have a smile and a joke,they'll try and play and learn something, they try to form bonds and relationships and navigate the absolute mess that is their life, they can be sweet,compassionate and empathetic.Sometimes it goes spectacularly wrong. A lot of the time their thought process is negative or dangerous,to themselves and others. But they still fucking try. Every single day.

People don't see that though. They see the meltdown, the rage,the screaming. The wrong choices,the refusal to engage, the hiding under a table. The attitude and rudeness. The inability to cope.

They roll their eyes and make glib comments like lack of resilience, spoilt, entitled.

My kids aren't weak , they're fucking strong. Since I can't praise them for still being alive and put a foot in front of the other every day , I praise their work,their behaviour,their manners. Yes, even the little things. Yes , even sitting down nicely.

@morninglive

I hate myself for it sometimes, but I am very irritated and dismissive of how many posters her seem to have anxiety and use it as an excuse not to be able to cope with relatively minor issues. We all have lost jobs, lost relationships, lost friends and so on, but we just get on with it. I didn't have parents I could run home to so had to endure years of an abusive marriage. Many times I wanted to give in to the despair but I had to carry on for my children's sake and to get myself into a position with a good job and money to get out.

Whoever told us life is easy and not a struggle has a lot to answer for.

See what you seem to be confused about is life challenges and an actual mental illness. It's understandable to an extent some of the feelings a person may have when experiencing some of these life events are similar to mental illness. I suppose the difference is the feelings or symptoms caused by a life event have an identifiable cause. Where as mental illness although of course has triggers is not directly connect to something bad happening.

Mental illness is not a thing people can just get control over by trying harder or being more resilient. I'd probably dislike myself quite a lot if I had your views on mental illness too.

@B33Fr33

YOU don't take responsibility for being rude, vicious or lazy in your surface level judgment of the situations people are in. You've seen a few disconnected things and put them into one over riding theory because you have sloppy and lazy thinking. Maybe take some time to explore some data first? You are assuming a trend based on a handful of complaints on line. But fear not, a future in writing for the Daily Mail might be yours if you really let the bigot out. Best of luck!

Yes I do. I said in my first post I knew it would be controversial and that I expected a flaming.

I don’t like the Daily Mail, and wouldn’t write for them.

@AccidentallyOnPurpose

I work with kids in a very deprived area. Kids living in poverty, kids made homeless over night, kids that have been abused and traumatised and neglected in so many ways ,kids in care,kids with SEN , kids being young carers, kids that have been abandoned and rejected and now their parents have other kids that are keeping etc.

And those kids still come in nearly every day and try to get on with it. Despite it all, they'll have a smile and a joke,they'll try and play and learn something, they try to form bonds and relationships and navigate the absolute mess that is their life, they can be sweet,compassionate and empathetic.Sometimes it goes spectacularly wrong. A lot of the time their thought process is negative or dangerous,to themselves and others. But they still fucking try. Every single day.

People don't see that though. They see the meltdown, the rage,the screaming. The wrong choices,the refusal to engage, the hiding under a table. The attitude and rudeness. The inability to cope.

They roll their eyes and make glib comments like lack of resilience, spoilt, entitled.

My kids aren't weak , they're fucking strong. Since I can't praise them for still being alive and put a foot in front of the other every day , I praise their work,their behaviour,their manners. Yes, even the little things. Yes , even sitting down nicely.

I said repeatedly, my post is not about those who cannot change their circumstances such as impoverished children. How many times.

I read an excellent book (little life) which put forward the idea that only children from loving secure homes expect life to be “fair” and get outraged when it isn’t. Those without that upbringing don’t have that mindset or expectation as they intrinsically already know life isn’t fair. Stuck with me anyway.

I think my personality is a good example of what cotton wool wrapping can do to a person.

In my family we have a genetic disorder that means we can get injured, badly, much easier than the general population, especially in childhood and teenage years. My mother had it, her mother had it etc. etc. We were obsessively watched, corrected, and kept from normal activities as children. My nana, mother and me and my brother (who also got it) are all nervous wrecks. Basically terrified of everything, constantly defaulting to what could go wrong in any scenario and passing that on to the next generation. There was also a lot of resentment on all sides. I'm not exaggerating when I say I am basically scared of everything - with a side order of perfectionism born of being scared of telling my mother anything so it didn't set of her "nerves". I will not be having children for this reason. This is obviously an extreme example but you get my point.

Turns out that just like any other thread about the subject, it's really all about generalisations, bias,prejudice and expressing a barely held contempt for people some people consider less than (children , young people,women, etc).

Did you miss that the majority of the posts agreeing with the OP were based on personal experiences? Which are the antithesis of generalisations.

You should ask yourself why you are so keen to dismiss other people’s experiences as generalisation/contempt/ prejudice/othering etc. It suggests that the problem is with you.

This is exactly what your grandparents said about you.

But yes, everyone has ‘anxiety’ (or is on ‘the spectrum’) and soon those words will be understood to mean ‘I don’t want to do that’.
Which is a real shame for those who do have medically diagnosable conditions.

Some people seem to be in a perpetual personal existential crisis.

We seem to delight in creating labels for normal human reactions to life circumstances.

@Okbussitout

You sound lovely op.

Well that’s turned my opinion around, I’m a changed woman, hooray 🎉

I agree with you OP.

The sad thing is- people seem to think that personal responsibility is somehow cruel. But the exact opposite is true!
Taking back control of your life, your thoughts and your actions is the epitome of being EMPOWERING. You are actually completely disempowering someone to tell them that their actions are pointless and that there is no hope that they can ever change and they'll be that way forever.
In therapy, we try to empower people to take control of their lives, not to teach them that effort is futile and that life is just something that happens to you. The only things we can actually control in life is what we think and what we do and those two things can be transformative and immensely powerful.

Think of it this way- if you had an illness, wheat would you prefer to be told?

1. Theres really nothing you can do about your situation, its very bleak and you may as well just give up and let others do everything for you. Theres really no point in trying to change this situation. Just stay passive and do nothing.Theres no point in even trying.

or:

1. You have an illness that has many challenges. However, with the right mind set you can potentially make lots of positive steps forward and can look towards gaining back your independence. There is hope that you can achieve many things you didnt think you would and your progress is limitless. Lets try and get you to where you want to be.

Yet I can see from this thread that many seem to think the first option is the "kinder" one. They are absolutely, categorically wrong.