Social class and anti-validation: Gaslighting without realizing it

When looking at the world of therapy and mental health needs, one area that is often criminally overlooked is the role that Socioeconomics play on our mental fragility. The lower the class you come from, the more the communication style changes. If you are middle class or lower middle class, you tend to find more demand put on to you than others of a different class might. Its expected that you have to work harder and know how to do more things than those around you and that you at all times are closer to failure than anyone else. And only you alone understand this and bear this burden.

This is an isolating truth to wrap our minds around but, if you have experienced this and are honest with yourself, you know this feeling intimately. Why is that? Lots of reasons really, but one I want to focus on anti-validation in communication. To put it another way: Any time you do something that you enjoy that doesn’t add up to social gain, its presented to you as a character flaw. Want to play video games because you enjoy it? You are made to feel like something is wrong with you. Want to learn a new skill that (likely) isn’t able to be turned into profit? Wasting your time. Want to learn to play an instrument without intents of becoming a professional musician? You must be distracting yourself from your real calling - work.

And this emphasis to this group of people is often abusively gaslighting. They carry this feeling with them constantly - the only value they can ascertain is work. This is not due to a character flaw - though it is presented to them that way. Its due to a mindset of the people around them, like parents, who are supportive (sure you can do that) but is anti-validating (but you are wasting your time). So now everything that individual does that isn’t about sustaining themselves or working is actually a burden to carry or a shame to hide. And that sort of psychic damage adds up.

And getting out of this is not easy. How do you undo decades of programing? It takes a lot of work from the individual and surrounding culture. For the individual you have to build an awareness of how you are promoting this system in yourself. Begin drawing attention to the repeating cycle of downplaying or gaslighting your own wants and needs. Begin to build a new view that sees things like personal creative endeavors, taking in entertainment, or simply doing nothing as both valid and fulfilling in themselves. They are not just something to be earned to be enjoyed but can also be a part of being human. As Bernard Suits puts it in his book “The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia” - 'playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles’. Relaxation and work are one in the same. Taking the steps of action and changing the rhetoric around this takes focus and will. Talking about it more is a great step in changing this and finding a more enjoyable and thus more fruitful life.

Socially for those of us who did glean this insight and knowledge and were not given the burden of work as our only value, I’d make an argument that a change in rhetoric is a necessary one. We can’t go around just telling others that ‘self-care is important’ since we now know that the people receiving the message are feeling guilty for doing self-care. Out rhetoric must shift to one that sees the demand of self-care as placing yet another burden. We must dignify the underlying feelings of the people receiving this message. We must hear their words, know the struggle of the lower-middle and middle class workers, and act on their behalf. For them self-care feels like an act of defiance and an action that is against their survival. Social supports - legislation and community engagement - is part of the answer here. But individual recognition that there are class differences and not living there are class differences can be just as gaslighting as any of the previously mentioned actions. Begin by making these a part of your casual conversations. Ask questions of your struggling friends like “what was it like growing up where you grew up?”, “Do you find it hard to relax sometimes?” or “What was it like for you as a child?”

This is a problem that takes both personal and social work. We can’t do it together unless we do it alone. And we can’t do it alone unless we do it together.

Before blaming the parents...

If you keep an eye on the social media of working adults, you’ll undoubtably find many an article that relates to how parents are letting their kids down by not preparing them enough for the real world. These articles might be about the decline in quality of academic institutions as students are treated more like fragile puppies than adults or the article might be about how parents are attending their children’s job interviews, but these articles are all pointing to the same general issue. The issue is parents are giving their kids Peter Pan Syndrome and thus the parents are failing both their children as well as society. So we are to point the finger of shame at them and reprimand them for their selfish failure. But we never stop to ask if there is a good reason for why they’re doing this.

There are some hard truths here that seems to be either lost in translation or simply overlooked. But after spending time with these parents who are deemed social failures and responsible for so many future societal woes, I’d like to offer some tea and sympathy. Here’s what I mean:

Parents are not doing this because they’re disconnected from the real world; parents are doing this because they’ve seen their son/daughter taken advantage of.

Parents have seen their child overlooked, beat up, picked on, treated less than, or hurt and justice was not served. Parents have seen their children miss out on opportunities because of things like cronyism or systemic disadvantage - problems no fault of their child. The parent knows the feeling of powerlessness and unfairness that both they and their children have faced. If they have the power to make things right or to call out unprompted favoritism, why shouldn’t they do what is in their power to help?

Parents know that the pressure for their child to succeed has never been so heavy.

This idea is nothing new but the degree and strength of it is socially unfamiliar. The expectations on a human being to have their personal, academic, relational, financial, social, occupational, romantic, and psychological life on point is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. And let us not forget that not only do these have to be achieved but we also must maintain all these things constantly. The level of difficulty is so absurdly challenging that it should leave us as a society speechless. No mere human being could be expected to hold all this - only a machine could do that.

Parents know that adulthood turns people into powerplants

Most people remember their childhood fondly. It was filled with a mysterious beauty and adoration that becomes difficult to find once in adulthood. Childhood is the hot bed of beautiful memories and joy at the simplest things. Adulthood is often filled with business, busyness, hustle, bustle, anguish, frustration, powerlessness, depression, and slow decay. Adulthood is smothering and our socio-political system has reinforced that adulthood is little more than a production-assembly line. For many adults it feels like their worth/value is tied directly to their production and this should be viewed with a great sadness and despair.

There is little room for enjoyment for adults; there is only room for productivity. We work, we fight, we work, we fight, we work, we fight we work…… And what parent would want their child to have to face this sooner than they have to? What parent would want their child to lose their love of life so swiftly and cruelly?

I can cast no stones at these parents who seem to over-protect. They want their child to live a life of joy and happiness and security because they know that adulthood values so little of this for them.