How Bad Habits Are Formed (Unconsciously)

I knew a girl in college who would always tell me about how she hated going home because she felt like she had to be both of her parents’ therapist. She would listen to her mom talk smack about her dad, and to her dad talk smack about her mom. It sounded like she parented her parents. When she wasn’t complaining about her family, she was going on about how she dedicated a lot of her time to taking care of her boyfriend. Not that she hated it, but she always made it sound like a nuisance: “I have to go home and cook for him… I need to go home and see how he’s doing.” When I got tired of her complaining, I said, “no offense, but I think you actually enjoy your stress.” I think she enjoys treating her boyfriend like a chore because her relationship with her parents acclimated her to the feeling of being depended on. She likes the feeling of parenting and babying someone because her child-self had to do that to stay on her parents’ good side. In other words, her psyche felt like, in order

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• Robert Sheng