Some people don't break

[Fluidic Kimbo]

I don’t particularly like to categorise people or “put people in a box” by reducing them to a certain classification such as ‘introvert’ or ‘extrovert’, or one of the four personality types (Type A, Type B, Type C, Type D). All of these terms and categories are really just approximations, although they’re probably helpful to apply to people if you’re the manager of human resources in a company of 840 employees.

I learned a few years ago from my own life experience – and I still think that my thoughts on this are accurate – that people can be separated into two distinct groups. There are people who break, and there are people who don’t break.

Everyone has a limit, and if you put more and more pressure on a person then you will eventually reach their limit, and then something will happen. But this is where the two types of person differ: What exactly will happen when the limit is reached? What will the person do when they’ve had enough?

Some people, if you put pressure on them, and then more pressure and then more pressure, if they can’t keep up with you, then they’ll break and they’ll submit. This is what I’m talking about when I say ‘break’. A person who breaks is a person who reaches their limit, has no more motivation to struggle, and is only left in a state of submission.

And then there are the people who don’t break. I’m not saying that people who don’t break cannot be defeated, but what I am saying is that when you push them too far, even if you push them to the point where they know they simply can’t win, they will do something crazy. These are the kind of people who will go down swinging just for the sake of going down swinging. These are the kind of people who don’t mind losing so long as they can do maximum damage on their way out. These people don’t mind destroying themselves if they can do a little destruction around them in the process.

Some people have made a career out of breaking people. Back in the 1800’s there was a slaver named Edwin Epps who was renowned as a ‘nigger breaker’, he had an aptitude for breaking the spirit of enslaved men to the point of their submission. Nowadays in the 2020’s, there are managers and directors in big multinational companies who spend their day dominating people and keeping their subordinates in line, sometimes getting people to work unpaid overtime, which I think we’re calling ‘modern-day slavery’ now. Thankfully it at least seems that some countries are bringing in laws against ‘coercive control’. Back in 2016, it became illegal in France for an employer to contact an employee outside of their normal work hours to talk about work. But anyway, back to the idea of ‘breaking’ a person.

There are mixed opinions around the world on whether or not it is moral to break people. Sometimes there can be a positive final outcome to breaking a person, but even in those cases that do turn out well, you have achieved your goal by abusing a person.

If you use these kinds of tactics against a person who doesn’t break, well hopefully you won’t draw it out to the bitter end. Because what you’ll get at the end is an explosion. It won’t necessarily be an aggressive or violent outburst – it could be much more subtle than that, so long as the antagonised person is content in the thought that they died swinging.

Up on YouTube there’s a channel called “World’s Stricted Parents”. Teenagers are sent abroad to go live with a different family in the hope that it will set them straight. I watched a few episodes of this show, and there were things I agreed with and things I disagreed with. The worse episode I’ve seen so far though is definitely this one:



As I watched that hour-long episode from start to finish, in which the parents aim to break the children, I was more than once gazing wide-eyed at the screen at what was just clear-cut child abuse. Emotional and psychological abuse directed at a child with the hope that they’ll be overwhelmed and just stop struggling. Some disciplinarians of children think that it’s fine to break children like this.

I have a friend of mine who’s a tiny little bit strict with his kids. Me and another friend of mine were over having dinner at his house recently, and once or twice the father was in my opinion a little too strict with the kid, but I’m not going to interject and broadcast my own parenting tactics at every opportunity (in particular when I myself don’t have any kids). I will continue to go over to my friend’s house in the future and just let him get on with raising his kids the way he’s raising them. But of course there would be a limit to what I would abide. If my friend was treating his kids in any way like the video I linked above, I’d stop going over to his house. I’d probably be considering discontinuing my friendship with him.

There are different kinds of parenting styles, and then there’s child abuse. Emotional and psychological abuse. Good old fashioned bullying. Some parents bully their children. They’ll have a big problem on their hands though when they take that approach to a child who doesn’t break.

[Obs]

That's a great post.
My brother and I go down swinging.
Everyone else in our family submits.

My brother and I were raised much different than our sisters.
We have always had criminal issues and drove ourselves insane.

[Obs]

My brother is harder headed than me. His minds about gone. I love him dearly but there is no getting through at this time.

I just came out of detox. I always pushed everyone away. Used drugs and whiskey to silence the war in my head.

I lost ability to talk finally when I woke up one morning.
I crawled off a machine later that day and looked at my gf crying and said stuttering I'm sorry I'm failing you. I gotta go away.

Her and her son's took me to the hospital then detox.

I won't ever relapse again.
I don't know what caused me and my brother to be like we are. And I don't know why some go down swinging instead of submitting.

I do know the only cure is having somebody that's strong enough to stand there beside you and put up with your bullshit until you see the error of your ways.

[Obs]

My brother had that a few times but he had a lot tougher life than me. If it wasn't for my girlfriend being tougher than me I wouldn't be here today.

[Obs]

The problem I have always seen with psychiatry is the try to break the human brain into a very small number of conditions.
We all exhibit just about every behavior at some point in our lives. Labeling someone based on a specific set of traits at a specific time is a shot in the dark imo.

[Fluidic Kimbo]

I won't ever relapse again.

With all the support groups I've attended, for example a group for people bereaved through suicide, I've met a fair few people who carry guilt.

A person carrying guilt can be anxious, depressed, thrill-seeking, even danger-persuing beyond rational reason. Some people are suicidal on account of the guilt they carry, and I've said:

If you feel guilt or shame about wrongs and harms you've done in the past, well that damage will be nothing compared to the damage you'll cause if you go and do that.

There's a term that gets thrown around a lot: "The damage done by suicide". Nobody in the world will ever understand that term until they've seen it with their own eyes and felt it with their own hands. You won't know it til you smell it.

With that said, and try not to hate me for pushing this line toward you: If you do relapse, it's still better than suicide.

I've never met a longterm stable former-addict who didn't relapse at least twice. Find someone who's been clean for 20 years, and if he tells you that he never relapsed then there's only two possibidlities:
(1) He's lying or he can't remember
(2) He's an incredibly neurotic individual -- what we call a 'dry drunk' in Ireland

[Obs]

With all the support groups I've attended, for example a group for people bereaved through suicide, I've met a fair few people who carry guilt.

A person carrying guilt can be anxious, depressed, thrill-seeking, even danger-persuing beyond rational reason. Some people are suicidal on account of the guilt they carry, and I've said:



There's a term that gets thrown around a lot: "The damage done by suicide". Nobody in the world will ever understand that term until they've seen it with their own eyes and felt it with their own hands. You won't know it til you smell it.

With that said, and try not to hate me for pushing this line toward you: If you do relapse, it's still better than suicide.

I've never met a longterm stable former-addict who didn't relapse at least twice. Find someone who's been clean for 20 years, and if he tells you that he never relapsed then there's only two possibidlities:
(1) He's lying or he can't remember
(2) He's an incredibly neurotic individual -- what we call a 'dry drunk' in Ireland

Agree with all of that.
Guilt was a major major part of my issue. I exhibited all the behaviors you mentioned too

[Fluidic Kimbo]

Agree with all of that.
Guilt was a major major part of my issue. I exhibited all the behaviors you mentioned too

This, in my personal opinion, is where the human condition is most complicated.

I've heard pastors say things like "If you are feeling guilt, that's the Lord working inside you". I get what this means, like for instance Jeffrey Dahmer got baptised in prison. However -- and this a big one:

A person can feel guilty when they haven't done anything wrong.


Here's a good example: An 8-year-old little girl feeling guilty because she can't adequately satisfy her grandfather's sexual desires.

What I'm getting at here, is that we cannot trust our own heart. If our intellect tells us that we are in the right, then we must ignore how we feel. Emotions aren't the be all and end all of everything. Personally I've found it easier to disregard invalid emotion through meditation, and also the Buddhist idea of considering the mind to be the sixth sense. Also in Buddhism, the mind is located in your chest.

Also in Christianity:

Jeremiah 17:9
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

[Obs]

This, in my personal opinion, is where the human condition is most complicated.

I've heard pastors say things like "If you are feeling guilt, that's the Lord working inside you". I get what this means, like for instance Jeffrey Dahmer got baptised in prison. However -- and this a big one:

A person can feel guilty when they haven't done anything wrong.


Here's a good example: An 8-year-old little girl feeling guilty because she can't adequately satisfy her grandfather's sexual desires.

What I'm getting at here, is that we cannot trust our own heart. If our intellect tells us that we are in the right, then we must ignore how we feel. Emotions aren't the be all and end all of everything. Personally I've found it easier to disregard invalid emotion through meditation, and also the Buddhist idea of considering the mind to be the sixth sense. Also in Buddhism, the mind is located in your chest.

Also in Christianity:

There is a big difference between being afflicted, being convicted, and guilt.

Guilt causes self pity and destruction.

Conviction keeps you on the path. Affliction makes you feel bad when you fuck up.

Guilt is something no matter what you do you feel you will never atone for. Even if people say Jesus forgives it still eats at you and destroys you.

[Obs]

This, in my personal opinion, is where the human condition is most complicated.

I've heard pastors say things like "If you are feeling guilt, that's the Lord working inside you". I get what this means, like for instance Jeffrey Dahmer got baptised in prison. However -- and this a big one:

A person can feel guilty when they haven't done anything wrong.


Here's a good example: An 8-year-old little girl feeling guilty because she can't adequately satisfy her grandfather's sexual desires.

What I'm getting at here, is that we cannot trust our own heart. If our intellect tells us that we are in the right, then we must ignore how we feel. Emotions aren't the be all and end all of everything. Personally I've found it easier to disregard invalid emotion through meditation, and also the Buddhist idea of considering the mind to be the sixth sense. Also in Buddhism, the mind is located in your chest.

Also in Christianity:

Just something to keep in mind most pastors are a bunch of pussies that have never lived a life.

They go to emissary so they can sit on their ass for a full week and get off of it for 1 hour and live in a church parsonage.