> doing something to make yourself feel better at the expense of the others you're claiming to help
There has to be some name for this phenomenon in psychology.
> It's easy to imagine everyone is 'always loved' if you grew up in a stable, supportive family in a safe neighbourhood, but that is not the experience for everyone.
Maybe there is a cycle with families similar to the idea that good times create weak people which create hard times which create strong people who create good times.
A loving family creates people who only know love and don't understand disfunction of a family, who then create disfunctional families by not knowing how to avoid the pitfalls, which then creates people who have to struggle out of disfunction who then know how to create a loving family by avoiding the pitfalls of disfunction.
I’m no psychologist, but from what I’ve read it’s inherently damaging to be raised in a dysfunctional family, and that’s more likely to lead to another dysfunctional generation. People from supportive families may not naturally be the most empathetic, but they’re less likely to have issues with drugs, gambling, alcohol, violence, etc if I understand correctly.
When you’re impressed by those who have struggled out of dysfunction and became stellar people because/in spite of it, that could be selection bias.
From experience, being raised in dysfunction provides a model for (maybe?) survival, but if one wants to improve things, the only model you have is one of failure. Knowing what fails can be useful, but it is orders of magnitude more useful to know what works.
There has to be some name for this phenomenon in psychology.
> It's easy to imagine everyone is 'always loved' if you grew up in a stable, supportive family in a safe neighbourhood, but that is not the experience for everyone.
Maybe there is a cycle with families similar to the idea that good times create weak people which create hard times which create strong people who create good times.
A loving family creates people who only know love and don't understand disfunction of a family, who then create disfunctional families by not knowing how to avoid the pitfalls, which then creates people who have to struggle out of disfunction who then know how to create a loving family by avoiding the pitfalls of disfunction.