Hiring Dr. K to Deal with Entitled Parents

[Music] okay so are we talking about narcissistic parents great question so we are talking about entitled parents and so this is the first thing so let's talk about entitled parents so what i i want to do is explain a little bit about my experience with uh working with people who have entitled parents and sort of how to understand them and what seems to work the first thing that we're going to talk about is that a narcissistic parent an entitled and an entitled parent is not necessarily the same so oftentimes entitlement and narcissism tend to overlap but i think about narcissism as essentially a fragile sense of internal self that requires a lot of very careful outward appearance and treatment to sort of maintain your internal sense of self so narcissists sort of take the like take things in the world around them is like personal insults so if for example you're supposed to pick me up from the airport and you get a flat tire on the way i will take that as a personal insult if i am a narcissist well i'm not necessarily but oftentimes we'll take you know things that have nothing to do with my life and take them as personal insults so it's like oh my god you don't care about me enough to be on time i waited so long i've been waiting here for a long time and there was this creepy person and oh my god like i can't believe that you would do this to me i would never do this to you so everything sort of becomes about the relationship between me and you even though it's like you got a flat tire and you had to change your tire in the rain like that sucks but all i can kind of think about is myself the other aspect of narcissism is also that you have to maintain an outwardly elevated sense of self because you feel insecure on the inside so you know i can't be insulted i can't i have to dress a particular way people need to treat me a particular way because that's how i know that i'm worth something because on the inside i'm afraid of of you know what my true value is so that's a little bit different from entitled parents so in entitled parents what we're really thinking about is entitlement so oftentimes they overlap but entitlement is sort of about rights right so it's like i deserve x y and z um and so oftentimes narcissism and entitlement can go hand in hand but what i really think about in terms of entitled parents is parents who don't respect boundaries parents who don't respect autonomy parents who don't sort of give their kids choices and respect their choices that's what i think of as an entitled parents so i'm gonna give you guys just like one example so i was working with a kid who was south asian um so growing up you know his parents were very controlling and also kind of very entitled and so they would sort of regulate a lot of what he could or couldn't do they they started him like playing tennis at the age of like seven started having him play like chess in a musical instrument at the age of like eight or nine um maybe even younger so he was sort of like this indian kid and then in high school you know they told him like okay here are your career options you're gonna you know we want you to play chess we want you to play a musical instrument and you're gonna be a tennis athlete those are gonna be your options he sort of like was interested in basketball and baseball and they're like yeah we you know literally the the what his parents told him is our people don't do that okay and so he decided like they were like yeah like if you you know we'd really like it if you wanted to be a doctor but he wasn't interested in being a doctor so he ended up um becoming a studying cs which was somewhat of an uphill battle uh his parents didn't allow him to go to prom so he wanted to go to prom and was arguably dating a girl but they were like no you're you're not allowed to do that so they were just really really controlling and felt like they had the right to make decisions for him so they were also he was also a gamer but they were very very strict on what kind of uh you know gaming he could do and his mom would set like really really firm limits so he goes off to college has a little bit of a rough year or two in terms of like learning how to deal with his newfound freedom parents were also quite controlling in terms of like mandating all kinds of random crap that he really didn't adhere to because they didn't have any power over him but they're like you need to be you know you can't no leaving your dorm past nine o'clock you need to be back at your dorm by nine pm every single day and they would like call him and and things like that and if he didn't answer they'd get pissed off all this kind of stuff so like super controlling felt like his choices were not his own like his parents made his choices for him so he tried to sort of argue with them about this stuff so like at many points throughout his life he would like have arguments with his parents and he'd say things like this is not what i want to do and they'd say like okay well we don't care right like you have to do what we tell you to do because we're your parents and you have to listen to us and so something funny happened so dad actually so mom was a stay-at-home mom dad was um lost his job during the pandemic and so after he had been out of school for one year landed a pretty good job and still parents were like pretty entitled pretty you know would want him to call every day and things like that so he goes home and because his parents need help sort of supporting the family and things like that because his dad has lost his job so he's essentially like paying the parents bills and you know he goes home and then he's like gaming at night and his mom comes in at like 10 p.m and she's like it's too late and you should stop gaming and he's like i have a job like what are you complaining about they get into a brief argument and then mom unplugs his pc so what do you think he does at that point absolutely right so he doesn't rage he moves out and so he's like and because mom you know mom and dad are kind of like there's like a brief argument and there's this sort of like my house my rules you have to respect the rules of the house and he's like okay so if i have to adhere to your rules living here i'm gonna move out and so the next morning like overnight like he doesn't say that so the next like overnight he kind of packs his stuff and moves out and then parents are like wait what you're moving out and then he's like yeah i mean you said your rules your house so i'm moving out so i can live my life the way that i want to parents start to panic there are financial considerations they're like oh no no like like wait no don't do that don't do that like we need your help like things like that and he's like okay so if you need like financial support you know you guys raised me and stuff so that's fine i'll like i'll pay your bills for some amount of time not a big deal but i'm not going to live here and and so it was a really kind of interesting you know dynamic because then like the parents were kind of really shocked and so as the conversation kind of went on as i i was working with him at the time and so he started to have like a couple of conversations with his parents and and were actually able to bring his parents around to a couple of things because i don't think his parents sort of realized what they were doing i don't think they really understood the power dynamics of the situation i don't think they had accomplished what they thought they had accomplished they were shooting for obedience instead of like understanding or any kind of relationship they wanted a robot for a son as opposed to like a thinking adult part of that is i think heavily cultural but i sort of see it outside of the south asian culture for sure where people parents sort of expect obedience they expect you know that they are entitled to um you know private communications that their kid has they are entitled to violate their kids boundaries in space and determine what they do and what they don't do so what i'd like to do is just share with you guys like a couple of ways to think about entitled parents if you guys have entitled parents how to have conversations with them and more importantly how not to have conversations with them and then ultimately hopefully try to do your best to build a relationship that is like somewhat healthy okay so the first thing to understand is entitled parents tend to be entitled not because of like moral deficiencies of character that are genetic or intrinsic but honestly because of the way that they were raised so oftentimes if you think about a particular parenting style we learn what appropriate parenting is by how we were parented so in in this kid's case i mean this is like a long it's like a whole culture right so where like in the south asian culture like this is what you do you do this and then you do this and then you do this your parents even not even in extreme cases i was about to say in extreme cases but even in quite common cases will determine who you will marry like i met someone in my neighborhood a couple months ago and you know they were telling me so they're my age um and even a few years younger and they were actually telling me that they met their spouse like on the day of their engagement and hung out with them for a total of about three hours before their wedding so they met once for like an hour and a half and they like saw each other twice for like an hour and then like half an hour so this is kind of a culture that you come from so in the case of south asian stuff it's like very cultural but we also find that you know you don't have to be south asian i've worked with a lot of people who are caucasian a lot of people who are black a lot of people who are african-american or even nigerian whose parents are very very controlling and very entitled to their kids life and so what we tend to find is that the reason oftentimes the reason that they are that way or one big reason is because that's the way their parents were with them and so it's not to say that we shouldn't hold people responsible for their actions but at the same time we should try to understand where their actions are coming from because if our goal is to build a healthy relationship understanding is just as important as change so then the next question becomes okay so if they were raised to like kind of think this way what do we do about that and this is where we get into the first problem that many people who are dealing with entitled parents make so many kids is that they try to convince so in my experience trying to convince entitled parents of something is generally speaking a waste of time so don't try to justify don't argue don't explain don't try to bring them to your way of thought because generally speaking like it's gonna frustrate you and like they're just not gonna do it so instead the goal is to get them to think okay not to convince them that you're right but to get get them to sort of like question and examine their own beliefs right so you're not trying to bring them to where you are we're just both going to look at their viewpoint so for example like you know this was a conversa this was part of the conversation you know my patient had with his parents was so he kind of talked to them and he was like so as as as he moved out he's like if you guys need financial support that's fine i'm just not going to live with you and they felt like really hurt and betrayed and then he was kind of asking them like you know what is our what is our relationship right now so like and this is where we use a technique called going meta so you ask them to think about or explain to you what their understanding of your relationship is so you can start with a question of like what is this relationship like what are the rules of this relationship to you how does this relationship work this is where a lot of things like power dynamics come in but it's essentially like you know just asking them like you know how does this work and it's kind of weird because most entitled parents never really think about the rules of the game that they are teaching you and it's my experience that once you show them and and once they realize the rules of the game that they're playing they no longer want to play it anymore i know it sounds kind of weird but you don't have to convince them of anything you just have to point out the rules to them so it's kind of interesting because you know it's sort of this idea that like the parents were like well like you're our son so you have to listen to us and then and then so he he was kind of saying well like i listened to you because i didn't have a choice like what do you guys think about that you know as soon as i have like and so this is where a conversation often times a conversation about power dynamics comes in so this is a question number one is like what are the rules of this relationship like how does our relationship work second a second uh question is you know what is the value of my opinion in this relationship so you have a particular opinion i have a particular opinion how do we decide what to do so if we have a disagreement on opinion this is not even talking about anything specific it's not about whether i can go to prom or not go to prom it's just asking them you know so in this relationship when i believe one thing and you believe something else how do we decide which person to go with and essentially what entitled parents will come down to is that it's a game of power dynamics right i'm the parent i'm the boss i pay the bills therefore i get the decision and this is where you really have a good opportunity because if if that's the situation you can't really argue with them right so as you are not financially independent as you are dependent on their on your parents you have to play by their rules like it's it's going to be really hard to change that so you can acknowledge that power dynamic but you also want to make it clear to the parents that if this is the way that the game is being played that's fine what do you think is going to happen when i am no longer financially dependent right so if this is the rules of the game is that like if if it's your house and your rules and and you know like we're just trusting you because i don't have an opinion or because you're the adult and i'm a child in the relationship like that's fine but what happens when we're both adults like i'm not you know so you kind of like point out the rules to them and eventually kind of what we got to is you know the parents sort of understood this when like their son was like yeah so what do you guys expect so this is another thing is ask the parents so when dealing with entitled parents i think a big a big solution is to get them to think about the evolution of your relationship over time so this is kind of how how this patient did and he's like what are y'all expecting about you know when i get married what do you guys think is gonna happen when i get married and they were like well you know we'll have a big indian wedding and he's like why do you why would i why would i do that what makes you think that i'm going to do that if we've determined that the reason that i'm listening to you is because you guys hold power over me you no longer have that so why would i listen to you anymore and so then they were like what does this mean does this mean that you're not gonna get married and he's like no i may get married but what do you guys you know i'm gonna do what i feel like but what are y'all envisioning about the future of our relationship are you guys envisioning that you will come to my wedding and this is the kind of thing where it's like you know this can feel like an attack and it's kind of interesting because the parents will perceive it as attack but that's really not an attack so you don't want to get upset you don't want to convince you don't want to punish your entitled parent you just want to get them to think what does this mean you're not going to invite us to our wedding i didn't say that so this is where you guys can use another meta technique which is like asking the parent in the conversation what did you hear me say or what did you hear me ask and so really what you want to do is don't try to convince them of anything genuinely try to understand their expectations and what we find is that as a lot of these unthought and unconsidered ideas come to the surface this is when we start to see entitled behavior change so as is the the kid genuinely sort of is asking his parents like what are you guys expecting and what do you base that on and so this is where like remember step one is like what is the nature of our relationship when we have a disagreement how does the decision get made and what are you guys expecting our relationship to look like in the future right so these are kind of like the three steps that you've got to take and this is where like i've had this conversation so another person i worked with you know had a very controlling mother was a woman and so she was sort of asking the question of like you know what's your understanding of like how happy i've been as a kid growing up what's your understanding of like what i think about you know how decisions make and like do you understand that i find you to be quite controlling you know and they're like oh yeah but it's it's for your you know it's it's for your benefit like we're doing this because like i know better and so then you know this is a another client of mine who's like so mom like what's what's your expectation about your like how much you're gonna see your grandchildren and then like that she's like well of course like i'm gonna like i'm gonna be very involved and then then this is where her daughter is like well what makes you think that you know it's kind of interesting because like but i'm your mother you're like yeah i understand you're my mother but you know it seems that most of our relationship seems to be like quite one-sided like you seem to determine the nature and style of interaction and you don't seem to respect my opinions or really listen to what i'm saying and so i don't i don't want that kind of person in my in my kid's life and so then the mom is like but i but i i deserve like are you telling me that i'm never going to be able to see my grandkid it's like well no i mean you'll be able to see them but i don't want you to be a big part of their life if you're going to be like this and so then like the then this is where the parent is like well but then like like what do you want me to do like and so oftentimes what the parents will do so when you kind of get through to them okay so you're not really saying that you're gonna you're not like trying to convince them of anything right it's just about sort of laying a boundary and then oftentimes what the parent will do is we'll be like well like you know what how how can i fix this like i'm i'm sorry just tell me what i need to do to make it better and so this is where things get really really tricky um so i'll give you guys kind of a third example so i had i had a a client who parents wanted them to come home for the holidays client really didn't want to come home for the holidays was like yeah i'm not comfortable coming home i'm just i don't want to do that and and then the parent was like well why don't you want to do that you should come and it gets into this argument about the parent trying to convince them like come home for the holidays come home for the holidays like if you don't do this oh your your dad will be so disappointed and everyone will wonder where you are like you know your aunts they'll start asking questions why isn't this person home for the holidays is everything okay like why don't you just come home like everyone will like that they're like yeah i'm not interested in that and so then then it kind of gets into this situation where you're like okay so then like how do you deal with that and so you can lay a boundary and you can say you know mom if we're talking about coming home from the holidays like what is this conversation about why are you calling are you trying to convince me to come home from the holidays go meta just ask your parent like what is this what are we doing what's the purpose of this conversation and then lay your boundary okay so then they're like yeah well we are talk well i'm we're talking about the holidays and you're like i'm not interested in talking about that i'm gonna hang up the phone now if you want to talk about other stuff i'm totally fine with that and then you hang up so lay a boundary right so this also involves a certain amount of power dynamics and independence on your part and then you know mom will call back a little bit later and so once again kind of go meadow what are we talking about mom yeah i'm not comfortable with that i'm gonna hang up the phone and so then eventually the parent will like ask why are you doing this why are you doing this to me why are you being like this you can say yeah the reason i don't want to come home for the holidays is because you don't respect my boundaries and then the parent is like okay fine i'll respect your boundaries fine fine just tell me like how to respect your boundaries and so then you can say this is one of my favorite interactions so what have i told you is my boundary about coming home in conversations about coming home and then they're like you said that you don't want to talk about coming home and you don't want to come home good how can you respect my boundary around that not talk to you about coming home and not pressure you to come up excellent but then what about coming home exactly mom now do you get it this is the problem when i share something with you about the boundary they have i have you are willing to say that you're gonna do anything you'll respect my boundaries you'll do you'll respect any boundary that i set except for the one that you don't respect right and like this is the key thing is like it's about understanding right so like when you get to that point and like you you just share with your parents you're like yeah so and they're like how do i get you to come what do i have to do to get you to come and this is where like that you can say you can't part of respecting my boundaries is respecting my decision that i'm not gonna come and if you can do that i think we can have a relationship if not i think it's not going to be it's not going to be much of a relationship right so this is really challenging but when dealing with entitled parents once again don't try to convince them don't try to tell them hey it's like a bad idea for me to come i don't want to come here's why i don't want to come here's why coming is a bad idea for me i want you to just like like don't try to convince them of anything okay just get them to think and the way that you get them to think is by asking them questions like what is the nature of our relationship what is the what what is going on chat what clip city what are you guys talking okay oh coming home for the holidays chad come on jesus okay i'm gonna keep going all right i'm gonna just keep plowing forward okay just keep keep plowing forward okay let's keep going okay so number one ask about the nature of the relationship number two talk a little bit about like what is the nature of how agreements and disagreements are resolved who gets to decide and this is the really tricky thing is as you guys have conversations about this you know it's like completely fine to have a conversation about it like it's gonna we'll get to a couple of other points about why these conversations are hard but you just want to bring it to the surface about how the decision gets made so is it because they're parents is it because you live under their house like that's fine right like if you can't if that's the power dynamic that exists and you don't have power in the relationship there's really not much you can do about it which is feels bad man okay so like sag but that's the truth of it at least acknowledge it and then the third thing that's really really helpful in terms of getting entitled parents to really like think is to ask them like what do you imagine our relationship is going to be like two years from now five years from now 10 years from now and then if you want to you can ask them is it okay if i share my perspective and so then they say of course you can share your perspective and then you could say well so like i think that are in this relationship i don't feel respected so i think that you have power and i don't but the reason that we maintain this relationship is because i don't have a choice i feel like i'm a hostage which is fine it's just you know as i start to gain independence i'm not sure how much of a relationship i want to have and you have to be really careful about saying something like that especially if there's a power dynamic or something like that you have to be able to sort of determine your parents ability to tolerate that kind of statement but i think it is a really useful question um to sort of ask your parents like what do you imagine our relationship is going to look like five years from now 10 years from now and you know what how is that relationship going to be different from this one and it's been my experience that when you stop trying to convince them and invite them to like really understand and you also try to understand you genuinely try to understand their perspective like it actually really helps move things in the right direction so a couple of caveats okay the first is that this is very very hard so like a big part of these conversations involves grieving and letting go and accepting that your parent is not going to say what you want them to say right so that's really tough like it's hard to sit down in a conversation and recognize that your parent has power over you whether it be financial or like other kinds of power and that like you're the weak person in the relationship the interesting thing is that like as you start to like accept that and admit that and actually come to that conclusion with your parent the relationship can feel a lot less burdensome because oftentimes what i find is that people are like they're so upset by the injustice of it which absolutely like you should be upset by the injustice of it but you being upset by the injustice doesn't actually by itself change the injustice right i know it sounds kind of weird like this is something that i know is confusing for the internet but outrage does not make the world a better place it is the actions that follow outrage that either make the world a better place or a worse place right because there are a lot of actions that come out of a feeling of outrage or injustice that actually can make the world a worse place and it's really really dangerous territory because and so this is why like you know what i advocate for y'all is not necessarily to take a drastic action because of the injustice but just acknowledge if your parents have the power in the relationship just acknowledge that they have it and what power do you have in the relationship now you have the power of memory right so you are going to remember how they treat you and how they treat you today is going to a certain degree so the karmic seeds for how you treat them tomorrow and this is the main this is really only like the only leverage that you have if you're in a large like power dynamic relationship and so this is kind of the sort of thing that like you just need to share with them like okay if this is what the relationship is like what do you imagine it going because basically you know i feel like our connection is a lot is very circumstantial like i'm here because i have to be here but i don't feel like you all respect me as people like you don't respect me as a person you don't respect my opinions you don't care to listen to them or understand them which is my observation i don't need to convince you that you should be listening to me so don't go down that route which is like very dangerous right because it's easy to go down that route where you can say this has been my observation because when you tell me to do something and i disagree like i don't want to be a doctor but you tell me that i have to major in this so that's an example of me not respecting y'all not respecting my opinion and then this is where they go down the tangent of but no but it's good for you like we know better we're your parents you can say like yeah i'm not i'm not debating that you guys have been alive longer than i have and that you may know better than i do but i'm still not hearing you guys like ask or care about what i what i want right so you guys are operating from you know better but i'm not hearing anything about what i want and so you can point that out right that's the nature of the relationship decisions get made by their subjective sense of what is better as opposed to what you want and so then like later on you can kind of let them know okay so like you guys believe this but you don't do you all see how it doesn't appear to me like you guys care about what i want you guys are valuing better over want right what i care about is not as important as what you guys think is good for me which is fine let's just call it what it is and so over time yeah so someone's saying like my parents don't believe that their their view is subjective which is fair right so like that's a fair point of view you don't need to argue with them about that they say we've been alive we are higher level than you are we have more xp therefore we know better if i am you know diamond league in law and your bronze league in law i may know more about the game than you do so you don't want to go down that road of whether they're objectively correct or subjectively correct or whatever the the argument that you want to go down or like the point that you want to make is like you guys are operating on a belief of what's better and i'm operating on a belief of like what i want to do right if i want to play techies i'm going to play techies forget that it ruins everyone else's game so so this is kind of like this is my kind of guidebook to dealing with entitled parents right which is like so notice the nature of the relationship like ask them okay what's going on here acknowledge the power dynamics so that's sort of like when we have a disagreement how does the decision get made and then invite your parents to think a little bit about how this relationship is going to evolve over time so this is also where you don't want to punish them right so you got to be really careful here because it can turn into a if you don't let me do this i'm going to cut you out of my life that's not what you want to do you don't want to be like emotional about it you don't want to threaten them you just want to say like okay so you know what do you imagine this is going to look like and i'm not so sure that like i'm going to be comfortable with that kind of relationship as i become more independent what do you think about that right and so the conversation should be calm it should be collected you have to let go of your own emotions right acknowledge that your parents may not care about your opinion acknowledge that you're the weak party in the relationship and recognize that time is on your side right so as as you get older you will gradually gain more independence you have more independence in college than you did in high school you have more independence after college than you did you know during college as you become financially independent then you will have even more you know control over your own life and the main message that you want to get across to them is not that you're going to cut them out because you don't want to threaten them because if you threaten them that's going to evoke their defensiveness and whatever narcissism is there will come out swinging if you kind of threaten them so you don't want to do that you just want to invite them to think that's the goal not to convince to invite them to think so what do you guys think is going to happen

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 184,385

Rating: 4.9776449 out of 5

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist

Id: gIHGcsjg15U

Length: 31min 4sec (1864 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 22 2021

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Disclaimer:

• Like Dr. K said in 24:40: This is hard. If some of y'all would choose to do this, don't expect it to be quick and easy
• Not 100% guaranteed to work. Minsan talaga, may mga tao/parents na ayaw ng 2-way communication
• Probably will not work with abusive/manipulative parents
• Some level of independency may require