Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Your Father Out-Alphas You

Transcript

When Your Father Out-Alphas You · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show today I'm going to be talking about something
• 0:10
  common which is a dynamic where men feel that their father out,
• 0:17
  Alphas them and nobody uses this term directly.
• 0:21
  So it's just something that I created right now but it's a
• 0:25
  common Dynamic really where the father had this really big
• 0:28
  strong personality for better and for worse as we will discuss
• 0:33
  and it's the therefore really difficult.
• 0:35
  For the man, the developing man, the boy to really assert himself
• 0:39
  in any way as kind of a viable male in the household because
• 0:43
  the entire household kind of caters to the father and the
• 0:48
  father is you know beyond the leader of the family.
• 0:53
  He is like a myth. He is like you know Goliath,
• 0:57
  he's like this like huge presence.
• 0:59
  It's really hard for men in this situation although they
• 1:04
  frequently do not Stand that. And instead, they think that the
• 1:07
  problem is that I did forget to tell you though, to subscribe.
• 1:12
  So, I will take a brief moment to tell you to subscribe to get
• 1:14
  over 120 more episodes there, I had to been a problem with
• 1:18
  anchor switching to Spotify. So a lot of my subscriptions got
• 1:22
  dropped and ever do is emailing me and there's nothing I could
• 1:25
  do on my end. Although Spotify support is
• 1:27
  helpful via email, but it seems like that is fixed now.
• 1:32
  I guess that was a difficult transition possible.
• 1:35
  Billy from anchor to Spotify and now it seems like people
• 1:38
  subscriptions are going through again.
• 1:40
  So that's great. And remember, you can always
• 1:44
  email Spotify. Customer service.
• 1:46
  They can help you. I can't on my end.
• 1:47
  I am completely useless at that. There's nothing.
• 1:50
  They let me do it. Solve them on the platform.
• 1:53
  All right, anyway, so back to this topic.
• 1:56
  So I work with a lot of successful guys who somehow
• 1:59
  don't really think that they're that successful or when they are
• 2:02
  successful, they were always thinking they could be doing
• 2:04
  better. Or they're somehow
• 2:06
  underachieving in a way out of level of achievement that
• 2:09
  everybody else thinks is just achievement.
• 2:11
  They think they're underachieving or they just kind
• 2:14
  of don't really have a lot of confidence or they didn't used
• 2:17
  to have a lot of confidence with women or in other ways or
• 2:20
  whatever. And it generally seems to go
• 2:24
  back to one Dynamic which is their father.
• 2:27
  And, you know, there's a lot of stuff on the internet about how
• 2:30
  like, men should be strong leaders and how, you know,
• 2:33
  children need their father. Definitely.
• 2:35
  Children need their father and definitely like a man should be
• 2:38
  like a strong leader especially to children.
• 2:40
  I mean, shit, you're an adult. You should, of course, be the
• 2:43
  leader of your own children, irrespective of whether you
• 2:46
  should be the quote leader of your wife, that seems to be an
• 2:49
  individual decision and more traditional people seem to think
• 2:53
  the man should lead the wife, but others think they should
• 2:56
  both be equal. I assume from my perspective
• 2:59
  they should be equal but you know, whatever floats your boat.
• 3:02
  But either way, a lot of guys take this Far, you know, and
• 3:07
  they usually take it too far because of their own
• 3:10
  narcissistic traits really, you know, and I'm not a super huge
• 3:14
  narcissist, diagnose, ER, compared to my peers but, you
• 3:18
  know, there are some people like it does exist, right?
• 3:21
  And so, these guys tend to have these larger than live.
• 3:26
  The you know, larger-than-life Persona is at stories and
• 3:30
  especially the self-made men. Oh God.
• 3:33
  It's like, you know, Dad came to this country with like three
• 3:37
  nickels and a rubber band. And then he built this Empire.
• 3:41
  Well, I mean she had, how are you going to compete with that?
• 3:43
  You know, he gave you then the money to start your own business
• 3:46
  with no matter how successful it is.
• 3:48
  You didn't come to this country with two rubber bands or
• 3:50
  whatever. So you know you always feel a
• 3:54
  little bit less than and this is not certainly all self-made men
• 3:57
  or all you know immigrants are all Dad's or anything.
• 4:01
  There's a lot of people who are like really impressed by their
• 4:05
  Kids and admiring of their children.
• 4:07
  But not these guys that I'm talking about in this situation,
• 4:10
  these guys have to be ultimate Alpha and so you can refer back
• 4:15
  to understand your father. If there's reminds you of your
• 4:18
  father have a self-made man podcast and also my CEO podcast.
• 4:23
  So a lot of these guys are CEOs. They're self-made men, they're
• 4:26
  businessmen. They have a lot of money and
• 4:29
  they've made it from nothing or they parlayed, you know, some
• 4:32
  money. They don't all just you know,
• 4:34
  come to this country. Tree with two nickels.
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  They some of them grew up in this country but somehow they,
• 4:39
  they invented something or they did something that was amazing,
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  you know, wrote books or whatever.
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  And basically, whatever the sun does is like, never ever in the
• 4:51
  Man's eyes, going to be up to what he did.
• 4:54
  So sometimes these men are a lot different to their daughters.
• 4:58
  So the boy who, you know, has sisters that get all of Daddy's
• 5:02
  attention and love. But then he especially if Oldest
• 5:05
  son, he gets the short end of the stick and nothing.
• 5:07
  He could do is ever good enough because the father over
• 5:11
  identifies with him, he looks like him.
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  Let's say, or at least he's the oldest son.
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  So he's the first experience of having a boy you know related to
• 5:20
  him. So he identifies with him.
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  And so he catches a lot of shit in comparison because the father
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  makes you know a logical error. He assumes that he would have
• 5:29
  had the same level of grit and perseverance.
• 5:32
  If he would have been raised in some cushy she lifestyle like
• 5:36
  the one that he's providing to the boy and I have article about
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  this, why your kids have less grit than you you know because
• 5:43
  you threw your grit, you know gave them everything and you
• 5:46
  didn't have everything so you had a different level of hunger,
• 5:50
  you know, often not literal but figurative, although sometimes
• 5:54
  both and so you had this drive that your kids don't have,
• 5:58
  because, remember them mice, only run through the maze when
• 6:02
  you don't feed them, you know, when if they're fed, then they
• 6:05
  Run through the maze because they don't care, you know.
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  And so so a lot of people are in that situation where they have
• 6:10
  the well fed mice children, but they were like a poorly fed
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  Mouse and then they're expecting the kids to run through the maze
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  with the same velocity that they did, which is like impossible.
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  And in this situation of the guys that I see they have become
• 6:24
  successful, but it's like for whatever reason, the mythology
• 6:27
  of the father is always, you know, Primary in their mind and
• 6:32
  it overshadows their own. Ants to a degree that they often
• 6:37
  don't even recognize, but it makes them feel worse at
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  everything. And then a lot of times these
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  guys it goes far beyond the mythology of the father goes,
• 6:47
  far beyond just the business realm or academic success or
• 6:51
  what have you it goes into women and it goes into parenting and
• 6:56
  it goes into socializing and it goes into hobbies and basically
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  in every area that the boy as he develops could assert Self as
• 7:05
  like good or better than the father because that's like a
• 7:08
  normal thing. Like, as you get older than you.
• 7:11
  You know, the parent is supposed to pass the torch, basically, to
• 7:14
  the child. And when parents can't because
• 7:17
  of their own narcissistic qualities, they can't really
• 7:20
  pass the torch. They still jockey to be kind of
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  primary and the most important generation and they can't be
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  old, you know? So this is the guy that like so,
• 7:30
  it's okay. So I'll give you an example,
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  right? So let's say the boy is, like 15
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  years old. And he has his first girlfriend
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  so he's feeling like on top of the world you know he's great as
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  testosterone pumping, it feels like a real man maybe for the
• 7:42
  first time and so then a healthy father would make like even like
• 7:48
  little jokes about himself being a dad like literal dad jokes.
• 7:51
  You know, he would be kind of seating over like the the role
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  of the cool, you know. Like you know, like a cool guy
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  role would go to the sun, you know.
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  And then And would start to make almost self-deprecating
• 8:07
  comments, jokes about being nod as trendy or cool, or with it
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  anymore, as the boy, which would kind of be more of the cycle of
• 8:15
  life, you know, same as women when, you know, the girl gets to
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  be like a teenager. She's like beautiful, she's all
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  dressed up on prom night. You don't expect my mom to come
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  out in a mini dress and try to join the pictures, right?
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  That would be considered pretty strange that she's not able to
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  pass the torch over to the girl who's like really in her prime.
• 8:34
  This is the first Time she's done anything like this, you
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  know, whatever whatever. So in this situation with the
• 8:38
  more dominant overly Alpha father he would make comments
• 8:43
  that diminish. The boy he would say something
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  that indicates that the boys supposed to be doing even better
• 8:49
  than he is. He might even flirt with the
• 8:52
  girl. He might even flirt with the
• 8:54
  with, you know the girlfriend of his son that's not uncommon or
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  make comments that indicate that the boys supposed to be getting
• 9:01
  somewhere sexually that, he's not yet getting Or even
• 9:05
  comments, like why you even just being with this one girl, Now's
• 9:08
  the Time To Play the field and when I was your age, I was doing
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  this that and the other with all these different girls.
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  So in some way, he like ruins the boys attempt to individuate,
• 9:19
  and he basically says don't even try to be more of a man than me.
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  You'll never be more of a man than me.
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  This is obviously not conscious unless the guys is sociopath
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  which are very rare but it's subconscious and he felt jealous
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  of the boy being at the cusp of his life being Having his
• 9:35
  girlfriend, all this excitement. So he had to knock him down.
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  And so these types of comments will be pervasive when parenting
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  he'll be like, you're too soft. You listen to your wife, too
• 9:45
  much, you know, or in business and career.
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  Of course, the guys never going to be as hard charging as a man
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  thinks that he should be or as stories about his younger self,
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  which are always exaggerated as any mythology is, you know, but
• 10:00
  the boy, the Boy, now man will never be living up to whatever
• 10:04
  the father, did it? Same age and you know, it could
• 10:07
  be in any regard like whatever Hobbies he picks the wrong,
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  whatever friends he has a stupid sometimes the friends are better
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  than the guy so that's a variant of that.
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  Why aren't you more like your friend?
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  Timmy, look how successful he is.
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  He gets all the girls Etc. So yes, every parents can be an
• 10:25
  asshole, you know like that did doesn't like it's not like you
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  have to be in this specific Dynamic to have a dad who's a
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  jackass but but it comes it hits.
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  It's different. If the rest of the world
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  recognizes your father, as super successful and things and even
• 10:41
  your friends as a boy will be jealous frequently of your
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  Association of having this as your father.
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  The imagine it would be wonderful, the amount of
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  opportunities and advice and just man to man, you know, sort
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  of sort of closeness that they Envision.
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  And then it's so different than that because you never feel
• 11:01
  exactly like you're catching up to your dad.
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  And so what Mom, like in this situation is the mother, a
• 11:07
  buffer for most of these men, not usually not that much.
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  They love their mothers very much.
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  The mother may be very kind. However, the mother has to be a
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  certain level of passive in order to put up with this guy in
• 11:18
  the first place, and she has to be kind of in the role of a
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  supplicant and looking up to him, the great man, you know,
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  and this whole like the great man and his devoted wife Dynamic
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  is what the boy sees and he met idealize it.
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  Then when he gets older and And his own wife, does not act happy
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  to be shining his shoes. Then he's, you know, shocked,
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  he's very upset. He didn't know.
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  Meanwhile, you know how unhappy secretly his own mother may have
• 11:47
  been and or I mean, a lot of times, quite honestly.
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  What happens is later in life. The boy find out that the
• 11:53
  father. I've been cheated because a lot
• 11:55
  of these guys cheat because getting just you know,
• 11:57
  supplication from one woman is this is not adequate at a
• 12:01
  certain point. So they want to get attention
• 12:03
  from everybody and different. Should chips, and whatever and
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  the guide and the kid doesn't realize it, but then when they
• 12:09
  do, then sometimes dad falls off the pedestal, which is, you
• 12:12
  know, difficult and can lead to a lot of grief and anger, but is
• 12:16
  ultimately, Redemptive it, because he can finally see his
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  father's a flawed person versus this, you know, heroic super
• 12:24
  Alpha. You know, that that is just
• 12:26
  going to be better than him at everything.
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  Well, he wasn't better at one thing which is being a faithful
• 12:30
  and loving husband. So, it depends, it depends if
• 12:34
  And also some of these super Alpha, guys, do end up with
• 12:37
  wives who are openly dissatisfied.
• 12:39
  Because over time the wife grows more unhappy with the dynamic
• 12:43
  being. So, you know, imbalanced and as
• 12:46
  she gets older, she asserts herself more and then the boy
• 12:49
  may see the cracks in the facade and may say, wow shit.
• 12:53
  That isn't really, so great as he makes out because he's making
• 12:56
  mom, so upset all the time. And so, so there's there's
• 12:59
  different ways that this can go but the worst way for the boys
• 13:03
  self-esteem, Frequently. When the mother is completely
• 13:07
  codependent with the father made her life completely about him,
• 13:10
  and his success is takes all of his shed and his nasty comments
• 13:15
  as just par for the course. Never stands up for herself.
• 13:18
  Never stands up for the boy, you know?
• 13:20
  And and then the boy kind of feels like my God.
• 13:23
  All of us are kind of subpar except dad like no wonder.
• 13:28
  He's so mad all the time because like he feels frustrated or
• 13:32
  whatever and held back by, you know off, Us in different ways.
• 13:36
  It's a very, you know, permanent pernicious, Dynamic.
• 13:40
  And another variant, by the way, I use this quote a lot the
• 13:43
  children of lovers are orphans. I've read that years ago and I
• 13:46
  thought it was very representative of a certain
• 13:49
  Dynamic I see where not only is the guy idealized with marriage
• 13:53
  is idealized. So basically like they're always
• 13:56
  making out, you know what, I'm the first to say that you should
• 13:59
  be physically affectionate in front of your kids.
• 14:01
  And I've said that a million times but there were always
• 14:03
  making out a little too. Much not supposed to really see
• 14:07
  your parents be sexual so yeah. Sure, you could hear the bed
• 14:11
  banging around. Sometimes you do in the middle
• 14:12
  of the night but you're not supposed to have your father.
• 14:15
  Say, hey guys, when you're like 10 years old, why don't you go
• 14:19
  downstairs? Mom and I are going to have a
• 14:21
  fun time. No, that's crazy.
• 14:24
  You know like don't do that bad, you know?
• 14:26
  Because your kid doesn't need to picture your genitals.
• 14:29
  Whenever you think that they might you should always think.
• 14:31
  You know, that's a good Mantra. My kid doesn't need to picture
• 14:34
  my My genitals. So, you know, or certainly that
• 14:37
  of their opposite sex parent. So a lot of these guys will show
• 14:41
  off and it is really a showing off because, you know, the woman
• 14:45
  is, you know, the 15 years, 20 years.
• 14:47
  And to monogamy as I've taught you, she's probably not that
• 14:51
  thrilled, you know, to be having the fun time with Dad as the
• 14:55
  boy, or as the dad, think, or even as just the boy thinks
• 14:58
  because maybe the dad knows that it's, you know, not her favorite
• 15:02
  activity. Anyway, but the reality is, is
• 15:04
  that The boy grows up thinking dad is the superstud and their
• 15:08
  relationship is amazing. And this is what it's going to
• 15:11
  be. But it's really just this kind
• 15:13
  of codependent with a narcissist relationship where it's a lot of
• 15:17
  image managing and the woman realizes that the man wants the
• 15:20
  marriage to look perfect. And so she goes along with it
• 15:23
  but they have the same problems as like everybody else in the
• 15:25
  world. But they just don't ever
• 15:27
  verbalize that because it would go against the image.
• 15:30
  So then the boy grows up and he thinks his wife is supposed to
• 15:32
  be licking his boots too. And you know, shit she doesn't
• 15:37
  and then it's upsetting conversely.
• 15:39
  Sometimes the man is drawn with Imago Theory to a woman that is
• 15:43
  like the father. So then ironically, he ends up
• 15:47
  with a woman who looks down on him and makes passive-aggressive
• 15:49
  remarks. Because this is a dynamic, he's
• 15:51
  used to, from living it with his father for years.
• 15:54
  So what do you do? If you're in this situation,
• 15:57
  some men will have an aha moment, therapy is super useful.
• 16:00
  This is literally what therapy is for.
• 16:03
  You could also do reading and stuff.
• 16:04
  Few know about like, you know, like a book called Children of
• 16:07
  the self-absorbed is a good one. Adult children of emotionally
• 16:11
  immature parents. You may say, what does that have
• 16:13
  to do with my amazing father? Yeah, it really does so you
• 16:17
  should read it, but a therapy is can be transformative in helping
• 16:21
  you rewrite the narrative such that you can finally understand.
• 16:25
  Why do I struggle with so many things when such a paragon of
• 16:28
  male virtue was my role model man I must be so fucked up, will
• 16:33
  know it is in fact related. Added to the fact that this
• 16:36
  supposed Paragon of masculinity was the role model because he
• 16:39
  had no self-awareness no empathy or very little you know it was
• 16:45
  his way or no way he looked down on anything that wasn't his
• 16:48
  perspective including all your perspectives and he made little
• 16:51
  comments, you know, over the years a kind of indicated that
• 16:55
  you were really subpar. And when coming from a man that
• 16:58
  you put on so much of a pedestal these really burrow themselves
• 17:01
  into your entire Consciousness and your self concept, So
• 17:05
  whereas, you know, if maybe your mom would say, oh, I don't like
• 17:08
  that shirt on you, son. Why don't you change?
• 17:10
  Okay, maybe Mom has bad taste. She's mom, whatever.
• 17:14
  If Dad says the hell you wearing that for well then shit.
• 17:18
  I mean I'm really not a man, am I, you know, do I even know what
• 17:21
  I'm doing and that's sort of low self-esteem.
• 17:23
  That sort of self-esteem hit, you know, will continue to come
• 17:27
  back, whenever somebody challenges, you particularly in
• 17:30
  authority figure later on and you'll find yourself extremely
• 17:34
  anxious. Anxious around high level, you
• 17:37
  know the sea level people at your company.
• 17:39
  If you are a seal of a integer company against other people
• 17:42
  that for whatever reason, you have put on a pedestal, then
• 17:46
  when they give you feedback, it's very hard to just roll with
• 17:49
  it because you already think on some level that you are kind of
• 17:54
  subpar and kind of weird and kind of not living up to
• 17:57
  expectations no matter how much success you externally attained.
• 18:01
  All right, I hope that y'all found this interesting.
• 18:03
  And if you are a woman who thinks that the man is in a
• 18:06
  relationship like this with his father, probably would honestly
• 18:09
  not be the best thing to send this to him.
• 18:11
  Unless you say to him something like you know and less you get
• 18:15
  basically consent unless you're like I've read something and
• 18:18
  it's kind of I think it's about your dad but I you know about
• 18:21
  how your dad was but honestly I don't want to make problems
• 18:23
  between us so, you know, I don't have to send it to you but you
• 18:27
  know if you ever you ever want to listen I feel like this could
• 18:30
  be a little bit. You know, resident, you could do
• 18:33
  that. But I mean, if it's a guy who's
• 18:34
  kind of really scared to ever be disloyal even mentally to his
• 18:39
  father, you may not get anywhere with that, you know, and then
• 18:42
  you probably need your own therapy as I have.
• 18:45
  A lot of people in therapy because their parent, their
• 18:47
  spouses are in in mesh relationships with their
• 18:49
  parents. But all right, I will talk to
• 18:52
  you all soon and hope you got something out of this and please
• 18:55
  do subscribe. And join my Facebook group to
• 18:58
  all right? Bye-bye.