This thread has really got me thinking. Thanks for bringing it up. I can probably attribute nearly all of my recent issues to Program culture directly and/or having come from the kind of family that didn't see it for what it is and pass like most of our friends and neighbors did.
Here are a few more things I continue to struggle with. I have a very hard time learning names. Part of that is because I've drifted from the edge of one social circle to the edge of another all of my life. Never been a full fledged belonger; just a pretender trying to pass as one so as not to make others so uncomfortable that they shun me entirely. And so I've never really been all that close with anybody and I also have 'known' so damned many people that I guess that part of my memory is full or overloaded or something.
That explains some of it. But there's something else. Remember how we all over-used names, especially when confronting each other? Instead of a normal way of talking to somebody where you might say their name once at first... like "Well Mary, I see you blah blah blah whatever..." we'd go "Mary, you need to blah blah blah, Mary! And Mary, you need to blah blah blah, Mary.....". I fucking hated that!. I knew about the power in a name and why we were doing that. So as soon as I got out, knowing what that was about, I quit using names altogether. Now that I want to I can't seem to get back into the groove of using someone's name naturally. People think they don't matter to me cause I can't remember their name and, even if I do, I never say it. It's always "man" or "dude" or "chick" or "buddy" or something. Or even if I try it doesn't sound natural so people think I'm bullshitting.
And then there's the social equilibrium thing necessary to any good relationship whether it's romantic, friendship, kinship or any other. Because I'm so distanced from everybody the people I try to get close to or who try to get close to me become overly important to me all out of proportion to my importance to them. Even when, to their way of thinking, they really love or like me a whole lot nobody can take too too much of the same person. So it's good and natural and all to spend some time apart, hanging with different people when or, better, before it turns to a fight. But when my friend is doing that normal healthy thing, hanging with other folk for awhile, I'm tortured with loneliness. And I find that, even though I understand what's going on and try to roll with it, I can never really forgive the infliction of that kind of pain.
