DOD212: This TikTok Accountability Formula Is... Good? Maybe?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that turns everything into math. I'm Tom Curry.

0:00:33 Thomas: Who the fuck is that, Eli? Who the FUCK is talking right now?

0:00:35 Eli: Oh my god, there's been an invasion. There's been an invasion in our podcast.

0:00:38 Thomas: That's not my beautiful wife.

0:00:39 Tom: I took a little breather, so

0:00:41 Thomas: That's someone even hotter than my wife.

0:00:43 Eli: Nice little break. Nice little vacay.

0:00:46 Tom: I waited to take Haley up to Wisconsin to see a specialist, and it happened to be that we could only do it on the day that we were recording. So you guys had to do the show without me, and I will say it suffered greatly.

0:00:58 Eli: Oh, I wouldn't have given you that much shit if I knew it was a Haley appointment. Fuck.

0:01:02 Thomas: You didn't listen, did you, Tom? Yeah, Eli was super cool about it. He was very understanding.

0:01:07 Eli: I went hard. Tom messaged just, there was a doctor's appointment, and I was like, motherfucker, your neck is fine.

0:01:13 Thomas: I'm pretty sure I mentioned in the episode that it was for Haley, and Eli just, like, refused to believe that it was.

0:01:20 Eli: No.

0:01:20 Thomas: Sometimes Eli decides what he decides, and you can't talk him out of it. Like, when he he decided I was from LA for like, I don't know, what, four years? He kept saying that.

0:01:20 Tom: Yeah, and that's

0:01:28 Eli: I still think you're from LA. I refuse to believe anything else.

0:01:31 Thomas: I was like, cool, cool. Cool. Yeah.

0:01:29 Tom: It, there's a construction of reality that comes from

0:01:35 Thomas: Sometimes it's really hard to get through it.

0:01:35 Tom: Eli's mind that is just, yeah, it's locked the fuck in. Locked the fucking... So I appreciate you guys, uh, you know, doing this show.

0:01:37 Eli: That's what you gotta do. That's you gotta do.

0:01:43 Eli: Did the doctor tell you she's faking it?

0:01:45 Tom: Obviously, no.

0:01:47 Eli: Because that's what I've heard.

0:01:48 Tom: Very. You know what's fucking nuts though? Let me, let me, uh, offer this. So she obviously has not been feeling well, is why we're going up, trying to figure out what's going on.

0:01:56 Eli: Faking it.

0:01:56 Tom: We've figured out what's going on, we're taking her to this specialist up in Wisconsin. We're driving back, and she's like, you know, I feel worse than I normally feel. She got some blood results back, she's, like, Jesus Christ, these things are all fucking crazy. And then it occurs to her that Aislinn had mono about a month ago. And Aisling had mono, it was not a big deal for her at all, she was, you know, a little bit sick for a few days. We weren't real worried about it, because 95 % of adult Americans have had mono.

0:02:23 Thomas: Hmm.

0:02:23 Tom: Haley had mono and remembers having it. Most people get it and don't even know they have it.

0:02:25 Thomas: Is that one you can only get once?

0:02:27 Tom: Well, it's funny that you asked, Thomas Smith, because about five percent of people can get it more than once. And driving back, we got blood results, stopped at a physician's immediate care, had Haley tested. She's got fucking mono again. She had it when she was a teenager and she has mono again. It is Five percent or less of people

0:02:42 Eli: Double mono. Mono. A mono, if you will.

0:02:46 Tom: Will have a reactivation mono. And mono, so I, my joke is she's the only person that gets something named mono twice. I

0:02:53 Thomas: When you built your house on the old haunted burial ground, do you think that was the right idea?

0:02:59 Tom: For fucking real.

0:02:59 Thomas: Like, should you? It was cheaper, but...

0:03:02 Eli: I think it was the fact that it became a burial ground that you poured the cement over the living people. I think that's really what that might have made the jinx more

0:03:07 Tom: They, that might have been, that might have been the tipping point, that might've been the tipping point, yeah. And laughing at them, I think the laughing at them probably didn't, didn't help. Like, it's gotten to the point where, like, I, we're waiting for the next full moon or whatever, we're gonna start doing fucking, like, sacred rituals of some kind around here. And I'm only kidding.

0:03:13 Thomas: Yeah. I guess I was focused on the wrong thing.

0:03:27 Eli: Powerful. Yeah, yeah.

0:03:27 Tom: A little bit like, it is, like, like, shit is straight-up cursed. Like, it's like, oh, what's the likelihood of you catching this twice? Well, it's less than 5%. I mean, it basically doesn't happen. Oh, it happened. It fucking, so like, right now, she's upstairs. She's laid up. She's got fucking mono. Who gets fucking mono as a 40-year-old?

0:03:38 Thomas: Yeah. Well, hold on. We have the Curry coefficient. Wait a minute. Who am I talking to? Let me plug in the formula. 5 % plus, let me see, Curry coefficient plus 95%. Let's see.

0:03:49 Tom: Yeah, they're, okay.

0:03:51 Eli: You have bones mono now. Each of your bones coughs once a day.

0:03:55 Thomas: They have a whole different scale for Tom Curry.

0:04:00 Tom: Jesus Christ, poor lady. So she's got, she's got mono, but that's why we, that's why I was not on the last, uh, recording to take Haley up to a beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin to see a specialist.

0:04:10 Thomas: I love Milwaukee.

0:04:11 Eli: See that fineness. Yeah. But, gentlemen, you know the only thing worse than Tom and Haley's luck when it comes to medical things. Why? It's the auto ads. Yes, the auto ads invading your podcast experience. Is there a way to make them go away? Well, yes, there is, podcast listener, over at patreon.com/dearolddads where for as little as a buck, you get a commercial free version of every single show. You get a little parenting story at the end and you get monthly bonus episodes. We're about to do one of our AMAs from I believe it's 10 months ago after we record this one. So, uh, you know, are you worried about a possible war with Iran? Yeah, yeah.

0:04:48 Thomas: You might hear in the outtakes that Tom tried to do it right now. He tried to prematurely ejaculate, what is it?

0:04:52 Eli: Preliminary Ejaculate. Just get that, let me get this out of the way. Yeah. But yeah, you can see all of that over at patreon.com/dearolddads, ripping into

0:04:57 Thomas: No, what is it, yeah, Lydia thanks

0:05:00 Tom: That's Pre-cum, that's just pre-come. Yeah, it's already got a name.

0:05:12 Thomas: You for that,

0:05:18 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:18 Tom: All right, so Eli, you put this TikTok in our show topics Slack sometime ago about a month ago, almost. Um, and I will admit, I like this because I am a sucker for anything that attempts to find a sort of, like, mathematical or other sort of relationship between things. It's something that I sort of, like, am very sympathetic to this idea. So this is a really cool TikTok. I think we can actually play it for the audience.

0:05:25 Eli: It, yeah.

0:05:42 Eli: And before we play it, I just want to give a little context here. So one of the biggest questions that we get, and we answer them occasionally if there's something new, but something that we give to the inbox at the dads. Hey, did you know you could ask us for completely inexpert advice at thedads at dearolddads.com? You can, and we might read your question on air. What we won't do, and I can't emphasize this enough because some people still email us, is write you a personal email back with our personal advice. It is for being read on the show.

0:06:16 Thomas: Unless there's a check attached to the email, and actually, I don't know how to do anything with checks, because I'm not old, so never mind, it's got to be cold hard

0:06:18 Eli: Yeah, that's true. There's a price.

0:06:25 Thomas: Digital cash, yeah.

0:06:25 Eli: There's the price. You just open with your cash offer and we'll figure out how to make you your own personal private podcast. Exactly. Yeah. We'll figure it out. Again, there is a price,

0:06:30 Thomas: I will be your pen pal for the low, low price of, I don't know what. I'm not sure.

0:06:38 Tom: I'll get Heath to be your pen pal. Yeah.

0:06:39 Eli: But one of the emails that we get on a pretty regular basis is sort of about accountability for parents who don't all the way suck, but there's been some not cash money -ness in the past. Not a Tom's mom, right? Right. Where it's just this person is toxic and evil and, you know, you should try to bury them under an elephant's foot somewhere in Russia.

0:07:02 Eli: But just like, you know, they knew what they knew. They did what they did and they aren't.

0:07:01 Thomas: I thought you were going to just easily go for the easy, like my mom or something. Is it like my mum? What do you think? Oh, come on. Shut up.

0:07:11 Eli: No, you should bury your mom under an elephant's foot in the desert. You just haven't realized that. So I try not to whenever I talk about how your mom let your abuse happen all the time. Your excuses just turn into like that was raining that day.

0:07:13 Tom: 100%. No, no.

0:07:25 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Where she worked the only job and also made all the meals and cleaned the house and did everything. She had to do one more thing, which has also somehow come through.

0:07:33 Eli: Yeah, if you're cleaning a house you can't stop someone from psychologically abusing your son. That's what they say. You gotta choose. That's

0:07:38 Thomas: Through, she is as big a victim as we are. I don't think she's a good parent. I just, yeah, yeah, that's like kind of understandable. That's why I'm putting her in the, I'm not saying she's a good parent, I didn't say that.

0:07:42 Eli: True. And you know what they say, being a victim is an excuse for what you

0:07:48 Tom: I'm staying the fuck out of this.

0:07:54 Eli: Did

0:07:54 Thomas: Well, actually, there's parts about her that was really good. I've said this a million times, all the good things that happened in my childhood pretty much were because of my mom.

0:08:01 Eli: Top two parents you had. Top two firm

0:08:03 Thomas: She's in the top two.

0:08:04 Tom: One. Well What did you put in her mother's day

0:08:04 Eli: First place? Yeah, yeah.

0:08:04 Thomas: Thank you. She is in the top two I don't even get Lydia mother's day card. I'm just suck. I'm a poopy pants.

0:08:08 Eli: Nothing. She didn't get one. Yeah, exactly. Poopy man-boy, but We get questions from folks like that a lot. And the sort of, like, where should accountability lie? And this TikTok is about sort of how did, quote unquote, do the math on that accountability? And I really liked it. So with all that said, let's take a listen. Yeah.

0:08:17 Tom: Card.

0:08:30 Thomas: Boy, through the magic of technology, you know, you can get like a whole house water filter that someday I want to do that. I have a whole-house Eli TikTok filter. So I just, it just filters it out by the spigot, like it's just like there's a bunch of, I had to go out

0:08:39 Tom: It just sheds TikToks.

0:08:44 Eli: Yeah, it's an ad blocker for my TikToks. I have this moment sometimes because I'm a pebbler, as my friends call it, where I'll like send people funny TikToks all the time that I see that I think make them happy.

And I have this moment that happens where it's such a distinct psychological phenomenon where I've sent someone a few tiktoks and I realize they don't like it they don'T CARE THAT IT'S CUTE BULLDOGS THEY'RE NOT HAVING A GOOD TIME WITH ME DOING THAT THING AND THEN I AM NEVER MORE BECAUSE MY FUCKING DEPRESSION IS ON LOCK PODCAST LISTENER I AM A NINJA OF DEPRESSION I GET A depression thought I'm like oh your kung fu is weak depression I'm afraid I had this when I was 13 years old and then I flip it off my shoulder but I am never more blissfully passionately steadfastly suicidal than when I have the thought hey you need to stop bothering your friends with videos of bull I'm never more certain that I should run a samurai blade across my neck than when I realize I am bothering the adults in my life with videos of cats being sung rock music too.

0:08:53 Tom: Yeah.

0:09:47 Tom: Pebbler. Well, how would you know if he never responds to you though? Like you're

0:09:57 Eli: You know what? I'll tell you what it is. It's when you scroll up in the conversation. This is not Heath. Heath is just a receptacle for my whatever. Whatever Heath feels or thinks about my TikToks, unrelated to me. That's not my business. That's not my journey.

0:10:12 Eli: It's my other friends who I do regularly text, and I realized, like, oh, we haven't had a text exchange in a week. I've just bombarded them with TikToks of pugs and bulldogs. That I realized, no, I never, I never send you, because the only ones I want to send you are people falling down and hurting themselves. That's

0:10:22 Thomas: There. I was joking. I think I watch yours. I don't remember. I'm sorry, it was just a joke. They're usually good. Oh no, no, you usually send me some ridiculous poly stuff, don't you? Like, I can't, I know, I'm in, I'm into it. I was just being silly.

0:10:36 Eli: Yeah, I'll send you a poly weirdo or two. Yeah, well, that's on the you, me, and Lydia thread, and Lydia fucking loves my TikTok. Yeah, exactly.

0:10:41 Thomas: Oh, that'll always, yeah, that'll, that, I was actually gonna say that if you want to send me anything, if it's in the three of us one, that's the place to do it. She's my accountability.

0:10:48 Eli: That's right. Yeah, because your

0:10:52 Tom: Just like, hey, did you watch the, yeah.

0:10:52 Eli: Your Tiktak accountability. Yes.

0:10:52 Thomas: Buddy, speaking of accountability, yeah.

0:10:55 Tom: Well, Eli only sends me the TikToks he knows are going to trigger my dystopian fantasies. That's it, he's just like, ah, this will set him off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, that's good, I'm more stable day by day, so I appreciate that. Yeah.

0:10:59 Eli: Yes, it's like

0:10:59 Thomas: That's true. Well, hold on, that's different, Tom, that's difference. He's running a psyop on you to try to get you to I... for what is it, Eli, I can't remember. Yeah, sweet.

0:11:10 Eli: Yeah, it's just, I, it's always like, hey, this new AI talks to you while you're making love to your wife. It's called LoveMaker AI. It collects that data and then shares it directly to Porn Hub and your doctor.

0:11:18 Tom: I Literally.

0:11:19 Thomas: Sweet.

0:11:27 Eli: It rules. All right, so let's, let's hear this TikTok. Let's hear what it has to

0:11:29 Thomas: Here we go.

0:11:31 Clip: Here's the line between being understanding about somebody's mental illness and holding someone accountable. Okay, I have such a good answer for this and I cannot wait to share it with all of you. Hey everyone, for those who don't know me, my name is Joe Nucci. I'm a licensed psychotherapist and I actually specialize in the treatment of the adult children of dysfunctional family dynamics. And everyone I treat struggles with this question. And here's what I teach them.

0:11:36 Thomas: Why didn't you let it finish? Okay.

0:11:48 Eli: Say, Thomas.

0:11:52 Clip: I teach them the accountability formula. The accountability formula, you need to think about responsibility. Now, the level of responsibility that somebody has for their actions in these situations is equal to the impact of their actions minus their capacity to understand times your compassion for the situation. Now, when I say it like that, sometimes people don't quite know how to apply that to a specific

0:12:02 Thomas: Okay. Oh, so you can't do this to me because I like math. So I'm like, but that doesn't make sense because one of those was like a one to 100 percentage and the other was like a score. So it doesn't.

0:12:25 Tom: Was like, but your compassion then could overwrite it's just a bigger, like I'm multiplying it instead of that's a

0:12:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:31 Clip: So I invented this really neat little flow chart that I'm going to share with you right now. What you have to ask yourself is that, what was the harm? What was the impact that these behaviors had on you? Was there any harm? Well, if no, then congratulations, you don't need to be watching this video. But if there was harm, the answer is yes. Then you have to ask herself this question. You have to ask yourself, what was their capacity? What was the capacity that they had to understand what they did? If there isn't any capacity, if they really don't have any insight, then what needs to happen here is there needs to to be a safety plan and a support plan. Blame isn't usually as helpful. Now, to be clear, this safety and support plan, that's for you. That's for the person who's aggrieved, the person that's been harmed.

If there's severe intellectual disability or something, maybe the person also needs a safety plan as well. Now if the person did have the capacity to choose differently, to understand what they did, then you have to ask yourself, well, did they take responsibility? Did they apologize?

Maybe this is something they've done before, but are they genuinely trying to show up and be better? If the answer is yes, then you can extend them some forgiveness and you can extend them with some grace. If the the answer no, then there needs to be consequences, and the consequences aren't necessarily no contact. The consequences could be boundaries. It could be about structuring the time you spend together. It could about reinventing and reimagining what kind of relationship this needs to have so it can be sustainable. I really, really love this formula in flowchart, and I hope that you found it helpful. If any of you are struggling with this, please, please ask me questions down in the comments.

0:12:46 Tom: Problem.

0:12:47 Thomas: I like that.

0:14:02 Thomas: Okay, so it's not really an equation, it's not math, it's like, okay, I had my graphing calculator. Dang.

0:14:06 Eli: It's not actually math. Boo. New episode. Well

0:14:07 Tom: No, it's not. Yeah, Thomas is, you are, you are palpably disappointed. Yeah.

0:14:14 Thomas: You can't get me excited about math and then not have it be math. It

0:14:18 Tom: Thomas is palpably disappointed right now, like he had out his slide rule.

0:14:21 Eli: If You think the yes and no is a binary

0:14:23 Thomas: Yeah, it's a, it's like an algorithm.

0:14:23 Eli: System, right? You could probably add those up, right? Yeah, create a

0:14:27 Tom: I mean, it's math adjacent.

0:14:28 Thomas: Right, sort of.

0:14:29 Eli: Score.

0:14:29 Tom: Right, it's like, it's math adjacent.

0:14:31 Thomas: The flowchart thing is what it is, really. It's like a logical process of kind of going through and assessing what's going on. Yeah, okay.

0:14:36 Eli: Sounds pretty mathy to me, huh, buddy? But I like this a lot because I think it really clearly spells out where to understand, and I also think it deals with the tricky parts of that, like I, I love the way he talks about capacity. Because I think one of the ways which we forgive abusers significantly too far is when we talk about capacity. Now, I won't use anyone on the podcast as an example, even though I should. But a lot of the time when we talked about capacity, we're not actually talking about capacity, we're talking about, like, a projected

0:14:39 Tom: Yeah, yeah. Okay.

0:14:52 Thomas: Okay.

0:15:02 Thomas: You can use whatever you want.

0:15:14 Eli: Capacity as opposed to like our actual understanding of their capacity. So it's like, uh, yeah, my dad was raised in that generation, he didn't know any better, right? And like, we hear that all the time, that's something that comes up in our emails all the time. And I think the way that he defines capacity is like, did they actually have the ability to choose other behavior? It becomes very obvious that the answer to that is yes. Yes.

0:15:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:24 Thomas: No.

0:15:39 Tom: But I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold off a little bit on that. Yeah.

0:15:40 Thomas: Because then anybody would, everyone would have capacity, right? I mean, there would be very limited, short of like genuine disability, everyone would have capacity.

0:15:48 Eli: And I love that. I really, really like that. I think that's important.

0:15:50 Thomas: No, I don't think that's, yeah, I don't think it's what he's

0:15:51 Tom: I'm not sure I'm sure that's what he's saying though. And like I, on my notes that I have for this, like what he wrote is not capacity to perform a different action, but a capacity to understand. And I think that's really a tricky spot because it does require you to some degree as an outsider to at the very least intuit the operation of someone else's mind, right? You have to say, all right, I, I feel like Like they had the ability, the capacity to understand the situation in a way that that would have enabled them to do better or they did not have the capacity. To understand. And that's the reason that they did Not act better. So I think that's a little different because the tricky spot there is it still requires you from the outside to make some. And I think it's reasonable to do this, but I do want to acknowledge the trickiness of it. To make some intuitions about what that person should have and could

0:16:02 Thomas: Saying

0:16:02 Eli: You

0:16:49 Thomas: Yeah, I

0:16:49 Tom: Have known. And I think that that's hard. I think That's a really hard thing to do. What I really do like about this a lot, I like everything about it. Just because something's tricky doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

0:16:58 Thomas: Don't like the guy's mustache. No, I'm just kidding. I actually

0:17:01 Tom: A mustache is bad, but Tom

0:17:02 Eli: Can't hear it on the tape.

0:17:02 Thomas: Do. I was trying to think of something. Yeah, yeah.

0:17:04 Tom: Selleck is the only one that gets a mustache. He took all the mustache for everybody else and that's it. What I do like is that like blame isn't really a useful thing to assign if we could not have done something better. I think about this all the time. It's like happens frequently around here where people, you know, will get mad at themselves for not having made a different choice. Right. And then you look and you're like, all right, but like, could you have known? Is it reasonable that you at the time that you made this choice, at the time that you made this decision, is it reasonable to say you knew how all these other things were going to play? No, of course not. Did you make all of your decisions and choices at the time knowing what you knew with, like, a good heart and, like, good intentions for yourself and other people? If you did, then, like, blame isn't a useful construct anymore. Like, doesn't mean that you can't have regret, it doesn't mean that you can feel guilty about things because we're people

0:17:17 Eli: Or

0:17:32 Thomas: Yeah, oh.

0:17:58 Eli: That you shouldn't make amends.

0:17:58 Tom: Like, we have those feelings, or that you shouldn't make amends. Exactly. But I do think that we shouldn't blame, right? I think that's a very different structure. I think it's a very different, like, response. So I really do, like, I seize on that. I like that because it's something that I think about a lot. Like, if you did your best in this situation with what you knew at the time and who you were at the time and what your abilities were, literally, that's it. So if shit goes tits up after that, it's like, hey, shit goes tits up in life, that's how it works. Let's work together to fix it. But, like, I can't eat shit on it, you know?

0:18:30 Eli: And what I love that he does in that video, too, because I think so many people stop after that capacity. They go, well, I did my best. And the person goes, okay, well, since blame isn't necessary, I guess we're done and I need to get over it. And what he has added in that formula that I think is so wonderful is, and are they changing? Are they working to change that dynamic? Are they working to do better? Because that is where you see the lie about capacity truly come to fruition, right?

0:19:00 Tom: Yeah.

0:19:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:01 Eli: Right? Because I will promise you there's not a toxic person you've ever met who hasn't come up with some version of why it wasn't their fault.

0:19:10 Tom: Yeah, man. You see that reflected a lot of times with language. You know, I've heard so many people use a language that defines who they are in a way that scapegoats them out of everything. And they're like, hey, that's just who I am. You know? That's why I've got this or that, or, you Know, that just, it's who I Am. I've always been like that. I tell it like it is. That's why I hurt Your Feelings. You know. Like, whatever it is, people will make declarative statements about who they are. And then like crazily, we have a tendency not to listen to that. Right. We have a tendency to just not hear those declarative statements for what they are, which is like a fucking get out of responsibility free card, which is what people are using it for. Hey, I'm a tell it like it is guy. That's why I said horrible, horrible shit to you. And it's like, or you could not be that guy.

0:19:32 Thomas: That's the worst. Yeah.

0:19:44 Eli: Yeah. Right.

0:20:00 Tom: You could, you don't get out of it by making a declarative statement about, "Hey, you know, I just, I, I told you, I don't have, I don't have the room for that, I can't, you know, that's why I didn't show up to your, uh, graduation, I'm just, you know," like all that shit. Like, people will just make these excuses for themselves, and like, that's a lot different than taking responsibility.

0:20:23 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:20:24 Thomas: So first off, Phoebe is doing a thing that I don't know if it'll be a future episode, but it's Eli's favorite thing, which she has weaponized the language that she's picked up somewhere. Whenever she's doing something horrible, sometimes she'll just be like, I'm unique and you get to be unique by being different. And I'm just different. And she does. She'll do like a, I don't know, Miss Rachel, something like whatever. She'll be like punching me in the face. And then she'll be Like, but what makes children great is their uniqueness. And this is who I am. Like, literally, she did that last night, like from some tantrum she was having. She put it in the language of like, I'm unique and that's how I'm going to behave. So, yeah, exactly.

I feel like, I feel like either Eli might have taught her that as a prank to me personally, in which case, well done, well done, respect, but also I don't not like this video. I think that, I think these things are good things to think about, but I think this does a lot maybe less than you'd hope, because right away I think it's, again, it's good to think about, but when I try to apply this to, like, my dad, it's really, it's so, so much more than capacity.

And I think you both have kind of already outlined some things about that. I think it's funny if you look at how Eli's done it, all of his adjustments lean toward the people have full capacity and also our response. Like if you Look at Eli's, it's like, he's going hard on crime.

0:20:49 Tom: Jesus Christ.

0:21:03 Eli: That's why I'm going to punch you in the face.

0:21:09 Eli: I did. It was a prank. We went over it at the night. I watched. Thank you.

0:21:51 Thomas: He's going like the formula just finds everyone guilty. Yeah, he is. Because Eli wants to find everyone in full capacity. That's how he's convicted my mom.

0:21:52 Tom: I would

0:21:52 Eli: Tough on crime. Tough on parent crime. Yep. Murder. That is true.

0:22:01 Thomas: He sentenced my mom to death. Yeah. But like when it comes to capacity, it's such a hard question to answer because like I just think about a lot of like, I don't know, free will type stuff where like, did someone have the capacity to do differently? I don'T know. Like you could say yes, but also it's really hard to know what would have had to have gone different. Also, who is going to make them?

That's the thing with my dad as well, is like, there's also the added variable of maybe, maybe, maybe my dad could have had some capacity to change, but who's gonna make him? And there's also this, like, there's almost needs to be a sub-formula of, like, is it fucking worth your time to try to make him? Like, it might have been that he could have changed with a full-time investment from me personally, constantly, but, like, is that my responsibility? I don't know how to answer that. I'm actually posing that as a question. Like, I think it's a little more complicated than in that just because I don't, who's going to change them? Who's going to put in that work? What responsibility do I have to put in that word?

0:23:01 Eli: Well, I think it's about the other person changing themselves. I don't think you have any responsibility to change them.

0:23:06 Tom: Agree with that entirely. Yeah.

0:23:08 Eli: Right.

0:23:07 Thomas: But if it's capacity, so maybe that's more in the other part of the formula because I think capacity just means capacity, wouldn't you think? It just means like can they change?

0:23:16 Tom: Yeah.

0:23:17 Eli: It's can they change, right? Because that, and again, that's why I think he's using this very extreme definition of capacity, which I think is really important, because I think there are a lot of people who don't have the capacity to change, especially older family members who don't have the capacity to change, and I think a safety plan is the way to go. Like, the reason I love that so much, and I love what I, and I know Tom disagrees with me on that, so I want to leave room for that. But, like, the reason I love that definition of capacity is I think he's using it, is I think way more people need a safety plan than need a conversation, right? If your dad is pre Alzheimer's and the way he shows that is delusional psychosis about Donald Trump and the deep state, you need a way to get yourself and your family safe. It's got nothing to do with him anymore.

0:24:05 Tom: Oh, wholeheartedly agree. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:24:01 Thomas: We need a way to get the country safe.

0:24:07 Eli: He's unwell. You can deal with, you know, with a therapist and a licensed professional. You can like figure out how you feel about that, but you should feel about that the same way you would as if his head got cut off in a final destination accident, you know? And so what I love about that is that it puts none of the onus for changing that person on you.

0:24:28 Thomas: Well, but is that practical? Because I want to know, give me an example then of somebody who would qualify under this, Eli, because, like, it sounds like, if I think that the reality of humans, whether it's justified or not, is that if they could or were going to change themselves, they would have already. Like, there's got to be something that is prompting this change, right?

0:24:49 Eli: I think a lot of people have not had it communicated to them that a behavior is harmful or that a behaviour isn't liked. I'll use a silly fun example because I mentioned it earlier in the show. I enjoy sending videos of people falling down to my friends because I think those videos are funny as fuck. But when someone says, hey, you're doing a harm, I have the capacity there to listen and make a change. If I don't make a changed or if I genuinely don't understand that I'm doing a harm with those videos, we go into other safety blur. You block me on Instagram, right? You stop watching my TikToks, whatever the case might be. If I do have the capacity and I choose to make the change, then we can talk about forgiveness, right? And I know that's just a tiny example of it, but like, I think that is a really, really good pathway.

0:25:43 Thomas: Okay, but, but you're still, someone's still communicating to you, is what I'm saying. Like, it's still, like, there's some amount of intervention. Yeah, yeah. And so I guess I was like, what's the, the line there. I think that's why I'm not saying this. I'm not trying to say this ruins the whole thing. I mean, I'm just saying it's like another consideration is what does that take for some people for you? Because you're a good guy that takes me saying, Hey, please stop sending me these. You never sent me another one.

0:25:48 Eli: Yeah, I guess there does need to be the communication that harm exists. Yeah. And that's true. That's true, these people dying.

0:26:09 Thomas: No, but really genuinely, you never sent me Another one because I don't like seeing people getting hurt. And that was the end of that. Not everyone's like you though. And I wonder, I feel like your line, which is funny because I Don't talk to my family and don't, you know, like I'm, I'M not like the other way. I'M NOT super into to staying for the sake of staying and all that crap, I'm almost the opposite. So is that your example? Like, is that kind of your line, Eli? Is like, it needs to, somebody needs to be that responsive because I just think with parents, that's almost nobody. Like that's either you already have good parents or you need to get rid of them, which I actually could be on board with.

0:26:40 Eli: No,

0:26:40 Tom: Really? Like, you think it's like that?

0:26:41 Thomas: Well, that is what it sounds like Eli's kind of application of this would do is what I'm saying.

0:26:45 Eli: Because I'll speak to my own family. I adore my family, but we are not perfect, and we have had a variety of conversations back and forth. I'll give you a really good example. So I, I have a super sweet cousin, and she's a very sensitive person, and she is, she is so lovely, she's so amazing, but like, she's not here for the boss's humor. You know what I'm saying? Like, she doesn't like it because it's mean, and she's not not a mean person, she's a kind, caring person. She's a volunteer for, like, kids with disabilities. Like, she spends her life doing cool, really nice stuff. And when I come in and I'm like, hello, everybody, it's me. But we're all in the same family thread because we share a last name.

And so we were on the family thread and we were talking about something and I like tossed in a joke, which was admittedly like kind of an asshole joke.

Joke, and she called me and she was like, "Hey, I really didn't like that joke. Really hurt my feelings. Really made me feel like it was about me and my family." And like, "I know that that's your sense of humor, and like, you're, you know, a funny guy." And the, the term she used, which was so sweet, she said, "Can we leave that on the podcast?" Right? But

0:27:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:55 Eli: Like, that was her telling me. Now again, I don't think that joke was too far. I don't think that joke was harm. In my first reaction, especially because I'm funny, I was like, "Ah, you're being oversensitive," right? That's the first thought that I had. But because of my capacity to understand and hear when someone says harm and because her feelings are more important than my bit, I wasn't able to make a change and transform because of that.

0:27:55 Tom: Mm hmm.

0:27:55 Thomas: I've never heard you say something like that ever. Something's more important than your bed.

0:28:22 Tom: I

0:28:21 Eli: Yeah, I know. Well, that's true. Very rarely things are more importante than my bit. Similarly, I have members of my family who who I have drawn very firm lines with where they were not receptive to that. And I, again, either made a safety plan or changed that relationship, right? There are members of my family who my relationship with them ostensibly ended when my parents stopped deciding where I go, right.

When I was no longer going with them for family vacations, that person exited my life and I let them know that. But I did it in a way that I really think was healthy, which is that I sort of said like, hey, this is the thing that's been done. I really didn't like it. Here's the harm. And that speaks to your point, Thomas, about like, you do have to let someone know. So I think there is some responsibility there that you have to communicate that harm.

I know specifically the family member I have in mind was not receptive, just sort of, and this is a person who was going through a lot. This is aperson who had a really significantly tougher life than I did, but was never receptive to the idea that they had done any harm. And so I just sort of said, like, OK, well, then I think I think we are good. Right. I wish you no harm.

Certainly I'm not going to make the family pick sides, but like we're not going to see each other again. And we did not. We never saw that person again.

0:29:42 Tom: Think a lot of like your risk to get to your question about who's responsible. I think it comes down to like, what is the relationship in question? You know, how old are we? Like and what are we trying to achieve by communicating this like with somebody?

There, there are people where maybe we don't have a particularly close relationship with. If we don't, we have very little responsibility to, you know, sort of intervene in these sort of like, "This is the way that you hurt me" I statements, all that really healthy great stuff you're supposed to. You just don't have to do that though. Like, you could just skip that and be like, "Yeah, I just don't hang out with Jim." Like, that's how we do that.

But I think if you've got a relationship that was close or we wanted to be close or that has some responsibility element associated with it. So, for example, a parenting responsibility, like for me to my kids, I am responsible to them. Right. And I'm responsible for them. They are not responsible to me or for me. So that directionality of responsibility only goes in one direction, right? There's not a free flow back and forth between us. That's not, in my view, how parenting and being a child, even adult children, that's not how that works as far as I'm concerned. But I do think change only really occurs as the result of feedback and pressure. Like people are not going to change absent feedback and some kind of pressure.

0:30:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:02 Thomas: Yeah. That's, that's kind of what I'm saying. Yeah.

0:31:05 Eli: She

0:31:05 Tom: And one of the things I was thinking about is like interpersonally, Haley and I have had to figure out how to have more constructive fights. Fights, like when we have disagreements, we discovered we don't have disagrements very often, but when we do, we discover that our style of disagreement is exactly the opposite of what the other person needs, right? It is very like, it's just bad. It's a bad style and I dislike that very much. Yeah, I'd rather be hit with a two by four. It's just, it's a little more, no, like we just, we have very different styles in terms of like how we respond, how we communicate when we're having a disagreement. And we've had really frank conversations about how to do better to meet meet each other's needs during times that are emotionally charged where we're having disagreements.

And we've both changed a lot in terms of how we do that and how we sort of get to the point of resolution together. And that change was the result of that feedback and the pressure to try to be a better partner, the pressure to trying to preserve a good, healthy, communicating relationship that has room for disagreement and big emotions.

0:31:26 Eli: Hits you on the head with a big frying pan that goes pang. And you. Yeah.

0:32:07 Eli: And because you both wanted to change. Right. Which I think is really important.

0:32:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:09 Tom: Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's exactly it. The pressure, I think, creates that. You have to want to change. If I didn't care about the relationship, then I'd be like, yeah, I'm not going to make any changes for this, right? Because there's nothing on the other side of it for me. There's no juice to squeeze. So if somebody is like, hey, I need you to make these changes in how you communicate with me, and I don't care that I'm communicating with them in a way that hurts their feelings because they're not somebody that's important to me, that'S not feedback I'm going to take in. I'm just like, yeah, I can solve this a lot quicker. Hang on. You're gone.

0:32:41 Eli: Right. Right.

0:32:41 Tom: Like, it's super easy. Yeah.

0:32:41 Thomas: Yeah. I think that's why I've sort of in my life, like, I don't really, I'm not going to have relationships with the people who can't change. I'm realizing what the other way you can do it is supply. Supply side economics or something is like you, you, if you get rid of their capacity to harm you, then yeah, sort of. Yeah. But with the modification of like, it's about a, it's an interesting calculation of how much of them can you deal with? Like, can you still have some relationship with someone, but still take away their ability to harm you? Which I think, I think some people would say, "Oh no, just cut them out of your life," which I think can be the right answer. But I also think with my dad, there were times when I kind of, no, I would say this is probably more with like other family members, where my dad, I just, I just didn't, I just couldn't deal with talking to you. Not because it harmed me, but because I just, it just felt pointless. Like it felt like I'm

0:32:59 Eli: Yeah, it's a safety plan.

0:33:37 Tom: Yeah.

0:33:37 Thomas: Not in a real. Yeah.

0:33:37 Eli: There was no upside, right?

0:33:39 Thomas: Yeah, I kind OF. I mean, I still think about this to this day somewhat. I mean is could I have hung out with him a little more just for me, you know, just to get a little bit more of him. Him. And it, I do think Trump and COVID sort of robbed me of that chance because I think toward the end, he was pretty hard to talk to. I mean, he already was, but like with all that political stuff, it was the added layer of just like unpleasantness that I think maybe would have not necessarily existed had there been no Trump, you know, not that it's not my dad's fault, but like, it's just, there's, there's us.

0:33:48 Eli: Mm -hmm.

0:34:10 Tom: Right.

0:34:10 Eli: Everything became about politics, right, you couldn't just chat anymore.

0:34:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, and so sometimes I regret, like, once someone's gone forever too, it is a little bit hard, because it's like, what was the downside? Once they're gone, it's permanent, there's no capacity to change anything. And I don't spend a ton of time thinking about this, but occasionally I think, oh man, you know, I said this before, it might be a silly thing, but it's whenever I'm doing crosswords, that's when I think about my dad the most, when I'm doing crosswords or when I listen to Bob Dylan, and I think, like, man, there were some times where I really appreciated my dad's brain.

And it's like, but he had no capacity to change. Like, I'm just like, right, right off the bat formula, like failing the, you know, he just had no capacity to change. Or if he did the effort, it would have taken out of me to like, personally, because my mom wasn't going to do it. The rest of my family, my brother kind of tried, but it didn't work. So he, he had pretty much zero capacity to change. So any relationship would have had to be that sort of supply side economics of, well, what can I, what kind of, how can I manipulate these variables to

0:34:25 Eli: Mm -hm, mm -hm.

0:34:47 Tom: Hmm.

0:34:54 Eli: Mm -him.

0:35:17 Thomas: Where he doesn't cause me any harm, but I still talk to him somewhat.

0:35:17 Eli: Right. Mm -hum.

0:35:21 Thomas: And that was what I did the very end. I visited him two or three times when he was dying for a little bit. And it was, you know, he was like 30 % there probably. Sometimes he would say stuff that was just like, oh, okay. I don't know what that is.

0:35:17 Tom: I

0:35:30 Eli: Mm -huh. Mm -hu.

0:35:34 Thomas: You know, it's very, very interesting. But you know so I think this is all good to think about, but I feel like it's hard not to just turn into, well, you got your Eli's who are people who are going to listen to feedback back and not send you gifts of people getting hurt. And then everything else is kind of like really hard.

0:35:50 Eli: Right.

0:35:50 Thomas: You know, it's like, I don't know how it helps divide that any better.

0:35:59 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:36:01 Tom: Feel like I like this. I feel, like, a lot of people, I think this is more useful than maybe your, at least I find this really useful to think about. I think that there are a lot of times where we feel aggrieved by something that somebody has done, by something somebody has not done. And like when we feel that sense of aggrievement, many people, I think, immediately seek to create a villain and cast blame. I think that that is a very, very common reaction that people have when we feels hurt, when we feeling angry, when feel aggrieved. And I think sort of recasting our own sense of agreement or, you know, hurt in the sense of like, all right, hang on a second. Was I harmed? I don't know. I feel bad. Is that harm?

0:36:06 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:36:45 Tom: I think that first question, I think all of this is useful. No, but I don't like that. And like a part of me chafes too at the idea of a safety plan. Like I get it. I'm, I'm a hundred percent there for it when it is the right terminology. But part of my chafs at the idea that like every time we feel hurt or sad or angry or aggrieved, that that is a fault of someone else's, that, that is something that we should, do you know what I'm saying? Like sometimes we just get hurt and sometimes we don't from people, but we're not unsafe. Yeah.

0:36:48 Eli: Mm -h.

0:37:14 Eli: Right.

0:36:46 Thomas: Yes. Yes. I've spent a lot of time. Sorry. I was going to just agree real quick. I spent a lot of time and I've had to work on myself a lot, questioning, why am I having a reaction to this particular thing? And I do worry that, Tom, you're the kind of guy who, I feel like, you could go too far the other way, where you're putting everything on you because you're that kind of guy, and you're, you're going to look for your ability to have responsibility in the situation. And I think that's good, but I do think there's a, there's fine line. It's like examine why something is bothering you. And there are times when it's like, oh, this is a me thing. This is the harm is actually more from me.

0:37:49 Eli: Right.

0:37:49 Thomas: It's not really what they're doing. It's my reaction to it

0:37:49 Tom: Yeah, Yeah. Dude, a hundred percent. I don't want to give too many details, but I had a scenario pop up a couple of weeks ago where I got really emotionally reactive to something and I was not aggrieved, but I had a complicated set of feelings around my family situation and I found myself becoming very reactive to it in a way that, like, when Haley and I thought about it together later was really not related meaningfully to the event in question at all. Right. But like people are people and we're complicated and we carry with us a lot of complicated feelings and complicated baggage. And we have stuff around our stuff. You know what I mean?

0:38:22 Thomas: Yeah

0:38:32 Tom: And so like we get like we get upset about things. And I think a lot Of times when we get upset, we we think that we have been harmed. And that is often not Not always. Often, not the case. Oftentimes, we feel bad because we're emotionally reactive or hyper -reactive or sensitive or we feel insecure. A lot of the time, when we have big feelings, it doesn't actually originate from somebody else harming us. A lot times, again, not always, a lot of times, those big feelings those senses of aggrievement They arrive from a complicated set of unmet expectations, personal insecurities, guilt around situations, etc., etc., that kind of combine in ways that emotionally overload us.

0:38:32 Eli: Mm -hun, mmh, mm.

0:39:22 Tom: I am always conscious of the fact that if every time we are emotionally reactive, we are looking for a villain, we're hurting other people. Now we're the one doing harm, right? Like, that's no good. That's no good. And, like, I also, like—and again, safety plan is often the right term. I'm not shitting on it. Don't send me your fucking email about it, but like, I think of, like, me becoming estranged with my mom. That wasn't a safety plan. I wasn't unsafe. She was 3,000 miles away. We talked on the phone. She wasn't, no, I, like, I strongly dislike, I was never unsafe. I wasn't emotionally unsafe, you know, like, I wasn't emotionally invested. I just realized at some point we had a call, she had not lifted a finger to come visit for a really long time. She barely called. We barely had a connection. I flew out there a couple of times on my dime when I was piss poor broke.

0:39:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:51 Thomas: No, I, I think that's kind of what I'm describing with my dad as well, Tom, I, yeah, where it's like, yeah.

0:40:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:15 Tom: And then she told me like, oh yeah, I'm going to go on this Alaskan cruise. And I was like, oh yeah.

0:40:20 Thomas: Didn't she get rid of, like, a box of important photographs or something? What was that? Yeah. Oh, worst. She sucks. Yeah.

0:40:25 Tom: On that trip, like I was like, Hey, it was like a box of like old memories or whatever. So God, I lost it last move or whatever and I was kind of hurt by that, but I wasn't like devastated by it. I was like, Oh, that kind of sucks. Like, and then she's like, yeah, I'm going to go on this like expensive Alaskan cruise. And I was like, oh, well, clearly I don't prior, I'm not prioritized here. I need to deprioritize you as well. And it was not an emotional moment for me. I was not worried.

0:40:32 Eli: And

0:40:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:49 Tom: I wasn't, I was just like, all right, cool. Like I get it. Like we can just not talk again. And we just didn't talk again?

0:40:56 Thomas: I mean, it's, it's sort of, it's some amount of, of preservation. Yeah. No, I, I hear

0:40:58 Tom: I don't know. Like safety plan feels so big. Do you know what I mean? Safety plan feels like calling the fire department. Well, what you need is like to put the cover on the pot, you Know, like, it's not, not that big a deal. Sure.

0:41:06 Thomas: You. Yeah.

0:41:06 Eli: I'm not gonna name names about who this is about, but when one refuses to call it a safety plan, it's also, might be a protection to

0:41:15 Thomas: Yeah, it's part of the safety plan. The safety plan is calling from within the safety plant. Yeah, that is the safety

0:41:15 Tom: Yeah.

0:41:15 Eli: Not admit that someone has the ability to harm you.

0:41:22 Tom: I look, totally, like, that that very well might be the case, but part of me just chafes at that because I feel like there are people that are unsafe, and then there are people who are having an emotional reaction. I just feel like that's too big. I don't know, like, yeah.

0:41:27 Thomas: Yeah, you

0:41:27 Eli: Yeah, yeah, you're fine. You're not crying, we're crying, right?

0:41:37 Thomas: Don't feel like it's all only a matter of physical safety, though, right? I mean, you grant that, like, there's, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

0:41:40 Tom: No, no, I don't. I think there's lots of ways to be unsafe, but I, I just, like, for me it feels like there's a big continuum there and I just get like a little weird about

0:41:46 Thomas: Yeah, I hear ya. It's the language creep a little bit of, of, I hear ya.

0:41:52 Tom: It, yeah.

0:41:52 Thomas: I, I just, I just take it in the spirit that I think it's kind of

0:41:54 Tom: It's a minor nitpick and I don't want to fucking email about it. Sure.

0:41:57 Thomas: Yeah. One thing I, I realized, though, as you were, as we were talking about this, is I realized that because I've been so, I don't know, what I actually don't know that I have a good explanation for this, so I'll just leave that on, just say what the thing is, which is that I only have the part of me that has to evaluate how I should react, like, actually in the moment with people interpersonally, I don't. I only have the part where I have to think about how I feel about what they've said or done I think it's because of, like, a childhood of constantly having my feelings, you know, minimized with my parents, and not so, like, for me it's like

0:42:30 Tom: Yeah.

0:42:31 Eli: So they trained you to say, to go, what's the reaction?

0:42:32 Thomas: I think so. They train me to not have any feelings except sometimes anger. You're allowed to have that. It's really, it's weird how it ends up being like toxic masculinity. So for me, I don't really have that first, like, someone does something and I, I think, like, wait, that doesn't seem good, and then I have to kind of reflect on it, because also my instincts were bad too. Like, there were, there was a lot of my life where things would bother me that definitely was a me problem. And it was because of just the gremlin that I was raised as. And so I've really, almost my, the entirety of my emotional reaction is like a premeditated crime. Like, it has to be, it has to be like, I have to think about it for a bit and then be like, how do I feel about this? Then I do have emotion. Like, if I come to the conclusion that, you know, like, oh, I think they've wronged me.

0:42:57 Eli: Right, of course.

0:43:19 Eli: Wait a second, I'm sad. Yeah.

0:43:21 Tom: Oh.

0:43:21 Thomas: Yeah, no, kind of, because it's like, Oh, I'm so used to having, having to mediate my feelings through that rationality because early on, I either wasn't allowed to have these feelings or when I had them, they were just wrong and inappropriate, like genuinely. So anyway, it's kind of funny. Like I've realized so much of my process is pretty much that I have to sit back and be like, okay, if I'm looking at this from the bird's eye view is what this person did cool. And then it's like, wait, that's kind of not cool. And then I'm really upset, but it's, it's all, it's never in the moment.

0:43:52 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:43:58 Eli: All Right, gentlemen, before we go, my wife really hates it when my 20 year old neighbor sunbathes topless. Personally, I'm on the fence.

0:44:08 Thomas: It well

0:44:09 Tom: God.

0:44:54 Eli: Motherfucker, your neck is fine!

0:44:56 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast where we eventually circle back to our AMA questions from 10 actual months ago from August of 2024.

0:45:07 Eli: Sounds

0:45:07 Thomas: We're doing that we're doing that one second we're doing that on second

0:45:10 Tom: Oh, we're doing that one second, I'm sorry.

0:45:12 Thomas: I'm a poopy pants boy

0:45:15 Eli: Pretty mathy to me, huh buddy?

0:45:19 Tom: Tom selick is the only one that gets a mustache