Nobody can teach you something they have no ability to do and no understanding of. Our first teachers, from before we can do anything but imbibe lessons we don’t understand, are our parents. If our parents don’t know how to compromise, how to resolve conflict, how not to become frustrated and enraged at others, how to forgive — we have a hard time unlearning whatever they demonstrated for us everyday so we can learn those crucial skills.

Rage is hard, fear of shame is devastating, the need to be right, no matter what, is crippling. The best some people can do, with every intention of being loving and teaching those they love by their example, is not very good. It is very bad. They will teach their children to take the blame for their parents’ shortcomings. The child grows to be an adult with deep cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, their parents are great people. On the other hand, they find themselves always in pain, especially around their parents, who love them, but are exhausting to be around.

My father lamented just before he died that in a challenging world with so many obstacles in everyone’s path that he placed additional obstacles in the path of his son and daughter, the two people, beside his wife, who he loved the most in the world. I’d have followed up on it, but he was dead.

If you work hard and have some luck, you can figure out how to become the parent to yourself that your disabled parents weren’t capable of being. Clearly, if we got to choose, it is much better never to have had this kind of asshole parenting. Parenting is in large part based on authority, but when the respect isn’t mutual, you wind up having to accommodate yourself to tyranny that may cause your brain to explode, unless you can come to see it for what it actually is. As Robin Williams’s character, the shrink in Goodwill Hunting, told Matt Damon’s, his super vulnerable tough guy patient, “it’s not your fault.”

It’s not your fault.