I went through a situation very similar to Ch90. Same story, different details.
Even got the worse-than-useless attempts at comfort—now I can’t even say “I’m sorry” to my uncle for letting his son die. That’s one of the few things that still brings me to tears about this whole incident.
My thought process was fairly similar to Harry’s, and I’ve given it a lot of thought, so I might be able to shed some light on the topic.
Any thoughts about how to apply this sort of thinking when you’re extremely stressed?
When the pressure was on, there was no room for guilt and it was just do do do with some frantic thinking interpersed—even when it was clear that there was little hope. The feeling that I was to blame didn’t come until afterwards, when there was nothing left I could do. At the point where you can still do something, it’s not so much the “it’s your fault and you should feel bad”, but rather “this can’t happen. THINK THINK THINK!” which gets in the way.
The main advice I have here is to come to terms with the possibility ahead of time. Get those tears out of the way now, so that should it happen, you just see it for what it is and not what it “can’t” be.
Practice helps, but it’s hard to deliberately come by legit/safe practice. Even though I had plenty of experience, I didn’t realize at the time that I was a more panicked than I needed to be. I had never lost before, and so I thought I was doing “good enough”—though in hindsight, clues were there.
I can’t imagine anything I could have done at the time to not feel guilt once it was official, and I’m not sure I would have wanted to anyway.
People will scourge themselves in ways that they’d curse if the lashes were landing on anyone else’s back. Why is compassion and kindness only for other people?
Because you usually can’t get away with lashing at others.
Lashing at others is often done to shift blame off the attacker even if it doesn’t help the attacked take responsibility, and so it makes sense to be punished. It’s also easy to win social points for making people feel good and signalling alliance even if it masks over the problem and keeps them stuck.
These things don’t really apply internally, and there is a purpose to it.
The solution isn’t just believing that internal abuse is wrong, it’s alieving that living well is safe.
This is exactly it. Calling something “wrong” and “bad” isn’t that helpful. You wouldn’t need to call it “wrong” if you didn’t have a reason to do it in the first place—and as long as you have that reason, you’re going to have an uncomfortable inner conflict about it and will likely do it anyway.
Actually, I wouldn’t even call it abuse. It’s a message—a very painful message, but just a message nonetheless. Reality isn’t what it should be and it could have been if you made better decisions and were more the kind of person you try to be. Pain isn’t something to avoid. Avoiding pain rather than avoiding that which causes pain is simply wireheading.
The pain is an impulse to do something about it. I thought I was prepared to keep my family safe. I was wrong. It would be bad to feel all happy and guilt free as long as I had not done my homework to make sure I don’t screw up again. No way in hell I’m going to let myself be guilt free if it means I might lose someone else that could have been saved.
As I went through exactly what happened, why it happened, what I could have done differently, how I would have known to do it differently, what changes need to be made to ensure that I do it right in the future, etc… I felt less and less guilt. And then another aspect would come up that I hadn’t thought through and I’d have to do it all over again. In the end it’s just something that is what it is. I wish I had done things differently and that he were still alive—of course I do. However I can’t really beat myself up any more for making the wrong call now that I know exactly what lead me to it. I’m a deterministic system and was in a known state with known inputs, so of course I gave that output. There’s just no other way for it to be—might as well wish 2+2=5. The only thing left to do is to change the system so that it does better in the future.
Ideally you’d just get on track to do what you need to do so that you don’t need the constant motivation of guilt—and then the guilt can just go away immediately instead of when you’re finished working things through. That’s what I do with physical pain. However, I wasn’t able to do that here. Most can’t.
I couldn’t because going through and learning what I needed to learn required plowing through nasty ugh-fields. Places where my identity conflicted with reality. No, I’m not perfect at handling situations under stress, and yes it can actually be the difference between having my cousin alive and not. Those aren’t fun thoughts, and I didn’t want to have to face them. The guilt needed to be high enough to push me through it anyway. I even had my hypnotherapist buddy help guide me through it at first, until I was able to more easily recognize subtle deflections I was making in order to not feel all the pain.
It’d have been better if I just faced all uncomfortable thoughts without flinching. I wish I were able to just accept everything as it comes and make sure I learn enough from bad experiences without needing to feel these pressures, but I’m not there yet. And so of course I felt guilty. The alternative wasn’t acceptable.
It’s pretty obvious why you wouldn’t want to go into details, but this seems rather too vague to be of use. Should I think of plans in case I need to find a student in Hogwarts, to fight a troll, to convince a student to disobey McGonagall? Should I do a headcount every time I walk into a room and try to guess where missing people are and what will happen if someone announces there’s a troll in the castle? Should I sign up to Defense classes and duelling clubs and the Armies so I’ll get training in thinking and acting under pressure? Should I think of possible ways Hermione could end up dead or hurt or in Azkaban and ways I can prevent that? Should I imagine those outcomes in excruciating detail so that I won’t be too shocked if they happen? Once Hermione gets eaten by the troll, how do I use the replays and alternate versions in my head to become better?
Nah, it’s fine. That one was hard for me because it hit a spot I hadn’t worked through yet, but I’m good now and not afraid to give details. I just feel weird bringing up personal details when it doesn’t feel relevant—like if I were to start talking about the taste of death blood/vomit unnecessarily :P
On the forethought/practice side of things (as opposed to the emotional prep side), it really depends on your risk level. For MoR!Harry, probably something like “all of the above”. For me personally, the risk level isn’t obscene like that, but given how big my family is and the fun stuff we do, it was almost surprising no one had been seriously injured (before the accident). There’s no way I could have planned out the logistics of incident any more carefully—everything was right there. The only mistake I made that night that definitely would have made a difference was treating the guy in danger as less of a PC and more of an NPC. It’s actually a mistake I’ve made in the past, but I had no idea it would apply to him. Even in hindsight it’s not obvious.
In terms of preparing for that kind of thing, other than common sense safety protocols, I keep in mind which situations are potentially life threatening and which risk a broken bone at most—and taking extra risks in the latter category because it gets me practice and is fun (never actually broken a bone, or been present while one broken, btw).
In terms of learning from the aftermath, it seems like it just follows from taking responsibility but not blame. You’re a deterministic system. Why’d you do what you did? No, “I’m a crappy person” isn’t a real answer since there’s no fundamental crappiness to excise. In my case, there were several things I didn’t think of. None of them I could have been expected to specifically prepare for beforehand, but I probably would have done better if I was less panicked. So why was I panicked? Well, my cousin might die and that’s not okay for one, and two, I had never had panic level problems before—I had always managed that really well, and I wasn’t far above my normal level, so it wasn’t on my mind to regulate it down. I had things to do, and didn’t feel like I had time to think. I didn’t, really, but I didn’t have time to not think and just do the first plan either. So the takeaway is to be emotionally prepared next time and to set myself a lower level of mental excitation to aim for (both actionable for me). I feel like I can let myself off the hook for not noticing a problem that had never impacted me before—I can’t see how I could possibly foresee the next “like” thing without unreasonable amounts of thought.
The one game changing decision was to focus on getting him out of danger instead of wasting time trying to figure out how much time we had on the clock. Even now, there’s no obvious answer. I’ll shift in the direction of more effort towards understanding the situation first, and keep it on mind as a potential source of critical info even if I really can’t take a few seconds to figure things out—which really seemed to be the case. The more likely way I could have gotten that right was to have less trust in him to start with—or to prepare him to be more trustworthy. Both of those get long faster than they get informative, but I’ve been down those paths as well. But yeah, basically take responsibility to change, view yourself neutrally to figure out why you actually did what you did, and what you can actually change so that you’ll do better in the future—and then chase it down until there are no worthwhile changes to be made.
The emotional prep side I’ll write about in response to Benito’s reply to me—maybe tomorrow or something since I have to go have fun now :)
The main advice I have here is to come to terms with the possibility ahead of time. Get those tears out of the way now, so that should it happen, you just see it for what it is and not what it “can’t” be.
Do you mean come to terms with your loved ones dying before there’s a problem, or that, after the problem starts / they die, come to terms with it as soon as possible?
I meant beforehand—it’s just easier real time if you don’t have to deal with the “this can’t happen!” impulse. Though if you find yourself in the midst of things without having it beforehand just put the emotional reaction off and be realistic. You just don’t want to get overly panicked and deny the real danger level. By denying the danger level, you’ll you’ll rule out dangerous/costly options even if they’re the right call. Ben Franklin apparently messed this one up.
Coming to terms with it isn’t a happy process though, so people tend not to do it until they’re hit in the face with it. Most people will find ways of not thinking about it by pretending they believe in heaven, or pretending they’ve accepted it being a couple common ones—sometimes pretending they don’t care. It’s certainly not a fun process—it’s just that I think it’s worth it anyway. Litany of Gendlin, and all that.
How does one go about doing that? I can tell whether I have a plan to prevent a bad thing or deal with its consequences, and whether I’m repressing thoughts of bad things happening, encouraging them, or letting them happen, but I’m not sure how I know I’ve come to terms with something.
Well… It’s hard to explain. I’ve never managed to “just tell” someone and have them pick it up—despite trying. I’ve always had to guide them through one so that they feel the difference between what they were doing and what I was getting at. I was mostly just pointing it out for the extra motivation to “come to terms with it”—so that if/when you do bump into the option, you know to take it.
EDIT: My newer hack at the problem is mostly “just go read ‘focusing’ by Gendlin”, and then maybe get back to that routine.
Also, I didn’t actually create that routine—just that explanation of it. Credit goes to Joe Fobes for that. He knows his stuff when it comes to hypnosis and therapy and stuff.
Thanks! You’re right, I don’t get it. I do have questions, though:
How do you recognise success? I don’t think I could distinguish it from giving up or going numb.
What do endpoints look like? Like, can I answer “I wish he wasn’t going to die” with “Because then he won’t be alive and that’s bad, duh” or do I need to find some way to pick that apart?
How does looping back work? “Why do I wish he’d sign up for cryonics? Because if he doesn’t he will die. I wish he wasn’t going to die.” works, but I don’t know what to do with “Why am I even acknowledging things? Because jimmy said I’ll be more effective at preventing things if I come to terms with them”.
Damn! That’s a disappointing thing to be right about. I admire your continued curiosity on the topic.
How do you recognise success? I don’t think I could distinguish it from giving up or going numb.
For example, you’re probably not crying over not having a yacht to sail around on. Like, sure, it’d be nice, but of course you don’t have a yacht. It feels a lot like that. Someone that just spent all their money on one just to have it sink would be upset about it because they’re framing it differently. They’re “supposed to” have a yacht, and reality is violating their picture of what they “ought to” have. It’s about updating your picture to have it match reality again. Once it feels like there’s no way reality “could” be different, then there’s no more room for the ought-is divergence to cry about. Just of course it sank—that’s what yachts do when you run them into rocks. And of course I ran it into rocks, I was told it was clear. And of course I was told it was clear, Bob is incompetent, and I knew I was taking a risk when hiring him. It’s just all understood down to the level where it’s just not important enough to go into it. What am I gonna do? Wish that the known-incompetent bob magically got it right? How much sense does that make?
There’s no loss of motivation, just loss of distractions. If you want a yacht, fix it—it’s just no longer “this can’t have happened”, it’s “it did happen. Shrug”. It’s all pull motivation now, not a pushing motivation—which is good because things tend to buckle under compression loading anyway.
Perhaps more important is that it just feels right. With going “numb”, it’s like “I can’t let myself want because it hurts too much and I wish I didn’t have to bury this hurt”—we can do better than that. It’s kinda one of those “when you’re dreaming you don’t realize you’re dreaming, but when you’re awake you know you’re awake” things. You’ll know when you’re there. It’s not like “eh, am I doing it right? Is this how I “should” feel?”. It’s more like “ahhhhh… peace at last”. Just nothing else you could ask for. I mean, it’d be nice if it never sank, but I’m about as tempted to yearn for that as I am to go on wishing that 2+2=3 - because neither could conceivably happen without ignoring known facts. No more gap where you can wish it went the other way. And so now you can just focus where you need to, because it’s clear what you need to do and you’re on your way to doing it—and it’s the best outcome not ruled out by your understanding of the world.
What do endpoints look like? Like, can I answer “I wish he wasn’t going to die” with “Because then he won’t be alive and that’s bad, duh” or do I need to find some way to pick that apart?
Nah, that doesn’t sound like a good answer. The “uh.. Duh?” answer comes up when it seems implied that the asker doesn’t share the “it is bad” impression, but we’re after a different thing here. Regardless of whether we think it’s actually bad, we’re tracking down the particular reasons that have emotions attached. For example, “Because then his family won’t get to have him in their lives”, and “because I can’t have him in my life”. For me, those were both painful to acknowledge—the latter in particular.
How does looping back work? “Why do I wish he’d sign up for cryonics? Because if he doesn’t he will die. I wish he wasn’t going to die.” works, but I don’t know what to do with “Why am I even acknowledging things? Because jimmy said I’ll be more effective at preventing things if I come to terms with them”.
The “why?” doesn’t have to be all of the following questions—it’s just purposely vague so that you answer the one (or more) that feels important.
If you need to going down the “Why am I even acknowledging things?” path, that answer is fine, but not the end of the road. The next question is then “why do I even care what this ‘jimmy’ guy says!?”
I went through a situation very similar to Ch90. Same story, different details.
Even got the worse-than-useless attempts at comfort—now I can’t even say “I’m sorry” to my uncle for letting his son die. That’s one of the few things that still brings me to tears about this whole incident.
My thought process was fairly similar to Harry’s, and I’ve given it a lot of thought, so I might be able to shed some light on the topic.
When the pressure was on, there was no room for guilt and it was just do do do with some frantic thinking interpersed—even when it was clear that there was little hope. The feeling that I was to blame didn’t come until afterwards, when there was nothing left I could do. At the point where you can still do something, it’s not so much the “it’s your fault and you should feel bad”, but rather “this can’t happen. THINK THINK THINK!” which gets in the way.
The main advice I have here is to come to terms with the possibility ahead of time. Get those tears out of the way now, so that should it happen, you just see it for what it is and not what it “can’t” be.
Practice helps, but it’s hard to deliberately come by legit/safe practice. Even though I had plenty of experience, I didn’t realize at the time that I was a more panicked than I needed to be. I had never lost before, and so I thought I was doing “good enough”—though in hindsight, clues were there.
I can’t imagine anything I could have done at the time to not feel guilt once it was official, and I’m not sure I would have wanted to anyway.
Because you usually can’t get away with lashing at others.
Lashing at others is often done to shift blame off the attacker even if it doesn’t help the attacked take responsibility, and so it makes sense to be punished. It’s also easy to win social points for making people feel good and signalling alliance even if it masks over the problem and keeps them stuck.
These things don’t really apply internally, and there is a purpose to it.
This is exactly it. Calling something “wrong” and “bad” isn’t that helpful. You wouldn’t need to call it “wrong” if you didn’t have a reason to do it in the first place—and as long as you have that reason, you’re going to have an uncomfortable inner conflict about it and will likely do it anyway.
Actually, I wouldn’t even call it abuse. It’s a message—a very painful message, but just a message nonetheless. Reality isn’t what it should be and it could have been if you made better decisions and were more the kind of person you try to be. Pain isn’t something to avoid. Avoiding pain rather than avoiding that which causes pain is simply wireheading.
The pain is an impulse to do something about it. I thought I was prepared to keep my family safe. I was wrong. It would be bad to feel all happy and guilt free as long as I had not done my homework to make sure I don’t screw up again. No way in hell I’m going to let myself be guilt free if it means I might lose someone else that could have been saved.
As I went through exactly what happened, why it happened, what I could have done differently, how I would have known to do it differently, what changes need to be made to ensure that I do it right in the future, etc… I felt less and less guilt. And then another aspect would come up that I hadn’t thought through and I’d have to do it all over again. In the end it’s just something that is what it is. I wish I had done things differently and that he were still alive—of course I do. However I can’t really beat myself up any more for making the wrong call now that I know exactly what lead me to it. I’m a deterministic system and was in a known state with known inputs, so of course I gave that output. There’s just no other way for it to be—might as well wish 2+2=5. The only thing left to do is to change the system so that it does better in the future.
Ideally you’d just get on track to do what you need to do so that you don’t need the constant motivation of guilt—and then the guilt can just go away immediately instead of when you’re finished working things through. That’s what I do with physical pain. However, I wasn’t able to do that here. Most can’t.
I couldn’t because going through and learning what I needed to learn required plowing through nasty ugh-fields. Places where my identity conflicted with reality. No, I’m not perfect at handling situations under stress, and yes it can actually be the difference between having my cousin alive and not. Those aren’t fun thoughts, and I didn’t want to have to face them. The guilt needed to be high enough to push me through it anyway. I even had my hypnotherapist buddy help guide me through it at first, until I was able to more easily recognize subtle deflections I was making in order to not feel all the pain.
It’d have been better if I just faced all uncomfortable thoughts without flinching. I wish I were able to just accept everything as it comes and make sure I learn enough from bad experiences without needing to feel these pressures, but I’m not there yet. And so of course I felt guilty. The alternative wasn’t acceptable.
It’s pretty obvious why you wouldn’t want to go into details, but this seems rather too vague to be of use. Should I think of plans in case I need to find a student in Hogwarts, to fight a troll, to convince a student to disobey McGonagall? Should I do a headcount every time I walk into a room and try to guess where missing people are and what will happen if someone announces there’s a troll in the castle? Should I sign up to Defense classes and duelling clubs and the Armies so I’ll get training in thinking and acting under pressure? Should I think of possible ways Hermione could end up dead or hurt or in Azkaban and ways I can prevent that? Should I imagine those outcomes in excruciating detail so that I won’t be too shocked if they happen? Once Hermione gets eaten by the troll, how do I use the replays and alternate versions in my head to become better?
Nah, it’s fine. That one was hard for me because it hit a spot I hadn’t worked through yet, but I’m good now and not afraid to give details. I just feel weird bringing up personal details when it doesn’t feel relevant—like if I were to start talking about the taste of death blood/vomit unnecessarily :P
On the forethought/practice side of things (as opposed to the emotional prep side), it really depends on your risk level. For MoR!Harry, probably something like “all of the above”. For me personally, the risk level isn’t obscene like that, but given how big my family is and the fun stuff we do, it was almost surprising no one had been seriously injured (before the accident). There’s no way I could have planned out the logistics of incident any more carefully—everything was right there. The only mistake I made that night that definitely would have made a difference was treating the guy in danger as less of a PC and more of an NPC. It’s actually a mistake I’ve made in the past, but I had no idea it would apply to him. Even in hindsight it’s not obvious.
In terms of preparing for that kind of thing, other than common sense safety protocols, I keep in mind which situations are potentially life threatening and which risk a broken bone at most—and taking extra risks in the latter category because it gets me practice and is fun (never actually broken a bone, or been present while one broken, btw).
In terms of learning from the aftermath, it seems like it just follows from taking responsibility but not blame. You’re a deterministic system. Why’d you do what you did? No, “I’m a crappy person” isn’t a real answer since there’s no fundamental crappiness to excise. In my case, there were several things I didn’t think of. None of them I could have been expected to specifically prepare for beforehand, but I probably would have done better if I was less panicked. So why was I panicked? Well, my cousin might die and that’s not okay for one, and two, I had never had panic level problems before—I had always managed that really well, and I wasn’t far above my normal level, so it wasn’t on my mind to regulate it down. I had things to do, and didn’t feel like I had time to think. I didn’t, really, but I didn’t have time to not think and just do the first plan either. So the takeaway is to be emotionally prepared next time and to set myself a lower level of mental excitation to aim for (both actionable for me). I feel like I can let myself off the hook for not noticing a problem that had never impacted me before—I can’t see how I could possibly foresee the next “like” thing without unreasonable amounts of thought.
The one game changing decision was to focus on getting him out of danger instead of wasting time trying to figure out how much time we had on the clock. Even now, there’s no obvious answer. I’ll shift in the direction of more effort towards understanding the situation first, and keep it on mind as a potential source of critical info even if I really can’t take a few seconds to figure things out—which really seemed to be the case. The more likely way I could have gotten that right was to have less trust in him to start with—or to prepare him to be more trustworthy. Both of those get long faster than they get informative, but I’ve been down those paths as well. But yeah, basically take responsibility to change, view yourself neutrally to figure out why you actually did what you did, and what you can actually change so that you’ll do better in the future—and then chase it down until there are no worthwhile changes to be made.
The emotional prep side I’ll write about in response to Benito’s reply to me—maybe tomorrow or something since I have to go have fun now :)
Do you mean come to terms with your loved ones dying before there’s a problem, or that, after the problem starts / they die, come to terms with it as soon as possible?
I meant beforehand—it’s just easier real time if you don’t have to deal with the “this can’t happen!” impulse. Though if you find yourself in the midst of things without having it beforehand just put the emotional reaction off and be realistic. You just don’t want to get overly panicked and deny the real danger level. By denying the danger level, you’ll you’ll rule out dangerous/costly options even if they’re the right call. Ben Franklin apparently messed this one up.
Coming to terms with it isn’t a happy process though, so people tend not to do it until they’re hit in the face with it. Most people will find ways of not thinking about it by pretending they believe in heaven, or pretending they’ve accepted it being a couple common ones—sometimes pretending they don’t care. It’s certainly not a fun process—it’s just that I think it’s worth it anyway. Litany of Gendlin, and all that.
How does one go about doing that? I can tell whether I have a plan to prevent a bad thing or deal with its consequences, and whether I’m repressing thoughts of bad things happening, encouraging them, or letting them happen, but I’m not sure how I know I’ve come to terms with something.
Well… It’s hard to explain. I’ve never managed to “just tell” someone and have them pick it up—despite trying. I’ve always had to guide them through one so that they feel the difference between what they were doing and what I was getting at. I was mostly just pointing it out for the extra motivation to “come to terms with it”—so that if/when you do bump into the option, you know to take it.
If you think you can be the exception, here’s my current hack at the problem
EDIT: My newer hack at the problem is mostly “just go read ‘focusing’ by Gendlin”, and then maybe get back to that routine.
Also, I didn’t actually create that routine—just that explanation of it. Credit goes to Joe Fobes for that. He knows his stuff when it comes to hypnosis and therapy and stuff.
Thanks! You’re right, I don’t get it. I do have questions, though:
How do you recognise success? I don’t think I could distinguish it from giving up or going numb.
What do endpoints look like? Like, can I answer “I wish he wasn’t going to die” with “Because then he won’t be alive and that’s bad, duh” or do I need to find some way to pick that apart?
How does looping back work? “Why do I wish he’d sign up for cryonics? Because if he doesn’t he will die. I wish he wasn’t going to die.” works, but I don’t know what to do with “Why am I even acknowledging things? Because jimmy said I’ll be more effective at preventing things if I come to terms with them”.
Damn! That’s a disappointing thing to be right about. I admire your continued curiosity on the topic.
For example, you’re probably not crying over not having a yacht to sail around on. Like, sure, it’d be nice, but of course you don’t have a yacht. It feels a lot like that. Someone that just spent all their money on one just to have it sink would be upset about it because they’re framing it differently. They’re “supposed to” have a yacht, and reality is violating their picture of what they “ought to” have. It’s about updating your picture to have it match reality again. Once it feels like there’s no way reality “could” be different, then there’s no more room for the ought-is divergence to cry about. Just of course it sank—that’s what yachts do when you run them into rocks. And of course I ran it into rocks, I was told it was clear. And of course I was told it was clear, Bob is incompetent, and I knew I was taking a risk when hiring him. It’s just all understood down to the level where it’s just not important enough to go into it. What am I gonna do? Wish that the known-incompetent bob magically got it right? How much sense does that make?
There’s no loss of motivation, just loss of distractions. If you want a yacht, fix it—it’s just no longer “this can’t have happened”, it’s “it did happen. Shrug”. It’s all pull motivation now, not a pushing motivation—which is good because things tend to buckle under compression loading anyway.
Perhaps more important is that it just feels right. With going “numb”, it’s like “I can’t let myself want because it hurts too much and I wish I didn’t have to bury this hurt”—we can do better than that. It’s kinda one of those “when you’re dreaming you don’t realize you’re dreaming, but when you’re awake you know you’re awake” things. You’ll know when you’re there. It’s not like “eh, am I doing it right? Is this how I “should” feel?”. It’s more like “ahhhhh… peace at last”. Just nothing else you could ask for. I mean, it’d be nice if it never sank, but I’m about as tempted to yearn for that as I am to go on wishing that 2+2=3 - because neither could conceivably happen without ignoring known facts. No more gap where you can wish it went the other way. And so now you can just focus where you need to, because it’s clear what you need to do and you’re on your way to doing it—and it’s the best outcome not ruled out by your understanding of the world.
Nah, that doesn’t sound like a good answer. The “uh.. Duh?” answer comes up when it seems implied that the asker doesn’t share the “it is bad” impression, but we’re after a different thing here. Regardless of whether we think it’s actually bad, we’re tracking down the particular reasons that have emotions attached. For example, “Because then his family won’t get to have him in their lives”, and “because I can’t have him in my life”. For me, those were both painful to acknowledge—the latter in particular.
The “why?” doesn’t have to be all of the following questions—it’s just purposely vague so that you answer the one (or more) that feels important.
If you need to going down the “Why am I even acknowledging things?” path, that answer is fine, but not the end of the road. The next question is then “why do I even care what this ‘jimmy’ guy says!?”