Freedomain Radio

Inability to submit:

The last few jobs I've had I've lost almost instantly because I can't handle any kind of force pressuring me to do something I simply don't want to do. Recently I was working for ASDA (Walmart in the uk). I worked as a product collector for the internet shopping part of the company, my job was basically to walk up and down marble floored aisles all day repetitively picking up items, carrying them around in bags and pushing the totes into the back. The first day of my concern here was the fact that during duty you actually wern't allowed to sit down. I sat down anyway, using anything I could find as a chair often sitting on a tote and possibly damaging it.  Now, I'm 265lbs and 6'3'' wearing hard soled shoes and walking on marble like flooring all day, it's not good, especially when the most you've ever walked in shoes is about 12 meters from the car to the wedding reception and back. :P.
I started getting blisters on my feet because of the hard leather my shoes were made out of, now. Am I supposed to just keep working? I asked that question, and I didn't care what the answer was because I had my own answer and if the company didn't like it then they wern't human. So, I took a day off. They'd told me "we work on a green - amber - red system, basically it means you can take two days off and be issued a warning and on the third day we have to let you go."  =SHIT. I took my day off, and on the first day I was called and told "We really want you in, come in because we're short staffed" and thanks to my empathy to the few  workmates I learned to get on with, I went in anyway, half hobbling.  The first thing I was told as I got in was. "The personel manager wants to see you". So I went to see her, where she told me "Oh, so you've got achey feet, it happens" I got annoyed, so simply said "I've not got achey feet, I've got blisters on my feet, on my heel and the side of my toes." and she continued "Well that doesn't matter, during the analysing period where we test how good you are at the job, we expect you to walk across hot coals to get here on time and do your work." then instant she said it, utter rebellion sparked up in my heart and I simply stuck up my middle finger and left, never to return again.

 I was talking about this in the chat room with a guy named ash, he told me to post it into a forum along with things about my childhood, etc. Clearly a freudian person I think as he felt it was something to do with my upbringing. So I will.

My parents were good parents, they were an authority I loved but they wern't all knowing like you want an authority to be. As day after day they'd take me to a school that was causing my psychological stress and clearly complex which stances me against authority. I have irlens syndrome and dyslexia, I used to work in short bursts of energy,  flying through half my work then stopping and just sitting there looking frustrated. My (first ever) teacher became increasingly pissed off by this, screaming at me at the top of her voice in class over something I couldn't help. She also watched on as three bullies tried to  choke me with sand, throw pencils at me, etc. Time went on, I kept having shitter and shitter teachers, at one point in my junior school (secondary school) I overheard teachers talking about me because they'd noticed I was the target for bullying, and the conversation ended in this line. "Well sometimes it's just the pecking order, you have to just let it be otherwise they wont learn how to cope with life". Maybe that's true, but hearing it at that age made me come to this slipknot realization that the world of authority vs me was the concept of reality. I became rebellious, started throwing ink cartridges in the school swimming pool and coming to terms with their prison scheme that was called "the wall".

The wall was  literally a wall, teachers would tell all of the 'bad boys' and girls to stand at it and couldn't move or look at each other. It was out in the 'playground' so we could look at all of the kids playing while we wern't. One day though, while at the wall, the kids playing football started kicking the balls at us. I felt like I was at a firing squad hoping someone would miss, but no. Ended up with a bleeding nose and winded. And that's the first time I remember absolutely shedding myself of the mental chains of authority, I came running off of the wall and knocked one of the kids to the ground and started to violently punch him, a teacher pulled me off and I started punching her too. Of course, it was all my fault so I got a counsellor, woopee wasn't that a dream.

She told me to do drawings, great! So I drew her top cat. She asked me a few questions, I didn't like the questions so I lied and she  told my parents I was fine. Anyway, time went on and in highschool I was a little more violent, I used to draw relatively horrific pictures in my books of people hanging babies and shooting kneeling hostages. I was disturbed I guess? Nope, just a normal teenage boy who wants to offend people as much as he can, especially teachers. It worked. I even ended up developing the nick name "Sick-Boy" because I'd use chains to deter bullies from hitting my friends in a rather medieval technique of trying to wrap it around their face in a whip like motion. I never got in trouble, because the teachers saw that I was defending my friends and left me to it. Also because I was bigger than them by now :P.  

Time went on, school was fine, people started liking me more but I never submitted to the hierarchies of the school playground, with the popular 'cool' kids and the nerds, I'd just be friends with any individual who I got on with and I liked it. Slipknot, the band, fed my ideals in this stage of my life. I felt ugly like most kids do, but the difference was I loved it because I thought it offended people who wanted to control me and make me something they like. I went to art college after school, with my 3 respectable grades and ended up getting a high mark, then in my second year I quit because after a really fucking painfull heartbreak I literally couldn't find it in me to do my coursework. I'm trying to get back on the course, but I still have this insane problem with authority that just never seems to let me keep a job.

 
Wow, that was long...

AsatruEnoAesir
 

That sounds all too terrible for words, thanks for posting -- and so sorry for all the torture you had to undergo as a child.

If I had to make my guess, I would say that your parents were not good at parenting. I hate to put it so bluntly, but it was their job to make sure that you were not going to be the target of bullies - to instill in you the confidence and positivity that keeps bullies at bay.

Also, you don't mention anything about what they did when they heard that you were being bullied or ignored -- you also don't talk about anything that they did to help you manage your dyslexia and other problems.

It sounds like you were left alone to raise yourself, as a sort of "Wolf child," who had to learn to navigate his way through a complex and brutal social ecosystem without any guidance whatsoever.

Thus I would say that your anger towards authority really stems from frustration at your lack of parenting -- at your parents. 

Does that ring true it all -- does that make any sense?

That is accurate Stef, but I'd like to propose an alternate mechanic.  It was the main problem with me and authority due to my childhood.  In your early experiences with authority, what was your impression of the commands?  My impression was that the commands were given to control me for their benefit.  Many times they were indifferent to what I thought of the order, or how the order effected me.  Because of this, I find myself responding to any order, even those I accept as justified, with rebellion.  For instance, at my job, my boss gave me some small changes in company procedure.  Objectively, they really did not cost me anything.  I spent 10 min reading them, and then could easily implement them.  Also, I accept that I have to do my job the way my employer wants me to.  However, I resented them at first.  This is because my immediate response was, I'm getting orders.  Therefore I'm being oppressed by someone for their benefit and they don't care what obedience costs me.  In fact, the changes actually made my job a little easier, but I still found myself resenting them.  It could be that you are so used to orders being given to dominate you, and have so little experience with benevolent authority that for you authority can only mean oppressive authority.

Yea, my parents didn't do too badly for their first son. My mother was a Christian, raised in a Christian family and my dad didn't have a male role model as he was growing up, he also generally had a really bad childhood. So I kind of had two separate negatives ha ha. I can't say my mother was a bad mother, but I base that on the amount of compassion and love she showed me, I was never hungry for cuddles or smiles and stuff like that but my relationship with my dad was incredibly distant until around now (I'm 20). Back to my mother, she organised my tests to discover my dyslexia and irlen's syndrome so she did what she knew how to, really. Most of my teachers close to the end of Junior's (secondary school I think) were a bit nicer, but generally had very little patience with me so I ended up being punished by them in subtle ways that I only understand now that I'm grown up.

When I was being bullied my mother didn't really know what to do I don't think, she informed the school but when the school showed a general lack of interest, covered up by long words and a formal layout. She just kept trying to give me advice, which worked slightly but only for mere moments before someone really pushed the mark and made me once again, aggressive. In general, they didn't have experience in themselves to teach me, so I did have to learn on my own. The only positive that came from this is my brutal, instinctual need for being utterly dominant and somehow maintaining a good level of morality. I also find myself empathizing too much with suffering, to a point where the mere fact that my girlfriend doesn't care about people in Afghanistan being shot can really turn me off of her for good.

Maybe I'm just normal in some senses, I mean I feel normal, maybe something with a hint of an overly-strong Ego that pushes people away. I think you did ring a bell. I think my parents for what they did do, the amount of times my mother cried over what I was going through because she simply couldn't figure out what to do showed me how hard she was trying for me. I have a friend called Chris, he was quite alot like me in certain ways and we're very similar even though we didn't really grow up together, we kind of did later in our teen hood and we became brothers in arms against the world. His general intelligence and my experience of the little wars created a successful double act in society

 Just incase your wondering, I grew up in the town of Luton in south England. You would not believe how absolutely disgusting that place is for race crime and general hate crime against basically anyone. Yet it gives off this happy appearance asif everything is okay, it's almost scary how deceiving the place is. -- I recently move to Scotland where I live in quite a passive town where the worst you'll get is someone throwing something at you across the road or someone shouting at you randomly to tell you something about yourself :P. Sometimes I literally feel kind of empty asif I should actually be nervous about walking down the street, walking on the far side of the turn so I can see around the corner from a distance before crossing over.              

I don't know.

P.S. To Stefan, your pod casts have really made me feel allot better about myself, the fact that what I believe in actually has a truly solid structure really helps in convincing people I'm not stupid for what I believe in.
 

Thanks alot for your input and the hug! -hug back-

 
Asatru-Eno-Aesir: Scotti.
 

Nathan, I think you do have a good point there. I did have a manager I loved in the British heart foundation called Agnes. (try not to bash the volunteer job too much, i know the company isn't great but at the time I truly believed I was helping save lives.) She wouldn't dominate me, she'd let me choose but she'd always be genuinely compassionate, she'd say things like "we need you on the till" rather than "Can you get on the till?" and  as pathetic as it sounds, when the latter one is said with a hint of the person getting off on the power, it makes it near impossible for me to comply. I constantly feel as if I'm needing to dominate people who try to control me. Like, It's cheeky the way they just waltz into my life and think that they can unconditionally lead me in something. I feel like I sound really bad just now. lol.

Thanks Nathan

 Scotti

(I'm using a browser spell check tool just now so try and bare with the wrong words in the wrong places.)
 

I also have problems with authority.  I get things done at work through sheer force of will.  My boss is a good guy, but when he tells me to do something, I resist it.  I know that its why I get paid, and when I do a poor job, or procrastinate, I feel extremely guilty.

 I have been trying to work out my parents position in my head but its not easy.  My mom could go from sweet and kind to the physical manifestation of rage in less than a second.  It was like her kindness was an act but at the same time I wonder if maybe she just yelled and hit me because she was convinced that that was the way to prevent me from becoming a bad kid. 

 Your dad sounds almost exactly like mine.  Its like he wasn't really there.  Just a guy that fixed my toys, told me what to do, and told me to ask my mom if I had questions.