Had a realization yesterday that I’m still trying to flesh out but wanted to put a few words out there so it doesn’t get lost in my ADHD brain.

I come from a dysfunctional family and have spent a good chunk of my adult years working through childhood stuff and attempting to break the generational cycles of addiction and dysfunction in both sides of my family. Through that experience it made me realize that self-sufficiency (or sovereignty if you will) is a form of control. This control is deeply rooted in fear of shame and abandonment. It’s an attempt to minimize uncertainty and avoid my own uncomfortable feelings about the past and present.

Shame and emotional abandonment are how dysfunctional families control children. This leads you to eventually see your parents as authority figures who cannot be trusted. I just realized bitcoiners have a similar relationship with governments and institutions. We have learned they cannot be trusted and in a way have been abandoned by our institutional parental authority figures. Our reaction to that abandonment has been to take self-sufficiency/sovereignty to the extreme and intellectualize the hell out of it. Intellectualization is another form of control to avoid feelings (which is literally what I’m doing right now). We use big, complex ideas to explain the pain but to not actually feel the emotions associated with it.

To be clear, I don’t think this is inherently a bad thing. Self-sufficiency is a rational response to an irrational world. We hide behind our intellectualized morals because it gives us a sense of security. But if we’re truly honest with ourselves, our motivation for self-sufficiency is deeply rooted in fear and shame.

Bitcoin creates a path to healing the sick, dysfunctional system we were raised in but it requires a heavy dose of looking at the mirror, warts and all. If we’re not honest with ourselves and have zero awareness about this, we’re doomed to repeat the cycle we were born out of. We must take active steps to create lasting change.

This is just an observation I’ve noticed in myself and the tip of the iceberg. Maybe I’m projecting all of this onto the world. I’ve heard nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqtxwaehxw309anxjmr5v4ezumn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tmwwp6kyvtjw3k8zcmp8pervct409shwdtwx45rxmp4xseryerdx3ehy7f4v3axvet9xsmrjdnxw9jnsuekw9nh2ertwvmkg6n5veen7cnjdaskgcmpwd6r6arjw4jsqgq6lcx8fc7h0p8t4ya9u0a92jnwavqe9rgjwwdw3wjgxfuxsz8rd5mths8c be pretty open about his childhood and personal story but I’d also love to hear other bitcoiners stories (publicly or privately). Feel free to reach out if you come across this and would like to discuss further. I’ll leave with this quote for now:

“Adult Children rarely stop to think that self-sufficiency is covering up a fear of rejection which they think could come if they ask for help. Meanwhile, to ask for help and get it might mean that someone would get to know them, and that is too risky. In such cases, self-sufficient power is really a mechanism to ensure isolation and aloneness.”