Daddy, Stop Talking! And Other Things My Kids Want but Won't Be Getting

I hope you kids have taken this warning to heart and will avoid becoming any of these assholes. But with my luck, Natalia, you’re convinced that you used to be Cleopatra and are reading this right now at a Starbucks, sipping on a ski

CHAPTER 4

Hey, Kids, Here’s a Note to Your Future Therapists

I KNOW THAT all the shit I’m talking about the twins is going to be used against me at some point, so I want to take some time to set the record straight on a couple of things that they’ll surely bring up to their future therapists. I’m going to address this directly to you, guy with suede patches on his elbows, and Jewish broad with the dream catcher on the wall.

First, I’ve done therapy myself, so I know how this works. And I respect it. Ironically, I come from a family of therapists. My grandmother was a sex therapist who worked for the VA and once famously asked at the di

And, to his credit, when I was nineteen, he sat me down and pretty much said, “You’re going to be a mess. Your mother is a disaster, I’m a train wreck; you’re going to need some therapy.” I was making seven bucks an hour digging ditches at the time, so he said he was going to find me a therapist, and that it was going to be a woman so I could work on my mom issues and that he would pay for half and I’d pay for the other half. For someone making minimum wage coming up with even half of the seventy or eighty dollars an hour for a decent therapist was rough. But it was worth it.

To all of you reading this who are on the fence about therapy because of the cost: It’s smart money, spend it. That one hundred bucks an hour pays off down the road when you learn through therapy how to get out of your own way, stop self-sabotaging and thus make good decisions about relationships and career. Think of it as an investment in yourself. Simply going to therapy helps. Just carving out an hour for yourself, and deciding that you and your life are worth spending some time and money on makes a difference. That simple act alone boosts your self-esteem. Don’t think of going to therapy as “I’m a broken pile of crap and need someone to fix me,” think of it as “I’m going to change myself for the better instead of crying, masturbating and blaming my parents for the rest of my life.”

So, back to blaming my parents. I was such a broken pile of crap from my childhood, therapy was inevitable. I’ve done all kinds of therapy: individual, couples and group. Group therapy is kind of rough, especially when you want to leave the group and there’s resistance. Once, when I tried to leave my group therapy, a chick confronted me, telling me I was in denial about how bad I was and that I needed to stay. I think it was her issue, really, some dad shit she needed to work out that she was putting on me. Group therapy is like having all the baggage that comes with a relationship with a crazy chick without the spirited crazy chick sex.

I’ve also done regular one-on-one individual therapy and appreciated the experience, though I don’t love it when a group of therapists share an office. It’s uncomfortable when you see another person sitting in the waiting room and start wondering what their issue is while attempting to avoid eye contact. Especially if you have regular appointments, you see the same guy every week and can hear him in the next room. Seriously, I’ve heard shit coming through the vent system I will never unhear. I’ve heard “My father wouldn’t stop raping me…” while I’m sitting there complaining about my Lamborghini. Makes me realize that most of my issues fall squarely into that rich white people problems category.

I’ve also done the couples counseling thing, which I didn’t like much. But I still think it works, just not in the way it’s supposed to. The reason couples counseling is effective is because you have to report to someone, typically a woman, who is siding with your woman about how horrible you are. At least that was the case with me. I’ve had people tell me that couples therapy worked for them and saved their relationship. For me, it was just a probation officer that I had to report to. So on Tuesday, when she comes home and wants to unload about her boss and you grunt, walk past her, holding a sandwich on the way back to your Duck Dynasty marathon, knowing you have couples counseling on Friday forces you to turn around and listen. It’s like mandatory drug testing in the workplace. It doesn’t make people not want to do drugs, it just makes people understand and avoid the consequences.

I do think psychology is important. We don’t put enough emphasis on this as a society. We live in a civilization, we live amongst other humans, but we don’t really know how they tick. If we lived among lowland gorillas, we’d study what makes them happy or what enrages them and their mating rituals, so that we could live in harmony with them. But we don’t do that with other humans. Instead, we live in a world full of PSAs for click-it-or-ticket and motorboat safety. You see the president coming out of church on Sunday, and you realize he probably doesn’t believe it but he has to do it because, if not, he’d be unelectable. But that same supposed Christian president would be unelectable if we found out he was seeing a shrink, which I think is bullshit. I want the guy making the most important decisions for the country to have an idea of the forces that influence his choices, the ramifications of his fucked-up childhood on his thinking and how that affects all of us. Imagine how much better our country would be if Nixon, Clinton and W. had gotten some real good therapy. So I respect you, Mr. or Ms. Shrink, and the work you’re doing to undo the damage I’ve done to my kids, but let me set the record straight on a couple of things.

First off, I never laid a hand on them. How could I be an absentee father and an abusive father at the same time? Even if I thought I could beat my kids, that would require me to be at home instead of onstage in Portland… though I was able to Skype in some emotional abuse from the road.

Of course, I’m joking. But the truth is hitting my kids is just not in my wiring. If you grow up in Hawaii, you eat poi. I’ve never touched that shit. So I don’t miss it. If I were a native islander, I’d miss it on the mainland. Same with child abuse. The idea of me hitting my kids is not on the menu. I didn’t grow up with it, so it’s not an option. As far as I’m concerned, the thought doesn’t even occur to me. One evening, after skipping my rope, I was trying to pound out forty push-ups like usual. I had my Beats headphones on and was cranking the Graham Parker. I had my eyes closed, and was totally in the zone. Out of nowhere, Natalia ripped the headphones off my head and wailed like a banshee in my face. I was startled. Had it been my buddy Ray, he absolutely would have gotten punched. But in that twentieth of a second, I processed the face of my daughter and that was no longer an option.

I know that, as a therapist, you’re on the same page, but allow me to rant a bit about this topic. There are certain cultures for whom this is a big issue, and there are cultures around those cultures that suffer the damage. Sometimes, the issue of corporal punishment becomes a national conversation, like after Mi