PSYCHOLOGY | MANAGING YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

Take the Hints

An open letter on grief, blood, and the family you have to stop auditioning for.

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Take the hints life is showing you for what they are. Don’t create fantasy around it to remain tethered to a false reality. — Dr. Leo Croft

I noticed I was growing increasingly more angry with myself for caring about people I used to love deeply, some like family and some actual family. People that I have opened up to, shared intimate details of my life with and even some attached to my healing journey.

Here’s the thing psychology doesn’t say plainly enough:

Attachment doesn’t check credentials.

Your nervous system will bond to whoever shows up consistently enough, regardless of whether they’ve earned the title they’re wearing. Blood, marriage, years of history — none of that guarantees reciprocity. It just guarantees proximity. And proximity is not the same as care. That confusion is where the anger I’m about to walk you through actually comes from.

Firstly I wanna deal with my family. As many of you know we just recently laid my stepfather to rest, but what you didn’t know is that the only person related by blood to attend his funeral and be there for my mom… was me.

My mother has 2 living brothers and a HOST of nieces and nephews that she’s been there for throughout their entire lives! She’s the first one they called when they needed anything and my mom was there for them when they dealt with their own loss. Flock to them front and center to be what they needed in their biggest time of need.

Not. One. Person.

My cousin by former marriage, because they’re now divorced, was the only one that came to spend time with my stepdad when he was in the hospital, just one week before he died. It hit me in the moment like a ton of bricks and I grew more and more angry but decided it was something I wouldn’t bring up to my mother until after she’s had time to deal with and process things.

I did that because although she had nobody there for her from her family, my mother had a packed house full of people that were there for her mostly from her FORMER church, because my mother hasn’t had a church home in many years but those bonds remained. The people who REALLY cared for her were there for her in what had to be her deepest time of need. So much so that she didn’t realize the complete absence of family until days later. At that point we discussed it, and she explained how hurtful it was to her.

I’m so thankful for all of her former co-workers, church friends which were actually life-long friends as it seems and my stepfathers family that really stepped up to make my mother feel loved, and there had been contention there in the past as well, none of that mattered because they were RIGHT THERE for her. My cousin by marriage swooped in and handled ALL of the planning for my mom. Turned herself into a personal assistant for her taking care of anything she needed even down to the repast. Her friends, strangers to my mother, catered it and all and didn’t charge my mother one dime.

People love to say that all skin folk ain’t kinfolk but I argue that not all kinfolk are kinfolk.

Lesson learned.

What my mother lived through has a name, even if nobody hands you the vocabulary for it in the moment. It’s called disenfranchised grief — grief that isn’t just about losing the person, but about losing them in front of an absence that nobody acknowledges either. You’re not just mourning. You’re mourning and doing the math on who didn’t show up, in real time, while you’re supposed to be holding a room together. That math doesn’t stop just because the funeral’s over.

It just goes quiet.

Now sadly on to me.

As many of you now know I don’t have the best relationship with the family I married into anymore. Cuz MAGA.

Not all of them are MAGA at all, but their one “golden boy” is. I practice what I preach, so I never minced my words about what was coming soon after the 2024 election, not just because I paid attention in social studies, but because I literally do contract work with the state and federal government sitting on a committee that all holds the minimum of Public Trust security clearance.

So we know our shit…

Everything I said was coming has come. I don’t say that to gloat. I say it because being right didn’t protect me from any of this, and it won’t protect you either — knowing the truth early doesn’t insulate you from the people who resent you for saying it.

I warned everything that was happening now was coming, and was branded the “bad person” being ‘mean and a racist’ typical MAGAT and MAGAT sympathizer behaviors.

Given all of that, I have never and will never put my wife in a position to “choose” because that’s stupid and abusive. I’m grown, I know how to stay the fuck away from people that in a word ‘need help’ and need to figure out the flaws in their worldview, I gave them the space for that.

I’m not an asshole to them, except for the ACTUAL MAGAT — I don’t even converse with him and I don’t pretend I want to, but the sympathizers to him I’ve been and continue to be out of their hair.

Well now I find myself mad at myself for ever opening up to these people I thought were going to be the big family I always wanted, growing up an only child, because only one of my in-laws has so much as sent me a text to offer their condolences.

Let me give you the math here, that is 1 out of 5.

These were people that have literally cried in my arms about the things going on in their lives, people that I cared for, stood up for, supported, helped grow their businesses, counseled with for LITERAL YEARS and not even a fucking text.

Not. One. Text.

I should know better than to still be this invested in them but its par for the course.

Here’s the part worth sitting with, and it’s the part I’d want any of you reading this to actually take with you: what I was to them has a clinical name too.

Psychologists call it instrumental support versus emotional support — the difference between people who use you for what you provide and people who show up for who you are. Counsel, encouragement, a shoulder, a business boost, a place to cry — I was giving emotional and instrumental support in the same breath, for years, and receiving instrumental silence back the one time it mattered. If you’ve ever felt like the relationship only moves in one direction, that’s not a feeling you’re overreacting to. That’s data.

I shared all of that because I feel like the community that we are collectively growing here gives me new life, it’s the reason I call you all “Family” because that is exactly what it feels like. Many of you have reduced me to tears just in expressing how so many of you find value in the truth I write and share and look forward to what I will teach/share next. I need all of you to know the dark times that dynamic has gotten me through and I don’t take it for granted.

That’s why I want to reinforce to you all the necessity of accepting the relationship dynamics around you for what they are and don’t dig for a deeper meaning to remain emotionally tethered to a false reality of care these people probably NEVER had for you. If you feel like you are nothing more than a “utility” then that is probably exactly what you are to them.

My mother and I both coming to that realization at the same time in our lives feels almost “cosmic” because now our bond is stronger than ever.

Care about yourself and your well being enough to say:

Ok, that’s how they feel about me.

I’m not going to make it more than that.

I’m going to grow and thrive in the direction I’m meant to go in.

That’s not bitterness. That’s what clinicians would call radical acceptance — you’re not required to like the reality, you’re just required to stop fighting it in your own head, because the fight is the thing that’s actually keeping you stuck. Acceptance isn’t surrender. It’s the exit door.

Follow your gut, don’t pause to look up, that just allows them to give you another slap to the face.

Cheers all, and thank you!

— Dr. Leo Croft

Written by Dr. Leo Croft Behavioral Scientist | Cultural Strategist | Member of the American Psychological Association

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