Name Your Addiction

The gift of the big orange grifter toddler

Near the beginning of her memoir Too Much and Never Enough psychologist/political analyst Mary Trump details the events of her infamous uncle’s childhood that produced today’s Toddler-in-Chief:

After their mother is hospitalized and their father, Fred, is not taking care of Donald and is brother Robert:

Again, Donald and Robert in particular would have been in the most precarious position vis-à-vis Fred’s lack of interest. All behavior exhibited by infants and toddlers is a form of attachment behavior, which seeks a positive, comforting response from the caregiver—a smile to elicit a smile, tears to prompt a hug. Even under normal circumstances, Fred would have considered any expressions of that kind an annoyance, but Donald and Robert were likely even needier because they missed their mother and were actively distressed by her absence. The greater their distress, however, the more Fred rebuffed them. . . . the annoyance provoked by his children’s neediness set up a dangerous tension in the Trump household: by engaging in behaviors that were biologically designed to trigger soothing, comforting responses from their parents, the little boys instead provoked their father’s anger or indifference when they were most vulnerable. For Donald and Robert, “needing” became equated with humiliation, despair, and hopelessness.

If you picture Donald Trump as giant bloated needy enraged toddler, desperate to be seen in order to feel he exists, you will also see his addiction to the behavior that is devastating us and the world.

To him, we and the world are a plaything that exist only to make him feel special because inside there is nothing but a tiny baby who was never loved. He is in a chronic futile spiral, trying to right the wrongs of his childhood deprivations.

The gift

Having an iconic form of addiction personified brings out our own issues . . . unless we choose to see the dynamic and use it to heal our own addictions . . . to whatever we grew up insecure about:

Safety
Control
Trust
Being cared for
Order

And all the associated qualities that become triggers for our neuroses when these foundational needs are shaken or denied to us.

A suggestion

In addition to committing to some form of activism to save all of us and our democracy, what if, when we are overwhelmed with rage, frustration, fear, or denial, instead of mirroring the toddler and giving in to it—allowing it to take over our emotions and lives—we use these things as much-appreciated pointers to the areas in our individual life stories that have always been “our issues.”

What if we reduce whatever is happening to:

I’m scared.
I’m angry.
I’m frustrated.
I will not/cannot deal with this.

And then we follow the feelings to their origins, fully feel them in their original context and thereby dismantle them, disarming our present reaction “bomb.”

In psychological terms, this is called “processing.” I’m sure there are other terms for uncrossing crossed wires. Make it simple: do whatever you must do to disarm the emotional spirals that are taking over your life. Become functional.

This is the process that Donald Trump is incapable of, hence, his perpetual lying, boasting, cruelty, and rage when it doesn’t accomplish his goal of feeling like an important fully-embodied person.

True story

I live in New York City. One day I was walking my dog in the park and who should be coming toward me but Donald Trump, Jr. He was so revved up he was blind to anything but the cell phone he was lecturing into. I only caught one sentence. He was explaining to somebody, “You have to reduce your decompression time so it becomes almost nothing.”

Good advice for all of us.

Decompression time is processing time. The more you do it, the faster you will do it. Quit spiraling like a dog chasing its tail and leap back into fully-embodied action.

---

Betsy Robinson is a longtime student of the Siddha Yoga Correspondence Course, a daily meditator, graduate of a four-year healing school, studying trauma healing, and former managing editor of Spirituality & Health magazine. She is an editor, fiction writer, journalist, and playwright. She has written about books for Publishers Weekly, Lithub, Oh Reader, and many other publications. Her novels Cats on a Pole and The Spectators were published by Kano Press in 2024, and earlier novels won prizes from Mid-List Press and Black Lawrence Press. She writes funny stories about flawed people and examines our herd culture. www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com.