The Jordan Harbinger Show
1098: Sanctioned Spank Sparks Sibling Split | Feedback Friday
Fri, 03 Jan 2025
Your sister gave you permission to spank her son. Now she's calling you a child abuser and diving deep into conspiracy theories. Welcome to Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [email protected]. Now let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: You spanked your nephew once after he kicked your daughter, with your sister's prior permission. Now she's calling you a child abuser, your mother's caught in the middle, and there's a fascinating twist involving QAnon, church expulsions, and a high-profile abuse case. How does one find the way through this labyrinth of family dysfunction? Picture teaching 100 ESL students daily in a crowded hallway (yes, a hallway!) with no walls, while six precious years stand between you and a cushy pension. Your Etsy side hustle brings joy, but those morning tears on the commute tell a different story. What's the escape route from this educational pressure cooker? As a pastor and Army Reserve high-ranker, you counsel others through their darkest hours. But your 16-year-old daughter's bipolar diagnosis, self-harm history, and manipulative behaviors are testing your limits in ways no pastoral training could prepare you for. How do you help someone who refuses to be helped? Recommendation of the Week: Use AI in your everyday life. For 16 years, you lived in the shadow of narcissistic manipulation, watching your self-esteem erode like a sand castle in rising tide. Now that you've escaped, your ex-wife is spinning tales that would make Scheherazade blush, and you're left wondering: how do you rebuild your truth when someone else has been writing your story? Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [email protected]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi. Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1098 And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What family conflict arises from a spanking incident?
Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the sugar in the raw packet, evening out the wonky leg of this tabletop with savory life conundra, Gabriel Mizrahi.
On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker.
And during the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, such as organized crime figures, cold case homicide investigators, gold smugglers or astronauts. On Fridays, though, we take listener letters, offer advice, compare Gabe to various ad hoc solutions to mundane everyday problems, while also subjecting you guys to multiple takes of our stupid little bits, apparently.
So, welcome to the first show of the year. Hope 2025 is off to a great start for all of you. This is another year full of joy and growth and healthy challenges and all that good stuff. Thank you for continuing to spend your Fridays with us. We really do hope to make your year as rich and entertaining and productive as possible, if that's your goal.
So Gabe, I was cleaning out some old boxes over the holidays, and I came across a Zippo lighter. I used to love Zippos when I was in high school and college. I don't know why.
Yeah, who didn't?
Okay. So that was a thing.
Yeah. We all go through the Zippo phase. You do. Okay.
And you like learn that trick where you put two fingers on top and the thumb on the bottom, it goes bling and it flips open and it's like magic. Like you're a pool hustler in the 80s. Totally. Yes. Like me and James Dean just hang out regularly. Anyway, I came across this Zippo lighter that I found in Vietnam in the jungle while I was walking around with a guide near the tunnels that they have.
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Chapter 2: How does one navigate family accusations of child abuse?
Yeah.
He was a little bit like messed up. Like he wanted me to suffer. Clearly. Telling me how Americans died in gruesome ways and stuff. He showed me these pits where they would take like sharpened bamboo and put leaves over it. So when you're walking, you fall into it and you just bleed to death in this like pit. And so he showed me some of these old pits that still existed.
They don't have the sticks. They're just like a little washed out holes now. And he's like, this is a punji pit or whatever they're called. And so I would be walking around and he's like, there's landmines around the outside. So don't go too far, but you can walk here and ask me if you're not sure.
So I was walking around with this guy for a few hours and I found a Zippo lighter in the dirt, clay, whatever. And It's so weird because on the front it has, it's not quite a coin, but it's glued on or welded on. And it says US, U.S. So it's clearly military. And then on the back is Mickey Mouse driving a little car, which is so weird because it's totally out of place.
It's hand etched, you can tell. And then below that, also hand etched, which just haunts my dreams, says, we are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, to do the unthinkable for the ungrateful. Isn't that just... Wow. So an American left it behind and you found it. So left it behind is interesting, right? Because I have this lighter in my possession and I'm like, why did he drop it?
Or was he killed and it was left behind? Did he get startled and a sniper shot rang out over his head and he dropped it because he was lighting a cigarette and he ran? Did he get shot and die right there and that's why he dropped it and they removed the body but they didn't find the lighter because it was in the dirt? Is he still alive right now?
Was he one of those weird Disney adults who goes every two or three months? I don't know.
And it's like, is he alive now? Did he die of cancer from Agent Orange? Did he die of lung cancer? Because I guess he smoked. So many questions. That is an incredible artifact. Yes, I kept it. My mom was like, should I get rid of this? You don't need lighters. And I was like, ah, that one I'm keeping.
And I put a new sort of innard in it because the one that was in there, I remember, was just like completely not usable, dirty and washed out and rusty. But I paid someone to clean it up because I was like, oh, this is a mess. So this guy like brushed it off. And I don't know if he used chemicals, but it looks pretty good. You can tell it's old, but it looks pretty good.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do teachers face in open classroom environments?
Her mom isn't in a position to take her. We've reached out to some resources recommended by her guidance counselor. One of them is a residential program, but it costs well into the six figures. I'm not that kind of pastor who makes big money. Most of us pastors just make normal middle-class incomes. Do you have any other ideas? Are there resources out there that I haven't tapped? What would you do?
signed trying to stay affectionate but hitting a bunch of impediments to treating my daughter's temperament, which is both intelligent and malevolent.
Oh, man, what a tough situation this is. First of all, I am so deeply sorry that your daughter struggles in this way. This is a lot for one person to go through. Between the mom stuff and the psychiatric stuff and the personality stuff, it just sounds like there's many layers to your daughter. She has some powerful gifts and also some profound challenges, and my heart really does go out to her.
Obviously, though, my heart also breaks for you and your new partner and your sons because... Well, being in contact with a family member like this is really hard. You don't need me to tell you that. I can't even imagine what it's like to care for somebody who's suffering in this way, to not feel like what you're doing is even helping. And it really does sound like you're doing so much right here.
You're meeting her with a lot of love, a lot of patience, a lot of resources. This is really hard. But what's especially tough about your story is that you guys are at an interesting crossroads with your daughter. She's 16 years old. She's still very young. She obviously needs help. But in a couple years, she's going to be an adult, legally speaking, anyway.
And she does have some degree of responsibility to engage with her care and relate to you guys in the most helpful way possible. You have a lot of data about your daughter now. You know that she has a disorder, that she's defiant, difficult, manipulative, that she might not be getting better. And a lot of that is out of your control. But you also can't give up on her. She's still your child.
She still needs and deserves your love and your support. So again, this is really hard. You're kind of on the precipice of a new phase with her. And how things go over the next year or two is probably going to tell you a lot about how to engage with your daughter long term.
So we wanted to run all of this by an expert, and we reached out to Dr. Aaron Margolis, clinical psychologist and friend of the show. I'm also known to the people who know me the best. And the first thing that Dr. Margolis said was, if your daughter is being medicated, if she's going to therapy and she's not getting better, she might need more comprehensive or involved treatment.
You mentioned this super expensive residential program. I get why that's not an option, but those are not the only residential treatment centers out there. Dr. Margolis said it's worth doing more research on your options because there are almost certainly places out there that are more affordable and or that insurance would actually cover.
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