I've heard this term "trauma" a lot in the past few years, and often in context where I didn't initially think that word applied in the situation it was used. It's caused me to think about my own childhood and wonder, with that modern understanding of the word, did I experience "trauma"?
I wasn't sexually abused, I wasn't neglected, I wasn't wanting of love. I was however often scolded to a point where I felt horrible about myself. Scolded to a point where I didn't even feel like I could exist without disrupting the world. At times yes, physically scolded but nothing so extreme as to leave a mark.
To be fair to my parents I was a very high energy and "difficult" child. Big emotions. I was always the problem.
Obviously compared to some upbringings this was a walk in the park. But it really did have an impact on me and who I grew up to be. In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.
I've had a myriad of mental health issues throughout my adult life, ranging from low severity to medium, and on some rare occasions high. Genetics? Upbringing? Modern life? All of the above?
> In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.
I'm kinda confused. Is that the good impact you think that had in you? Why?
OPs description resonates with me as well, and the impact is complex, and in my case, probably more good than bad. There is a romantic notion that childish energy shouldn’t be suppressed, but childish energy is what broke my toys (and my body), and I have expensive toys now (motorcycles, house, etc.)
I have found in my own life that the practice of emotional regulation has made me a pretty good diplomat in difficult situations. Sitting down, shutting up, and following the rules when I want to yell at people is the essence of de-escalation.
Well, I feel emotional regulation is different to shutting down you emotions and your energy.
Emotional regulation is a great thing to work with (I should keep on it), but I think it's very important to do it, not like "my emotions don't belong here, I'm not valid", but knowing the differences between different people, learning how different people behave and express themselves, and finding ways of moving your emotions to different places that help you express yourself and transmit your needs. And you don't have to do it the same way than everyone else (that's one of the most important things I've learnt since my diagnose a couple years ago).
I guess I just mean that nothing is completely black and white.
I learned to regulate my emotions, one way or another. Did it possibly (likely?) also have a long lasting negative effect on aspects of my mood, motivation, focus, etc.? I think there's a good chance.
Thanks, I understood that better. I hope you get to learnt (or are in the never ending process of learning) to understand and express your emotions in a helpful and productive way.
I have lots of problems understanding my feelings (good old alexithymia) and it's always been an struggle for me to understand or communicate how I feel or what bothers me.
Have you read the PDF? It is whichever of the choices explains your lack of success in the real world, and this then brings relief from blaming yourself for that.
Really, that's it. Read the PDF.
The article even acknowledges that psychiatrist answer is wrong, and that all of the above are on a spectrum and nobody is ADHD-free or 100%-autist. This is not a problem because the answer is not meant to be correct, but only to be helpful and to "alleviate shame to enable people
to achieve their fullest potential".
So there isn't even an answer.
Which, judging by your post, I'm guessing you will find a deeply unsatisfying way to look at the world, as you sound like someone with a positivist view (facts are correct and everything is true or false, you either have ADHD or not, and even on a spectrum there's a number. But there isn't)
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
My anecdotal observation, that also applies to me as well, is that people who see faults in other people are seeing their own faults in other people. You have not read paper carefully enough and went for a start and end, where usually best bits are, but in this case the best part is in the middle:
"My hypothesis is that that those who remain most affected by childhood trauma in
adulthood and seek treatment for it represent a population more
likely to have innate neurodiversity."
What you are describing is emotional neglect and a failure of parenting.
You were meant to learn to recognize and name that energy and emotionality, and then learn to sit with it and develop adaptive coping strategies as needed, not maladaptive ones like negative self-concept and emotional repression.
It can take quite a long time to realize all of this and unlearn the patterns, and unfortunately, first line therapies like CBT are possibly detrimental for these issues.
Edit: also, you need not be fair to your parents. They are meant to adapt to parenting you, even if you were legitimately overactive or overemotional. Instead, you adapted to them.
Maybe both parents had to work two jobs. Maybe they had their own life challenges.
Perfect parenting, if such a thing exists, certainly has an economic minimum price.
And likely has a previous generation upraising requirement as well. There's a reason maladaptive cycles continuing down through generations happens: parents are often defined by their parents ad infinitum.
What matters as a parent is being the best you can be, and striving to be better than your parents were.
All that matters is the outcome. The child has to live with it.
Offspring repeat maladaptive traits which were considered normal or effective. Any skills lacked will have to be self-taught or sought out once they become aware. The narrative of being the best we can be and putting in 100% effort as parents unfortunately only makes us feel better about our situation/security, personal life choices (including avoidance), and quality of connection. Many people have kids for the sake of it and to improve their own lives. This is one of the insidious roots of a potentially painful upbringing.
Shifting the thought framing to seeking "reasons" rather than "blame" for behaviors allowed me to see failures or betrayals for what they are. I could then grieve the times I was hurt despite the love and intentions. I processed anger and bitterness about this along with a host of unresolved traumas and associated emotions that I never had the chance to resolve internally at the time. What remains is a dull universal sadness at seeing the truth of all this - the obvious harms we are doing to ourselves and each other despite "best intentions". It's a small price to pay to finally be arriving at a sense of internal peace.
Effective or "good enough" parenting requires a range of skills including emotional intelligence and awareness of our flaws in order to reduce harm, and to treat the child as a separate individual. Everyone gets stressed and makes mistakes, but those skills determine whether it's an opportunity to teach children how to self-regulate and resolve conflict, or an internal clusterfuck that sets them up for a lifetime of interpersonal issues, poor self-regulation, and disappointment. Prioritizing emotional presence is critical.
Some people with deeper issues can cause problematic child development and attachment regardless of material conditions or physical presence. It's mainly whether the child has room to grow themselves or if they are stunted/controlled by the environment.
I believe we should look at ourselves deeply and honestly to work on our own state of mind before diving into commitments. The reward of internal peace is worth the price of realizing this reality. From here we can improve it for the next generations.
What a shitty, unsympathetic take. Parenting is hard, especially with difficult children. Most parents do the best they can but they end up unintentionally screwing up their children anyway. That's just life.
Actually it is hard to maintain perfect discipline and self control when parenting a child who frequently acts out. Perhaps you can do it. Most parents slip up occasionally.
Turning it into an all-or-nothing thing doesn't help. Nobody's perfect.
If you have the urge to use violence or verbal abuse, shouting etc. at a child - things that would be illegal to do to even an adult or would most certainly get you fired at work - you have emotional control issues, perhaps from your own upbringing.
Kids naturally want to please their parents and respond well in most settings, as they are totally and utterly dependent on parents for survival. It's not difficult to use this to discipline them in constructive ways. Unless something is medically wrong, their specific behavior reflects their environment and upbringing.
Parents need to react well about 30% of the time for a kid to form a secure attachment, so there’s a lot of wiggle room and slip ups do not effect the overall pattern.
It’s not all on the parents of course but often family systems push parents to have kids when they don’t know how much they’ve been neglected or have major attachment issues themselves. Theres a huge social hereditary thing.
For me, making a distinction between the big Trauma with a capital T and little trauma with a lowercase t has been helpful. Any experience that has a lasting negative impact on you could be considered a trauma, but only very extreme stuff - violence, sexual abuse - would count as Trauma.
A car accident is a car accident. Sometimes they are fatal, sometimes the paint gets scratched. People sometimes get long term health effects from a fender-bender.
I think there's a degree of some people being maybe genetically predisposed to having more serious adverse reactions to trauma as well. An obvious example is when it leads to psychosis. So the objective reality of what happened is not necessarily the only thing which factors into how it affects somebody's functioning.
I don't disagree with that at all, but I do think that line of thinking about ones own issues can lead to a sort of self-blame - thinking things like: if I were stronger I wouldn't have been hurt by that neglect or mistreatment. No question, who you are has a huge impact on how something effects you, but nobody reacts well to e.g. neglect or mistreatment. I might end up with depression, while my sibling ends up with anxiety. That's our predisposition interacting with the objective reality, but neither outcome shifts the blame for the neglect or mistreatment to us. I know that's probably not what you were trying to say, but I do think that idea is one possible place downstream of what you are saying.
> nobody reacts well to e.g. neglect or mistreatment
Maybe, but some people react by becoming stronger and some react by breaking down and failing. Regardless of other effects like depression, anxiety, paranoia etc., being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know? If you ended up weaker then sometimes nothing can convince you that's what was best.
I don't think "weak" and "strong" are useful in this discussion without defining them carefully. The way most people seem to get through these things is by becoming more thoughtful and emotionally mature. This is what is generally meant by "weak" in these conversations. "Strong" leads to pills and bottles and painful deaths trying to fight the feelings down.
Consider two approaches: one is to spend hours ruminating on your experiences every day to form insights and approaches to tackle new problems and make new progress. The other is to panic at the slightest sign of anything, compartmentalize everything and get stuck in fruitless thought loops constantly, making very little progress to integrate information or have insights. Say both of those take the same immense amounts of energy, but maybe the former would have a better shot at fighting active abuse, you know? In my experience, calculated thought is far superior to fruitless panic. In this way one could be considered "stronger" than the other even though both are technically undesirable (because constant rumination over everything is actually terrible, for example).
Real example based on real self-doubt across multiple friends I know.
I'm trying to say that the reason it's not defined carefully is because people who worry about this don't usually have concrete objective definitions. "Stronger" sounds better to someone who hates that they're "weak", because the costs are less obvious. (Consider breaking down in front of everyone all the time, embarrassing yourself constantly, never knowing what to do, irritating everyone by being inconsolable, etc. vs always being composed, manipulating situations to avoid embarrassment, always being prepared with plans and never depending on others. Despite the fact that the latter is a constant never-ending source of work that mostly never gets used, on top of being incredibly lonely, the former feels worse because everybody sees it as worse.)
Both examples can be incredibly emotionally mature, they just express it in different ways.
This still sounds like you're trying to justify "weak" and "strong" as useful categories.
>> "Consider breaking down in front of everyone all the time, embarrassing yourself constantly, never knowing what to do, irritating everyone by being inconsolable, etc. vs always being composed, manipulating situations to avoid embarrassment, always being prepared with plans and never depending on others. Despite the fact that the latter is a constant never-ending source of work that mostly never gets used, on top of being incredibly lonely, the former feels worse because everybody sees it as worse."
These are not emotionally mature ways of handling things. These are called maladaptive coping strategies.
I would be very careful dismissing these examples as merely coping strategies. Maladaptive sure, especially once no longer needed, but a coping strategy is only for managing emotions. These are largely survival mechanisms, ways to avoid or reduce the intensity of abuse in the first place. They do tend to come with coping mechanisms, but that's not their whole thing.
> being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know?
That feels like a tautology. From context, you've defined stronger to mean better. So of course in that case stronger is better. But in reality stronger isn't always better. If you come to a chess match being able to bench more than your opponent, are you better at chess than them?
If there are tradeoffs, and there are always tradeoffs, then you can't actually say stronger is better. The neglect of your parents might make you more independent and you might find that helps with your work life, while at the same time it makes your personal relationships harder. Which of those do you happen to value more?
Which is not to say you can't personally find value in and appreciate even the negative the experiences that made you who you are. But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
> But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
Oh neglect is terrible; simultaneously the worst and the least recognized type of abuse.
My point is that adaptations to abuse vary enough that some can be more "desirable" than others (in addition to being more fit for the environment / the world at large in some cases), and someone stuck in a "worse" one could end up longing for a "better" one. Though, sometimes I long for "worse" ones myself as someone who feels "better" than I should be, so maybe the grass is just always greener.
I almost feel like we need a different word that doesn’t have the confusing association. Like scratching your car (‘little t’ trauma) vs smashing the frame (big ‘T’ trauma).
If you come up with one, I'm happy to use it - but we're comfortable with a lot of big umbrella categories: "car accident", "job", "conversation", "computer", "app", "injury", to name a few.
One aspect of trauma is the helplessness of it: it's not just how severe the physical reality is, it's also about the inability to do anything about it (and the internalization of that inability).
The classic example is a child who drew a picture shortly after 9/11. The picture included people floating down the building on (I believe) balloons or umbrellas. Obviously unphysical; but the child imagining ways (however fantastical) that could have helped was a factor in reducing that child's trauma.
On a therapist can tell you whether you personally have trauma, but the lessons you took away from your experiences certainly sound like it to me.
Yeah so I think when most people these days say trauma, they simply mean "An ongoing emotional overreaction due to a past negative experience." I think that's a super useful concept.
In your case I'd just ask myself "Do I still feel like I'm a bother in situations where I know I'm not because of X?" And if so, it can be productive to see if you can change that directly or indirectly.
Sounds a lot like CPTSD, which is more about symptoms and responses you have now caused by the continuous situations like you describe. It’s older and there’s been progress on the definition since it came out but Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (and website) is a good resource for the differences between this type of effect form upbringing vs single event traumas.
Personally since reading it and working through my own responses I’ve grown in leaps and bounds where previously I would’ve described myself exactly how you did.
Your comment reads like a case study from "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" by Pete Walker. Many of his studies focus on childhood experiences that are overall "happy" but fall short of "emotionally fulfilling".
This is utterly ridiculous. To be healthy we have to have an emotionally fulfilling, not just happy, childhood? How did we ever survive as a species?
How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
In my honest opinion, no one wants to look at genetics because it scares the hell out of them. But it’s most likely it’s complex genetics, not complex PTSD.
You don't need to be happy or healthy to survive.
> How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
Happy is how you're feeling in the moment. Emotionally fulfilling is how you feel about the whole of your situation. Does it feel right? Fair? Or are you constantly "glad it's not worse"? Remove fault and justification from the equation -- wouldn't it be more emotionally fulfilling if parents didn't yell at you? If they didn't make such a big deal out of spending money on you? You can be happy a lot of the time despite those, but they tend to leave a hole in you anyway. Emotional fulfillment is the relative lack of those holes, compared to the good.
Scolding has been found to have pathways to some really bad things.
It doesn’t have to be the wrist experience to childhood to guarantee crippling adulthoods.
It’s not about little or big trauma, the focus on what any trauma did to the brain is what’s important because the fingerprint and footprint of trauma can be unique and underdeveloped the brain in certain areas regardless of source.
Very similar experience here. It was my mum doing the scolding and I learned 3 things as a child:
1) love is conditional on behaviour - pleasing mum was the primary goal above everything else.
2) when I had been “bad”, only the most extreme contrition on my part unlocked the love I needed (as a highly precocious and literate child I’d write little suicide notes for her to find apologising for being so useless. I was single-digit age).
3) The dissonance between the private incessant scolding and the public display of praise led me to develop a rich, secretive inner life, and become adept at hiding maladaptive behaviour. I became a skilled liar and dissembler.
Suffice to say that this did not do me any favours in life. For the longest time I was able to “fake” being a successful, functioning, and sensitive person. But in reality I was throwing mental landmines into my own future that I eventually stepped on, resulting in addiction, depression, anxiety, almost constant suicidal ideation, a painful divorce (due to my own behaviour), and the estrangement of my adult children. I broke down a couple of years ago, landed in a psychiatric clinic, and started unraveling the effects of a lifetime of living with this baggage. I’m now 61 and have had two of the hardest, most challenging, most heartbreaking, yet also most happy and serene period of growth ever. I feel I’m finally coming into my own and the power my childhood trauma has held over me is broken.
For what it's worth I was a similar kind of child. My problems entirely went away with about 10 (or more) hours of exercise a week. This required a hobby I cared about and the right kind of friends, but since then things have been smooth
I'm skeptical of most claims of trauma. As a fan of premodern history, I have come to understand that 99%+ of all humans ever born experienced what would today be called severe childhood trauma, not to mention later adult trauma. And they carried on okay. So either you have to think that everyone in the history of the world had been operating with severe trauma that was causing terrible problems, or that the modern trauma dose/response curve is learned. And I just feel like the former is less likely.
Logged in to recommend a book called “What My Bones Know” if you haven’t already read it. I think you’d greatly benefit from hearing the author’s story.
tossintowind320 · · focus · HN ↗
I wasn't sexually abused, I wasn't neglected, I wasn't wanting of love. I was however often scolded to a point where I felt horrible about myself. Scolded to a point where I didn't even feel like I could exist without disrupting the world. At times yes, physically scolded but nothing so extreme as to leave a mark.
To be fair to my parents I was a very high energy and "difficult" child. Big emotions. I was always the problem.
Obviously compared to some upbringings this was a walk in the park. But it really did have an impact on me and who I grew up to be. In some ways it was likely a good impact. I learned that my energy had no place in the world. I learned that my emotions would likely cause more problems than they would solve. I learned to shut up, and sit down, and follow the rules, even when every ounce of my inner being wanted to do the opposite.
I've had a myriad of mental health issues throughout my adult life, ranging from low severity to medium, and on some rare occasions high. Genetics? Upbringing? Modern life? All of the above?
tecleandor · · focus · HN ↗
I'm kinda confused. Is that the good impact you think that had in you? Why?
peterlk · · focus · HN ↗
I have found in my own life that the practice of emotional regulation has made me a pretty good diplomat in difficult situations. Sitting down, shutting up, and following the rules when I want to yell at people is the essence of de-escalation.
tecleandor · · focus · HN ↗
Emotional regulation is a great thing to work with (I should keep on it), but I think it's very important to do it, not like "my emotions don't belong here, I'm not valid", but knowing the differences between different people, learning how different people behave and express themselves, and finding ways of moving your emotions to different places that help you express yourself and transmit your needs. And you don't have to do it the same way than everyone else (that's one of the most important things I've learnt since my diagnose a couple years ago).
tossintowind320 · · focus · HN ↗
I learned to regulate my emotions, one way or another. Did it possibly (likely?) also have a long lasting negative effect on aspects of my mood, motivation, focus, etc.? I think there's a good chance.
tecleandor · · focus · HN ↗
I have lots of problems understanding my feelings (good old alexithymia) and it's always been an struggle for me to understand or communicate how I feel or what bothers me.
spwa4 · · focus · HN ↗
Really, that's it. Read the PDF.
The article even acknowledges that psychiatrist answer is wrong, and that all of the above are on a spectrum and nobody is ADHD-free or 100%-autist. This is not a problem because the answer is not meant to be correct, but only to be helpful and to "alleviate shame to enable people to achieve their fullest potential".
So there isn't even an answer.
Which, judging by your post, I'm guessing you will find a deeply unsatisfying way to look at the world, as you sound like someone with a positivist view (facts are correct and everything is true or false, you either have ADHD or not, and even on a spectrum there's a number. But there isn't)
cj · · focus · HN ↗
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
spwa4 · · focus · HN ↗
453yuh46 · · focus · HN ↗
"My hypothesis is that that those who remain most affected by childhood trauma in adulthood and seek treatment for it represent a population more likely to have innate neurodiversity."
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
avidiax · · focus · HN ↗
You were meant to learn to recognize and name that energy and emotionality, and then learn to sit with it and develop adaptive coping strategies as needed, not maladaptive ones like negative self-concept and emotional repression.
It can take quite a long time to realize all of this and unlearn the patterns, and unfortunately, first line therapies like CBT are possibly detrimental for these issues.
Edit: also, you need not be fair to your parents. They are meant to adapt to parenting you, even if you were legitimately overactive or overemotional. Instead, you adapted to them.
kubanczyk · · focus · HN ↗
That's just your own projection. Both sides adapt, and you haven't heard the other side yet.
Since children turn into adults, and not the other way around, I'd say that children adapt much more than parents.
avidiax · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
ethbr1 · · focus · HN ↗
Perfect parenting, if such a thing exists, certainly has an economic minimum price.
And likely has a previous generation upraising requirement as well. There's a reason maladaptive cycles continuing down through generations happens: parents are often defined by their parents ad infinitum.
What matters as a parent is being the best you can be, and striving to be better than your parents were.
cj9 · · focus · HN ↗
Offspring repeat maladaptive traits which were considered normal or effective. Any skills lacked will have to be self-taught or sought out once they become aware. The narrative of being the best we can be and putting in 100% effort as parents unfortunately only makes us feel better about our situation/security, personal life choices (including avoidance), and quality of connection. Many people have kids for the sake of it and to improve their own lives. This is one of the insidious roots of a potentially painful upbringing.
Shifting the thought framing to seeking "reasons" rather than "blame" for behaviors allowed me to see failures or betrayals for what they are. I could then grieve the times I was hurt despite the love and intentions. I processed anger and bitterness about this along with a host of unresolved traumas and associated emotions that I never had the chance to resolve internally at the time. What remains is a dull universal sadness at seeing the truth of all this - the obvious harms we are doing to ourselves and each other despite "best intentions". It's a small price to pay to finally be arriving at a sense of internal peace.
Effective or "good enough" parenting requires a range of skills including emotional intelligence and awareness of our flaws in order to reduce harm, and to treat the child as a separate individual. Everyone gets stressed and makes mistakes, but those skills determine whether it's an opportunity to teach children how to self-regulate and resolve conflict, or an internal clusterfuck that sets them up for a lifetime of interpersonal issues, poor self-regulation, and disappointment. Prioritizing emotional presence is critical.
Some people with deeper issues can cause problematic child development and attachment regardless of material conditions or physical presence. It's mainly whether the child has room to grow themselves or if they are stunted/controlled by the environment.
I believe we should look at ourselves deeply and honestly to work on our own state of mind before diving into commitments. The reward of internal peace is worth the price of realizing this reality. From here we can improve it for the next generations.
nradov · · focus · HN ↗
washkitonion · · focus · HN ↗
nradov · · focus · HN ↗
cj9 · · focus · HN ↗
If you have the urge to use violence or verbal abuse, shouting etc. at a child - things that would be illegal to do to even an adult or would most certainly get you fired at work - you have emotional control issues, perhaps from your own upbringing.
Kids naturally want to please their parents and respond well in most settings, as they are totally and utterly dependent on parents for survival. It's not difficult to use this to discipline them in constructive ways. Unless something is medically wrong, their specific behavior reflects their environment and upbringing.
taurath · · focus · HN ↗
It’s not all on the parents of course but often family systems push parents to have kids when they don’t know how much they’ve been neglected or have major attachment issues themselves. Theres a huge social hereditary thing.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
kennywinker · · focus · HN ↗
A car accident is a car accident. Sometimes they are fatal, sometimes the paint gets scratched. People sometimes get long term health effects from a fender-bender.
captainbland · · focus · HN ↗
kennywinker · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe, but some people react by becoming stronger and some react by breaking down and failing. Regardless of other effects like depression, anxiety, paranoia etc., being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know? If you ended up weaker then sometimes nothing can convince you that's what was best.
Kye · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
Real example based on real self-doubt across multiple friends I know.
Kye · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
Both examples can be incredibly emotionally mature, they just express it in different ways.
Kye · · focus · HN ↗
>> "Consider breaking down in front of everyone all the time, embarrassing yourself constantly, never knowing what to do, irritating everyone by being inconsolable, etc. vs always being composed, manipulating situations to avoid embarrassment, always being prepared with plans and never depending on others. Despite the fact that the latter is a constant never-ending source of work that mostly never gets used, on top of being incredibly lonely, the former feels worse because everybody sees it as worse."
These are not emotionally mature ways of handling things. These are called maladaptive coping strategies.
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
kennywinker · · focus · HN ↗
That feels like a tautology. From context, you've defined stronger to mean better. So of course in that case stronger is better. But in reality stronger isn't always better. If you come to a chess match being able to bench more than your opponent, are you better at chess than them?
If there are tradeoffs, and there are always tradeoffs, then you can't actually say stronger is better. The neglect of your parents might make you more independent and you might find that helps with your work life, while at the same time it makes your personal relationships harder. Which of those do you happen to value more?
Which is not to say you can't personally find value in and appreciate even the negative the experiences that made you who you are. But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
Oh neglect is terrible; simultaneously the worst and the least recognized type of abuse.
My point is that adaptations to abuse vary enough that some can be more "desirable" than others (in addition to being more fit for the environment / the world at large in some cases), and someone stuck in a "worse" one could end up longing for a "better" one. Though, sometimes I long for "worse" ones myself as someone who feels "better" than I should be, so maybe the grass is just always greener.
kennywinker · · focus · HN ↗
Fr0styMatt88 · · focus · HN ↗
kennywinker · · focus · HN ↗
eslaught · · focus · HN ↗
The classic example is a child who drew a picture shortly after 9/11. The picture included people floating down the building on (I believe) balloons or umbrellas. Obviously unphysical; but the child imagining ways (however fantastical) that could have helped was a factor in reducing that child's trauma.
On a therapist can tell you whether you personally have trauma, but the lessons you took away from your experiences certainly sound like it to me.
zug_zug · · focus · HN ↗
In your case I'd just ask myself "Do I still feel like I'm a bother in situations where I know I'm not because of X?" And if so, it can be productive to see if you can change that directly or indirectly.
taurath · · focus · HN ↗
Personally since reading it and working through my own responses I’ve grown in leaps and bounds where previously I would’ve described myself exactly how you did.
tossintowind320 · · focus · HN ↗
nyanmatt · · focus · HN ↗
Noaidi · · focus · HN ↗
How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
In my honest opinion, no one wants to look at genetics because it scares the hell out of them. But it’s most likely it’s complex genetics, not complex PTSD.
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
> How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
Happy is how you're feeling in the moment. Emotionally fulfilling is how you feel about the whole of your situation. Does it feel right? Fair? Or are you constantly "glad it's not worse"? Remove fault and justification from the equation -- wouldn't it be more emotionally fulfilling if parents didn't yell at you? If they didn't make such a big deal out of spending money on you? You can be happy a lot of the time despite those, but they tend to leave a hole in you anyway. Emotional fulfillment is the relative lack of those holes, compared to the good.
j45 · · focus · HN ↗
It doesn’t have to be the wrist experience to childhood to guarantee crippling adulthoods.
It’s not about little or big trauma, the focus on what any trauma did to the brain is what’s important because the fingerprint and footprint of trauma can be unique and underdeveloped the brain in certain areas regardless of source.
scun · · focus · HN ↗
phs318u · · focus · HN ↗
1) love is conditional on behaviour - pleasing mum was the primary goal above everything else.
2) when I had been “bad”, only the most extreme contrition on my part unlocked the love I needed (as a highly precocious and literate child I’d write little suicide notes for her to find apologising for being so useless. I was single-digit age).
3) The dissonance between the private incessant scolding and the public display of praise led me to develop a rich, secretive inner life, and become adept at hiding maladaptive behaviour. I became a skilled liar and dissembler.
Suffice to say that this did not do me any favours in life. For the longest time I was able to “fake” being a successful, functioning, and sensitive person. But in reality I was throwing mental landmines into my own future that I eventually stepped on, resulting in addiction, depression, anxiety, almost constant suicidal ideation, a painful divorce (due to my own behaviour), and the estrangement of my adult children. I broke down a couple of years ago, landed in a psychiatric clinic, and started unraveling the effects of a lifetime of living with this baggage. I’m now 61 and have had two of the hardest, most challenging, most heartbreaking, yet also most happy and serene period of growth ever. I feel I’m finally coming into my own and the power my childhood trauma has held over me is broken.
Formally diagnosed two years ago as ASD, ADHD.
thelaxiankey · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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eudamoniac · · focus · HN ↗
washkitonion · · focus · HN ↗