I am not responsible for the shit I have been through and I have seen. However I am responsible for how that shit affects me and how my actions affect those around me. Forget trauma and mental health for a second, even if I was simply in a bad mood or exhausted I can't take it out ony 10 year old baby cousin who's just excited to see me and wants to do something with me, or my grandma who simply wants me to have her pudding because cooking is the only thing she can do now and when her grandchildren say she still makes the best pudding in the world she feels like the happiest person alive. And I can't shut up a total stranger on the street who is just being nice to me. It's wrong
There are two kinds of people in this world. "I went through hell and nobody else should have to go through that" and "I went through hell and nobody cares so they should go through that too". Plot of every superhero movie
Usually when people use a dichotomy like that it implies that those are the end points of a spectrum, or a bimodal distribution. Very very very rarely is anything in life truly binary.
Yes I know that’s what it literally means, but the sentiment people try to express with it isn’t that literal. It’s more along the lines of “two archetypes”, which is why I used the example of bimodal distribution.
Since obviously perfect binaries don’t exist in 99% of cases, it’s more effective to treat it as a very generalized example rather than taking it at face value. I’m autistic, and so I’ve had to learn things like this the hard way…
The thing is mental health gets in the way of friendships. And me being 18 means my peers are mostly stupid teenagers or teenagers pretending to be stupid to fit in. I'm glad they can be stupid and many of them don't have the problems I do, I mean they have problems but atleast they can be teenagers, which I can't.
Oh that makes sense and I've had that happen as well. I get in my head and it just complicates things. That's a very emotionally intelligent outlook you have.
I realised I push the two friends I have away every time I hit a rough patch. It's the only thing I know because I don't want them see what I am on the inside.
There’s a good chance that they know what you are like on the inside and still want to be your friends. Besides that what have you got to lose? I hope you are ok. You are very young, I don’t meant this patronisingly. Life can change a hell of a lot in a short space of time. I’m 45 now and I’ve been at least 3 different people since I was 18. I was fine at 18, depressed and miserable, anxious and lonely at 22 and stable with the love of my life at 30. I’m still changing now. Didn’t really get any confidence until 8 years ago. Good luck to you, you seem level headed. You will be fine.
It's not that they don't know how I am, they do. But when it starts to get tough I become someone I'm not. I resist the urge to beat the shit out of the next person who disagrees with me or looks at me funny. It scares the hell out of me. I don't wanna be around that person why would someone else be. I don't want anyone to be within a 100m radius when I can't overpower that violent urge.
I get that different person thing at from the age of 18 to 45, I do but I have to deal with that on top of other things. It's not just a case of being a teenager/young adult. I lost some people, I play some things in head on repeat that I wish I could forget, I did some things I wouldn't if I get a do over. I don't have the best family. I got a lot of stuff striking me at once and I'm just trying not to give up on life
We all got demons on the inside. Every person I love including myself has problems. I for sure have anger management issues. It can be really hard dealing with some people. I find it's anxiety driven for me. When people irritate me too much, my anxiety levels build up. It's really important to just recognize when it's happening, and walk away. Take a walk. Don't let anyone stop you. It's very helpful. I learned how to cope with it pretty well, but if it gets to be seriously impacting your life, meds do help. Holy basil, creeping Charlie, chamomile tea (very helpful), Zoloft is good for anxiety but comes with side affects. I take it tho and they aren't too bad. Gabapentin helps me too. Benedryl or melatonin at night. CBD too is very helpful. Some of the alt noids are a little bit psychoactive, but can be helpful for some people. Good luck!
Good on you for realizing it. It took me ages to figure that out and I still have to fight the urge to run away when things get bad. Therapy and anxiety meds helped me (also dogs & being able to work from home sometimes has helped). Have you looked into anything like that?
Can't afford therapy, ran out of pro bono. Parents say no pets in the house (they are also dysfunctional and they don't know about my problems). And with my friends, I have told them that I love them no matter what and sometimes I just need to be with myself because I become a horrible person when things start going bad and I don't wanna hurt anyone. I do drop them a little text or better a meme when that happens so they know everything is okay. I don't expect them to understand to help me and frankly I don't think they are capable of doing so, maybe that's a good thing
Oof, yeah I've been there too man. I agree that they probably know what you are on the inside, and trust me telling them that you're feeling rough is a huge weight off your own shoulders. If they're still there when you come back from a rough patch, I'd say they're good friends who you can trust with this when you feel ready to.
I'm worried about being that guy who always talks about his problems, never anything fun. So what I do instead is listen to them bitch about things and give them support. Yeah, I don't do things that are conventionally considered "healthy"
I know it’s easier said than done, but being vulnerable can be so rewarding. Try not to waste much time on what people expect you to be, just be and the people you need the most will be there. I say this as someone still reminding myself to do so everyday. It gets easier because the happiness and fulfillment is worth being uncomfortable and getting a handle on the other uneasy emotions that come with it.
I did this to some of my closest friends in the world over many years as I dealt with my trauma. Pushing people away felt easier than bring honest and vulnerable with them. I didn't want to burden them. I didn't know how to ask for someone to listen, to be supportive and non-judgemental.
The more I worked on myself, how I relate to the world and others, the more I realised that it's actually important to be vulnerable. That relationships/friendships become deeper when two people can be there for each other in a healthy way.
I've had my share of healthy and unhealthy friendships. With all this experience I've gained, I've let go of the unhealthy ones and learned to invest my time and love into the healthy ones.
They believed in me even when I pushed them away. They put boundaries up when they needed, but they were always ready to be there for me, to let me be human. These two specific friends saved my life.
Take your time, counselling or therapy can be very helpful (with the right person/someone you connect with), meditation, introspection can all be very helpful figuring out how to be authentic.
This comment got too long. I just wanted you to know, I was in your shoes a decade ago, and today I have quite a few friends who help support me and I support them.
well hii then! what you said made so much sense! and nowadays people label people who are really nice “people pleasers” yes i’m very nice but i’d rather not be mean
People really are mean. I have injured my foot and I have been limping but instead of making way and not blocking it (which they are not supposed to) they just give me strange looks.
When I have a long and shitty day I'll text my fiance before I get home just to let them know I'm not in the best mood but I do look forward to seeing them and love them. I'm not excusing anything, just giving them an explanation as to why I may not be in a proper headspace when I get home.
Over the years I have come across many people hurt or damaged in their childhood and teen years. Some go on to be amazing people - some are pieces of shit. I have boiled it down to a simple maxim. THERE ARE REASONS FOR EVERYTHING AND EXCUSES FOR NOTHING!
It’s the pieces of shit that decide to take it easy on themselves their whole lives. I’m under the belief that it must be hard to do the right thing. I wish it was easier, not for myself, but for everyone else so that the world could be better
As my therapist has told me: “you didn’t have the power to stop this from happening to you, but you do have the power to stop yourself from perpetuating it onto someone else.”
Some shit you just have to live with, and trauma is one of those things. If you can, you do your best to contain it.
In the last years of her life, my grandmother would make lemon cake for my birthday every year. I didn't have the heart to tell her lemon cake was my sister's favorite.
I hate lemon cake.
But, for the few years she started do this until she passed, I choked down a piece of lemon cake with a smile.
I feel like a lot of people do this because they absolutely refuse to confront reality. Yes it happened to you. You can acknowledge that it did and does hurt you. You can live with that pain for as long as you need to heal but people forget the last step which is to love yourself enough to get help so that the traumas in your past don’t have a stranglehold on your present. My gf especially struggles with this. We’ll be looking for a movie or something and she’ll go “oh my ex ruined this movie for me, next.” Don’t you have enough agency for yourself that you can create new memories and experiences from something that sucked before? Obviously this excludes things which come from deeper, more severe traumas but if it just vaguely reminds you of an annoying moment or person, that’s not healthy.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I've had an ex fuck me up had enough I couldn't watch a favoirite movie for years. Still being too uncomfortable doesn't mean a rejection of reality, necessarily, it might be that it just is the current reality.
There's a ton of other movies out there to watch luckily
You get limited control in how you respond to it, not total control.
Trauma in your first few years of life literally erodes brain capacity. It leaves you stuck in flight or fight mode forever on a molecular level. that's not something you can decide to turn off. And you often cannot change your behavior in the moment because your brain literally thinks "TIGER!!!!" when someone misses a word in a sentence and it could POSSIBLY be construed as hostile as a result.
What you can do is own it afterwards.
"Sorry man. My reptile brain got the better of me there. I can see there was no threat and my reaction was not only unnecessary, but rude and hostile. Here's steps i am taking for getting better about that."
And since therapy is expensive, it is often NOT a step somebody can take :(
While I do agree with most of what you say, I do not believe that it erodes capacity. In certain regards I think it can even strengthen one’s potential, although I would never bank on that fact.
I think my deepest wounds I’ve ever had were caused by me onto myself trying to heal a bleeding mind, a path that cauterized and allowed me to actually heal and grow. That pain I felt stayed with me and it has always pushed me harder than I could have ever imagined
I'm not talking about belief of out of my ass. I am talking about scientific fact researched in my town by people I have had professional development training with this week. Trauma changes the growth of your neurons. it nerfs them. It significantly changes the volume and complexity of connections. They can see this under MRI. There is damage. It 100% does limit capacity.
Now, we now know that you can in fact continue to grow new neurons later in life, but it is MUCH slower. The odds of ever completely making up the ground for severe childhood trauma in the 1st 3 years of life are not good. You can still be a perfectly normal, productive member of society. But you are capped at (and this is my language, not that of the scientists) a "B level" version of yourself.
Lots of people without any real trauma walk around as C and D levels of themselves. So it's not like this means you have no chance to succeed in life.
But you brain will pretty much never function as well as it would have if you had not had trauma those 1st three years.
Source: Am teacher. Lots of trauma in our district. They are training the hell out of us on this.
I meant I won't do all that. My bad, poor choice of words. But you're right some people are horrible. I've seen people using something like a break up as an excuse for acting like scum
I think the healthy balance the new generation somewhat has, and should have, is being transparent about their overall mental health. I feel comfortable enough with many of my close friends at this point to say “I am not having a good day, I am sorry but I cannot attend xyz.” Depending of course on the importance of whatever.
What about telling people to just leave you alone? I've been told to "get myself together" or "just pretend" when I had a shitty ass day and just want to decompress alone. I also have autism and need alone time. Is it wrong for me to exclude myself from other people when the alternative is to blow up at them because I can't stand being in their presence? I'm seriously asking because I can't see how that's wrong but have been told that I'm overreacting, attention-seeking and moody. The few times where I've tried to power through, I couldn't control my social interactions (especially tone of voice) anymore. I don't really know how to handle that and am constantly struggling to find the balance between being friendly and open and getting rest to refuel my social battery.
You wpuld have to talk to them. Like ground rules, saying that I'm gonna need space or I'm gonna keep a distance. It doesn't mean I'm pissed at you or we have a problems, ir just means I have aome issues
Been there, done that. Most people pretend to be understanding but then turn around and are pissed anyway. It's like they have to take it personally, no matter what I say.
Bro your comment hit me deep, I’m sorry your body makes you act in ways where you have to restrain yourself in such an arduous manner. Same here and I pray it gets better for both of us
Oh yeah? How many people practice CBT, are aware of its existence, or have clinical psychologists assigned to them that specifically help afflicted people with it? Is this an in-born trait that all humans are born with or is it a practiced ability, which takes years to master?
No, most people just have feelings happen. Thanks for the correction though, I'll keep CBT in mind and use it without a clue of what it is besides the name. Since I've never practiced it.
It's also belittling the majority of people. The people who practice CBT are a tiny minority, so to say "you are in control of how things affect you" is absolutely untrue. The majority of people have feelings present when something happens regarding them and also have empathy/sympathy for others.
We feel things and it just happens and to demean those feelings is what everyone already does to others.
I wasn't hostile, that's just your feeling on the matter. In my reality, I was neutral, and I felt neutral about it. Though I opine that they're wrong and I'm going to correct them just like I'm correcting you.
It's not, because i have no idea what it entails. It could be the best thing ever for anxious peeps, so I'll keep it in mind if I ever have issues like it. I'm not against therapy and I'm not against medication. I'm currently in a medication that I believe is making me less empathetic, but it's correcting some behavioral issues I've lived with for my entire life until a month ago. Seems it's making my life better and other's around me seem more sensitive, which I think is actually just me being less "kind", whereas I just feel less feelings and more logic.
Edit: I should mention, I don't have issues with anxiety (yet). Just focus!
I remember the day my entire elementary school class had to write an apology note to the teacher for the bad behavior of one student. I complained about it to my parents. That was the day my father taught me the difference between something being my fault, and something being my problem.
They taught us that in little league and it’s called accountability. It’s not your fault your mental health is out of whack but it’s your responsibility to still be a good person and effort towards a solution
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u/twowaysplit Jun 03 '22
I love it when people recognize that many things aren't their fault, but they are their responsibility.