- 7 days
No, but it should inspire compassion and patience. Childhood abuse literally changes the structure of their growing brains, you don’t fix that in a day.
- 7 days
Learning changes the structure of growing and non-growing brains. So does trauma.
- 7 days
Explain to me in one hastily written white board that you do not understand childhood trauma.
On the one hand there’s truth to that: your behavior is your responsibility.
On the other: people in this country are seriously uneducated in regards to childhood trauma. I mean good grief. If someone is behaving poorly, there may be deep reasons for that and maybe get them some help.
- 7 days
I think the point is though that after you move out you are in control of your own destiny, and can choose to be a better person than your parents, or just repeat their patterns in your life. I’m not negating trauma.
I.e. had a guy doing Renos at our place, super guy, very kind. As the renos went on we got to chatting. His dad was an abusive alcoholic and he’d left home. I commented how he was doing amazing in spite of his upbringing, and his response was (paraphrased) “I went through stuff, but one day I had to choose not to be my dad, and not let what he did hold me back any longer. You can wallow and drown in the poor me pool, or climb out of it”
- 7 days
It’s all about attitude. You can’t choose your trauma, but you can choose how to see it:
- A normal experience that you “got over” and refuse to allow yourself (and by extension others) to say is or was “that bad,” may even lead to believing that it’s “your turn” to inflict it on anyone who arbitrarily deserves it
- A horrific experience that you never want another child to ever go through
Luckily, I grew up with parents who saw it the #2 way and raised me with love
- 7 days
You cannot always understand or even know your own trauma and in many cases, not all for sure, as you didn’t see it as trauma or completely suppress it and hide it from even yourself
- MehBlah@lemmy.worldEnglish7 days
It took me quite a while to climb out of that pit. Even now decades later I’m realizing how much they did to me. They didn’t know it and didn’t care but they shortened my life with their neglect. I had never looked up rheumatic fever. When I was fourteen I was third in free style swimming in my region. I got sick with a sore throat and ear ache. My parents waited three days to take me to the doctor. The 80 year doctor just said it was a minor ‘red throat’ I went back home and two days later my I started bleeding from my ears. Three days after that they finally took me back to the doctor. I had a high fever and was really out of it. I was out of it for a few days and in the hospitals for fourteen days.
After that I started getting slower in swimming. I couldn’t no longer keep up with the times I had when I was younger. I was getting tired all the time and was having pain in my chest. My mother insisted I was too old for that and fool that I was believed her. In truth I had heart problems related to that fever. They had the money and I had insurance but they decided that their money was more important and the only reason why they went to the doctor when they did was because someone came by the house and saw the bloody paper towel next to my ear and freaked out. I didn’t learn that for thirty years just like I didn’t learn they called SCAN which was child services at the time. Of course they talked them down and I was in my late forties before I found out.
I had a heart attack when I was in my mid thirties. Now in my mid fifties I’m looking at severe problem with my heart valves. If I lose my job I’m dead in the Land of the Fee. I have tried to raise my children better but I still have difficult emotional problems and I can tell you right now I don’t hate much but even though they are dead I will always hate them.
- 7 days
Honestly, I used to feel the same. But now… Not so much.
Shitty childhoods often develop into isolating behaviors. Isolating behaviors keep you from connecting with other people. Those people often give you hell, because you don’t have the skills to connect and they’re afraid of you. Which means you learn behaviors to keep others away from you.
- Senal@programming.devEnglish7 days
A reason isn’t an excuse (or free pass).
It could be considered a mitigating consideration, but thats not an automatic freedom from consequences.
- 7 days
A reason is literally an excuse.
If every time your parents offered you ice cream as a child, they beat the hell out of you, you’d soon start associating ice cream with with abuse. You’d expect it, as a matter of survival.
When you got older, someone offering you ice cream would trigger that fight or flight mechanism.
Mitigation is quite literally freedom from one consequence, in place of another.
I honestly don’t know if this is genuinely supposed to be a shitposting community, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask
I mean, kind of glossing over how strong childhood trauma can be. Feels like they’re saying “just get over it already”.
Unless people are trying to use that as a free pass for acting shitty somehow.
- JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.worldEnglish7 days
“Sorry” takes this otherwise good thought and makes the whole thing cunty.
Couldn’t agree more
That doesn’t mean it’s easy to NOT let that trauma turn me into a bitter monster. In fact for a time during the thick of it, I was. Which was also the time when I was struggling BAD with addiction (7 years sober now, it’s the longest I’ve ever been sober). It’s a stretch of time where I deeply regret the person I was.
I’d say the biggest thing that helps me win and be a better person is framing who I am now in a specific way in my mind. If I let all that trauma turn me into a bitter monster, than that means that the monsters that defined the first 24 years of my life continue to have power over me. So basically I go “Fuck you! You won’t turn me into a fucking monster! I’m going be the kind of person none of y’all ever were to me! I’m gonna be kind! I’m gonna be helpful! I’m gonna be the kind of person people are happy and PROUD to know! I’m gonna leave a POSITIVE impact on the lives of people I interact with!”
My sister has the same outlook as me, which brings me joy. She also had awful trauma continue into her 20s.
My brother, not so much though. At least my niece and nephew have my sister and I to interact with often (mostly my sister, my brother doesn’t talk to me very often for reasons I’m not gonna go into) so they’re becoming the kind of people that we’d love for them to be. Being the candle in the dark for them gives them a guiding light so that they have some good to look to.
- 7 days
You don’t know me, but I wanted to say I’m proud of you, internet stranger, for 7 years of sobriety. That takes a lot of work.
- Mr Fish@lemmy.nzEnglish7 days
No, but understanding how a shitty childhood can often lead to a shitty adult can help prevent it.
- 7 days
Yes and maybe you’ll be able to bring up some compassion for shitty people when you understand them a bit better
“Just because you got burned doesn’t mean you get to go around setting everyone else on fire.”
A quote I remember often.
The thing about trauma is that it hijacks the default mode network and makes everything look like a threat. The word is hypervigilance, and it filters everything you perceive through the lens of danger.
So when “hurt people hurt people,” it’s not usually because “I’m in pain so I must make others suffer.” Often it’s because they see a phantom of whoever hurt them in the past, and it’s overlaid on every interaction they have.
The default mode becomes defensiveness and self-preservation, and often the impulse is to preempt any potential pain by reacting to it before it even happens.
Therapy can help, but blaming people for their trauma and treating them as a fundamentally bad person because of how it manifests in their behavior doesn’t.
- 7 days
Absolutely humans are deeply affected on conscious and unconscious levels by all kinds of things that are out of their control - both experiences and brain chemistry. Absolutely it is a privilege afforded to only a few to have access to the support and resources needed to become aware of their situation and create deep change for themselves.
It’s also true that if you do a bad thing you did a bad thing. That does NOT mean you are a bad person, it does NOT mean all the things you can’t or couldn’t control are your responsibility, it does NOT mean that you even were fully aware of what you did.
But if you do a bad thing you are responsible for what you did. YOU did it. It is your responsibility to get on a path that will allow you to recognize and change that behavior.
It is nobody’s job to be perfect or beat themselves up for mistakes. It is everyone’s job to work towards being better - to themselves and to the people around them.
Part of that is understanding that you are responsible for your actions. You may genuinely not have been capable of making a better choice at the time - but if you did it = it’s on you to own the mistake.
7 daysMakes me think of the fact that boys that are sexually abused as children are far more likely to grow up to become pedophiles than boys who are not sexually abused as children.
They should still be in prison if they ever act on their pedophilia.
They should still get help for the trauma they have experienced.
I’m willing to bet that almost all of them are fixable as long as they have not offended, but saying that, I also say that it’s practically inexcusable if they did.
My quote wasn’t intended to be a solution for people with genuine problems. It can be a reminder to take a step back if one can.
Yeah, trauma or other defensive behavior can be like wagon ruts. That’s the well-worn path the brain defaults to and it can be really hard to lift that heavy wagonload of trauma out of that deep rut. Creating other roads and lightening the load is a job for therapy.
- 7 days
I’m glad my childhood raised me to be a pathological people pleaser utterly terrified of anyone’s disapproval. Nobody complaining about these sorts of people
- 7 days
Not yet. But when the day comes when you decide you don’t want to live like this any more, you’ll get a lot of “you’ve changed” and “why are you being so cruel to me” from the people who have grown accustomed to your lack of boundaries.
- 7 days
One day you’ll emerge, fed up with being steamrolled by everyone. There’s a strong assertive raging badass inside of you who won’t take shit from anyone.
Deep down inside, everyone has their Office Space moment just waiting to bloom!
On one hand, I am the same way. On the other hand push that further in the same direction to get BPD, and people absolutely complain about people who have it. I guess also my wife complains about my people pleasing sometimes…
I’m a people. And you can please me by giving me french fries.
- 7 days
Same for age, wealth, status, gender, education, height, weight, hair color, surname and any other inane metric yould care to list. People just need validation and respect, yet don’t recognize it’s a two way street. Not difficult.
- 7 days
Nobody is asking for a free pass, but mental healthcare and just a general recognition of the lack of free will that we all suffer in this deterministic universe does require us to think in terms of consequences that might actually work to make the world a better place.
I’m other words, when has saying, “be better” ever persuaded anyone?
- chunk6235@piefed.socialEnglish7 days
I’m other words, when has saying, “be better” ever persuaded anyone?
When the other person respects your opinion of them.
I’ve had a couple instances in my life where a friend has pulled me aside, explained how I’m being an asshole and told me to be better. Honestly, that has done more to unfuck the person I am than just about anything I can think of. Because I actually care what those close to me think, and don’t want to push them away with my character flaws. Same reason I go to therapy, my therapist just knows how to word it better.
You’re against using the phrase “be better” ? Because it’s overly reductive, lazy and lacks any real tangible call to action? Is that why?
- 7 days
At least don’t fuck over the people that actually stand beside you. Everyone else is fair game.
- 7 days
its not your fault for turning that way. but its your fault for keeping that way.
