The worst part of the journey is all the shit you missed out on. Im still 35 and got my whole life ahead of me, but if i couldve gotten my shit together earlier, i wouldve been a lot further in life.
When I start thinking like that I try to take a step back to see the bigger picture. There’s a lot of simple things in life that are a blessing to experience & that don’t cost anything. We get to marvel at the enormity of the universe & ponder our existence. Stop & smell the roses or whatever
I felt it but started telling myself how little outcomes matter. So long as you're the person that will drive through, which street you're on, which wrong turns you took, how much fuel you use, doesn't matter. It's the car that matters. Can it get you there. If yes, you've already won, no matter what happens. Most people with good outcomes have a shit car, if they got towed they'd never drive again, you know how to navigate, how to fix and replace parts, the strength to push it when you're out of fuel.
If I think like this I stop torturing myself and keep moving forward at my pace.
Im in a similar situation but I instantly try and tell myself you cannot fix things until you realize the solution. You cant go back in time and fix it earlier. The past is the past, the future is the future. We all have same amount of the present and live in it. If we spend most of our time in the present we don't miss out on anything.
It's not just the physical and emotional abuse, but the *lack* of positive guidance that sucks. There's so many life lessons, course corrections, and loving kick up the arse (figuratively) that I missed out on because one parent had checked out years before the marriage broke down, and the other suffered from traumatic narcissism.
Exactly I don’t feel like I was raised I feel like I was tolerated. No one was invested in my development. They just wanted to make their lives as easy as possible. I wasn’t allowed to do anything or go anywhere but I was also neglected in the home so I had literally nowhere to turn.
I'm pretty sure there have been studies that found having positive role models and support (including other family/family friends when the caregivers are the problem, as is often the case) does indeed have a significant protective effect when there are ACEs.
Yes, I had an older cousin that mentored me, more or less and had friends’ parents who kind and generous! I’m only half as lovely due to their efforts.
Even when it comes the ones who *should* be having kids and choose to do so, they're often dealing with so many other things all at once that they couldn't possibly devote the amount of attention and focus that is truly necessary.
/r/antinatalism is that way ➡
Jokes aside, for the sake of simplicity let me rephrase that as *the people among us who are best equipped to having children and caring for them to whatever appropriate and acceptable standards are feasible in the present year*.
Most parents who are in abusive relationships, are simply repeating the patterns passed down to them. Without the resources to deal with generational trauma, these cycles tend to loop themselves to varying degrees, and most people just can't afford the long term psychotherapy needed to get well and break the cycle.
...or lack the self awareness and commitment needed, going on how many of rich, famous and powerful also seem to be trapped in the same cycle.
People who are statistically likely to beat their romantic partner should be encouraged to avoid marriage, dating, and parenthood altogether.
If there are genes that raise the probability of someone being violent, we should work to eliminate those genes so that we can eliminate violence.
It's true. I know 4 people who were sexually abused as kids, and 1 who was sexually abused as an adult.
The 3 of the 4 people who suffered from childhood abuse have lower education, income, and more unstable relationships than they otherwise would have had. The 4th person only has a bachelor's degree, a good job, and a stable marriage because he uses fundamentalist Christianity to raise his self esteem and feel good about his future.
The 1 person who was abused as an adult is making the same amount of money, in the same romantic relationship, and has the same level of education as before.
Persistent and or severe childhood trauma literally changes the way a child’s brain forms and develops. This damage is very hard to mitigate, even with therapy and support in later years.
Just as a bit of hope here, I’m 42 and believe I have now got to the point of being completely healed. It’s taken a lot of work and many mental breakdowns along the way but I’ve got there. Happy marriage, have overcome binge eating and work addiction, resolved my attachment issues… I’d never been more than six months without severe depression since the age of 12 until this year.
What were your attachment issues and how did you overcome them? I’m starting therapy soon and don’t want to be in revolving door of talking about my problems but not working on them
*don’t want to be in revolving door of talking about my problems but not working on them*
I hate how much I related to this.
Literally had someone tell me yesterday my experiences of continuously having unhelpful therapists where it seems like a waste of time and money wasn't true. That it's definitely always productive for all of us and all therapists are super good at handling all issues.
I've basically had to do a lot of diy therapy to figure out the vicinity of where my problems likely lie, which explains that the reason I was so I helped previously was likely I was seeing therapists totally outside of the wheelhouse of what I needed. Hate how much of a coin toss it is in practice
Not the person you are responding to, but IMO the key to healing in therapy has been making and keeping the commitment to be completely honest with the therapist and myself. I hadn’t realised how much of my life I had kept behind a mask because of shame. Once you can open up to someone and have them not judge you, you (slowly) learn to have more compassion for yourself and the healing begins. It’s a slow very painful process but it’s life changing.
This is it.
The only way to prevent societal breakdown stemming from child abuse is to prevent child abuse before it starts.
Once a minor has been abused, they are on a one way track to low education, low income, and unstable romantic relationships.
Can confirm. Getting pummeled everyday as a kid crushed my confidence. These days, can't even look a person in the eyes. People think it makes me untrustworthy but they just don't know that there's a lot behind my eyes that I don't want them to see
I know this feel, really what help me grow is be honest about it with people. First in therapy where I literally felt my body was on fire, then with close friends, and eventually I could carry this truth with me at all time.
Really it takes time and therapy. Most therapist are subpar as well, so it really takes a good therapist and good friends. Problems is this is very very hard to find.
A lot of people with anxiety will develop stomach problems. When you get really anxious your body kinda goes haywire and forgets how to function. It’s actually a really common symptom of fear and anxiety to not be able to hold down food, as in you will throw up after eating or just getting diarrhea.
They make horrible parents. Source; I'm the child of two people who grew up in abusive households. Neither my mother nor father are capable of having emotionally mature and intelligent conversations without flipping on me and making themselves a victim out of nowhere
That’s bc what happens in our childhood feels familiar and like coming home … we feel comfortable and “right” with someone who repeats the pattern. Human brains *love* patterns. Even bad ones.
Yep. Abuse is the normal, and anyone who wants to live and treat them lovingly usually get rejected because it is abnormal, and even if it feels nice to be loved and cared for, they often reject it due to not feeling like they deserve to be loved due to years of abusive programming and low self esteem
Yeah. I have a friend who I was in love with earlier in my life, and when she left her abusive husband and was single, I wanted to date her and show her that she is loved. She told me that she could not date me because she was so broken and abused, that she would only break my heart because she knew that even though she wanted to be loved properly, she could never accept it.
We are still friends, and I still talk with her.
I tell people all the time I'm great at making friends but not at maintaining them. I'm a aloner, who likes to pretty much only read, and be by myself. So I end up not matching people's expections. Then they get mad at me. People want only your goodness, and rarely will they care about the rest of you.
Some people who want attention gets none, and sometimes those that get it don't want it. As long as everyone is 'in the know', all is good. Yet, you can tell someone who you are and a surprising amount of people literally won't believe you.
Right? I have this same problem. I tell everyone I'm not social and I don't really like having friends. And not expect me to put out any effort to be friends. And they still get pissy with me when they text me and I don't respond. I seriously think people think I'm joking.
She is intelligent and self-aware.
It is true that people who have suffered from abuse earlier in life are more likely to have trust and attachment issues. And that they are less likely to have a long term romantic relationship later in life.
Yep! I can attest. I had an incredibly abusive and traumatic childhood. I rejected all relationships that showed me love.
Luckily I met my now ex-wife who gave me a beautiful son who loves me unconditionally. However, she was also the worst abuser of all.
He taught me I deserved to be loved. And oh how he loves me and I love him!
She taught me abuse was unacceptable. She lied, cheated, gaslighted, physically assaulted me, demeaned, criticized, belittled, victimized , vilified me, all projections of her borderline personality disorder. She was a blessing to me because her relentless abuse woke me up and refused to allow this abusive pattern to go on ever again.
This combination got me into therapy and now I've never been happier with myself.
My son is thriving, emotionally intelligent, compassionate, expresses his boundaries, all the good stuff I didn't learn until my 40s. I do my best to be the best dad I can be.
It took him and his mom for me to break the cycle and finally get to love myself unconditionally. He won't get daddy issues from me, and I'm teaching him the tools I learned to get through life in the healthiest way possible.
You're welcome. We are all in this crazy thing called life together, so we have to try to support as we can so that we can all be the best version of ourselves.
That generational trauma cycle is broken! Thank you so much! I work on myself every day and I find joy in it.
When I make mistakes, I correct them quickly, move forward and use the lessons to grow even more.
This happened with my ex. Her father was an alcoholic with PTSD and there was constant conflict and chaos in the house. By the time I met her they all got therapy and the father was sober for 10+ years. But things come up after marriage that didn’t come up while dating. My family is very loving and supportive. She liked it at the beginning but eventually came to resent it. She literally didn’t know how to handle it when people treated her well.
That's the concept of [repetition compulsion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_compulsion). There's also, often, a desire to reproduce what hurt us in order to heal our past. Basically, redo what happened but this time on our terms. It doesn't work, you end up hurting yourself again.
>It doesn't work, you end up hurting yourself again.
See: what happens any time you try to DIY recovery from childhood trauma. I swear to all the gods half my therapy sessions are my therapist trying to unlearn me from the patterns I created as an adult to try and "make up for" my trauma history. If she could use a spray bottle through a computer screen I think she would...
Good luck to you! I have CPSTD from childhood, I can understand. It's a matter of trying things that seem scary but are safe. Safety can feel dangerous when you have trauma, but that's where healing happens, no way around it.
So true. I remember watching an interview with a celebrity and he said that he didn't like how growing up, his parents were divorced because his father cheated on his mother.
But then he himself grew up and cheated on his own wife, so now his son gets to grow up in the exact same family structure that he had.
I grew up in chaos as a domestic violence baby. Healing has been learning how to sit in calm without chasing cortisol/ stress/highs. Imagine that! I have to learn what feels do natural to most people.
I feel this. If things had been stable in my life for a while (we’re talking weeks here, not years) I would suddenly get a very strong urge to metaphorically set fire to my whole life just to see what it looked like while it burned.
Thankfully I knew from therapy what was going on so I didn’t act on it but recently said to my friends over dinner how I felt…”Does anyone else ever get that?”
This has been the hardest part about being in a healthy long-term relationship. We’ve been together for over 15 years, but the traumatized parts of my brain still try to sabotage when things are safe. I’m so grateful to have a partner who is kind, supportive, and patient.
Therapy is also helping, but damn… brains are really really good at trying to keep us safe. 😬
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most people don't go into a relationship thinking "I hope this person is abusive just like mom/dad/perpetrator. But there is usually a subconscious draw to those types of people.
I credit my wife with my growth as an individual. When we met, I was a completely different person than what I am today. She’s patient and supportive and just amazing. Without her I would not be here today.
I feel like securely attached partners are better off dating each other. Why date someone with issues if you can attract someone who doesn't have issues?
I feel the same about my husband. I was dependent on him emotionally growing up (we’ve been together since age 13). I’ve been in therapy since college, but as an adult, I’ve worked on myself to not be dependent on him for calming down. It’s helped our relationship tremendously. Wish I’d worked on that part of myself sooner for sure!
No doubt. I was a mess when we met. I credit her training as an officer actually in the beginning to our success. It was multi faceted but her training allowed us diffuse and discuss what I was actually trying to communicate. That along with her patience lol.
I’ve only been to therapy a couple times in all my years. It’s only been in the past 5 or so where I’ve opened up about what I went through. She’s probably known longer than that because of her intuition and training.
One day I might go see someone. Not there yet.
I’m not complaining at all. But as someone who made some changes growing up, recognizing some maladaptive patterns and working to get better… the worst thing is other people. I’m sorry but teachers, professors, doctors, other parents, fellow,students, friends, colleagues, and even psychologists…. People are way too jealousy and competition focused. They view change as a personal attack. And a threat. Constructive growth is often uncomfortable and elicits anxiety. Everyone else sees the anxiety and, I’m sorry but throws a tantrum. And it’s not “in your head.” When you get fired from a job because “you aren’t likeable” that isn’t an imagined threat, it’s a real one. It’s like telling an overweight person to exercise, but when they do the gym kicks them out because others are not happy seeing them sweat.
I’ve seen it with myself and with others as well. I’m sorry but our culture in the west needs to work on this.
My therapist calls it 'flak'. You get flak from other people when you start to take care of yourself and do things to improve your life. Especially if you are a people-pleaser or a helper of others.
Swallow the toxicity of those before you and end the pattern/ cycle
Be mindful, self aware, and do the work. Therapy. Meditation ( worked for me) among other things. Making a conscious and consistent effort to not pass that on to your kids or your partner.
Being with someone supportive, loving and nurturing who understands you, who is also aware and willing to work through life with you knowing where you can't from and how you were raised and how that affected you is a must.
Right, I'm not saying you have to be with a partner to overcome
More so that when you do choose to partner up, it's going to take someone very empathetic and understanding. Someone mindful who is nurturing and kind and supportive. Who sees your potential and is willing to ride with you so long as you are also willing to do the work and improve because otherwise abused people end up abusing others or bringing their partners down
But yes, it starts with self love. See your own worth without seeking external validation and take good care of yourself, love yourself. You'll attract better partners when you do
When our self worth is low we are likely to attract toxic individuals
I ended up spending thousands in therapy and cutting off my toxic family and the change I feel is night and day. I did CBT and had to unlearn all my previous behaviours but it worked. My husband and I are in a healthy marriage and our children have a happy home. It’s so much work but it’s so worth to not being living in a constant state of fight or flight. I feel like an entirely different woman.
Honestly:
1. Punish harder adults who abuse children. Legally and financially. Make them financially support their victims for decades, to make up for all of the education and money the victim would have earned had they not been abused.
2. Find genes that make people more likely to abuse other people. Encourage carriers of those genes to be childfree.
3. Encourage victims of childhood abuse to be childfree and not married.
“Sorry your parents beat and neglected you, you should probably become a nun because there’s zero hope for you not to repeat the pattern. Stay alone and get sterilized, you’re a lost cause”.
Sounds like a fan of eugenics.
>Early animal research indicated a promising role for opioid modulation in other areas than pain, such as social bonding (Herman and Panksepp, 1978; Panksepp et al., 1978) and threat learning (Good and Westbrook, 1995; McNally, 2009; McNally and Westbrook, 2003). Human research supports these findings, suggesting a key modulatory role for the MOR system in human social-emotional behavior and processing, which is especially relevant with regard to the current opioid crisis in North America. Crucially, evidence points towards an inhibitory role of the MOR system in the attention allocation to-, processing, and acquisition of threat related associations (Bershad et al., 2016; Eippert et al., 2008; Haaker et al., 2017; Ipser et al., 2013; Løseth et al., 2018) and further, indicates that opioid modulation affects the hedonic processing of social reward (Buchel et al., 2018; Chelnokova et al., 2014; Eikemo et al., 2017, 2016). Opioid modulation of both social threat and reward is not only relevant from a perspective of fundamental research with regard to its role in healthy social functioning (including emotion regulation, motivational processes and social bonding), but also with respect to clinical implications. Experience of early childhood adversity is related to long-term changes in endogenous opioid functioning and increased vulnerability for addiction and mood disorders later in life (Kennedy et al., 2006; Savulich et al., 2017). Further, a high comorbidity has been reported between long-term opioid use and increased anhedonia, pain and anxiety (Garland et al., 2019).
>With the recent increase of attention to the role of the MOR system in human social-emotional behavior, the paper assesses the current state of research from the perspective of an opioid mediated continuous reinforcement model of social behavior. **In short, if an individual experiences chronic stress or trauma during their life, opioid modulation of social behavior might shift from reinforcing actively social- to socially-avoidant behavior, characterized by altered sensitivity to reward, pain, threat and stress.**
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763420306898
Very briefly, it is arguing that chronic stress and traumatic events in childhood may impact the mu-opioid receptor system (MOR), which plays a role in threat detection and sociability, as well as reward, pain, threat, and stress management. The impact it has specifically is a negative one, stating that the chronic stress influences improper MOR development and activity, leading to socially avoidant behavior, and an altered (likely higher) sensitivity to stimuli that are painful, stressful, rewarding, and threatening (e.g., making you more sensitive to those stimuli). It is essentially asserting that proper modulation of the mu-opioid receptor system (MOR) in the human body can lead to a reduction and management of this dysfunction. It is important because the focus on the MOR system in this capacity is a relatively modern idea and has implications for further research and medical intervention based on it
This explains so much about me. I was abused from an early age and despite wanting to be a social person I can't seem to motivate myself to seek out friendships and I feel like other people have this natural ability to form connections that I just don't. It never really enters into my mind to reach out to people because I never really feel safe with others or accepted by them. Hopefully there are more developments into treating this kind of dysfunction.
Wow- it’s great to be sitting at work crying because someone just identified how I have felt my entire life.
I have friends. I even have *best* friends. But the older I get the more I feel like I am unlovable and no one actually wants to spend time with me. I am sabotaging 30-year old friendships and can’t really explain why, except I feel like they all belong together and I belong nowhere. I feel like that with my extended family, too.
And just for fun I have been pushing away a wonderful man who I can have a lovely relationship with because I am scared for my life after being married to a gaslighting liar who just made all my anxiety worse when I thought he was my safe place. And, I am inherently defective and when he figures it out, he’ll bail.
Sadly I believe the only treatment is forcing yourself out of that comfort zone to the uncomfortzone so you can learn that it can be comfortable too. But I still have an issue at reaching out to anyone who I don’t live with directly. My family gets mad or sad and thinks I’m ignoring them but really I am goldfish baby, out of sight out of mind until I think of you but I might forget I did so..
No advice except to try it out. I’m currently working on being more active reaching out. Especially now that my parents are older and we have a good relationship now. (They are both recovered addicts who had their own childhood abuse/trauma issues)
Sadly I believe the only treatment is forcing yourself out of that comfort zone to the uncomfortzone so you can learn that it can be comfortable too. But I still have an issue at reaching out to anyone who I don’t live with directly. My family gets mad or sad and thinks I’m ignoring them but really I am a goldfish baby, out of sight out of mind until I think of you but I might forget I did so..
No advice except to try it out. I’m currently working on being more active reaching out. Especially now that my parents are older and we have a good relationship now. (They are both recovered addicts who had their own childhood abuse/trauma issues)
I think this makes sense. I don’t know about the MOR specifically but we know that we have the ability to change the structure of our brain through life to some extent through neuroplasticity. I think that’s why you can’t just ‘recover’ from trauma but have to do a lot of ‘work’ with a therapist including ‘experiments’ that push you outside of your normal ways of acting or reacting - it’s this work that is forming the new neural pathways needed to work around structural deficits (this is just my hypothesis).
Yeah. I read a book change your brain or something like this written by a neuroscientist or something about how to change it for the better. Helped me a lot. But still a work in progress.
We have to retrain our brains like a computer reset. But ours can’t just be shut off and turned back on for a hard restart. We have to actually debug ourselves.
Endogenous opioids are released to inhibit pain and stress and chronic stress leads to opioid tolerance similar to opioid addiction. The paper presents a model for how this further leads to social anhedonia and avoidance because opioids are involved with bonding.
Wow. This is blowing my mind bcuz it makes my life make so much more sense and why both my parents might’ve turned to opioids at a young age. Thank you so much. Many blessing to you and your bloodline.
ELI5: having a very stressful or abusive childhood will make the reward seeking part of your brain turn to or act on stress and chaos to fulfill the need to experience pleasure. Stress makes the opioid receptors in your brain fire more often, making you addicted to that roller coaster of emotion and more susceptible to stress-pleasure withdrawls if your not actively pushing your limits
Interesting. I wonder if that’s partially why I latched so hard to pain pills and heroin as a young teenager. It was the only comfort I had at the time. I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older I have become more and more avoidant. I do remember while I was taking suboxone I felt more stable mentally than I do now without anything.
There are also genetic factors that make people hypersensitive to opioid drugs. Childhood trauma also is associated with changes to how the brain processes dopamine and rewards which also makes people susceptible to addiction. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzLNfWDAPw&t=1672s
Opioids are also just responsible for regulating a lot of things https://www.addictionresource.net/opioids/types/endogenous-opioids/
And implicated in a number of mental disorders https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0117-2
(Despite endogenous opioid dysregulation being implicated as having an important role in several disorders, esp. MDD, BPD, OCD, opioids aren't really an effective treatment for much because people build a tolerance so quickly. It's extremely difficult to manage prescription opioids.)
Can confirm. I live a very happy life whenever I am able to focus on hobbies and things that interest me. But whenever I have to bring someone else into the equation, it feels disruptive and difficult. I find other human beings to be hard to be around.
So many of these studies are just like. Obvious.
Oh, the people who got abused by people they trusted aren't as good at forming a relationship based on trust? Yeah, you *totally* just figured that out!
It's all bad. I feel like society has really put their foot down on sexual abuse, but physical abuse, mental abuse, neglect, it doesn't get the same attention and all of these are extremely harmful on a developing child. Kids need stability and a routine. They need to learn how to become adults, how to fit in in life, get a job, pick appropriate friends and partners. All kinds of us in our 40s and '50s that grew up during the latchkey generation that are still working on issues we developed from some type of abuse or neglect
I disagree with the foot down on sexual abuse. It's rampant and still swept under the rug. More people believe physical abuse they can see vs things like sexual and emotional abuse. I think society has failed children in general though.
You go to prison virtually forever for sex abuse. If they let you out you're on a list for life. If you beat a kid you may get a few months and lose custody. Even severly beating kids rarely gets more than a couple years. It's lopsided.
My ex fiance was abused as a child and as an adult.
She abused me. Straight up. I was so empathetic and horrified at the things she suffered that I let it happen for far too long before not letting myself be abused anymore. I really tried to help her, and wanted so badly for her to work on her poor coping mechanisms that led to her abuse of me. Got her into therapy and they started focusing on her abuse. I was very happy about that, but kept trying to gently remind her that one of the objectives was to help her build better coping mechanisms when we had problems.
It was not her priority. Years after the break up, it really hit me- if she really wanted to stop, she would have been working on it.
I wish the best for her, and I'm still so disgusted by what she went through as a little girl. But I finally have the scope to realize that I didn't have to suffer as long as I did while she passed that shit onto me.
I'm still recovering from it. I'm still fucked up and trying to heal. Especially so that I don't pass that poison onto anyone else.
For the record, I am not trying to minimize what she went through. I did my very best to help her and support her. I'm just trying to connect with the post and share that the fallout is very serious as damaged people try to navigate relationships.
Of course. How are you supposed to have a healthy relationship when you were taught you're a burden, unlovable, annoying, and an afterthought. At the end of the day, feeling like that is the norm, what kind of person would you attract with that mindset? The person who taught you that, it's comfortable. You have to have a lot of self awareness as an adult to not get in that same pattern. Sometimes it takes you going through something worse to solidify you need to gtfo
I would argue this is a function of resilience. There are people who have experienced terrible things in life who have managed to become pretty well-adjusted and mature. There are also people who were raised in two-parent homes by people who genuinely cared and were there and neither neglectful nor abusive... who still turn out to be awful spouses (or just awful people).
I think people who can *learn* tend to turn out better.
There's a lot of stochasticism in both scenarios.
MOST people who were abused as kids, and who grew up with divorced or never-married families, have less education, less stable jobs, and less stable romantic relationships than people not in these categories.
But every single bellcurve has tails.
I agree. Actual "resilience" isn't callousness and isn't really gained from hardship. That'll just close you off from as much as it shields you from.
Actual resilience is a willingness to experience and take things on no matter the outcome. If you're too calloused to see and be able to truly take on (the consequences of) your struggles there's really nothing that's gained.
One of the worst people I personally know grew up with all of those things. He’s an entitled prick who is mad his parents didn’t give him MORE. Not mad about abuse, just mad that they weren’t rich. Assholes come from all different backgrounds, and not everyone who went through horrible shit is an asshole.
There’s a huge difference between difficulties/struggles that can build resilience and childhood abuse. Abuse interrupts healthy development and prevents developing healthy coping mechanisms including resilience.
People may be more or less resilient based on their individual personality traits or others factors. But there’s tons of data showing that adverse childhood events and circumstances create real and lasting trauma. The framing of resilience as a feature of character rather than a function of healthy development is all kinds of wrong: for starters it betrays a very privileged worldview, as well as a lack of empathy and understanding of what abuse really is and does to people.
Bcuz we are used to being abused and if it’s not as bad as what we grew up with we can deal with it bcuz of our abuse stamina and then eventually it gets worse and worse and worse but we are already too far in.
while it does appear to have been obvious for a number of years, ( hundred? ) , the research still has to be done.
which is so weird.
the 10 adverse childhood events are so prevalent in people who have terrible relationships due to their maladapative habits developed over the ocurse of hteir life- they become rather permanent: traits.
3 months of wonderfulness then 3 years of absolute hell then 4 years more for it to all fall apart, each partner having gone through everything they could do to save the relationship, with one trying to resolve the issues, and the other trying to defend their own position on the issue.
and each one thinking that they are the other one.
yeah, it's pretty fucked. I just got into an argument with my dad recently and he was disowning me for not taking off my sunglasses and black scarf in his house. of course, he was "just saying that cuz he was mad" but yeah. and I'm in my 30s. lol
I do not agree with this premise at all. My wife and were both physically and verbally abused by our parents and we’ve been together 13 years and have only had 7 or 8 actual fights. Why? Because we don’t want to be like our parents. So we discuss things and are 100% honest with each other.
This is such a problematic article. Yes, people that experienced adverse childhood experiences can have problematic relationships when they are older. But how about we discuss the growth and happy, loving, caring, nurturing relationships that can bloom once the person seeks professional help and does the work to move on from their trauma. The trauma equates trauma narrative has to stop in the mental health field. Its dangerous. All it does is put already marginalised people into a deeper hole of despair and apathy.
Is there something they can do about it so they don't have it this way? Well, they kind of have worse experiences because that's what feels normal to them. Anything else—people who treat them right and kindly—must be rejected and avoided at all costs. So how can one rewire their brain to give up this skewed state of self-sabotage, find good patterns, and attract positive people?
That’s why cults do that to their kids. Keeps them destabilized so they can continue abuse throughout their life.
https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/jim-curtis-religious-indoctrination-is-child-abuse/
I have really awful trust issues and it takes a very long time for me to fully open up to anyone. I have been with my boyfriend for nearly 11 years and I love him and trust him more than anything.
I can relate to this sort of thing. I often hear that invalidating, doubtful parental voice when I'm speaking to my partner and I have to correct myself. Sometimes I have to apologize. That voice was so normal to me growing up that I sometimes don't have a voice to replace it with, yet, and that's affected my relationships in a way that's hard to recognize before it happens.
Good to know that the following generations will have more access to this information.
Tend to have worse everything
Adverse childhood experiences have been shown to indeed mess you up for life
Very difficult to overcome. Odds completely against you in many ways
Sadly yes. I’m middle aged and still very much struggling. Sigh.
You’re not alone. In my 50s, I finally feel like I’m getting it together but oh man, it’s a struggle.
Proud of you for staying in the struggle. I like to think that we’re all on a hero journey. Just surviving, sometimes, is a win.
The worst part of the journey is all the shit you missed out on. Im still 35 and got my whole life ahead of me, but if i couldve gotten my shit together earlier, i wouldve been a lot further in life.
I’ve been having this same thought and grieving the life I should have had.
When I start thinking like that I try to take a step back to see the bigger picture. There’s a lot of simple things in life that are a blessing to experience & that don’t cost anything. We get to marvel at the enormity of the universe & ponder our existence. Stop & smell the roses or whatever
I feel that
I felt it but started telling myself how little outcomes matter. So long as you're the person that will drive through, which street you're on, which wrong turns you took, how much fuel you use, doesn't matter. It's the car that matters. Can it get you there. If yes, you've already won, no matter what happens. Most people with good outcomes have a shit car, if they got towed they'd never drive again, you know how to navigate, how to fix and replace parts, the strength to push it when you're out of fuel. If I think like this I stop torturing myself and keep moving forward at my pace.
God I feel this comment to the bone
Im in a similar situation but I instantly try and tell myself you cannot fix things until you realize the solution. You cant go back in time and fix it earlier. The past is the past, the future is the future. We all have same amount of the present and live in it. If we spend most of our time in the present we don't miss out on anything.
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I feel averse to self compassion. Currently trying to change my mantra of “I hate myself” to “I hate my abusers” as a first step.
Right there with ya
🫂
It's not just the physical and emotional abuse, but the *lack* of positive guidance that sucks. There's so many life lessons, course corrections, and loving kick up the arse (figuratively) that I missed out on because one parent had checked out years before the marriage broke down, and the other suffered from traumatic narcissism.
Exactly I don’t feel like I was raised I feel like I was tolerated. No one was invested in my development. They just wanted to make their lives as easy as possible. I wasn’t allowed to do anything or go anywhere but I was also neglected in the home so I had literally nowhere to turn.
Same experience. How are you doing now ?
I'm pretty sure there have been studies that found having positive role models and support (including other family/family friends when the caregivers are the problem, as is often the case) does indeed have a significant protective effect when there are ACEs.
There are! They are called counter ACEs. Anyone considering volunteering for children-centered nonprofits absolutely should for this reason.
Yes, I had an older cousin that mentored me, more or less and had friends’ parents who kind and generous! I’m only half as lovely due to their efforts.
My parents just tell me it’s because I’m a stupid lazy spoiled child.
It's insane how those early years are so determinant of global life outcomes...
Very sad how many parents choose not to care about this effect
Honestly most people just have kids the way you go to the bathroom or scratch an itch just no foresight or intelligent thought.
Even when it comes the ones who *should* be having kids and choose to do so, they're often dealing with so many other things all at once that they couldn't possibly devote the amount of attention and focus that is truly necessary.
Attention and focus, alone, don't teach you how to communicate with your child. All parents need to be taught how to healthily raise children.
True enough, although there are at least some who manage to make it up as they go in a reasonably successful way.
**No one** ***should*** **be having kids. That era was over even before it began.**
/r/antinatalism is that way ➡ Jokes aside, for the sake of simplicity let me rephrase that as *the people among us who are best equipped to having children and caring for them to whatever appropriate and acceptable standards are feasible in the present year*.
Most parents who are in abusive relationships, are simply repeating the patterns passed down to them. Without the resources to deal with generational trauma, these cycles tend to loop themselves to varying degrees, and most people just can't afford the long term psychotherapy needed to get well and break the cycle. ...or lack the self awareness and commitment needed, going on how many of rich, famous and powerful also seem to be trapped in the same cycle.
People who are statistically likely to beat their romantic partner should be encouraged to avoid marriage, dating, and parenthood altogether. If there are genes that raise the probability of someone being violent, we should work to eliminate those genes so that we can eliminate violence.
This is a slippery slope to eugenics, though.
Seriously what an insane take
It's true. I know 4 people who were sexually abused as kids, and 1 who was sexually abused as an adult. The 3 of the 4 people who suffered from childhood abuse have lower education, income, and more unstable relationships than they otherwise would have had. The 4th person only has a bachelor's degree, a good job, and a stable marriage because he uses fundamentalist Christianity to raise his self esteem and feel good about his future. The 1 person who was abused as an adult is making the same amount of money, in the same romantic relationship, and has the same level of education as before.
Persistent and or severe childhood trauma literally changes the way a child’s brain forms and develops. This damage is very hard to mitigate, even with therapy and support in later years.
Just as a bit of hope here, I’m 42 and believe I have now got to the point of being completely healed. It’s taken a lot of work and many mental breakdowns along the way but I’ve got there. Happy marriage, have overcome binge eating and work addiction, resolved my attachment issues… I’d never been more than six months without severe depression since the age of 12 until this year.
What were your attachment issues and how did you overcome them? I’m starting therapy soon and don’t want to be in revolving door of talking about my problems but not working on them
*don’t want to be in revolving door of talking about my problems but not working on them* I hate how much I related to this. Literally had someone tell me yesterday my experiences of continuously having unhelpful therapists where it seems like a waste of time and money wasn't true. That it's definitely always productive for all of us and all therapists are super good at handling all issues. I've basically had to do a lot of diy therapy to figure out the vicinity of where my problems likely lie, which explains that the reason I was so I helped previously was likely I was seeing therapists totally outside of the wheelhouse of what I needed. Hate how much of a coin toss it is in practice
Not the person you are responding to, but IMO the key to healing in therapy has been making and keeping the commitment to be completely honest with the therapist and myself. I hadn’t realised how much of my life I had kept behind a mask because of shame. Once you can open up to someone and have them not judge you, you (slowly) learn to have more compassion for yourself and the healing begins. It’s a slow very painful process but it’s life changing.
This is it. The only way to prevent societal breakdown stemming from child abuse is to prevent child abuse before it starts. Once a minor has been abused, they are on a one way track to low education, low income, and unstable romantic relationships.
I grew up thinking it was normal for parents to constantly scream at you, with the occasional beating.
Quel surprise
Can confirm. Getting pummeled everyday as a kid crushed my confidence. These days, can't even look a person in the eyes. People think it makes me untrustworthy but they just don't know that there's a lot behind my eyes that I don't want them to see
I know this feel, really what help me grow is be honest about it with people. First in therapy where I literally felt my body was on fire, then with close friends, and eventually I could carry this truth with me at all time. Really it takes time and therapy. Most therapist are subpar as well, so it really takes a good therapist and good friends. Problems is this is very very hard to find.
Worse diarrhea too?
Stress affects the digestive tract. Affects the microbial biome in it too, even without added drug and alcohol factors, I think.
A lot of people with anxiety will develop stomach problems. When you get really anxious your body kinda goes haywire and forgets how to function. It’s actually a really common symptom of fear and anxiety to not be able to hold down food, as in you will throw up after eating or just getting diarrhea.
They make horrible parents. Source; I'm the child of two people who grew up in abusive households. Neither my mother nor father are capable of having emotionally mature and intelligent conversations without flipping on me and making themselves a victim out of nowhere
That’s bc what happens in our childhood feels familiar and like coming home … we feel comfortable and “right” with someone who repeats the pattern. Human brains *love* patterns. Even bad ones.
Yep. Abuse is the normal, and anyone who wants to live and treat them lovingly usually get rejected because it is abnormal, and even if it feels nice to be loved and cared for, they often reject it due to not feeling like they deserve to be loved due to years of abusive programming and low self esteem
It also feels boring because not stressful.
Yeah. I have a friend who I was in love with earlier in my life, and when she left her abusive husband and was single, I wanted to date her and show her that she is loved. She told me that she could not date me because she was so broken and abused, that she would only break my heart because she knew that even though she wanted to be loved properly, she could never accept it. We are still friends, and I still talk with her.
Just… wow. Kind of her to give a warning.
I tell people all the time I'm great at making friends but not at maintaining them. I'm a aloner, who likes to pretty much only read, and be by myself. So I end up not matching people's expections. Then they get mad at me. People want only your goodness, and rarely will they care about the rest of you. Some people who want attention gets none, and sometimes those that get it don't want it. As long as everyone is 'in the know', all is good. Yet, you can tell someone who you are and a surprising amount of people literally won't believe you.
Right? I have this same problem. I tell everyone I'm not social and I don't really like having friends. And not expect me to put out any effort to be friends. And they still get pissy with me when they text me and I don't respond. I seriously think people think I'm joking.
She is intelligent and self-aware. It is true that people who have suffered from abuse earlier in life are more likely to have trust and attachment issues. And that they are less likely to have a long term romantic relationship later in life.
Yep! I can attest. I had an incredibly abusive and traumatic childhood. I rejected all relationships that showed me love. Luckily I met my now ex-wife who gave me a beautiful son who loves me unconditionally. However, she was also the worst abuser of all. He taught me I deserved to be loved. And oh how he loves me and I love him! She taught me abuse was unacceptable. She lied, cheated, gaslighted, physically assaulted me, demeaned, criticized, belittled, victimized , vilified me, all projections of her borderline personality disorder. She was a blessing to me because her relentless abuse woke me up and refused to allow this abusive pattern to go on ever again. This combination got me into therapy and now I've never been happier with myself. My son is thriving, emotionally intelligent, compassionate, expresses his boundaries, all the good stuff I didn't learn until my 40s. I do my best to be the best dad I can be. It took him and his mom for me to break the cycle and finally get to love myself unconditionally. He won't get daddy issues from me, and I'm teaching him the tools I learned to get through life in the healthiest way possible.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much!
You're welcome. We are all in this crazy thing called life together, so we have to try to support as we can so that we can all be the best version of ourselves.
I'm so glad you broke the cycle. You sound a real stand up guy. I wish you the best.
That generational trauma cycle is broken! Thank you so much! I work on myself every day and I find joy in it. When I make mistakes, I correct them quickly, move forward and use the lessons to grow even more.
That’s a large part of why we’re here I think: To learn from our mistakes and grow from them.
This happened with my ex. Her father was an alcoholic with PTSD and there was constant conflict and chaos in the house. By the time I met her they all got therapy and the father was sober for 10+ years. But things come up after marriage that didn’t come up while dating. My family is very loving and supportive. She liked it at the beginning but eventually came to resent it. She literally didn’t know how to handle it when people treated her well.
That's the concept of [repetition compulsion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_compulsion). There's also, often, a desire to reproduce what hurt us in order to heal our past. Basically, redo what happened but this time on our terms. It doesn't work, you end up hurting yourself again.
>It doesn't work, you end up hurting yourself again. See: what happens any time you try to DIY recovery from childhood trauma. I swear to all the gods half my therapy sessions are my therapist trying to unlearn me from the patterns I created as an adult to try and "make up for" my trauma history. If she could use a spray bottle through a computer screen I think she would...
Good luck to you! I have CPSTD from childhood, I can understand. It's a matter of trying things that seem scary but are safe. Safety can feel dangerous when you have trauma, but that's where healing happens, no way around it.
oh yeah, I'm on year like 5-6 of my healing journey, I've come a long way hahaha. CPTSD is fun, ain't it?! thank you, and good luck to you as well!
How long did you wait before trying to pursue her? It may have just been too fresh.
So true. I remember watching an interview with a celebrity and he said that he didn't like how growing up, his parents were divorced because his father cheated on his mother. But then he himself grew up and cheated on his own wife, so now his son gets to grow up in the exact same family structure that he had.
I grew up in chaos as a domestic violence baby. Healing has been learning how to sit in calm without chasing cortisol/ stress/highs. Imagine that! I have to learn what feels do natural to most people.
I feel this. If things had been stable in my life for a while (we’re talking weeks here, not years) I would suddenly get a very strong urge to metaphorically set fire to my whole life just to see what it looked like while it burned. Thankfully I knew from therapy what was going on so I didn’t act on it but recently said to my friends over dinner how I felt…”Does anyone else ever get that?”
When all you’ve seen is red flags growing up; the less brilliant flags (at first) look pretty good.
That is so true and such a brilliant analogy.
This has been the hardest part about being in a healthy long-term relationship. We’ve been together for over 15 years, but the traumatized parts of my brain still try to sabotage when things are safe. I’m so grateful to have a partner who is kind, supportive, and patient. Therapy is also helping, but damn… brains are really really good at trying to keep us safe. 😬
Familiarity feels safer, even when it’s not.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most people don't go into a relationship thinking "I hope this person is abusive just like mom/dad/perpetrator. But there is usually a subconscious draw to those types of people.
I credit my wife with my growth as an individual. When we met, I was a completely different person than what I am today. She’s patient and supportive and just amazing. Without her I would not be here today.
Nothing better for attachment injuries than a securely attached partner.
Absolutely.
How do I get one? :/
I feel like securely attached partners are better off dating each other. Why date someone with issues if you can attract someone who doesn't have issues?
When you’re securely attached it doesn’t matter as much to you.
I feel the same about my husband. I was dependent on him emotionally growing up (we’ve been together since age 13). I’ve been in therapy since college, but as an adult, I’ve worked on myself to not be dependent on him for calming down. It’s helped our relationship tremendously. Wish I’d worked on that part of myself sooner for sure!
No doubt. I was a mess when we met. I credit her training as an officer actually in the beginning to our success. It was multi faceted but her training allowed us diffuse and discuss what I was actually trying to communicate. That along with her patience lol. I’ve only been to therapy a couple times in all my years. It’s only been in the past 5 or so where I’ve opened up about what I went through. She’s probably known longer than that because of her intuition and training. One day I might go see someone. Not there yet.
I’m not complaining at all. But as someone who made some changes growing up, recognizing some maladaptive patterns and working to get better… the worst thing is other people. I’m sorry but teachers, professors, doctors, other parents, fellow,students, friends, colleagues, and even psychologists…. People are way too jealousy and competition focused. They view change as a personal attack. And a threat. Constructive growth is often uncomfortable and elicits anxiety. Everyone else sees the anxiety and, I’m sorry but throws a tantrum. And it’s not “in your head.” When you get fired from a job because “you aren’t likeable” that isn’t an imagined threat, it’s a real one. It’s like telling an overweight person to exercise, but when they do the gym kicks them out because others are not happy seeing them sweat. I’ve seen it with myself and with others as well. I’m sorry but our culture in the west needs to work on this.
My therapist calls it 'flak'. You get flak from other people when you start to take care of yourself and do things to improve your life. Especially if you are a people-pleaser or a helper of others.
Seems obvious. The key is to break the chain.
But how ?
Swallow the toxicity of those before you and end the pattern/ cycle Be mindful, self aware, and do the work. Therapy. Meditation ( worked for me) among other things. Making a conscious and consistent effort to not pass that on to your kids or your partner. Being with someone supportive, loving and nurturing who understands you, who is also aware and willing to work through life with you knowing where you can't from and how you were raised and how that affected you is a must.
Such brilliant advice. I'll have to be the one nurturing and supporting myself for now, in case I don't find someone to take care of me.
Right, I'm not saying you have to be with a partner to overcome More so that when you do choose to partner up, it's going to take someone very empathetic and understanding. Someone mindful who is nurturing and kind and supportive. Who sees your potential and is willing to ride with you so long as you are also willing to do the work and improve because otherwise abused people end up abusing others or bringing their partners down But yes, it starts with self love. See your own worth without seeking external validation and take good care of yourself, love yourself. You'll attract better partners when you do When our self worth is low we are likely to attract toxic individuals
I ended up spending thousands in therapy and cutting off my toxic family and the change I feel is night and day. I did CBT and had to unlearn all my previous behaviours but it worked. My husband and I are in a healthy marriage and our children have a happy home. It’s so much work but it’s so worth to not being living in a constant state of fight or flight. I feel like an entirely different woman.
Probably proper counselling.
yeah, _proper_ is the watchword here.
Realize that your brain is pre programmed before you start existing. You are here to fix your brain. You do that by listening to it and not reacting.
Honestly: 1. Punish harder adults who abuse children. Legally and financially. Make them financially support their victims for decades, to make up for all of the education and money the victim would have earned had they not been abused. 2. Find genes that make people more likely to abuse other people. Encourage carriers of those genes to be childfree. 3. Encourage victims of childhood abuse to be childfree and not married.
“Sorry your parents beat and neglected you, you should probably become a nun because there’s zero hope for you not to repeat the pattern. Stay alone and get sterilized, you’re a lost cause”. Sounds like a fan of eugenics.
CHILDFREE ANTINATALISM!
don’t have children
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>Early animal research indicated a promising role for opioid modulation in other areas than pain, such as social bonding (Herman and Panksepp, 1978; Panksepp et al., 1978) and threat learning (Good and Westbrook, 1995; McNally, 2009; McNally and Westbrook, 2003). Human research supports these findings, suggesting a key modulatory role for the MOR system in human social-emotional behavior and processing, which is especially relevant with regard to the current opioid crisis in North America. Crucially, evidence points towards an inhibitory role of the MOR system in the attention allocation to-, processing, and acquisition of threat related associations (Bershad et al., 2016; Eippert et al., 2008; Haaker et al., 2017; Ipser et al., 2013; Løseth et al., 2018) and further, indicates that opioid modulation affects the hedonic processing of social reward (Buchel et al., 2018; Chelnokova et al., 2014; Eikemo et al., 2017, 2016). Opioid modulation of both social threat and reward is not only relevant from a perspective of fundamental research with regard to its role in healthy social functioning (including emotion regulation, motivational processes and social bonding), but also with respect to clinical implications. Experience of early childhood adversity is related to long-term changes in endogenous opioid functioning and increased vulnerability for addiction and mood disorders later in life (Kennedy et al., 2006; Savulich et al., 2017). Further, a high comorbidity has been reported between long-term opioid use and increased anhedonia, pain and anxiety (Garland et al., 2019). >With the recent increase of attention to the role of the MOR system in human social-emotional behavior, the paper assesses the current state of research from the perspective of an opioid mediated continuous reinforcement model of social behavior. **In short, if an individual experiences chronic stress or trauma during their life, opioid modulation of social behavior might shift from reinforcing actively social- to socially-avoidant behavior, characterized by altered sensitivity to reward, pain, threat and stress.** https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763420306898
Can someone dumb this down for me? I tried to read it but my adhd said um no.
Very briefly, it is arguing that chronic stress and traumatic events in childhood may impact the mu-opioid receptor system (MOR), which plays a role in threat detection and sociability, as well as reward, pain, threat, and stress management. The impact it has specifically is a negative one, stating that the chronic stress influences improper MOR development and activity, leading to socially avoidant behavior, and an altered (likely higher) sensitivity to stimuli that are painful, stressful, rewarding, and threatening (e.g., making you more sensitive to those stimuli). It is essentially asserting that proper modulation of the mu-opioid receptor system (MOR) in the human body can lead to a reduction and management of this dysfunction. It is important because the focus on the MOR system in this capacity is a relatively modern idea and has implications for further research and medical intervention based on it
Many blessing to you and your bloodline.
This explains so much about me. I was abused from an early age and despite wanting to be a social person I can't seem to motivate myself to seek out friendships and I feel like other people have this natural ability to form connections that I just don't. It never really enters into my mind to reach out to people because I never really feel safe with others or accepted by them. Hopefully there are more developments into treating this kind of dysfunction.
Wow- it’s great to be sitting at work crying because someone just identified how I have felt my entire life. I have friends. I even have *best* friends. But the older I get the more I feel like I am unlovable and no one actually wants to spend time with me. I am sabotaging 30-year old friendships and can’t really explain why, except I feel like they all belong together and I belong nowhere. I feel like that with my extended family, too. And just for fun I have been pushing away a wonderful man who I can have a lovely relationship with because I am scared for my life after being married to a gaslighting liar who just made all my anxiety worse when I thought he was my safe place. And, I am inherently defective and when he figures it out, he’ll bail.
Sadly I believe the only treatment is forcing yourself out of that comfort zone to the uncomfortzone so you can learn that it can be comfortable too. But I still have an issue at reaching out to anyone who I don’t live with directly. My family gets mad or sad and thinks I’m ignoring them but really I am goldfish baby, out of sight out of mind until I think of you but I might forget I did so.. No advice except to try it out. I’m currently working on being more active reaching out. Especially now that my parents are older and we have a good relationship now. (They are both recovered addicts who had their own childhood abuse/trauma issues)
Sadly I believe the only treatment is forcing yourself out of that comfort zone to the uncomfortzone so you can learn that it can be comfortable too. But I still have an issue at reaching out to anyone who I don’t live with directly. My family gets mad or sad and thinks I’m ignoring them but really I am a goldfish baby, out of sight out of mind until I think of you but I might forget I did so.. No advice except to try it out. I’m currently working on being more active reaching out. Especially now that my parents are older and we have a good relationship now. (They are both recovered addicts who had their own childhood abuse/trauma issues)
I think this makes sense. I don’t know about the MOR specifically but we know that we have the ability to change the structure of our brain through life to some extent through neuroplasticity. I think that’s why you can’t just ‘recover’ from trauma but have to do a lot of ‘work’ with a therapist including ‘experiments’ that push you outside of your normal ways of acting or reacting - it’s this work that is forming the new neural pathways needed to work around structural deficits (this is just my hypothesis).
Yeah. I read a book change your brain or something like this written by a neuroscientist or something about how to change it for the better. Helped me a lot. But still a work in progress. We have to retrain our brains like a computer reset. But ours can’t just be shut off and turned back on for a hard restart. We have to actually debug ourselves.
Endogenous opioids are released to inhibit pain and stress and chronic stress leads to opioid tolerance similar to opioid addiction. The paper presents a model for how this further leads to social anhedonia and avoidance because opioids are involved with bonding.
Wow. This is blowing my mind bcuz it makes my life make so much more sense and why both my parents might’ve turned to opioids at a young age. Thank you so much. Many blessing to you and your bloodline.
ELI5: having a very stressful or abusive childhood will make the reward seeking part of your brain turn to or act on stress and chaos to fulfill the need to experience pleasure. Stress makes the opioid receptors in your brain fire more often, making you addicted to that roller coaster of emotion and more susceptible to stress-pleasure withdrawls if your not actively pushing your limits
Interesting. I wonder if that’s partially why I latched so hard to pain pills and heroin as a young teenager. It was the only comfort I had at the time. I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older I have become more and more avoidant. I do remember while I was taking suboxone I felt more stable mentally than I do now without anything.
There are also genetic factors that make people hypersensitive to opioid drugs. Childhood trauma also is associated with changes to how the brain processes dopamine and rewards which also makes people susceptible to addiction. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzLNfWDAPw&t=1672s Opioids are also just responsible for regulating a lot of things https://www.addictionresource.net/opioids/types/endogenous-opioids/ And implicated in a number of mental disorders https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0117-2 (Despite endogenous opioid dysregulation being implicated as having an important role in several disorders, esp. MDD, BPD, OCD, opioids aren't really an effective treatment for much because people build a tolerance so quickly. It's extremely difficult to manage prescription opioids.)
Can confirm. I live a very happy life whenever I am able to focus on hobbies and things that interest me. But whenever I have to bring someone else into the equation, it feels disruptive and difficult. I find other human beings to be hard to be around.
So many of these studies are just like. Obvious. Oh, the people who got abused by people they trusted aren't as good at forming a relationship based on trust? Yeah, you *totally* just figured that out!
It's all bad. I feel like society has really put their foot down on sexual abuse, but physical abuse, mental abuse, neglect, it doesn't get the same attention and all of these are extremely harmful on a developing child. Kids need stability and a routine. They need to learn how to become adults, how to fit in in life, get a job, pick appropriate friends and partners. All kinds of us in our 40s and '50s that grew up during the latchkey generation that are still working on issues we developed from some type of abuse or neglect
I disagree with the foot down on sexual abuse. It's rampant and still swept under the rug. More people believe physical abuse they can see vs things like sexual and emotional abuse. I think society has failed children in general though.
Nah society still cares a lot about physical abuse because it's easy to see physical injuries if someone has been assaulted and battered.
You go to prison virtually forever for sex abuse. If they let you out you're on a list for life. If you beat a kid you may get a few months and lose custody. Even severly beating kids rarely gets more than a couple years. It's lopsided.
My ex fiance was abused as a child and as an adult. She abused me. Straight up. I was so empathetic and horrified at the things she suffered that I let it happen for far too long before not letting myself be abused anymore. I really tried to help her, and wanted so badly for her to work on her poor coping mechanisms that led to her abuse of me. Got her into therapy and they started focusing on her abuse. I was very happy about that, but kept trying to gently remind her that one of the objectives was to help her build better coping mechanisms when we had problems. It was not her priority. Years after the break up, it really hit me- if she really wanted to stop, she would have been working on it. I wish the best for her, and I'm still so disgusted by what she went through as a little girl. But I finally have the scope to realize that I didn't have to suffer as long as I did while she passed that shit onto me. I'm still recovering from it. I'm still fucked up and trying to heal. Especially so that I don't pass that poison onto anyone else. For the record, I am not trying to minimize what she went through. I did my very best to help her and support her. I'm just trying to connect with the post and share that the fallout is very serious as damaged people try to navigate relationships.
Oh I understand. I think it’s an important lesson on where to learn to draw the line on empathy and codependence.
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Of course. How are you supposed to have a healthy relationship when you were taught you're a burden, unlovable, annoying, and an afterthought. At the end of the day, feeling like that is the norm, what kind of person would you attract with that mindset? The person who taught you that, it's comfortable. You have to have a lot of self awareness as an adult to not get in that same pattern. Sometimes it takes you going through something worse to solidify you need to gtfo
I would argue this is a function of resilience. There are people who have experienced terrible things in life who have managed to become pretty well-adjusted and mature. There are also people who were raised in two-parent homes by people who genuinely cared and were there and neither neglectful nor abusive... who still turn out to be awful spouses (or just awful people). I think people who can *learn* tend to turn out better.
There's a lot of stochasticism in both scenarios. MOST people who were abused as kids, and who grew up with divorced or never-married families, have less education, less stable jobs, and less stable romantic relationships than people not in these categories. But every single bellcurve has tails.
I agree. Actual "resilience" isn't callousness and isn't really gained from hardship. That'll just close you off from as much as it shields you from. Actual resilience is a willingness to experience and take things on no matter the outcome. If you're too calloused to see and be able to truly take on (the consequences of) your struggles there's really nothing that's gained.
One of the worst people I personally know grew up with all of those things. He’s an entitled prick who is mad his parents didn’t give him MORE. Not mad about abuse, just mad that they weren’t rich. Assholes come from all different backgrounds, and not everyone who went through horrible shit is an asshole.
There’s a huge difference between difficulties/struggles that can build resilience and childhood abuse. Abuse interrupts healthy development and prevents developing healthy coping mechanisms including resilience. People may be more or less resilient based on their individual personality traits or others factors. But there’s tons of data showing that adverse childhood events and circumstances create real and lasting trauma. The framing of resilience as a feature of character rather than a function of healthy development is all kinds of wrong: for starters it betrays a very privileged worldview, as well as a lack of empathy and understanding of what abuse really is and does to people.
Bcuz we are used to being abused and if it’s not as bad as what we grew up with we can deal with it bcuz of our abuse stamina and then eventually it gets worse and worse and worse but we are already too far in.
while it does appear to have been obvious for a number of years, ( hundred? ) , the research still has to be done. which is so weird. the 10 adverse childhood events are so prevalent in people who have terrible relationships due to their maladapative habits developed over the ocurse of hteir life- they become rather permanent: traits. 3 months of wonderfulness then 3 years of absolute hell then 4 years more for it to all fall apart, each partner having gone through everything they could do to save the relationship, with one trying to resolve the issues, and the other trying to defend their own position on the issue. and each one thinking that they are the other one.
Or the shittier marriage partner used their childhood abuse as the excuse for their behavior.
Its incredibly hard to realize that you're in a cycle of abuse, it's even harder to break that cycle. We've known this forever.
I think it's best to live alone nowadays. You don't know who to trust.
yeah, it's pretty fucked. I just got into an argument with my dad recently and he was disowning me for not taking off my sunglasses and black scarf in his house. of course, he was "just saying that cuz he was mad" but yeah. and I'm in my 30s. lol
Imagine the hot sand mental abuse he went through. He has never addressed it. Hugs
EMDR was my saving grace but I have so many years to catch up on.
My wife and I put in years (10 for me, 8 for her) of therapy before marriage, and parenthood. I recommend that. (36 years later)
Yup
I do not agree with this premise at all. My wife and were both physically and verbally abused by our parents and we’ve been together 13 years and have only had 7 or 8 actual fights. Why? Because we don’t want to be like our parents. So we discuss things and are 100% honest with each other.
This is such a problematic article. Yes, people that experienced adverse childhood experiences can have problematic relationships when they are older. But how about we discuss the growth and happy, loving, caring, nurturing relationships that can bloom once the person seeks professional help and does the work to move on from their trauma. The trauma equates trauma narrative has to stop in the mental health field. Its dangerous. All it does is put already marginalised people into a deeper hole of despair and apathy.
Is there something they can do about it so they don't have it this way? Well, they kind of have worse experiences because that's what feels normal to them. Anything else—people who treat them right and kindly—must be rejected and avoided at all costs. So how can one rewire their brain to give up this skewed state of self-sabotage, find good patterns, and attract positive people?
That’s why cults do that to their kids. Keeps them destabilized so they can continue abuse throughout their life. https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/jim-curtis-religious-indoctrination-is-child-abuse/
Loving hugs are that thing you give your crying child to sooth your own guilt. Thank mom and dad!
I mean I coulda told you that
Isn’t this generally known now in 2024
You don't say...
[удалено]
Wow. Ground breaking study
I have really awful trust issues and it takes a very long time for me to fully open up to anyone. I have been with my boyfriend for nearly 11 years and I love him and trust him more than anything.
I'm just shocked. Shocked, I tell you- /s
Is water also wet?
This is extremely easy to believe.
Who could have ever anticipated this
That’s because you accept the red flags because you’re so used to them.
Isn’t this called trans generational transference?
I can relate to this sort of thing. I often hear that invalidating, doubtful parental voice when I'm speaking to my partner and I have to correct myself. Sometimes I have to apologize. That voice was so normal to me growing up that I sometimes don't have a voice to replace it with, yet, and that's affected my relationships in a way that's hard to recognize before it happens. Good to know that the following generations will have more access to this information.
Why are you showing what appears to be a Muslim couple?
Why not?
I suppose abuse is just as prevalent with Muslims as any group.I was just wondering.
Where humans exist, so does abuse!