You were meant to learn to recognize and name that energy and emotionality, and then learn to sit with it and develop adaptive coping strategies as needed, not maladaptive ones like negative self-concept and emotional repression.
It can take quite a long time to realize all of this and unlearn the patterns, and unfortunately, first line therapies like CBT are possibly detrimental for these issues.
Edit: also, you need not be fair to your parents. They are meant to adapt to parenting you, even if you were legitimately overactive or overemotional. Instead, you adapted to them.
That's just your own projection. Both sides adapt, and you haven't heard the other side yet.
Since children turn into adults, and not the other way around, I'd say that children adapt much more than parents.
A car accident is a car accident. Sometimes they are fatal, sometimes the paint gets scratched. People sometimes get long term health effects from a fender-bender.
Maybe, but some people react by becoming stronger and some react by breaking down and failing. Regardless of other effects like depression, anxiety, paranoia etc., being stronger tends to sound better, even if it has other trade-offs, you know? If you ended up weaker then sometimes nothing can convince you that's what was best.
That feels like a tautology. From context, you've defined stronger to mean better. So of course in that case stronger is better. But in reality stronger isn't always better. If you come to a chess match being able to bench more than your opponent, are you better at chess than them?
If there are tradeoffs, and there are always tradeoffs, then you can't actually say stronger is better. The neglect of your parents might make you more independent and you might find that helps with your work life, while at the same time it makes your personal relationships harder. Which of those do you happen to value more?
Which is not to say you can't personally find value in and appreciate even the negative the experiences that made you who you are. But you can't say something like: neglect is good because it makes people stronger. It could be true for your life and what you value, but it's not objectively true.
Oh neglect is terrible; simultaneously the worst and the least recognized type of abuse.
My point is that adaptations to abuse vary enough that some can be more "desirable" than others (in addition to being more fit for the environment / the world at large in some cases), and someone stuck in a "worse" one could end up longing for a "better" one. Though, sometimes I long for "worse" ones myself as someone who feels "better" than I should be, so maybe the grass is just always greener.
Real example based on real self-doubt across multiple friends I know.
Both examples can be incredibly emotionally mature, they just express it in different ways. Like, both are much more mature than me. This might be surprising because panic does not seem mature, but it does often have a good reason, even if it's something like sympathy or wearing abusers out, etc.
>> "Consider breaking down in front of everyone all the time, embarrassing yourself constantly, never knowing what to do, irritating everyone by being inconsolable, etc. vs always being composed, manipulating situations to avoid embarrassment, always being prepared with plans and never depending on others. Despite the fact that the latter is a constant never-ending source of work that mostly never gets used, on top of being incredibly lonely, the former feels worse because everybody sees it as worse."
These are not emotionally mature ways of handling things. These are called maladaptive coping strategies.
The classic example is a child who drew a picture shortly after 9/11. The picture included people floating down the building on (I believe) balloons or umbrellas. Obviously unphysical; but the child imagining ways (however fantastical) that could have helped was a factor in reducing that child's trauma.
On a therapist can tell you whether you personally have trauma, but the lessons you took away from your experiences certainly sound like it to me.
Personally since reading it and working through my own responses I’ve grown in leaps and bounds where previously I would’ve described myself exactly how you did.
I'm kinda confused. Is that the good impact you think that had in you? Why?
I learned to regulate my emotions, one way or another. Did it possibly (likely?) also have a long lasting negative effect on aspects of my mood, motivation, focus, etc.? I think there's a good chance.
I have lots of problems understanding my feelings (good old alexithymia) and it's always been an struggle for me to understand or communicate how I feel or what bothers me.
I have found in my own life that the practice of emotional regulation has made me a pretty good diplomat in difficult situations. Sitting down, shutting up, and following the rules when I want to yell at people is the essence of de-escalation.
Emotional regulation is a great thing to work with (I should keep on it), but I think it's very important to do it, not like "my emotions don't belong here, I'm not valid", but knowing the differences between different people, learning how different people behave and express themselves, and finding ways of moving your emotions to different places that help you express yourself and transmit your needs. And you don't have to do it the same way than everyone else (that's one of the most important things I've learnt since my diagnose a couple years ago).
In your case I'd just ask myself "Do I still feel like I'm a bother in situations where I know I'm not because of X?" And if so, it can be productive to see if you can change that directly or indirectly.
How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?
In my honest opinion, no one wants to look at genetics because it scares the hell out of them. But it’s most likely it’s complex genetics, not complex PTSD.
It doesn’t have to be the wrist experience to childhood to guarantee crippling adulthoods.
It’s not about little or big trauma, the focus on what any trauma did to the brain is what’s important because the fingerprint and footprint of trauma can be unique and underdeveloped the brain in certain areas regardless of source.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
1) love is conditional on behaviour - pleasing mum was the primary goal above everything else.
2) when I had been “bad”, only the most extreme contrition on my part unlocked the love I needed (as a highly precocious and literate child I’d write little suicide notes for her to find apologising for being so useless. I was single-digit age).
3) The dissonance between the private incessant scolding and the public display of praise led me to develop a rich, secretive inner life, and become adept at hiding maladaptive behaviour. I became a skilled liar and dissembler.
Suffice to say that this did not do me any favours in life. For the longest time I was able to “fake” being a successful, functioning, and sensitive person. But in reality I was throwing mental landmines into my own future that I eventually stepped on, resulting in addiction, depression, anxiety, almost constant suicidal ideation, a painful divorce (due to my own behaviour), and the estrangement of my adult children. I broke down a couple of years ago, landed in a psychiatric clinic, and started unraveling the effects of a lifetime of living with this baggage. I’m now 61 and have had two of the hardest, most challenging, most heartbreaking, yet also most happy and serene period of growth ever. I feel I’m finally coming into my own and the power my childhood trauma has held over me is broken.
Formally diagnosed two years ago as ASD, ADHD.
Really, that's it. Read the PDF.
The article even acknowledges that psychiatrist answer is wrong, and that all of the above are on a spectrum and nobody is ADHD-free or 100%-autist. This is not a problem because the answer is not meant to be correct, but only to be helpful and to "alleviate shame to enable people to achieve their fullest potential".
So there isn't even an answer.
Which, judging by your post, I'm guessing you will find a deeply unsatisfying way to look at the world, as you sound like someone with a positivist view (facts are correct and everything is true or false, you either have ADHD or not, and even on a spectrum there's a number. But there isn't)
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".