Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods • Hacker News Board

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#31

Post by white-flame » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

anonymous_fun wrote: post #21

mmsimanga wrote: post #7

My most upvoted comment on HN was when I made reference to fact that I had grown up in African village. I was totally unaware that this was a something worth sharing but it seemed to pique people's interest. As I didn't know any better at the time, I never felt that I lacked anything. I had two parents, grand parents and many cousins around. We spent the whole time playing, "exploring" and "hunting". Not once did it…

Growing up hungry, with worn out second hand clothes, and dysfunctional families happens also in post-industrial societies. The hunger for knowledge and escape drove me to the library and the outdoors. I remember being young and thinking, if I can get $1500 dollars together, I will have made it. Every decade it seems to get another zero on the end of where I think I can be successful, and I continue to love to goto w…

> Growing up hungry, with worn out second hand clothes, and dysfunctional families happens also in post-industrial societies.

Just pointing out that the parent didn't imply a dysfunctional family in their upbringing. Familial dysfunction is orthogonal to poor, hungry, and having old clothes; and in my opinion can be a far more life-constraining factor for the future.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#32

Post by mmsimanga » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #25

mmsimanga wrote: post #7

My most upvoted comment on HN was when I made reference to fact that I had grown up in African village. I was totally unaware that this was a something worth sharing but it seemed to pique people's interest. As I didn't know any better at the time, I never felt that I lacked anything. I had two parents, grand parents and many cousins around. We spent the whole time playing, "exploring" and "hunting". Not once did it…

I didn't really have a childhood that could be described as "difficult", but having grown up on a farm and having ended up workin' in the big city for a tech company, I suspect we have at least one common experience. Do you ever sit and think sometimes how weird it is, to know all these things and have all these skills from your earlier life that have, like, no relevance or use in your current life? It's weird to me…

:-). I totally agree. I keep an eye on rainfall totals because that determines how good the harvest with be. Nevermind the fact that I buy all my food from the shop. I don't see cow dung or any farm animal dung as being dirty. We used to use it as binding agent for the mud huts and spread it on the floor, to make the floor. I often terrorise my city slicker friends with cow dung. I can make cars out of wire. When I see wires I often find myself visualisng the cars I could make. We used to milk cows and goats, plough with cows, pull carts with the donkeys, fish with home made hooks and nets. None of this useful when trying to tune my SQL queries.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#33

Post by vanderZwan » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

ta76567656 wrote: post #14

I too had a difficult childhood and overcame some moderate difficulties. Then I proceeded to waste my adult youth (20s and most of my 30s) in a multi decade pit of depression and withdrawal from the world. So let's not forget survivorship bias.

I hope you managed to claw out of that pit. Either way, hang in there!

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#34

Post by phaedrus » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 3:05 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #6

A topic so close to my heart I can barely engage with it. I credit my resilience to a sense of absolute worthlessness. If you have seen the film Gattaca and the bit at the end how the non-modified person can beat the modified person... it comes down to not being afraid of the consequences, of literally being willing to die trying because what do you have to lose? That you would accept that, to die trying, stems from…

This line from Gattaca always hits me so hard (when the genetically engineered brother asks the protagonist how he always won when they competed to swim as far out from shore as possible):

"I never saved anything for the swim back."

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#35

Post by saalweachter » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

Arete31415 wrote: post #23

I've had both experiences. I had very difficult home circumstances, and I "overcame" them at a challenging boarding school. Then I "couldn't handle" them in a challenging Ivy League environment, where I felt isolated and developed depression. I have a few takeaways from these experiences: 1. The difference for me between "succeeding in spite of" and "failing because of" was in a few areas. One, good help being availa…

I think it's very easy to forget that the same thing can both create advantages and handicaps. Take being an outsider in a field.

Being an outsider in a field can be a huge advantage sometimes. You know things other people in the field don't, you aren't bound by the same prejudices and preconceptions as the insiders, and you'll try things no one else would consider because of your radically different starting point. It can be a huge advantage, setting you apart from the crowd and letting you succeed where others fail.

But you'll also make mistakes no one else in the field does, suffer from and for gross misunderstandings of the simplest things everyone else takes for granted (and never be corrected of them, because no one could even conceive you would not know such a basic thing), and waste huge amount of times and money and effort going down dead-end rabbit holes everyone else would discard out of hand.

At the end of the day, most outsiders in a field will fail - hard and fast - because of the handicaps, but every once in a while an outsider will come along and revolutionize a field, because they are an outsider.

(Or at least, that is the cultural myth ;-)

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#36

Post by charlchi » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

rambossa wrote: post #13

I credit any of my "success" to the struggles I had as a child. Our world isn't perfect, and some of us experience different & harsher aspects of its flaws. I think the earlier some experience these flaws, the more they learn to adapt and realize truths of human nature. We learn that many things aren't going to be handed to us and to get what we want we will have to work a bit harder, or struggle a bit more (In the m…

I was deeply depressed and anxiety strikken during my entire adolescence. After dropping out of university at 20 I got diagnosed with ADHD and Bipolar. While sometimes I wish I'd had a normal life with parents that taught we good life lessons, in hindsight I feel like I've learnt even more fundamental lessons and have experienced some "truths" that I would not have experienced otherwise.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#37

Post by anonymous_fun » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

mmsimanga wrote: post #30

anonymous_fun wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up hungry, with worn out second hand clothes, and dysfunctional families happens also in post-industrial societies. The hunger for knowledge and escape drove me to the library and the outdoors. I remember being young and thinking, if I can get $1500 dollars together, I will have made it. Every decade it seems to get another zero on the end of where I think I can be successful, and I continue to love to goto w…

You bring up so three points that I think about quite a lot. First point, I often wonder what impact the curated upbringing I am giving my daugther will have on her future outlook on life. I know I can't possibly know and she will ber her own person but I am a parent and I do wonder. Doing what you love was an alien concept to me and my peers. It was a case of doing what needed to be done. Fullstop. I ended up doing…

Thanks, I really liked the comment on chores with kids. I thought about that a lot this morning. Some people grow up doing nothing for themselves and seem to be successful in their specialization. Personally, I think the people that came from nothing are more of an anachronism than the curated upbringings (biased of course). Curated upbringings seem to have more reliable outcomes. Computers also ended up being my career and passion, but philosophy, architecture...

On money, it feels like a double edged sword. It makes life convenient, but it also disconnects us. As you point out, it only holds value in a situation, and it doesn't buy health, relationships, or time. I ride public transit to work for perspective. If I could teach my kids only one thing, it would to be empathetic towards others.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#38

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #8

An more interesting thing to me is why resilience is so overlooked nowadays. We "design" young people to shatter like a glass when bad things happen.

It's IMO a sign of things being good nowadays. I mean you're not saying everyone should have a tough childhood, right? Everyone that did is doing stuff to make sure their children / the next generation doesn't have to go through what they had to.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#39

Post by pvaldes » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

afpx wrote: post #17

pvaldes wrote: post #8

An more interesting thing to me is why resilience is so overlooked nowadays. We "design" young people to shatter like a glass when bad things happen.

Do you have evidence that things have changed? I suspect that if you took random samples of young people from several generations and followed them throughout life, the rate of success and failure relative to their peers would be the same across generations.

Most people can manage frustration correctly. But some outliers, instead...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...

I wonder how this would look in a chart.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/charts-and-maps

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#40

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #39

afpx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence that things have changed? I suspect that if you took random samples of young people from several generations and followed them throughout life, the rate of success and failure relative to their peers would be the same across generations.

Most people can manage frustration correctly. But some outliers, instead... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th... I wonder how this would look in a chart. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/charts-and-maps http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1138/

Also, there's a lot of terrible ways to manage stress without going postal (or some variant thereof) and there's plenty of things other than stress that can lead people to going postal.