61–70 of 357 posts
I have an ACE score of 6. I vastly benefit from trauma therapy: EMDR, IoPT (constellations), hypnotherapy, somatic experiencing, nonviolent communication. It helped me get out of most of my previous addictions, and I do not need to take any medication. I consider myself to be quite happy, and was able to build secure attachments and bonds.
You will never feel safe. You will instead build a life, a portfolio, and a network of friends as a surrogate for feeling safe. And you can trust my words, I'm shadowbanned.
Still made it out OK as a homeowner with no student debt, but between the first 20-odd years of my life spent limping along and trying to pick up the pieces from my "adverse childhood" and another 4 or so odd years of pandemic lockdown, it feels like much of my early life was taken from me against my will.
I am satisfied with my achievements in spite of my tumultuous upbringing. That being said there will always be an undercurrent of "wasted potential" or "what if" I had the fortune of more fortuitous life circumstances.
As a sidebar I also am absolutely apoplectic with the blatantly sexist assumption in one of the ACE questions that it is the father who physically abuses the mother or threatens them with a weapon, but given that this is NPR I am not surprised.
My ACE score is 7, but I don't feel like that for 2 reasons: 1. there are some questions that technically I should answer "Yes", but is of milder scale of the spectrum. 2. I occasionally shared my upbringing to other people, and they are all very surprised. Once I shared with a group of "trainee chaplains", the teachers are commenting something like "why I'm describing my experience without the emotion", that is, whe…
For example I turned out a workaholic because I couldn’t find how to have success in my affective life. I’m 40, fit, correctly rich, but with a deep unsatisfaction about romantic life. Should I just be brave about it and satisfy myself with being single, or would a brave person deal about it?
I've been diagnosed with bipolar and depression, but I've had what most people would probably consider a successful career, but every day been a struggle. I've always struggled with depression and feeling abandoned by my family. Pretty much have a life by myself with very few people involved. I don't talk with my family.
Decades of therapy and medication, and it honestly really doesn't help.
I suspect I'm not the only one here in this boat.
I lost interest in formal education and ended up having a baby and dropping out, then going back to study psychology as the foundation stuff covers child psychology and development a lot. I found a combination of this and being mindful not to repeat the mistakes of my parent(s) really helped raising the kids incredibly easy. We were never going to be rich, but we were happy.
I got into health and fitness, which I always considered lame, because my dad died from being unhealthy and unfit and didn't want to inflict that pain on my own baby. It helped me think clearer and faster and made me feel safe, confident and I became quite extroverted. I felt that this and reading a good chunk of philosophical literature in my spare time really "fixed" a lot of mental health issues I had. I've spent most of my life working jobs around my lifestyle, even if it means having less money, I seem to be pretty good at living off a small amount of money and not living in misery even with the family, I have more in savings and investments than people I met that work 2-3x more than me. I work less hours so I get more time to read, create, be with family, get exercise and sun, meet friends, prepare meals, work on community projects etc.
Maybe it's a cope for being constantly told that I'm going to "go far" and being too lazy, distracted or disinterested in doing it (I wince every time someone praises my intelligence) but I'm happy that I have the freedom and opportunities to always be improving myself and trying new things, my only complaint is that life is too short for me to possibly indulge in everything that interests me.
Unfortunately, I either inherited type two bipolar depression or it's just what happens when you're very smart and see the world as it is. It has undermined me my entire life. But I also have zero competitive streak and I find material ambition embarrassing. So I've never been particularly financially successful.
Been a coder and writer my entire adult life. Started writing professionally when I was 18, had a column in an alt weekly in a major city before I was 23 and was Pulitzer nominated when I was 25. At the same time I was first a web designer and then a dev. I've worked for a few promising startups but they always did what most startups do. In retrospect, I was already burned out by the mid-2000s but I kept going because I thought I'd either get rich or find something worth my time.
Had a heart attack at 38 and another at 42 that nearly killed me. Had a triple bypass and moved to England to marry my girlfriend. Now I've got heart failure and spinal problems from a lifetime hunched over a computer and all the health problems you get from a lifetime of being a freelancer or contractor without insurance.
But I've lived an amazing life so far. I've traveled, partied, been witness to history, done what I wanted to do and followed my heart and will. I've done some good things for the world, I think. Now I'm writing a new social network app to fix the problems with the existing ones, working on a book about how to survive climate collapse if you're not a billionaire, and writing the best music I've ever written.
You won't make yourself feel safe by getting rich or powerful. You'll feel safe when you've surrounded yourself with people you love and trust. That's all. It has nothing to do with success or ambition. However you find that, whatever it takes, make that your ambition. And to use whatever the universe gave you to make things less hard on you and everyone you can.
If you're as bright as you seem to be, other people probably seem stupid. Maybe they are. But that doesn't make them any less human or any less important than you, and if you can see ways to make life kinder for them, do it and you'll never regret it. Everything else is just ego and self-reinforcement to drown out the things in your head that tell you you're not good enough or living up to your potential. Fuck that.
If you try as hard as you can to make the world a kinder place than you found it, you've won. That's all you can do. That's the only real wisdom I've ever found. We are born falling from birth to death, and all we can choose is how we use our time in the air: we can enjoy the rush of the air in our ears and the view, we can try to make sure everybody falling around us has their parachute open, or we can open ours without a thought for anyone else and still fall...alone.
I hope that helps.