Growing up in a environment that isn’t conducive to social adaption gives you a free pass to be not socially adapted, but it also means it is now your personal responsibility to fix that.
Shitty childhood led me not to have kids at all.
“Just because you got burned doesn’t mean you get to go around setting everyone else on fire.”
A quote I remember often.
The thing about trauma is that it hijacks the default mode network and makes everything look like a threat. The word is hypervigilance, and it filters everything you perceive through the lens of danger.
So when “hurt people hurt people,” it’s not usually because “I’m in pain so I must make others suffer.” Often it’s because they see a phantom of whoever hurt them in the past, and it’s overlaid on every interaction they have.
The default mode becomes defensiveness and self-preservation, and often the impulse is to preempt any potential pain by reacting to it before it even happens.
Therapy can help, but blaming people for their trauma and treating them as a fundamentally bad person because of how it manifests in their behavior doesn’t.
Good luck with that. It was never really about fault, but responsibility.
A captain can do nothing wrong themselves, have their ship be scuttled, and be liable for it.
Without this, society would simply not function.
Really, because it seems society is constructed around mitigating liability for the people at the helm while passing blame down the cargo nets to the poop deck.
Maybe a literal ship captain is responsible for his ship, but what about the owners of the shipping company? I’ll pop the champagne the day they’re held accountable for their reckless profit-gouging policies.
To be clear, that applies to shareholders and executives of any major corporation, not just maritime shipping.
On the smaller scope, I’d agree in theory that accountability should be about responsibility rather than mere fault, but we live in a backwards world. Our entire justice system is designed around assigning fault and administering retributive punishments.
A more just system would find who is at fault only as a means to identify who is culpable and to what degree, and the corrective actions would be assigned proportionally, with the primary aim being restorative or reparative justice. Sometimes punishment and/or confinement may be necessary, but it shouldn’t be the modus operandi of the entire justice system, nor the default course of action.
Especially when you consider how blame is doled out in society; it tends to roll down the social hierarchy until it lands on the lowest possible candidate who can’t manage to shift it onto a subordinate.
They say the leadership assumes the risk/responsibility. They also say wealth trickles down. They say a lot of stuff that’s utter bullshit, just to justify their own positions.
Absolutely humans are deeply affected on conscious and unconscious levels by all kinds of things that are out of their control - both experiences and brain chemistry. Absolutely it is a privilege afforded to only a few to have access to the support and resources needed to become aware of their situation and create deep change for themselves.
It’s also true that if you do a bad thing you did a bad thing. That does NOT mean you are a bad person, it does NOT mean all the things you can’t or couldn’t control are your responsibility, it does NOT mean that you even were fully aware of what you did.
But if you do a bad thing you are responsible for what you did. YOU did it. It is your responsibility to get on a path that will allow you to recognize and change that behavior.
It is nobody’s job to be perfect or beat themselves up for mistakes. It is everyone’s job to work towards being better - to themselves and to the people around them.
Part of that is understanding that you are responsible for your actions. You may genuinely not have been capable of making a better choice at the time - but if you did it = it’s on you to own the mistake.
I’d argue it is everyone’s job to be perfect, as trying for anything less, means choosing intentionaly to not care if you would potentially harm someone.
It’s great for us all to be the best we can be, and to always be working to improve.
“Perfect” is an abstract idea - it’s not really applicable to something as complicated as a human. Not just because it isn’t obtainable, but because we definitely would never be able to agree what the criteria are.
Makes me think of the fact that boys that are sexually abused as children are far more likely to grow up to become pedophiles than boys who are not sexually abused as children.
They should still be in prison if they ever act on their pedophilia.
They should still get help for the trauma they have experienced.
I’m willing to bet that almost all of them are fixable as long as they have not offended, but saying that, I also say that it’s practically inexcusable if they did.
My quote wasn’t intended to be a solution for people with genuine problems. It can be a reminder to take a step back if one can.
Yeah, trauma or other defensive behavior can be like wagon ruts. That’s the well-worn path the brain defaults to and it can be really hard to lift that heavy wagonload of trauma out of that deep rut. Creating other roads and lightening the load is a job for therapy.
having an abusive childhood is the main reason why i’m extremely sympathetic now, and probably part of why i’m also a massive doormat
Nobody is asking for a free pass, but mental healthcare and just a general recognition of the lack of free will that we all suffer in this deterministic universe does require us to think in terms of consequences that might actually work to make the world a better place.
I’m other words, when has saying, “be better” ever persuaded anyone?
plus things like autism/adhd have been largely balked at as being “lazy”(because the child isnt doing what they are expected as an adult) and not as a symptoms that is now gaining more recognition too.
At least don’t fuck over the people that actually stand beside you. Everyone else is fair game.
I’m other words, when has saying, “be better” ever persuaded anyone?
When the other person respects your opinion of them.
I’ve had a couple instances in my life where a friend has pulled me aside, explained how I’m being an asshole and told me to be better. Honestly, that has done more to unfuck the person I am than just about anything I can think of. Because I actually care what those close to me think, and don’t want to push them away with my character flaws. Same reason I go to therapy, my therapist just knows how to word it better.
For sure. That the answer. But that’s a select group of people for everyone. And we don’t all have people in our lives we feel obligated to impress.
Buncha times
Be good. Stop being bad. Okay you can go…
You’re against using the phrase “be better” ? Because it’s overly reductive, lazy and lacks any real tangible call to action? Is that why?
That’s part of it. The other part is who would actually benefit from being told this? Only someone who already wants to self improve and is motivated not to disappoint you.
No, but it should inspire compassion and patience. Childhood abuse literally changes the structure of their growing brains, you don’t fix that in a day.
Learning changes the structure of growing and non-growing brains. So does trauma.
Un my experience the worst people are the ones who have had no adversity.
Your post is great OP. There are so many entitled people in this thread arguing that their life gives them a reason to not be a good person. Its lovely that they’re all outing themselves for who they really are.
There will always be someone out there who had it worse than you did. Many of those people choose good. Being a good person is an active choice that you have to make every day, and it is not the easy choice. It’s work.
You don’t want to make the effort and try and leave this world a little better than you found it? Fine. But at least own up to it. Don’t blame circumstance. It’s you. It’s the choice you are making.
I fall into the “no free will” camp. I don’t think people should get a free pass, however. The goal should be rehabilitation and prevention.
If any punishment is involved, it should not be anything beyond what is most likely to correct the behavior and/or discourage others from engaging in the problematic behavior… if we can even agree on what is considered problematic behavior.
Figuring out the rehabilitation and deterrence is also hard, and we’re usually just happy to punish in such as way as to minimize cost or maximize profit so… I doubt we’ll figure it out anytime soon. That and people’s egos can’t handle the whole “no free will” thing.
No, but understanding how a shitty childhood can often lead to a shitty adult can help prevent it.
Yes and maybe you’ll be able to bring up some compassion for shitty people when you understand them a bit better
Honestly, I used to feel the same. But now… Not so much.
Shitty childhoods often develop into isolating behaviors. Isolating behaviors keep you from connecting with other people. Those people often give you hell, because you don’t have the skills to connect and they’re afraid of you. Which means you learn behaviors to keep others away from you.
Couldn’t agree more
That doesn’t mean it’s easy to NOT let that trauma turn me into a bitter monster. In fact for a time during the thick of it, I was. Which was also the time when I was struggling BAD with addiction (7 years sober now, it’s the longest I’ve ever been sober). It’s a stretch of time where I deeply regret the person I was.
I’d say the biggest thing that helps me win and be a better person is framing who I am now in a specific way in my mind. If I let all that trauma turn me into a bitter monster, than that means that the monsters that defined the first 24 years of my life continue to have power over me. So basically I go “Fuck you! You won’t turn me into a fucking monster! I’m going be the kind of person none of y’all ever were to me! I’m gonna be kind! I’m gonna be helpful! I’m gonna be the kind of person people are happy and PROUD to know! I’m gonna leave a POSITIVE impact on the lives of people I interact with!”
My sister has the same outlook as me, which brings me joy. She also had awful trauma continue into her 20s.
My brother, not so much though. At least my niece and nephew have my sister and I to interact with often (mostly my sister, my brother doesn’t talk to me very often for reasons I’m not gonna go into) so they’re becoming the kind of people that we’d love for them to be. Being the candle in the dark for them gives them a guiding light so that they have some good to look to.
You don’t know me, but I wanted to say I’m proud of you, internet stranger, for 7 years of sobriety. That takes a lot of work.
Those 7 years weren’t easy but they were so worth it
My sleep is better, I’m saving so much money (well… in theory lol), and my CPTSD is easier to deal with
It’s all about attitude. You can’t choose your trauma, but you can choose how to see it:
- A normal experience that you “got over” and refuse to allow yourself (and by extension others) to say is or was “that bad,” may even lead to believing that it’s “your turn” to inflict it on anyone who arbitrarily deserves it
- A horrific experience that you never want another child to ever go through
Luckily, I grew up with parents who saw it the #2 way and raised me with love
You cannot always understand or even know your own trauma and in many cases, not all for sure, as you didn’t see it as trauma or completely suppress it and hide it from even yourself
This is basically all of gen z, expect they pretend to have shitty childhoods.
They’re like performative trauma victims that make everything some sort of political battle for clout and social media attention.
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Explanation, but not excuse.
But then, is there any excuse to be a shitty person. I can only thing of a couple of edge cases.
is there any excuse to be a shitty person
By definition, no. Because if there’s a good justification for it, it’s not that shitty.
E.g. It’s okay to be shitty to Nazis.
The problem is also “shitty person” is kind of subjective. Some people would consider perfectly harmless things to make you a shitty person.
Everyone makes mistakes.
If you had a reasonable childhood count yourself lucky - your mistakes will probably be reasonable. If you suffered from severe trauma/abuse or you have mental health challenges then you are likely to make different kinds of mistakes.
It is everyone’s job to work towards being better. You do something shitty then YOU did it - your childhood didn’t do that, you did. It also might be true that you don’t even recognize how shitty it is because you were taught it was “normal”.
We all are responsible for our actions, but some folks have been surrounded by kindness from birth so kindness is natural and easy. Other folks have to work really hard and make a lot of mistakes to learn that their behavior isn’t ok.
Yes, we are all responsible for our actions.
Equally true = some folks face enormous challenges because of background or brain chemistry, while others have it so easy they don’t get why anyone would struggle.
Fyi you don’t have to have had trauma or abuse to have behavioral issues that are untreated or undiagnosed.
I’m glad my childhood raised me to be a pathological people pleaser utterly terrified of anyone’s disapproval. Nobody complaining about these sorts of people
On one hand, I am the same way. On the other hand push that further in the same direction to get BPD, and people absolutely complain about people who have it. I guess also my wife complains about my people pleasing sometimes…
One day you’ll emerge, fed up with being steamrolled by everyone. There’s a strong assertive raging badass inside of you who won’t take shit from anyone.
Not yet. But when the day comes when you decide you don’t want to live like this any more, you’ll get a lot of “you’ve changed” and “why are you being so cruel to me” from the people who have grown accustomed to your lack of boundaries.
correct. I got this a lot from what used to be my family when i tried to start regulating my interactions with them. eventually they switched into passive-aggressive mode because they feel like boundries are oppression, and that treating me with respect was a bridge too far.
