How bad was my (and your) childhood compared to my (your) peers?

[Abzo Dolba]

Looking back in my childhood and teenage years I realize that I seemed to be very different from most of my peers in regards with anything social especially.

 

Every since I can remember most of my peers and classmates had a much easier and enjoyable time making friends, having a good time interacting with each other, being more confident and not fearing getting in conflicts with one another. They were more combative in dealing with their peer, more charismatic, louder, more assertive, much more socially savvy etc...

 

When it came to studying there were a lot that were more determined, had an easier time learning the material in class, more motivated - generally they had clearer visions about what they wanted to do in the future and took better grades. 

 

The greatest disparity and the one that made me feel the worst is the dynamic of the interactions between them...they seemed to talk a language that was really foreign to me, I was an outcast. Most of them ignored me all throughout the school years, I think because they did not see any value in interacting with me. 

 

They started going on holidays by themselves with their friends, going clubbing, having boyfriends/girlfriends and all the typical things for teenagers. 

 

I was bullied a lot and did not go through any of the teenage stereotypes. My teenage years were mostly spent sitting by myself in my room.

 

 

 

I not a long time ago realized that there was always deep lingering sentiment of inferiority that I had. I was very deeply ashamed of myself that most of my peers had such an easier time compared to me, at least when they were outside the house. However, listening to most of the call in shows with people that had a similar past with mine Stefan would make the point that they had a worse childhood than their peers and that their peers did not have empathy nor sympathy for them.

 

I found that calls very powerful and got me very emotional because how much they resonated to how I felt and Stefan's words sounded almost too good to be true. I think that unconscionably my mind was going...:"wow! so do you mean to tell me that all of this was not because of deficiencies on my part but because I had a worse childhood than them? This feels so relieving" 

 

My doubt comes from the fact that I actually do not know what happened in their childhoods, I do not know what exactly they got that I did not, or what abuse I did go through that they did not...and I came to wonder how bad my childhood was compared to theirs if it was indeed worse at all.

 

 

Do you have any idea how can I find this out?

 

What about your childhoods? How much worse or better were they compared to most of your peers?

[Koroviev]

you could ask?

 

I am wary of comparing to others' experience especially looking at them as better or worse. We all have different situations and experience and process those situations in different ways.

[Will Torbald]

You start by recognizing the abuse in your own childhood that most certainly diminished your sociability - and those are the abuses your peers didn't go through by simple elimination.

[dsayers]

You start by recognizing the abuse in your own childhood that most certainly diminished your sociability - and those are the abuses your peers didn't go through by simple elimination.

Exactly.

 

"wow! so do you mean to tell me that all of this was not because of deficiencies on my part but because I had a worse childhood than them? This feels so relieving" 

This is only partially true. There were deficiencies, but they were inflicted upon you. I noticed that while you were contemplating your peers, you weren't contemplating your parents. The isolation you describe serves no evolutionary purpose. It would however benefit abusive parents. You won't have the power to address this until you properly identify where it came from and have a proportionate emotional experience regarding that.

[Abzo Dolba]

I am wary of comparing to others' experience especially looking at them as better or worse. We all have different situations and experience and process those situations in different ways.

 

I am sorry this is too vague for me, would you mind detailing a little bit?

 

 

You start by recognizing the abuse in your own childhood that most certainly diminished your sociability - and those are the abuses your peers didn't go through by simple elimination.

 

Makes sense, but is this ignoring the fact that people have genetic predispositions towards a certain personality or temperament?

 

I do not find it hard to imagine that people that have the same abuse can have totally different outcomes.

 

 

This is only partially true. There were deficiencies, but they were inflicted upon you. I noticed that while you were contemplating your peers, you weren't contemplating your parents. The isolation you describe serves no evolutionary purpose. It would however benefit abusive parents. You won't have the power to address this until you properly identify where it came from and have a proportionate emotional experience regarding that.

 

I agree with the point you are making. However, what I meant by "deficiencies" here was intrinsic deficiencies, like I was intrinsically "inferior" to them regardless of what has been inflicted upon me.

[aviet]

Have you listened to the podcast about Robin Williams? I don't know what might have happened to you, but that was an interesting one in terms of origins of such behaviors as yours.

My observation as to people I knew who were in similar situations to you in my first school is that they were all from poor, single-mother homes. In my first school I would put the roughly fifteen boys in my class into three groups:

Unpopular - 5
Popular - 8
Middle-class - 2

All of the unpopular ones were from single-mother homes. Two of the popular ones were from single-mother homes. They were actually half brothers, born one month in between each other. One's mother made a lot of sacrifices to give her son a good future and he has turned out well. The other's mother is a complete disaster. The only thing that separated him from the unpopular illegitimate boys is that he came from a large, very close Irish family that has a lot of men in it with big characters who essentially filled the gap of his dead-beat father. He has had a lot of mental problems with anxiety and paranoia, though I believe he has got himself on track now.

The popular boys were all from families with two married parents. They were all working-class in terms of manners, boisterous, though some of their father's probably earned above average. From my experiences of going to their houses, in hindsight I could have seen the divorces that came to their families. I am fairly sure there was physical violence in some of the homes, though probably not prolific. Though there were certainly a lot of bad mental traits.

The two middle-class (in terms of manners), including myself, were from stable families. We were able to mix with the popular boys and indeed were fully integrated, essentially as equals.

In the second school I went to, which was private, there was a similar setup, but this time consisting of just:

Popular
Unpopular

There was one boy who fitted the description you give - very aloof and isolated. In his case I believe it was because his father traveled a lot for work and was not at home much.

I have a relatively close relative who has/had similar issues. His parents were from a wealthy gentry family and they spent most of their time travelling in Europe. One time they came back to their mansion and encountered their son. They asked one of the maids, "Who is this boy?"

That's my anecdotal evidence and from call-ins and other shows it seems parental absence, treatment and single-motherhood seem to be big factors in this.

[Eh Steve]

Looking at ACE scores might help you understand things objectively a bit.

 

https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/

 

I personally find the percentages a bit surprising.  On my street despite having a 3-5 ACE score myself my neighbor, the kid across the street, and the one down the street actually had it worse.  Despite being middle-uppermiddle class.  But I think for my city as a whole that might have been unusual and unlucky.

 

I wish I knew more about the rest of the kids I grew up with.  I remember there being different groups I interacted with in elementary school, going to their houses, and remembering how weird their relationships with their parents seemed to me.  One of the kids I think of ended up in the newspaper years later having hiked some mountain with his dad.  Whereas the kids I ended up spending more time with later on and some of the kids my parents friends had, all ended up a bit more screwy.  So there ends up being this confirmation bias of the ACE scores running in circles. 

 

Of the families I knew intimately they were all quite bad.  However, I knew some kids down the street and remember going "hmm, they seem less screwed up".  There was one family whose father was the psychologist for the kindergarten and I remember thinking they were very "unusual".  I remember them playing flutes they made out of pipes in the front yard and generally thinking what a foreign family they seemed like.

 

There can also be personality differences in terms of resiliency, being highly-sensitive, and having a high-iq that could make you have more difficulty socializing and make you more likely to feel / be traumatized by your family and your peers.  For example on the first question of the test, I technically answer a "No", because objectively that wasn't the case.  But, I was greatly greatly aware of an underlying contempt and hostility within the house which to me may have had the effect they intend to ask about in terms of swearing, put-downs and humiliation.

[KeepOnGoing]

It's hard to say what kind of childhood people around me had because if you haven't seen it happen, you didn't hear any stories you can't know for sure. I had pretty rough childhood and for most part of my life I seemed kind of normal to people. I actually turned out good but I just put a lot of effort in it and of course still working on it. When I was a child my mother called me a savage because I lacked social skills and was extremely shy. If a stranger talked to me (even if they were asking me some normal kind questions) I started to cry. Of course I was punished for that by my mother. Funny how parents are trying to fix symptoms of abuse with inflicting more abuse. When my family (aunts, uncles, grandparents etc.) wanted to hug me I was so scared that I was trying to get away and when somehow they got me I was like a frozen statue waiting for something bad happen. Most of my close friends in early childhood came from abusive alcoholic families drowning in poverty and physical violence. Once in a while I met some lucky kid with normal family or at least it seemed like it but like I said, you never know for sure.

[Jack_Rainbow]

Hello Abzo,

 

I'm a retired lorry driver aged 65 and I've struggled with the abuse I sustained in childhood my whole life. 

 

Would it be OK if I asked you some questions about your childhood and adolescent relationships with your parents?

[mgggb]

To some extent I think what's being described is merely an aspect of significant introversion, which at the extremes can sometimes have connotations of things like high-functioning autism. Usually in some way the deficiencies are compensated for in narrow areas in which the individual is above average or "excellent".

 

I'm going to have to push back a bit on this. An introvert or someone who is autistic wouldn't be bothered by their lack of sociability as op appears to be. Most people would describe me as an introvert because I spend so much time by myself, but speaking from experience, extreme isolation in my childhood made me "comfortable" with it in the same way a zookeeper is "comfortable" around lions.