5 ms·

> Bad shit will always happen, but at least you're in a position to deal with it! I think this is pretty key and doesn't get enough attention. In child psych

by zamfi 8y ago

> Bad shit will always happen, but at least you're in a position to deal with it! I think this is pretty key and doesn't get enough attention. In child psych they talk about "resilience", the ability to get back on your feet when something knocks you down. It's hugely helpful for kids. But it's also critical for adults, and especially successful adults who frankly don't have a lot of experience being knocked down and getting back up again. I suspect that most anxious successful adults underestimate their own ability to bounce back from failure -- many of us think that we got super lucky and at any time something could destroy it all, not thinking about how would take advantage of other opportunities already available in the face of failure in one domain. I suspect another piece of this is the lack of spare resources (money, time) to handle external shocks. We're so busy that when one thing goes wrong and needs extra attention/money/time, we know it comes at the expense of something else -- and we feel that expense strongly. Curious for others' thoughts on these.

airstrike 8y ago
> But it's also critical for adults, and especially successful adults who frankly don't have a lot of experience being knocked down and getting back up again. This is a point that certainly needs to be raised more often. Thanks for making me aware of it.
ndiscussion 8y ago
Counterpoint: chronically stressed children are left with frantic nervous systems and don't learn how to self-soothe. Being chronically stressed for tens of years is incredibly damaging to a body and mind. Childhood trauma and PTSD are little better than a death sentence. Of course, not every child who gets knocked down has trauma. But there's a lot of evidence that people with "rough childhoods" just grow up to have "rough adulthoods". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_...
- cordonbleu 8y ago
  quite some time ago a co-relation was established between resiliency and the ability of the child to discover ad hoc foster parents. the island of stability normalcy and reasonable expectations created by a child when self-adopting a foster parent, seems to have a great bearing on who survives the traumatic childhood. I am one such child, having experienced extreme and daily physical and psychological abuse for more than 10 years and i have very severe difficulties with wanting to be socially active but feeling extremely pained by the interaction. I feel more in tune with people who are at least 20 years my senior and i am sure this is a result of self fostering
  - mastox 8y ago
    Interesting. I didn't know this was a thing. Thank you for sharing! I recently had a revelation that neither of my parents were "good" parents. But also realized who my first two "good" parents were. My dad's mental illness turned into psychological abuse and he eventually committed suicide. Luckily, my mom married one of my "good" parents and we currently have a great relationship. I have two older sisters, one turned out fine. She was born resilient, and didn't really seek a foster. The other sister is a different story, and I had wondered if she had found a "good" parent as a child.
    - cordonbleu 8y ago
      adde unnum 4u, ;-) i think this is 20+ years old and from scientific american as a secondary lit resource. it seems to hold from the psych education ive had.
- pdpi 8y ago
  > Counterpoint: chronically stressed children are left with frantic nervous systems and don't learn how to self-soothe. The counter-counterpoint is that this is very much a goldilocks things. Too little stress and you don't build resilience, too much stress is just plain abuse.
k9s9 8y ago
There is ofcourse more to it than that. "Getting back up" after life knocks you down is a huge factor in their success. There are very few successful adults protected from life's blows given the competitive, cut throat world we live in. They all know something about getting thrown into deep holes and climbing back out. However, I will say that a majority of successful adults, learn how to be resilient at the expense of the people around them. Not because they are evil, but because no one has shown them better ways of how to handle situations they haven't faced before. People don't realize how bad this used to be in the past. Nowadays we have much more access to info, better understanding of the right ways to "cope", better understanding of what to avoid, and the right people/environments that will pull one out of life's deep holes. It's nowhere near perfect but it's much better (if you have the resources as you pointed out). In the past people were mostly just winging it. It's why you see a whole lot successful people who are also ruthless. And regret it towards the end of their lives as they tally the costs and see examples of better routes they could have traveled.
- ethbro 8y ago
  It's interesting you bring up access to information: it seems like a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I have more information at my fingertips than someone with access to the entire NYC library system would have had in the 1970s. On the other hand, the outlier-emphasis of social and news media makes me aware of and able to worry about things someone in the 1970s wouldn't have thought to. I feel like there was probably an optimal internet (for utility and overall positive impact) from ~1970-1998. In hindsight, we should have more strongly segregated the information internet from the commercial internet, then let each evolve in isolation.
worldsayshi 8y ago
I really think that a lack of adversity is a double edged sword. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and if you don't get to experience your limits you can't tell what things might actually be a threat. And you won't learn the tools needed to face those situations. So you become afraid a of a lot of things that aren't within your immediate comfort zone. Exercising the situations that we think might be a threat to us in a controlled way might be the best solution.

by zamfi 8y ago

airstrike 8y ago

> But it's also critical for adults, and especially successful adults who frankly don't have a lot of experience being knocked down and getting back up again. This is a point that certainly needs to be raised more often. Thanks for making me aware of it.

ndiscussion 8y ago

Counterpoint: chronically stressed children are left with frantic nervous systems and don't learn how to self-soothe. Being chronically stressed for tens of years is incredibly damaging to a body and mind. Childhood trauma and PTSD are little better than a death sentence. Of course, not every child who gets knocked down has trauma. But there's a lot of evidence that people with "rough childhoods" just grow up to have "rough adulthoods". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_...

cordonbleu 8y ago
quite some time ago a co-relation was established between resiliency and the ability of the child to discover ad hoc foster parents. the island of stability normalcy and reasonable expectations created by a child when self-adopting a foster parent, seems to have a great bearing on who survives the traumatic childhood. I am one such child, having experienced extreme and daily physical and psychological abuse for more than 10 years and i have very severe difficulties with wanting to be socially active but feeling extremely pained by the interaction. I feel more in tune with people who are at least 20 years my senior and i am sure this is a result of self fostering
- mastox 8y ago
  Interesting. I didn't know this was a thing. Thank you for sharing! I recently had a revelation that neither of my parents were "good" parents. But also realized who my first two "good" parents were. My dad's mental illness turned into psychological abuse and he eventually committed suicide. Luckily, my mom married one of my "good" parents and we currently have a great relationship. I have two older sisters, one turned out fine. She was born resilient, and didn't really seek a foster. The other sister is a different story, and I had wondered if she had found a "good" parent as a child.
  - cordonbleu 8y ago
    adde unnum 4u, ;-) i think this is 20+ years old and from scientific american as a secondary lit resource. it seems to hold from the psych education ive had.
pdpi 8y ago
> Counterpoint: chronically stressed children are left with frantic nervous systems and don't learn how to self-soothe. The counter-counterpoint is that this is very much a goldilocks things. Too little stress and you don't build resilience, too much stress is just plain abuse.

k9s9 8y ago

There is ofcourse more to it than that. "Getting back up" after life knocks you down is a huge factor in their success. There are very few successful adults protected from life's blows given the competitive, cut throat world we live in. They all know something about getting thrown into deep holes and climbing back out. However, I will say that a majority of successful adults, learn how to be resilient at the expense of the people around them. Not because they are evil, but because no one has shown them better ways of how to handle situations they haven't faced before. People don't realize how bad this used to be in the past. Nowadays we have much more access to info, better understanding of the right ways to "cope", better understanding of what to avoid, and the right people/environments that will pull one out of life's deep holes. It's nowhere near perfect but it's much better (if you have the resources as you pointed out). In the past people were mostly just winging it. It's why you see a whole lot successful people who are also ruthless. And regret it towards the end of their lives as they tally the costs and see examples of better routes they could have traveled.

ethbro 8y ago
It's interesting you bring up access to information: it seems like a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I have more information at my fingertips than someone with access to the entire NYC library system would have had in the 1970s. On the other hand, the outlier-emphasis of social and news media makes me aware of and able to worry about things someone in the 1970s wouldn't have thought to. I feel like there was probably an optimal internet (for utility and overall positive impact) from ~1970-1998. In hindsight, we should have more strongly segregated the information internet from the commercial internet, then let each evolve in isolation.

worldsayshi 8y ago

I really think that a lack of adversity is a double edged sword. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and if you don't get to experience your limits you can't tell what things might actually be a threat. And you won't learn the tools needed to face those situations. So you become afraid a of a lot of things that aren't within your immediate comfort zone. Exercising the situations that we think might be a threat to us in a controlled way might be the best solution.