7 ms·

It is uncanny how much this mimics my own experience. Was bullied between ages 11-16. Grew a a social circle in high school, which started fragmenting once eve

It is uncanny how much this mimics my own experience. Was bullied between ages 11-16. Grew a a social circle in high school, which started fragmenting once everyone went off to university. I rarely if ever see any of them anymore. Before the bullying, I was aparently happy and excited for most things (according to siblings). After it I have always been the low energy serious guy. 20 years on I feel an intense need for human connection, but no matter how much I try I never seem to be able to cultivate any kind of lasting relationship with others.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Depression often develops in adolescence so I think we should be a bit skeptical with the 'correlation is not causation' going on with these examples.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
> It is uncanny how much this mimics my own experience. A significant amount of people damaged exactly like that run around. It‘s nothing noteworthy nor exceptional. And there is no recognized cure for us. My pet theory is that through either nature or nurture, we are permanently damaged individuals that won‘t ever experience what we perceive as the normal, healthy social life and mental states. Our brains are permanently altered to our detriment. Connecting to your anecdote: I am 30 and my mom still mentions what a lively and happy child I was. I wish she wouldn‘t, because it hurts to hear about the potential I squandered, lost or had stolen.
- ryanwaggoner 4y ago
  There are no magic bullets, but the research on psychedelics and depression are encouraging.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    The only time I managed to acquire psylocobin was on an island where a big rave was happening. A hippie guy sold me magic mushroom pills. I was too scared to take it in this atmosphere and wanted to take the pills home. To leave the island, one had to walk through nipple-high water. The pills in my wallet melted away in the water. Maybe some other day.
    - bnjms 4y ago
      If you are in the US mushroom spores can be found in head-shops and grown easily enough. If you have friends who smoke weed they will likely know someone who knows how to get mushrooms. Raves are fun enough as it is. You made the right choice.
- imiric 4y ago
  > I wish she wouldn‘t, because it hurts to hear about the potential I squandered, lost or had stolen. I think this negative mentality doesn't help. The sooner you try to live life to the best of your abilities with the cards you've been dealt, the sooner you'll feel better about your present and future. We can't change the past, but we can choose to accept it and move on.
- sammalloy 4y ago
  > we are permanently damaged individuals that won‘t ever experience what we perceive as the normal, healthy social life and mental states. Our brains are permanently altered to our detriment. Pretty much all of the available evidence says otherwise. Look into neuroplasticity, developing healthy habits, and exposing yourself to people and situations that are far different than your comfort zone. I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago, and I’m not the person I was ten years ago. If you’re not busy growing, you’re busy dying. Change is the one thing we can count on to improve ourselves. But you have to accept it and get on with it. There are some people out there who have great difficulty changing and growing. Best to confront that now rather than later. Challenge yourself every day, and at the end of a year you’ll look back and laugh at your old self who said they were permanently damaged. Everyone has their unique way of doing this. For me, it’s going to nature and immersing myself in it every day and trying to find the beauty in all things. Find your own way.
likeabbas 4y ago
I believe we find it hard to keep relationships because we take criticism/rejection harder than others. My (former) friends would say that I have no trouble burning bridges with anyone. Any time I’ve found myself embarrassed or hurt by someone else, I’ve pushed them out of my life. This definitely comes from how I handled people in my formative years
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  Yep, because we have very negative associations with criticism. In addition to being bullied, we tended to move a lot when I was a kid. So it became easy to just leave and start over somewhere else - I think I even started to look forward to being able to start over. I remember as a kid playing with other kids and after a bit just disappearing and hearing them in the distance say "hey, where did he go?" - I'd often do this. Much later I came to realize that this was some kind of avoidance and that it wasn't the norm. I think that I expected even amicable play situations to eventually lead to being bullied and I think that's why I'd just ghost people.
- waboremo 4y ago
  For me this was Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, linked to ADHD but of course that itself has a lot of overlap with the anxiety/depression realm. It's a pretty messed up condition to deal with, especially because even the mere perception of potentially being rejected can cause disproportionate reactions.
  - msrenee 4y ago
    I need to do some reading on that, but it seems superficially similar to the behavior of someone with borderline personality disorder. However, I think of borderline including becoming attached or infatuated with a new person abnormally quickly and then rejecting them just as fast. I'd be curious if there's some neurological overlap or if it's a different distortion of "normal" human behavior with a different cause. Or if those are one in the same.
    - waboremo 4y ago
com2kid 4y ago
> but no matter how much I try I never seem to be able to cultivate any kind of lasting relationship with others. I used to run a startup focused on this, here is what I learned: Time. The answer is time. Research shows there are two ways long term bonds are formed, shared adversity[1], or lots of time spent together. General rule of thumb for relationship building: 1. 10 hours together is someone you know 2. 100 hours together is a good acquittance. 3. 1000 hours together is a good friend and a relationship that can now last a long time This is why activities such as football watching (3*18, 54 hours a year, 2 years and you now have the beginnings of a good friends circle), or weekly poker matches (2 hours, almost 100 hours in a year) are so effective at building relationships. Interpersonal hobbies with lots of down time, like rock climbing or playing in a band, accelerate this process greatly. For people with kids, weekly play dates, or a weekly rotated dinner hosting. Friendship is literally grinding hours, when we are young it is easy, studying and hanging out get those hours in, but when we get older, we have to be purposeful about it. [1] Military boot camps are an example of this, so are the various culture wars. If you make people feel they are part of an oppressed group, preferably while isolating them from society at large, you will forms a cohesive group that acts together and one where everyone feels connected to each other. "Both sides" of the political spectrum do this, once you learn to spot it you start seeing it everywhere.
- citilife 4y ago
  I recommend people try to go to Church -- even if you're not exceptionally religious (you can even tell them that, I've never seen anyone mind; though they may try to convince you). It's an easy place to meet 30-40 people in a day, everyone there has different interests and comes from different walks of life. If you attend for a few weeks you'll often start attending lunch together, meeting out at some activities, etc. Plus, all you have to do is show up. People at a church tend to be outgoing, at least some of them are. Someone is bound to reach out to you if you sit there and drink a coffee.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    I would offer some hesitations to offer Church without knowing too much about someone or without caveats. Lots of people have religious trauma from being sexually assaulted/abused by church members or religious leaders, being ostracized for being LGBTQ or even just not performing gender strongly enough, or from being autistic/ADHD/a weirdo. When religion is good, it's a great pin to community building and mutual aid. When religion is bad it's a nightmare.
jvm___ 4y ago
Same. Insulting nicknames from elementary into highschool. Same 15 boys due to small classes at private Christian school. Married the first girl who showed me positive attention. I didn't know what a friend for me was, so we're married but not friends. The hope for you is that I found a group through a local running group. They posted on Facebook and we run weekly. They added me to the group chat last year and it's been amazing having people to chat with and go on runs with. Going home to someone who you can't have a conversation with is hard though. Trite advice that worked for me. Find a group of people who do the thing you like as a way to make friends. This group was started by someone just looking to not run alone in town. I can picture in my head walking up to the running group meetup for the first time, it honestly feels like a new birth after being friendless from grade 7 til age 40+.
- ryanwaggoner 4y ago
  I wasn’t bullied, but I was a homeschool kid who ended up at a private Christian school and then married the first girl who showed me any interest. We finally divorced after two decades of struggle. The entire 3-4 year period of my marriage finally collapsing under its own weight came with several beautiful bright spots: I went to therapy, I had several life-changing experiences with psychedelics, and I found a group of incredibly good friends in similar situations. It’s mindblowing the difference that a few good friends can make.
  - jvm___ 4y ago
    1000% Same experiences with psychedelics, haha.
theGnuMe 4y ago
People develop a set of psychological defense mechanisms to the bullying that work at the time but can be maladaptive later. Maybe you were bullied because the bullies found your happy excitement upsetting to their feelings and wanted you to feel the way they feel. This is not uncommon. I'm sorry that happened to you. But it sounds like you are finding the time to reflect on your past. As for relationships, the "one simple trick" for human connection and relationships is that there is no trick, you have to continuously put the work in. It helps if you find activities that you want to do and make friends there. A lot of people find satisfaction in helping other people, so volunteering can be one way to meet new people. You might face constant rejection at first but you are not unlovable. But if you are nice and kind to others and help others people will value that and think of you in the future. At some point you will reach critical mass and things will get easier.
vbezhenar 4y ago
I'm in a similar situation. Best friends I've found are when I actively played WoW and attended raids. I didn't kept them though but that was nice time and probably I had best interactions at that time. I'm trying to replicate that time but WoW changed and its audience changed, I don't feel like I fit there anymore.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
I found out that part of the issue with creating lasting relationships with others is that it actually takes a lot of effort to maintain relationships. It's not like a dating game where if you have a good dialogue on day 1 and then another good dialogue on day 2 their disposition changes. It's much more nuanced and much more specific on individual-to-individual interactions over months or years. Remembering common events to talk about regularly, responding and being responded to, birthdays, holiday celebrations, mutual activities, organizing intimate setting (think "potluck at X's house") socialization, the list goes on and on about the wide variety of behaviors. If you're struggling, I found graythorn's various assessment resources super helpful, as it systematizes aspects of relationship building that most people find intuitive. Things like "what level of friendship am I with this person" and "assessment on expressing needs and support" were helpful to me. Although these guides are specifically towards autistics, so keep that in mind when you try them.
- citboin 4y ago
  Googling “ graythorn assessment resources” gives us nothing useful. Please post more detail.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    https://linktr.ee/Gray.Thorn https://linktr.ee/Gray.Thorn Contexts to the links is the tiktok account https://www.tiktok.com/@graythornian https://www.tiktok.com/@graythornian

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

Depression often develops in adolescence so I think we should be a bit skeptical with the 'correlation is not causation' going on with these examples.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

> It is uncanny how much this mimics my own experience. A significant amount of people damaged exactly like that run around. It‘s nothing noteworthy nor exceptional. And there is no recognized cure for us. My pet theory is that through either nature or nurture, we are permanently damaged individuals that won‘t ever experience what we perceive as the normal, healthy social life and mental states. Our brains are permanently altered to our detriment. Connecting to your anecdote: I am 30 and my mom still mentions what a lively and happy child I was. I wish she wouldn‘t, because it hurts to hear about the potential I squandered, lost or had stolen.

ryanwaggoner 4y ago
There are no magic bullets, but the research on psychedelics and depression are encouraging.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  The only time I managed to acquire psylocobin was on an island where a big rave was happening. A hippie guy sold me magic mushroom pills. I was too scared to take it in this atmosphere and wanted to take the pills home. To leave the island, one had to walk through nipple-high water. The pills in my wallet melted away in the water. Maybe some other day.
  - bnjms 4y ago
    If you are in the US mushroom spores can be found in head-shops and grown easily enough. If you have friends who smoke weed they will likely know someone who knows how to get mushrooms. Raves are fun enough as it is. You made the right choice.
imiric 4y ago
> I wish she wouldn‘t, because it hurts to hear about the potential I squandered, lost or had stolen. I think this negative mentality doesn't help. The sooner you try to live life to the best of your abilities with the cards you've been dealt, the sooner you'll feel better about your present and future. We can't change the past, but we can choose to accept it and move on.
sammalloy 4y ago
> we are permanently damaged individuals that won‘t ever experience what we perceive as the normal, healthy social life and mental states. Our brains are permanently altered to our detriment. Pretty much all of the available evidence says otherwise. Look into neuroplasticity, developing healthy habits, and exposing yourself to people and situations that are far different than your comfort zone. I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago, and I’m not the person I was ten years ago. If you’re not busy growing, you’re busy dying. Change is the one thing we can count on to improve ourselves. But you have to accept it and get on with it. There are some people out there who have great difficulty changing and growing. Best to confront that now rather than later. Challenge yourself every day, and at the end of a year you’ll look back and laugh at your old self who said they were permanently damaged. Everyone has their unique way of doing this. For me, it’s going to nature and immersing myself in it every day and trying to find the beauty in all things. Find your own way.

likeabbas 4y ago

I believe we find it hard to keep relationships because we take criticism/rejection harder than others. My (former) friends would say that I have no trouble burning bridges with anyone. Any time I’ve found myself embarrassed or hurt by someone else, I’ve pushed them out of my life. This definitely comes from how I handled people in my formative years

UncleOxidant 4y ago
Yep, because we have very negative associations with criticism. In addition to being bullied, we tended to move a lot when I was a kid. So it became easy to just leave and start over somewhere else - I think I even started to look forward to being able to start over. I remember as a kid playing with other kids and after a bit just disappearing and hearing them in the distance say "hey, where did he go?" - I'd often do this. Much later I came to realize that this was some kind of avoidance and that it wasn't the norm. I think that I expected even amicable play situations to eventually lead to being bullied and I think that's why I'd just ghost people.
waboremo 4y ago
For me this was Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, linked to ADHD but of course that itself has a lot of overlap with the anxiety/depression realm. It's a pretty messed up condition to deal with, especially because even the mere perception of potentially being rejected can cause disproportionate reactions.
- msrenee 4y ago
  I need to do some reading on that, but it seems superficially similar to the behavior of someone with borderline personality disorder. However, I think of borderline including becoming attached or infatuated with a new person abnormally quickly and then rejecting them just as fast. I'd be curious if there's some neurological overlap or if it's a different distortion of "normal" human behavior with a different cause. Or if those are one in the same.
  - waboremo 4y ago

com2kid 4y ago

> but no matter how much I try I never seem to be able to cultivate any kind of lasting relationship with others. I used to run a startup focused on this, here is what I learned: Time. The answer is time. Research shows there are two ways long term bonds are formed, shared adversity[1], or lots of time spent together. General rule of thumb for relationship building: 1. 10 hours together is someone you know 2. 100 hours together is a good acquittance. 3. 1000 hours together is a good friend and a relationship that can now last a long time This is why activities such as football watching (3*18, 54 hours a year, 2 years and you now have the beginnings of a good friends circle), or weekly poker matches (2 hours, almost 100 hours in a year) are so effective at building relationships. Interpersonal hobbies with lots of down time, like rock climbing or playing in a band, accelerate this process greatly. For people with kids, weekly play dates, or a weekly rotated dinner hosting. Friendship is literally grinding hours, when we are young it is easy, studying and hanging out get those hours in, but when we get older, we have to be purposeful about it. [1] Military boot camps are an example of this, so are the various culture wars. If you make people feel they are part of an oppressed group, preferably while isolating them from society at large, you will forms a cohesive group that acts together and one where everyone feels connected to each other. "Both sides" of the political spectrum do this, once you learn to spot it you start seeing it everywhere.

citilife 4y ago
I recommend people try to go to Church -- even if you're not exceptionally religious (you can even tell them that, I've never seen anyone mind; though they may try to convince you). It's an easy place to meet 30-40 people in a day, everyone there has different interests and comes from different walks of life. If you attend for a few weeks you'll often start attending lunch together, meeting out at some activities, etc. Plus, all you have to do is show up. People at a church tend to be outgoing, at least some of them are. Someone is bound to reach out to you if you sit there and drink a coffee.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I would offer some hesitations to offer Church without knowing too much about someone or without caveats. Lots of people have religious trauma from being sexually assaulted/abused by church members or religious leaders, being ostracized for being LGBTQ or even just not performing gender strongly enough, or from being autistic/ADHD/a weirdo. When religion is good, it's a great pin to community building and mutual aid. When religion is bad it's a nightmare.

jvm___ 4y ago

Same. Insulting nicknames from elementary into highschool. Same 15 boys due to small classes at private Christian school. Married the first girl who showed me positive attention. I didn't know what a friend for me was, so we're married but not friends. The hope for you is that I found a group through a local running group. They posted on Facebook and we run weekly. They added me to the group chat last year and it's been amazing having people to chat with and go on runs with. Going home to someone who you can't have a conversation with is hard though. Trite advice that worked for me. Find a group of people who do the thing you like as a way to make friends. This group was started by someone just looking to not run alone in town. I can picture in my head walking up to the running group meetup for the first time, it honestly feels like a new birth after being friendless from grade 7 til age 40+.

ryanwaggoner 4y ago
I wasn’t bullied, but I was a homeschool kid who ended up at a private Christian school and then married the first girl who showed me any interest. We finally divorced after two decades of struggle. The entire 3-4 year period of my marriage finally collapsing under its own weight came with several beautiful bright spots: I went to therapy, I had several life-changing experiences with psychedelics, and I found a group of incredibly good friends in similar situations. It’s mindblowing the difference that a few good friends can make.
- jvm___ 4y ago
  1000% Same experiences with psychedelics, haha.

theGnuMe 4y ago

People develop a set of psychological defense mechanisms to the bullying that work at the time but can be maladaptive later. Maybe you were bullied because the bullies found your happy excitement upsetting to their feelings and wanted you to feel the way they feel. This is not uncommon. I'm sorry that happened to you. But it sounds like you are finding the time to reflect on your past. As for relationships, the "one simple trick" for human connection and relationships is that there is no trick, you have to continuously put the work in. It helps if you find activities that you want to do and make friends there. A lot of people find satisfaction in helping other people, so volunteering can be one way to meet new people. You might face constant rejection at first but you are not unlovable. But if you are nice and kind to others and help others people will value that and think of you in the future. At some point you will reach critical mass and things will get easier.

vbezhenar 4y ago

I'm in a similar situation. Best friends I've found are when I actively played WoW and attended raids. I didn't kept them though but that was nice time and probably I had best interactions at that time. I'm trying to replicate that time but WoW changed and its audience changed, I don't feel like I fit there anymore.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

I found out that part of the issue with creating lasting relationships with others is that it actually takes a lot of effort to maintain relationships. It's not like a dating game where if you have a good dialogue on day 1 and then another good dialogue on day 2 their disposition changes. It's much more nuanced and much more specific on individual-to-individual interactions over months or years. Remembering common events to talk about regularly, responding and being responded to, birthdays, holiday celebrations, mutual activities, organizing intimate setting (think "potluck at X's house") socialization, the list goes on and on about the wide variety of behaviors. If you're struggling, I found graythorn's various assessment resources super helpful, as it systematizes aspects of relationship building that most people find intuitive. Things like "what level of friendship am I with this person" and "assessment on expressing needs and support" were helpful to me. Although these guides are specifically towards autistics, so keep that in mind when you try them.

citboin 4y ago
Googling “ graythorn assessment resources” gives us nothing useful. Please post more detail.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  https://linktr.ee/Gray.Thorn https://linktr.ee/Gray.Thorn Contexts to the links is the tiktok account https://www.tiktok.com/@graythornian https://www.tiktok.com/@graythornian