Were most of us mentally healthy people growing up?

[Please help]

Hello All,

  If you have read some of my posts, I am doing some inner-child healing work. One thing that is always a sticking point for me is my choice of friends. I think it's a mistake to look at Facebook and see people I know posting pics of their childhood friends and assume they were able to forge healthy relationships with people at a young age.

 I look back and can see how in my young days ( 5-6 th grade -even earlier), my choice of friends were the "troubled kids". Of course, most parents saw me as the problem one as my life was so chaotic.

Being painfully honest with myself, I almost have to admit I was a dysfunctional child. Otherwise, I would have chosen more stable people. I can see the patterns into adult life. Many of these people went flat out insane or took unconventional approaches to life i.e becoming a hermit in the woods. There is nothing wrong with an unconventional approach. However, it's usually a symptom of a deeper issue. There were a few stable guys who endured a childhood similar to mine and managed to prosper in many areas of adult life.

  I moved alot and would occasionally fall in with stable / healthy kids but quickly fell out. I can see why now. I put too many demands on them i.e needing them to become a surrogate family when they simply wanted a drinking buddy.

 My question is : Were many of us unstable due to circumstances beyond our control growing up and if so, at what stage in your life were you able to pull it together?

Thanks

[schwing]

I think we should never underestimate our own ability to identify and gravitate towards what is familiar (i.e. like family).  Even as kids, we have an uncanny ability find and attach ourselves to other people who in some way that allows us to share or replicate our own family dynamics, healthy or unhealthy.

I didn't understand who/why I favored the people I favored in my childhood.  But with respect to the early teenage or late teenage peers that I found myself close to, I can see now (as an adult) that there was always some connecting aspect -- either they had a family that had a dysfunctional dynamic similar to my own.  Or they possessed the very dysfunction as exhibited by my disordered family member (i.e. BPD/NPD).

Birds of a feather... .

I grew up less than mentally healthy.  I imagine I found my peers who grew up in mentally/emotionally healthy families to be strange or too different from what I understood. Now as an adult, the friends that I have kept from my youth are friends who have similar family dysfunction.

For example, I believe my mother is a uBPD waif.  My best man at my wedding has a mother who is a BPD witch.  And my other groomsmen also have BPD/NPD parents.

[Turkish]

My best friends I've kept since my teens:

One whose mother abandoned the family when he was 12. Let him and his two sisters with their dad.  NC, though the older sister has a r/s with the mother.

Two brothers: each have issues of their own,  but their mother was likely BPD (and or schizophrenic).

One whose dad, though a great guy,  suffered from depression.  His mom wasn't BPD (she recently passed), but had traits. His sister is dBPD  (and other things).

These are my best friends,  my brothers. We all feel this way.  Maybe the dysfunction isn't what brought us together,  but it's something we have in common. 

For what it's worth,  I've done ok on the surface,  but the hermit in the woods is my retirement goal.  I think being what one wants to be is ok as long as one is ok with it. 

I felt I pulled it together in my middle 30s... .then I met my uBPDx, and 6 years later I ended up here.

I think the one thing I learned through this is that it's ok to show vulnerability. The "inner child" was told how to feel and even whom to be,  but realizing I can be who I really am,  that takes more effort,  but it's liberating.

[Notwendy]

That is an interesting question. I was a pretty good kid- got good grades, didn't do anything really wild or hang out with the "wrong crowd". I had some close friends who seemed to have pretty normal families. I think I was  mentally normal for a kid.

In talking to some of the friends I was closest to now- one had an abusive father. My friends weren't the bad kids - but like me, seemed sensitive and older for our ages. We didn't discuss the issues in our FOO's back then. I think we just accepted that this was the way families were.

I recall by middle school feeling different, like I didn't fit in with my peers. When my friends started being interested in boys, I didn't have the same interest they did. I had crushes on boys- but not the boys they liked.  When I look back at the guys I dated later as a teen- one had an alcoholic father. Another didn't say much about his parents but they divorced. So I can see that I was attracted to people who shared the dysfunction in my FOO even as a teen.

I think what we had in common was not mental health issues, but the fact that our family circumstances resulted in us having to be more like adults than children. Some teens rebel and try risky behavior, but the person who was out of control in our home was my mother- and that kind of behavior didn't interest me. So, I had little interest in peers who did that.

By college, I knew that my ticket to independence from my FOO depended on gaining financial independence. I was motivated to study and do well. It wasn't fun to be on a campus with kids who liked to party. I think we were just at different stages of growing up.

[daverisk]

I was FAR from "normal" as a child... .not that I give much meaning to that word anymore.  I was a middle child in a group of 8 kids.  Sexually abused at least as early as age 5 which produced some ugly results in my teens and early 20's... .acting out sexually... .highly emotionally unstable... .no self-esteem... .sometimes I'm surprised I'm as "normal" as I am now.

[Please help]

Thanks for all the replies. I can look back on my life and see how I chose the friends I did. I will say almost all of them had issues such as broken homes, mental illness. The only one who was normal was forced to work in his family business night and day while in HS. They were immigrants and I was in the same industry and worked just as hard as he did. There was some subtle dysfunction. I think they made him into an adult at an early age. That is the only friend who was almost "completely normal".

  I also realize I do not beat myself up for my actions since I was 18-19. I am proud of my struggles and what i have accomplished. A few bad moves but it comes with taking chances in life.

What troubles me the most about my life are two things:

1) I am embarrassed about being somewhat of a loser in my teen years. I worked and often did not have a car. I lived in a different state from where I grew up as I moved my JR year in high school and had difficulty making friends. I stayed in touch with my childhood buddies and this kept me sane. During this period when I was weak / vulnerable, my a-hole father would rub in my face how he was a successful athlete, organized crime figure, toughest guy in school and of course a ladies man during his HS years. And here I am , riding a bike to work at a pizza shop. I later realized he embellished his life.   

My question is ; am I coping out by saying my early years before 18 were poisoned by a brutal home life that I could not succeed academically or in sports or with girls? I started doing great the moment I left home.  My theory is I was fighting bigger battles at home than most other kids so I could not be measured in terms of teen success. May be I was successful on a much larger scale as I got out of hell? your thoughts please.


2) I have 2-3 friends from my childhood who endured issues as well and are great people. A few turned on me for idiotic reasons and the others are simply incapable of being a friend in their adult years. As many of us children of BPD's do, we strive for perfection and I want perfection in my friendships. Should I let the 2-3 guys who turned on me and are not even functioning adults bother me? I mean there is no way we could maintain friendships as adults anyway. It does bother me as I get nostalgic for them. I had told my friend he could stay with me as his sister was moving out and he did not want to move home. He was pretty much sponging off her. I was 23 and had a 1bdrm struggling to work 2 jobs and go to school.  He wanted to live with me indefineately , smoke weed and be carefree. I said he could stay for a few weeks for free, save up some money, put his car on the road and go home.  He had a nice big house and his parents said if he moves back they are forcing him to go back to school. He was working p/t delivering packages at the time. After I made clear what i could offer, he and his 2 other friends decided I was a dick and no longer liked me. One invited everyone to his wedding but me as a way of hurting me. This happened 15 years ago but the intentional hurt is still there.   The one who did not invite me, I was close to his younger brother and almost let his brother stay with me so he could graduate HS in the same school as his mother was being evicted. He did not need the place but I had no issues with him staying for a month or so. It's called being a friend.

My question is I want to view myself as being successful with friends but this one instance of a few guys has soured it out. If I ignore this situation, I feel I am a well rounded friend.

Your assessment please. I think only another child of BPD's could understand why this is so important to me. I have no family and needed as many friends as possible. Maybe some people simply are not friend material?

Thanks again

 

[schwing]

Hi Please help,

My question is ; am I coping out by saying my early years before 18 were poisoned by a brutal home life that I could not succeed academically or in sports or with girls? I started doing great the moment I left home.  My theory is I was fighting bigger battles at home than most other kids so I could not be measured in terms of teen success. May be I was successful on a much larger scale as I got out of hell? your thoughts please.

I don't think it's "coping out" if you are trying to understand yourself and your history to help dig yourself out of where ever it is you might be stuck (i.e., depression, grief, etc).  It is "coping out" if you believe that your history defines who you are and this belief robs you of the motivation to change your life into whatever it is you want for yourself.  Your history does not define who you are. You define who you are.  You just need to take into account your history to help you shape your future.

Because of your background, you do have to fight bigger battles at home compared to some other kids. But those battles will inform you in ways that may catch the "other kids" off guard when they encounter such drama in their adult lives.

I think it might be helpful for you to define "success" in broader ways than who is doing well in school or in sports.  School has its uses but you can be the best student in your class and still be the most miserable person (I know a few of these). Appearances are exactly that. The people who make a big show in appearing to be happy or well off can sometimes be the least happy/well-off, or at least the most insecure.

As I see it, we are all the same.  We all have our challenges and the challenges will differ from person to person. But we all want a shot at living happy, fulfilling and challenging/rewarding lives.  What that looks like from person to person will be different.

My question is I want to view myself as being successful with friends but this one instance of a few guys has soured it out. If I ignore this situation, I feel I am a well rounded friend.

Your assessment please. I think only another child of BPD's could understand why this is so important to me. I have no family and needed as many friends as possible. Maybe some people simply are not friend material?

Just because you have a friend for a long time does not make that person a good friend.  Choose who you want in your life.  Stay in practice when it comes to making new friends.  For a plethora of reasons, most people seem to be less committed in developing new friendships as we get older but it doesn't mean it can't happen.

Ideally, you learn to develop friendships outside of the familiar dynamics of BPD affected relationships and you become acquainted and familiar with other dynamics that you adopt for yourself.  The danger is that if you don't learn new dynamics then you will end up marrying and recreating the old familiar dynamics and get stuck there.

Hope some of this helps.

Best wishes,

Schwing

[Please help]

I want to thank all of you for the replies. They really helped me out. I have to accept there was no community for me growing up. Additionally, even though my F took every opportunity to tell me how weak I am and this was affirmed at school as I was not successful by "teenage standards", I was in fact very strong. I can qualify this by the very fact I survived. If I was weak, I would have died of an OD or suicide by now.

  It's funny. I look back and feel weak because I was bullied a bit when I was younger. One of these bullies in his 40's grew up in what appears to be a stable home but collapsed as an adult. He rambles on Facebook about losing everything but still loving his kids. To me, that is the weak man.

Attacking someone because they seem weaker or smaller than you is not a hallmark of strength. Strength is what many of us here have. The ability to get the living hell beat out of you physically and or emotionally , then try to recover and move forward.   

Yes, I guess my F did harm me in many ways including my worth as a kid. Thanks to many of you, I can see how he was merely projecting his own fantasies onto me to build himself up.

Schwing said it best to paraphrase " I define who I am right now". What I went through as a child did not define me. It helped shape me to who I am today. That is all. My actions today define me.

I can now tell my 16-17 year old self he is not a loser. He is a winner that is fighting (and winning) much bigger battles than his peers.

Inner child healing hurts but it also feels really good. I can feel myself as a kid being reassured and that was all i ever needed.

Thank you all.