To think being well-adjusted is a privilege no one acknowledges enough?

Strongly agree. Lots of people think their agression is warranted when actually it’s stress and or neurosis. Lots of the most vocal people obsessed with micro aggressions etc are hyper focused in paranoid ways. Our society in many ways is being trained to walk on eggshells around narcissists.

I think the term privilege has become quite political.

If the OP had said something like - "People who have a stable upbringing and are really well adjusted are really fortunate" I wonder if it would have been so contentious?

I used to often think how lucky I was to have a positive disposition; I didn't earn it or deserve it, I was born like that and I definitely think it makes my life easier. That's not to say people can't make an effort to be more positive or that it gives people an excuse to be grumpy bastards if they are naturally as positive as me but I can see how in the particular respect i am fortunate.

it's very telling that people who experienced a real trauma, like your example, are usually much more resilient and better achieving than those ruminating about other people's privileges.
It's always so easy to say other have xyz and I don't and that's the reason I'm such a waste

Agree with this & especially @SmallTreeDeepRootsalso.

Very well said.

What are you suggesting OP? If we acknowledge this is a privilege, how should it be allowed for or what adjustments should be made?

I agree with you 100% OP.

I thought I was well adjusted in that despite ups and downs my baseline is to be happy, content, grateful and optimistic.

Im not experiencing MH issues as a result of undiagnosed ND and stress which has caused an array of physical and mental problems.

I don't get the tirade about avoiding personal respnsibility by acknowledging youre not well adjusted either. Like physical health, I dont think you can put a price on good mental health.

Yet another load of AI tosh!

I agree so strongly with this.

Social media has enormously exacerbated the issue, particularly amongst young adults and teens who end up in echo chambers self diagnosing themselves with all sorts (I don’t simply mean neurodiversity here). It seems to have profoundly impacted both their resilience and ability to function as expected for their age.

Well yes, Gordon Ramsay grew up in poverty with an alcoholic father and witnessed domestic violence towards his mother.
He used that trauma to fuel his determination to make sure his own life was better while his brother became a drug addict and ended up homeless.
Both experienced the same trauma, both had completely different outcomes and yes maybe that’s down to choice and mindset.

I came from a very privileged background, had 2 loving and supportive parents, we lived very comfortably.
While my sibling went to uni and now owns his own business.
I failed all my exams and struggle through life in poverty because I was in my 40s before I was diagnosed with learning disabilities and ADHD and no amount of nurturing and step-ups in life were going to change the fact that I couldn’t learn like nt students so I have no qualifications and no chance of ever getting a better paid job.
My own daughter lives in poverty and is doing great, she’s at grammar school, she is so clever and bright yet I couldn’t even understand her maths homework in infants.

It’s not always a case of work hard, some people really struggle to get through life in a world they can barely function in but that’s because the world was built for how the majority of brains are wired and that doesn’t work for them but that’s not their choice.

But even this is subjective. Obviously having two parents together is the optimal scenario but there's so much more nuance to it.

I have been a single parent (I no longer am) but have spent a lot of time around other single parent households and I would venture to say in many of these households the children are better adjusted than in households where there are two parents. A financially stable, loving lone parent can provide an upbringing that is as good as a coupled family, particularly if the parents in the coupled family no longer like or respect one another.

Coming from a single parent household doesn't automatically mean a child will experience trauma. Coming from a coupled household doesn't automatically shield him or her from abuse or trauma.

There are so many more variables than people are acknowledging.

What you are forgetting op is that a person who has thrived in life despite going through trauma has a privilege that only those who have been through the storm can understand. Their recovery, inbuilt resilience, and understanding of themselves is a source of joy and privilege that has been won through hard work and no one can take that away from them.
We are our nervous system. It's ability to heal and respond to our thoughts and moods cannot be underestimated despite what privileges we were born into.

Of course it's true that having a stable upbringing is likely to make your life easier, likewise good health, financial security etc etc. We all know this.

I think it's useful to draw a distinction between those qualities which are innately beneficial (good health and a stable family, for example) and those which are only benefits because of the society we live in (for example, being of the majority racial group in a racist society, being straight in a homophobic society, being male in a misogynist society etc). I think privilege is a more useful concept in the latter, because it's easy if you are a member of the privileged group to be (wilfully?) unaware of your own privilege.

(Of course for a lot of things there is a grey area- disability, for example.)

I might get ripped a new one for this but for me, a stable household with 2 loving parents is the baseline standard of what a child should be brought into the world to. Coming from a wealthy family with connections and extras such as this are the privilege. A loving stable family is a baseline.

I don’t think it is that simple. People who are well adjusted in the way you are suggesting are few and far between.

Almost everyone has had some negative shaping in their upbringing that has negatively impacted their personality. The very very hard truth is that for most people the source of the damage comes from what should be the source of their support because parents, extended family members, community members, partners are who generally harm people far more than the random stranger carrying out a random act on you.

The vast majority of people have some negative and damaging experiences at the hands of people who should not do that to them.

Yet so many people in spite of that have to find ways to integrate that stuff and function on in the world.

I find this sort of intense navel-gazing, privilege-ranking a bit absurd tbh. Like people are always looking for an excuse they haven’t achieved xyz. As someone with several ACEs including a hasty teenage migration from a war zone without my parents, I really do not think it is mentally healthy to be ruminating constantly on negative things that happened to you. Focus on what you can control and beautiful things. It is the absolute cancer of Western civ to be obsessing with “mental health” and the unfairness of life.

Privilege?
You have to be kidding.
What about those who worked hard to overcome their past and are now well adjusted? Is that privilege too?

Everyone has a privilege if you look close enough: white, male, rich, stable home life, good looking, smart, sporty, no SN, charismatic, good family connections, etc etc

I do think that having a parent/parents who have expectations of you, i.e., they don't continually enable you/prop you up is a huge advantage. I can already see this among DD's (21) friends.

So even having supportive parents is a complex privilege, because "too much" support can hold people back IYSWIM. We all have to take responsibility for our own lives at some point.

I consider myself well-adjusted but it has been no privilege. I have trauma from childhood in excess (death of a parent, alcoholic step parent, violence, poverty, housing insecurity, lack of attachment to living parent to name but a few)

That may be true, and I think for some people trauma does impact them in ways that are hard to fathom. It can be very hard with early trauma because separating out what’s developmental and what’s behavioural is very difficult when a personality is formed in and through trauma.

In saying that, writing off every difficult personality trait as a trauma response absolves the individual from taking action to address the impact of trauma on them and on others. Trauma recovery is really, really hard work and not everyone has the resources to access appropriate help, the medicalisation of trauma hasn’t helped that any. Being able to access support and work on recovery is another form of privilege.

Well I think everyone acknowledges that: some people will always have more than others. You can't avoid this. And sadly some people will experience trauma in their early childhoods and that will have an effect.

But the OP's contention is that a lot of negative personality traits are caused (and by implication, justified) by them having had a disadvantaged background. I think you do have to draw a line here: otherwise you're stuck in a constant cycle of accepting poor behaviour from people because their trauma is "bigger" than yours. You see this a lot on threads about poor behaviour from husbands/partners: an OP will detail awful behaviour and say "he had a deprived background and is really triggered by x and y" etc. It becomes a bit of a trauma Olympics which ultimately allows people to duck out of accountability.

Also "privilege" is subjective. If you come from an affluent, two-parent household where you didn't want for anything material but your parents hated one another and never spoke are you more "privileged" than someone living with a single parent who was poor but loving?

There is already a recognition that having adverse childhood experiences is a disadvantage, with some research linking multiple ACEs higher prevalence of addiction and suicide in adulthood. What other recognition do you think would help? https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html

Blaming everyone else?
Or feeling the unfairness of a world built by nt people for nt people?

But the privilege is almost impossible to define. Some people that have suffered immense trauma have natural resilience and it doesn't impact them anywhere near as much as objectively milder events could impact someone with a more fragile disposition. So what is the privilege? Experiencing less traumatic events or having the natural disposition or ability to work towards a state where you can deal with or even grow from trauma?

Combine this with the long list of other 'privileges' that could exist and it's clear that virtually nobody is completely privileged and we are all managing a variety of experiences and traits as part of the human condition. It's very hard to definitively state that you are more or less privileged than another person as it's completely subjective and depends on the weighting you give to various aspects that can impact someone's life. For example, it's a privilege to be able to conceive a child naturally as many people can't but if you never wanted children then it's not going to rank massively highly on your list of perceived privileges. Ultimately it can all become a complex and rather pointless exercise as there is often very little we can do to address every perceived privilege or lack of.