To think that not everyone has the tools to make great life choices?

[malificent7]

I hear a lot of talk on mn about life choices. Especially in the context of benefit recipients or single parents.

I used to make very poor life choices. I suffered abuse from mum and in my teens/ early 20s, from my ex.
I therefore made bad decisions and suffered from horrendous mental health.

This resulted on me rebelling against my mum, not doing medicine asshe wanted me to ( regret this now,), turning to booze and choosing a bad dad for dd.

Since emdr therapy, I have been making much better choices but my upbringinghas definately has held me bk.

Aibu to think that if a person from a relatively affluent middle class family can make poor life decisions, so can anyone if their mh is poor. Not everyone can choose a decent partner, not to be an addict or a decent career.

I do feel like i threw a lot of my opportunities away as a young woman.

Yes I do agree with this, and think that as a society if we could be more nurturing of those who have ACEs and also just to all - availability of really good mentoring and confidence building within schools and beyond. And things like ‘what a good relationship looks like’. I’d really have benefited from that, it took me years to realise not everyone had to grow up fast, not everyone felt so unconfident like me so that I just chose or attracted rubbish boyfriends…

I do think most of my middle class and wealthier friends were on the whole more ‘buffered’. But yes of course a great family even poor can mitigate the poverty.

I agree OP and I think a lot of people do not get it.

I have a lovely husband now. But I used to choose quite dominating men. I never realised they were dominating though, it felt normal to me. I remember after being with this very dominating man for two years I said to a friend very tentatively that I think x might be quite dominating. She actually laughed and said you think so? As if I had said something obvious like water is wet.
I was not purposely making bad choices, I literally did not see the issues and it took me a fair few years to see the issues at all.

Also a shit life wears you down so that your personal resources available are sometimes not enough to make good choices. So working an extra job so you can save to get you out of shit housing might seem to make sense. But if you are so worn down just getting through the day, being able to mentally cope with a second job may just be too much.
I think this is something that those brought up in decent life situations just do not understand.

Everyone has such different experiences it’s not something you can say one size fits all. I imagine many women started dating an amazing guy, who waited until she was dependent on him before becoming abusive. And statistically you are more likely to be killed when leaving. I’m in Australia so it may not be the same in England not so long ago you were paid to have children. You could get a council house with cheap rent, enough money to live on, and it went up each child you would have. You got a baby bonus of $5000 each child you had. If you didn’t work and your kids didn’t work you have that cheap house forever. This just kept the cycle of poverty going, it was easier to make the ‘poor choice’. If you want to get an education and a job you had no family support. Some people make poor choices to survive a situation they didn’t put themselves in.

This is all well and good but obviously not everyone can. Or else they'd be doing it. So, what do you do with them?

Some people know they're making bad choices. They don't want to change.

You can't do anything with them, until they acknowledge and reach out for help.

It has nothing to do with class and everything to do with being raised in a loving nurturing supportive family.

You're absolutely right.

As many of your replies here show, people who were brought up with the "right tools" - stability, safety, respect, the sense of a promising future - actually have no clue that they've got these tools while some of us don't.

There comes a point where you have to take responsibility, stop blaming others ... this is like telling a person with two broken legs it's time they got a fucking grip and just walked already.

Yeeears of therapy, I did, just to comprehend what my childhood had done to me and that my internal picture of the world wasn't like other people's. That's incredibly hard - I actually don't blame anyone who chooses not to do it - and then you still have to learn how the world looks to "normal" people, then try to work with that picture while dealing with all the crap your life's amassed in the meantime!

There are no second childhoods. Everyone who's muddling through with a distorted world picture would like a chance at the stability, safety and respect they didn't get, and is acutely aware that the promising future they didn't get is now gone forever. We all do the best we can with the tools were given.

Huge sympathies to @Onnabugeisha, too. I made the same mistake - and that was my "sensible" decision while in therapy! Ended up having to hand over the keys to my lovely London flat (previous circumstances having not provided any financial trampoline), and that was that. Been homeless a couple of times since then, now renting in a place I wouldn't have chosen, and will never have options again.

It is what it is. Life goes on. But I'm not wildly tolerant of "pull your socks up" type comments from people who've been somewhat luckier.

There are no second childhoods. Everyone who's muddling through with a distorted world picture would like a chance at the stability, safety and respect they didn't get, and is acutely aware that the promising future they didn't get is now gone forever. We all do the best we can with the tools were given.

This is very poignant.

People who just cannot understand this, are very lucky.

I've made some terrible decisions in the past. My life could and should have been very different. Hindsight is wonderful, huh?

The kicker is that I had a loving, supportive, stable upbringing, so it really is all down to me. I'm very intelligent academically, but I can finally see I'm also a bit naive and too trusting of people I shouldn't have trusted. It's obvious now, but wasn't at the time. I try to forgive myself for that. I've had counselling recently and while I can't identify why I do it, at least I understand the pattern and can try to avoid it in future. I think I may have undiagnosed ADHD, which may be a factor. I was definitely the weird bullied unpopular kid at school and that had a huge effect on my self esteem. On the plus side, I am pretty tough and resilient, . work hard and aim for my goals.

I'm honestly embarrassed at how stupid I have been at times.

I hate to think what I would have been like if I'd also had family trauma.

Walk a mile in someone else's shoes before you judge them.

NC for this.

I had a terrible childhood. I was abused and witnessed some terrible stuff. I was spoke to like shit, called names, humiliated, hit and my father on a couple of occasions went to put a cigarette out on me. My parents relationship was horrendous, screaming, shouting, thumping each other, ignoring each other and us kids for weeks at a time. And as well as hearing and seeing a lot of it myself, my mum also used to tell me everything from a very young age including that my dad raped her. It was all covered up and people used to think we were a normal family, we were threatened so as not to tell anyone. There were times of normality which only added to the confusion. There was never really a kind word or encouragement. I just felt very alone and powerless.

I was understandably a very anxious child. I thought my mum was a victim of my bullying father but realise now that although she was, she also enabled him to abuse me and my siblings and is just as twisted as him.

Thankfully for me, I somehow managed to achieve well academically and left ‘home’ at 18. For me, my childhood made me focus on getting away from my parents and that lifestyle. I was determined to get a good education and make good decisions and only have good people in my life. I became good at pretending it hadn’t happened. I think my over anxious, highly strung, traumatised personality at that time made me feel I had to do everything ‘right’ so that’s what I did, with no support.

I know so many people that had similar childhoods and they went completely off the rails in their teen years and their life spiralled in their 20s. I do sometimes wonder how that didn’t happen to me. I did sometimes drink heavily in my late teens to try to forget but I’d always get straight back to being sensible and doing the right thing the next day. I don’t know how.

I met my partner fairly young and we’ve built a really stable and happy life that is the opposite to what I was brought up in. We have a really healthy relationship and our kids, adult and teen, are so lovely. Level headed, sensible and just really decent young people.

Sometimes I think how the fuck did I get so lucky after such a horrible start in life. I did have a bit of a mental health ‘crisis’ about 5 ish years into our relationship, I think I’d spent so long ‘building’ and feeling scared of being like my parents that when I finally came up for air, it was overwhelming and it took me a while to think that, yes, I can have this good life. Lots of medication, therapy and hours and hours of talking with my very lovely partner later and I think at 40 odd I’ve dealt with it as much as I can. There will alway be that self doubt that they planted in my head.

I still think that it could have all been so different like it is for others who are let down so badly by their parents. I could have continued the cycle, chose a bad partner and parented badly just because I didn’t know better. Weirdly, it’s my parents bad parenting and abuse that’s made me be a good parent and be happy and successful.

I can absolutely understand that others haven’t been as fortunate. I feel very strongly about how shit parents can be,and yet still not have authorities intervene. There were warnings in my families case. Like the police called to our house for disturbances, me being very, very anxious, things that had slipped out to teachers and relatives. But nothing is done. And then so many of these kids grow up having not seen healthy relationships, boundaries etc and not having the tools to make good decisions.

Im waffling now, not sure this even makes sense. I want every child to be loved and secure because it’s the best way that ensuring adults make good choices and when they do, everyone benefits.

Too add, my brother has made some very bad life choices. He’s continued the cycle and been quite a controlling person with his past partners and kids. He can’t commit to anything, smoked way too much weed, drinks heavily, is always looking for an escape route. He can’t maintain friendships and so much more. I think a lot has to be from his past experiences, he doesn’t seem equipped for life. He did have some therapy, but much later than me.

There is nothing certain in life. For those that have never had a bump in the road of life think yourself lucky. All it takes is a life changing incident, illness, bereavement, redundancy, and life can be very different and you may well see your resilience melt away. And that's before having stability in the first place.

For those who say there's a time when you have to take responsibility, what does that look like.

You've been abused in childhood and have had complex PTSD for as long as you can remember. It's as yet undiagnosed, so you don't know for instance that flashbacks and panic attacks aren't part of everyday life for most people. You have no supportive family/no family, your friends aren't really friends, and from age 16 onwards you've been raped a few times. You're 29. You've never been in a relationship where you're respected so you have no idea what it feels like to be respected. It's entirely normal to be diminished, gaslit and humiliated verbally. You desperately want to be loved, but you've never actually felt it, never been taught about it, never seen it other than in the movies and believe that "love-bombing" is someone showing you their love for you and that you're important.

You're earning minimum wage.

You're not happy but all the things I've labelled (PTSD flashbacks, being humiliated etc) aren't "things". They're like the air you breathe - you don't see the oxygen molecules.

What exactly are you supposed to be taking responsibility for?

You can go to the GP to say you're unhappy, but you've got to get an appointment and then know what to say AND have a dr who understands what you're not clear about. And then you've got to hope that you get something like EMDR rather than wait a year for 12 sessions of general CBT and hope that practitioner picks up on the PTSD. The CBT won't solve your problems, because it's the wrong therapy and 12 sessions in your situation is laughable. You'll have done therapy so think you've given it a shot. You'll assume that you're just an unhappy person, or like your abusers have all told you, you're exaggerating, over sensitive and the problem is intrinsically in you: you don't have problems, you are the problems.

When you have nobody stable and supportive to lean on, can't access proper support and don't have financial resources, you can take all the responsibility you want (and a great many victims of psychological abuse take ALL the responsibility..) but you're extremely limited in where that's going to lead.

Compare to someone with stable, supportive people in their life, or who gets proper MH support, or who has financial resources to enable access to long term MH support. Just one of those things makes an immeasurable difference.

And then you live in a society that says you're not taking responsibility for your life - essentially victim-blaming.

Some people will be bloody-minded enough to push against every closed door to get what they need. Others are too broken and too scared (based on how they've always been treated by others, not for an imaginary reason!) that they just try to keep themselves from topping themselves in the darkest moments. Usually these people don't talk about that either. They read comments in threads like this and berate themselves for not being able to get out of it all.

Attachment theory is relevant here. It explains some of the unhealthy relationship dynamics and seems to underpin eg BPD.

I can name hundreds of 'choices' which people make due to family finances and background. SPOILER: they're not a choice.
Example:
Child gets into a rough group of friends. Although these kids are already starting to get into crime, they are also the ones who don't judge you for sharing a small two bed flat with two siblings and two parents. Do you know how alienating it is to feel like the only poor kid in the school? How you have to explain why you don't have your own room, why you eat a lot of tinned food, why your mum doesn't bring you and your friend up a 'snack tray' with cut up fruit and rice cakes and houmous?
Choice: you hang out with the wrong crowd.
You get into uni but you feel completely out of your comfort zone, you feel poor and not clever enough, even though you were the clever one at your sixty form. You would have moved away but parents couldn't afford to top up your accommodation. You're living with your shitty bf who belittles you (but pays bills) and won't let you socialise with uni people, and it's massively overcrowded at home so that's not an option.
Choice: you drop out of uni.
You get a job. There's progression but it means a paycut whilst you train and moving away. You already have a child in school here and their dad won't let you move.
Choice: you stay in a dead end job
You are in an abusive relationship. You want to leave but kids are happy in school, you have family support near by, with the biggest support being your abusive partners mum. Your children adore her.
If you move into a hostel you will have no support and will lose your job. You were raised by a skint single mum and remember all that it entailed. No food, struggling to heat the house. Maybe you could just keep putting up with it for the kids? It's not that bad.
Choice: you stay in an abusive relationship

I have a 'confidence' which I can only imagine comes from being brought up in a stable family. I didn't have to worry about my parents finances, food, their mental health. My ex dp and some of my friends did and I can see this in their approach to things. In short, it's much easier to take risks if you know mum and dad can bail you out. Take uni, I went as I wanted to study. My friend didn't as she was earning ok money at Boots. For our area, that's a good career. It's this limitation to how far you can see into the future, there's a tendency to think short term (on good money for a sixteen year old now) rather than long term (make better money in the future). I think this is changing but it was very real when I was growing up. My friends were definitely encouraged to stop studying and start earning so they could pay 'rent'. Some of my friends already had credit card debt accrued by their parents. No one from other walks of life can really get that responsibility. That you are the hope and that you are expected to contribute to pay back for the years your parents raised you.

You can make a good choice that has a bad outcome.
or a bad choice that has a good outcome.

You put it better than I did. If you're in a hole it's very difficult to get out of. If pp haven't been in that type of situation it could be hard to understand how tough it can be no matter how hard you try to change things.

It's not just a matter of personality. For example if you've grown up in a family and an environment where abuse and violence are the norm you may not see it as a red flag in the way that other people do, even if intellectually you sign on to the idea that domestic violence is unacceptable. It was my mother who was the abuser and that seems to have meant that it didn't affect my choice of partner but I have tolerated some absolutely awful bullying situations at work, in one job I was actually suicidal but still turning up and trying my best thinking that I I could just learn to anticipate and carry out all my boss' random demands she would once treat me OK. (She got managed out of the organization after other people blew the whistle on her but by that time I had left). I had all the tenacity and drive and gumption etc you could ask for but I also needed the insight to understand that my mother's early abuse had made me too tolerant to being bullied by authority figures. I'm still really afraid of confrontation, I have ways around that, but some things I believe never really leave you and it can be retraumatising to try to behave as though you can 100% escape the effects of early abuse. This is why I don't agree 100% with "there comes a point where you have to take responsibility for yourself." Acknowledging the effects that abuse has had on you and trying to take them into account in how you live your life is not giving up responsibility. In fact I think those of us who experienced early abuse or neglect have had too much responsibility - we have had responsibility for ourselves since we were much too young to deal with it, because no other fucker would take care of us.

I completely disagree with @GarlicGrace .

She says that those posters who have the right tools: "actually have no clue that they've got these tools while some of us don't." That's presumptuous. Many of us have read many mn threads over the years and are very well aware that others didn't have those tools growing up.

I also disagree with her 2nd point. "There comes a point where you have to take responsibility, stop blaming others ... this is like telling a person with two broken legs it's time they got a fucking grip and just walked already. "

No, it's not. Taking responsibility, not blaming others is a quality we expect in adults.

Self responsibility / self accountability is important. Blaming others isn't actually very effective as a healing tool. It achieves little. So self evaluation is possibly one of the few tools available.

Or do you think people should just be allowed to contribute to blame
Indefinitely ? When should you take responsibility? What age? Aged 40 o 50 or 60, you've had 20/30/40 years of making your own choices. Will a 60 year old blame their recent choices on their parents. To most that would be odd and taking no responsibility.

@Oblomov23: That's presumptuous. Many of us have read many mn threads over the years and are very well aware that others didn't have those tools growing up.

OK, you understand about the lack of helpful life tools. The rest of your reply makes no suggestion of where people are supposed to get them from; how you imagine they might [1] recognise that they're working with an unhelpful understanding of the world, [2] change their understanding on a deep enough level to alter course, and [3] fix the problems they have accrued.

It's quite a big ask, which is nowhere near answered by "quality we expect in adults". Who's doing this expecting? More people with no idea and no interest in how someone's supposed to pull off this fundamental change? Responsibility isn't even the quality you're looking for here because, as @Anycrispsleft says, those of us who experienced early abuse or neglect have had too much responsibility - we have had responsibility for ourselves since we were much too young to deal with it.

And yes, there are plenty of 60-year-olds still making poor choices because their upbringing didn't teach them what's needed to make better ones. A lot of them don't have the insight to understand that their childhoods are "to blame" - they're still working with the dysfunctional tools those childhoods gave them.

I can't believe what an idyllic childhood/ family/ growing up experience all boomers must have had. Its amazing that an entire generation experienced no poverty, abuse or bad things that could have contributed to bad mental health or poor choices. And even more amazing that even if they did make bad choices they were wiped clean and could start afresh and those choices never mattered! Not entirely sure how they could start again from say choosing a bad father for children but if it's true then I imagine none of the children of boomers will have any issues either from their childhood as it was all fixed! No poverty or housing issues either for the children of boomers as their parents just got a new job and house easily!

There is so much bound up in what constitutes ‘success’. Some on this thread are talking about mental health: some about economics: some about family.

Health is a matter of luck, and can change very quickly. Family background is very much a matter of luck, and never changes: nowadays it’s more vital than ever that you come from a supportive background with parents willing and able to offer a safety net far beyond traditional childhood, which I never had. Then there is economics, where you can work but are still very much at the mercy of change. We are currently in one of the most turbulent economic periods of history, a time of technological change, and we it feels as if those of us who worked for something can have it taken away so easily and have no back up from society whatsoever, while those who didn’t end up being supported for life.

So much is in the realm of chance.

Boomers actually worked harder than the late generations. Most of them worked many jobs and had to graft hard to end up where they are.

Later *