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.

Exactly, it's easy to preach about taking responsibility for yourself and being resilient when it's not been tested, or when you have a wealth of support to help you when you are.

Some people are so sure of themselves and they can't imagine not being so, not thinking they're worthy of being treated well and fighting for that, and they're able to recognise and address things when they're not treated how they feel they should be. I do wonder though, if they ever consider the effects of their actions on other people and take responsibility for that?

it’s bloody obvious what is a good choice and what isn’t.

I didn’t make rash decisions on relationships, work or any aspect of life.

How did you know what was a rash decision? It wasn't bloody obvious to me.

Both my marriages were abusive - hell, even some of my close friendships were abusive; I had no idea. I didn't find out until my late thirties that not all men hit their partners. I had a lovely career, thanks to some extremely patient bosses, where I felt intense pressure to over-perform because I needed them to be patient with my 'quirks'. Someone powerful tried to undermine my career - and succeeded to an extent - because he'd misinterpreted some of my maladaptive behaviours as malicious. There's more - much more.

My huge tally of 'wrong things' was discovered in therapy because, until then, I had absolutely no insight that my understanding of how the world works wasn't normal. Sure, I met a lot of sane & balanced people but I did not see that they were different from me in important ways.

I agree. There's also the fact that you have to see the choices, know what they are, to make the more beneficial choice. I've known people who pretty clearly didn't know another way. And sometimes the barriers to getting help are too high, especially if you have to fight your corner, not everyone can do that.

And stress and exhaustion make things harder - I know I'm making poor eating choices, but I am stressed and tired to the verge of collapse sometimes. I've done all the right things to get help but so far there isn't any.

@EilonwyWithRedGoldHair

At what point does the blame game, of blaming someone else for your poor choices stop? and instead of blaming someone else you take responsibility for your own choices.

I actually find this offensive tbh. 'The blame game'? Is that what you think it is? Childhood abuse can literally rewire your brain. That isn't 'blaming' anyone. That's just a fact. Do you have any idea how hard that is to overcome?

Lately a lot of my childhood has come to the fore for me and I'm finding this thread kind of upsetting and I haven't made any particularly 'bad choices' for the last decade at least. But the fact that people think it's all some kind of choice whether or not you are impacted by a really shitty childhood and adolescence is upsetting. Like we sit here and go, do you know what I fancy doing today, reliving almost 2 decades of trauma, that sounds lovely, I might have a cup of tea and a biscuit with it.

You spend your childhood feeling like you are to blame for what is happening to you, if only you can be better/more loveable/better behaved/quieter/more helpful etc etc then when you are an adult you also supposed to feel like you are to blame for not just getting over it.

@Oblomov23 if you think that reading a book or spending time on MN combined with a bit of hard work is the solution you really have absolutely no idea, absolutely none whatsoever what it is like to be faced by a bad choice and an even worse choice. Read Catch 22.

It's strange how the only posts that use the word "blame" are those that seek blame the person with less than good choices.

The taking the responsibility mantra sounds like common sense, but it is not. It really is not as simple as that.

And people with privilege often make bad choices too, but their impact is rarely devastating. So if I make a bad choice about how I spend my salary and spend too much at Christmas on my kids, we could end up in a downward spiral where we are made homeless. I work full time, but our finances are pretty much balanced on a knife edge. Someone well off spends too much at Christmas, they just take it out of savings or at worst spend January and February paying back their overdraft.
Very few people always make good choices.

I agree with this. I care for a relative with a serious mental health problem who is generally fairly stable. But I get them to appointments, make sure they get extra help when they need it, help them when they need to do things online, etc. Without that help they would struggle to engage with the help that is there.
And the assumption is that everyone is online and if they are not it is their own fault - take responsibility. There is zero understanding of the barriers many people face. Often simple literacy is a struggle for those who most need help.

YANBU. Ignore the defensive twits trying to tell you otherwise.

I wish they'd done PHSE on abusive relationships in my day. At my posh private school i school i was called a " minger" by all the boys and taunted for not having a boyfriend. Any wonder why my self esteem was on the floor? Had I had a supportive family then I would have risen above.

@Daftasabroom
I never said it was easy. But you have to do some counselling. Read. You have to at least TRY.

YANBU.

Some people simply have no idea, as we can see from this thread.

I have made choices due to my past that will always impact me today. I have made good choices too, but it took me years to build up any self-belief to be able to make those choices.

I bloody hate the word resilience though. It's always thrown around with no real meaning behind it.

Am I resilient because I get up and get on despite what has happened in my life? Or is it survival?

Sometimes people praise you for being resilient when you're sick of having to be. Or worse, feel you are not resilient because you struggle in life due to what you have experienced. I wish the word would fall out of existence.

It's incredibly naive and really, truly, exceptionally insulting to explicitly state that people who only have bad choices available to them just need to "at least try".

People don't make bad choices because they are not trying or because they are lazy.

I agree to a certain extent but I know someone whose parents were both alcoholics and lived in a filthy house as a child. As a result of this she rarely drinks and her house is always tidy and clean ( not obsessively).

But how do you know people aren't TRYING? Or what they've TRIED? What they continue to TRY?

Because effort alone does not equal success, you've no idea if that person is trying, and what they're trying, but people see that they're not 'succesful' (by their own personal measure) and decide lack of success=lack of effort.

To some my just above nmw job with 'manager' in the title is a result of my trying, to others because it's an 'unskilled' unvalued occupation and poorly paid it's evidence that I didn't try hard enough.

And I probably read more when clinically depressed than at any other time in my life, and I've had several lots of counselling - it didn't change the factors affecting my life that made me depressed, it didn't change the past, nor the way I viewed it, and it certainly didn't make the people who were used to treating me with contempt change their behaviour either.

I never knew I could cope because from being very small, I'd been told by the people in my life that were my guides, that I couldn't, that I wasn't capable and was useless at just being.

Some people have no concept of this because they've had people who believed in them and that instilled self worth, they never had reason to doubt their own worth - I never had reason to doubt my uselessness, lack of self worth was as natural to me as self worth is to others.
I was taught that if I went after what i wanted and needed, I was being selfish and negatively impacting everyone else, others could do this because they were worth it, I wasn't worth it so it was wrong. That was just normal to me. And whatever went wrong it was because I made it go wrong.

You actually have to realise that what you feel about yourself is wrong before you can change it.

How should people pay for counselling?

@MPY24, I can't even say "good try." That reply doesn't make much sense.

Education WAS affordable for Boomers. So was housing. So was medical care. When I had to move yet again for work a few years ago, it took three years even to get signed up at a GP practice and another 1.5 years to get an appointmentand that was when I had a cancer scare. I have never had NHS dental care. I am no spring chicken but have never found a practice that can take me. Boomers are now spending decades in retirement that we're paying forand most after having stable jobs that didn't require education.

You are in denial about what is going on.

First off, luckily I have managed to steer clear of abusive relationships, drink or drink problems.

My older sister recently reminded me of the August night in the early 80s when I faced up to my mum and dad and told them I wasn't going back to sixth form, I intended to get a job. OMG it went on for hours and the furore involved everyone in the house including the dog.

The only regret I have is my earning power. There was a window in the mid-90s when an opportunity presented itself which could have put me back on track with earnings but circumstances and obligations then forced a decision against.

So one of those life choices was made in the foolishness of youth, and the other was made as a mature woman with obligations. One road was taken selfishly, the other was taken selflessly.
But whatever I did, I thought it was for the best at the time, and I am the master of 'eyes front and ahead'.

I definitely agree with this. I grew up in an abusive home, my DM was very manipulative and would guilt trip us kids if we didn't do as she wanted. My mom would give my dad the silent treatment for days over some small indescretion (altho i'm sure the abuse caused her to be very resentful). My dad never really wanted children, so at times he was abusive (physically and emotionally) to us as well.

It shaped who I am and how I made decisions in life. Many of them bad, so that I now have physical scars, a lagging career, anger issues, not many friends, no relationship/bad relationships, eating disorders, etc.

I never said education wasn't affordable or that healthcare wasn't easier. You said it was easier for boomers to make good choices due to these things. Ignoring what the post is actually about. Regardless of how affordable education is or how easy medical care is to access all generations, including the hated boomers, possibly had abusive parents, had undiagnosed conditions like ASD or ADHD (or is it just younger people who can have these things?) or sometimes just made plain stupid teenage decisions etc.
Also regardless of how free and easy education apparently was, not everyone could actually do it anyway. My dad started work at 15. His mum couldn't afford for him to go to college or university. She couldn't support him. He had no choice but to go to work. I'm not denying at all it would have been easier for him to get a job than these days. But the decision to get a job was not relevant to how cheap education was.

And if it makes you feel better. My boomer father also couldn't get a doctor to take him seriously when he had a cancer scare. They refused to refer him at first and when they finally did the appointment took months to come through. He died of cancer 6 weeks after diagnosis. He was 64. So you'll be pleased to know he didn't get to enjoy all those years of retirement that you're paying for. Instead he enjoyed working for 50 out of 64 years then died without ever getting to relax.

I am not officially a boomer by a year. Education was affordable to middle class kids and some working class kids.
But most people did not go to university. Most ordinary working class kids left school at 16 and went into full time work.
You have to understand that university being free was irrelevant to most kids.

But if you have no awareness that those people and influences are negative because that's all you've known then it's not that simple.

Without the right grounding, though, you don't know what you're doing wrong or even that there IS an alternative.

I come from a deprived background, with a complex and chaotic family, quite severe poverty. I got into a good high school some distance away from where I grew up due to a weird local authority quirk and when I started school at 11, I knew so LITTLE. Didn't know people actually ate their tea at a table outside of films. Didn't know most people didn't know someone who'd been in prison. Didn't know most people didn't have to hide from the Provident woman regularly and thought debt was normal. Didn't know adults could disagree without shouting and screaming. Didn't know what an example of a healthy romantic relationship looked like. Didn't think it especially shocking or unusual to get pregnant at 15 and your parents not to bat an eyelid other than to get you on the council housing waiting list the second you turned 16. Didn't think people actually saved money. Didn't really understand that people who were very mentally ill or with addiction issues could access treatment and get better instead of just slowly destroying their own life. And all these things that were outside of my experience still seemed alien to me even when I did learn about them.

20 odd years later, a good job in a professional industry, an education, a mortgage, a happy and healthy marriage... I'm still working through some of that stuff and it crops up in the strangest of ways in my life.

I still feel weirdly pretentious when I eat at the table at home, which is objectively ridiculous. I still struggle with a kneejerk distrust of authorities like the police or the council or bank managers - even though I'd never show it, I still have a baked-in fear response. There's a million little things.

And I was so lucky because if I'd gone to the high school nearest to where I lived I'd have spent time with lots of other kids from similarly deprived backgrounds or worse and my perception of the world would have been very different. I got to see an alternative version of the world early enough for it not to be too late for me to do things differently than my parents did, but I know plenty of people from my childhood who didn't and whose life choices many people would judge now. But their world view is so normal to them that it's not that they're not taking responsibility - they don't realise in lots of cases there's anything to take responsibility for.

But if you have no awareness that those people and influences are negative because that's all you've known then it's not that simple.

I've never said it was simple. It really isn't.