Do you think that you internalise what you're told you are as a child?

[Chilloutrelax]

So for example I was always told that I was very clever all throughout primary school. I was constantly praised by teachers and my parents for being brainy. In fact I was probably just a good reader and a bit more ahead than some of the other kids, but I've carried this belief. I've got zero evidence of being clever as an adult but I was told so much the belief has never gone away.

Otoh I was also constantly told I was shy, nervous and not very good at sport and I have carried this belief too and always been afraid of trying things.

Dh was always told that he was slow and a.bit stupid and again, even though he's done very well he always puts himself down about being 'thick'.

Yeah of course. I was told I was clever too. Also my mother randomly told me at 13 I would be about 6 ft and slim with piano player's fingers.

Nope. I'm 5ft and podgy. Pretty good with the written word but that's it.

My dad also told me I had a moustache and no friends (after taking me away from all my school friends to a different country)

I think my mum did parenting better 😅 still waiting for those piano players fingers though!

i always believed in myself, even if people said i was dumb etc i used to tell myself as long as i can study x subject etc then ill get better

Oh dad also refused to let me shave my legs or try out make-up or clothes so I always felt the ugliest girl in secondary school. Apparently 'who are you trying to impress'. I've struggled with dressing nicely ever since

Very much so. I've spent years trying to get over being told how stupid and worthless I was as a small child. Even my own mother resented, disliked me and wished me dead.

As a child my mum would tell me I was beautiful which I believed until I was a teenager. I remember distinctly the moment of realising that I wasn't actually beautiful by conventional standards and that she was just saying that because she was my mum 🙄

Yes definitely. It's called ' introjection', as opposed to projection. However something else can also happen, which is that in a very young mind, we can make assumptions about things that have happened to us and come to erroneous conclusions, which is just as damaging. For example, my mum who already had 2 children and didn't want any more, got pregnant and had me. The way my family treated me left me feeling I was ' unwanted'. It's a hard belief to shake and often we act as if these beliefs are true and it creates a kind of self fulfilling prophecy.

So if I believe I'm unwanted I may be quite defensive and guarded. People interpret this as being aloof and standoff and may not want to approach me. And so the cycle continues...

Yes, 100%. As a child I was constantly berated for being ugly, dumb, etc by my stupid mother. It’s still so hard to get this out of my brain, it truly makes you believe what you are told. Perhaps not helped by the fact I am an introvert, extroverts May deal with it better. Also you end up feeling you aren’t capable of achieving better if that makes sense.

Yes definitely. I was always told I was clever but not pretty, and also that I would end up like my granny on my dad’s side - who spent most of her time in psychiatric hospitals.

I am actually pretty clever, spend lots of time worrying about not being attractive/money trying to make myself attractive, and suffer from severe anxiety and depression.

(As an aside, my mum always said I would never be pretty but that I was “striking”, and I have grown into thinking that is a good thing!)

Yes probably

Sadly yes I believe you internalise things you’re told as a child. I was told a lot about my disability that I would never be good enough compared to able bodied people. Also was told things about my appearance both good and bad by different people (the good things being that I’m beautiful, the bad being that I’m fat and ugly), also told that no one likes me by some people and sadly yes I’ve carried those beliefs around into adulthood. There’s days when I think I’m decent but days I think I’m the worst in the world. I have issues with the way I look as I pick apart and try to perfect everything and if it’s not perfect or not an overnight fix it really gets me down, I have fear of abandonment and think everyone or at least most people I love whether that’s friendly, family or romantic will abandon me, I think I’m not good enough and have to constantly fight to prove my worth.

I was told that I was too clever and was disadvantaging my brother (not so clever, but not thick either). In addition, I should stop "blowing my own trumpet" because I would make other children feel bad.

I have had extremely low self esteem my entire life, I will not do anything to put myself at an advantage at any time (and to do so, makes me feel really awkward). As a result, I have really bad self esteem and suffer from imposter syndrome - apparently, I'm quite good at my job (my colleagues back this up), but I don't feel this way at all)

@PonyPatter44

Everything that wasn't based around reading books was nonsense. My mother absolutely fetishised books, and children who showed an interest in anything else (sport, art, even music) were just wrong and silly.

Are we sisters? My parents were both absolute book fetishists. Obviously encouraging an interest in books is a good thing but this was taken to extremes and had a really snobbish and judgemental undertone.

Books are great and I love reading but the absence of reading doesn’t equate to stupidity or moral turpitude.

I still to this day feel appallingly guilty and “dirty” if I watch TV ie any screen based entertainment at all. I subconsciously hate myself and think I am stupid, lacking motivation and lower class. Which is my mother’s internal voice.

My mother had a similar disdain for make up and clothes and self adornment borne out of her own insecurity about not being an “intellectual”. I hate it but find it hard to throw off.

Just want to say, to all of you who received negative feedback during childhood, you can change this dialogue - it's not fixed.

Absolutely! My mother had a very strange belief that children shouldn't be praised. Apparently it would make them 'big headed' and they would stop working as hard! Consequently all that came from her mother was criticism and explanation of how I'd embarrassed her by my behaviour and how ashamed of me she was.

Nearly 60 years later I still feel that nothing I ever do is good enough and I'm not quite good enough or I've done something wrong. I know a previous poster said that you can change the narrative but actually when it happened constantly as a child until you left home it is pretty much fixed. I was very shy as a child and I remember being about 7 at a social gathering when the mother of another child started chatting to me. I thought it had gone pretty well and was feeling quite pleased with myself that I'd managed to interact with this lady. Afterwards my mother turned on me and said how ashamed she was of me because when the lady was talking to me I said 'yeah' instead of 'yes'. I wasn't aware I'd done it but this wasn't a throwaway comment but a full rant about how embarrassed she was of my behaviour and how ashamed of me she was. Even now it makes me second guess social interactions wondering if I've done something wrong that I wasn't aware of.

Yes. I'm very careful not to say anything damaging to my children.

Laughing at this (well, ruefully), because it was the opposite in our house. No one was fluently literate apart from me, and the only books were mine, from the library, and my mother thought a child reading was ‘lazy’, ‘not normal for a child’, and would fly into rages about me not doing housework or ‘playing’. I remember to this day reading The Fellowship of the Ring in the garden in the summer holidays and failing to put it away in time when my parents arrived home after a day away. Years later when I won a big international scholarship to do a postgraduate degree overseas, she told a neighbour I was ‘too lazy to get a job’.

(I mean, I know exactly where all this was coming from, but it was pretty pernicious.)

OP, you can actually unpick and challenge scripts you learned in childhood, though — it’s a lot of work, but doable with a good therapist. I’ve managed some, but still working on others.

Absolutely. The good and the bad

Oh yes. I was told You're too slow, you're stupid, you're lazy, you're not as pretty as your sisters, you're not unhappy you're just making it up, you're only good for cooking and cleaning, etc etc, by my parents. Mostly by my father but mother had plenty to say too.

And it stuck.

It's taken me to my 40s to stop thinking it and it still creeps in.

I think what your parents/caregivers say about other people affects you as well.

@CountTo10 your mother turning on you for saying Yeah- mine would do EXACTLY the same thing to me. And why did I use that tone of voice? Didn't I see how rude it was? Was I trying to make her look stupid?
She could make a telling off for that last days.

@BlindHarbour

Laughing at this (well, ruefully), because it was the opposite in our house. No one was fluently literate apart from me, and the only books were mine, from the library, and my mother thought a child reading was ‘lazy’, ‘not normal for a child’, and would fly into rages about me not doing housework or ‘playing’. I remember to this day reading The Fellowship of the Ring in the garden

Yeah in some ways it’s a good problem to have, don’t get me wrong. And your mum’s approach is awful.

But I still carry with me a horrible reflexive snobbery about people who don’t read which I struggle with. Objectively I know not reading two books a week doesn’t make someone a bad person. But I still get a instinctive nausea and self hatred when my family watches TV or when my partner goes on his phone and it’s surprisingly hard to shift.

It took me a long time to realise that "not as clever as your brother" didn't mean I wasn't clever.
He's a genius. I was (am?) merely intelligent.

I still compare myself to him.

I take massive care to tell my children I'm proud of them individually.

One of my regrets as a parent is laughing at my DS (in what was meant to be a nice way) about his choice of clothes as a child. He tended to go for crazy combinations like a stripy top and checked trousers in a different colour or similar. He's now 18, and still thinks he's rubbish at choosing clothes. It's a small thing, but I wish I'd done it differently! Hopefully I did enough of building up his self esteem in other ways (eg telling him I love him and he's awesome and I'm proud of him).

Absolutely. I was the smart one in the family, my cousin was the pretty and outgoing one.
Both of us have a massive chip on our shoulders about it

I see that. I suppose I have it too, as we didn’t have a tv when I was growing up (poverty, rather than ideology!), so it’s not a habit I’ve ever really formed, and I’m deeply suspicious of non-readers, though that in my case I think is just some unprocessed fear of what my life would have become if I’d been the non-reading child my parents wanted and left school at 15.

I grew up with my mum loathing my paternal grandad. She was very careful to not say anything about him in front of me and my sister, but you could tell that she didn’t like him. This made us wary of Grandad, but he was always lovely to us. When he died I know that my mum was relieved.

Years later I asked he why she disliked him so much. She told us that as a young housewife and mum, my grandad wouldn’t let her parent us and he always knew best. He had odd habits of telling friends and family that he hadn’t seen my mum and dad for years (even though we lived two doors away and my dad went round every day).

Grandad had been a career soldier and had travelled all around the world. He ended up in the first battle of WW1, Mons. He was wounded and sent back to Blighty to recover. He rejoined his regiment and survived.

Knowing all this now, makes me sad, because I think Grandad was suffering from shell shock. I wish I hadn’t picked up on my mums ‘vibes’ because both me and my sister would have had a totally different relationship with him.