To think in the past people had more stoicism and resilience and it’s a shame we’ve sort of lost that?

[Carrotted]

Towards the end of the battle of Waterloo, the Marquess of Uxbridge, a British general, had part of his leg blown off by a French cannonball. He was sitting atop his horse next to the Duke of Wellington, to whom he turned and said “By God, sir, I think I’ve lost my leg”, to which the Duke of Wellington replied “By God, sir, so you have”. He then went to the field hospital where the remaining leg was amputated without anaesthetic, while he joked with the surgeons.

Thats one individual and the story is probably elaborated for effect, but AIBU to think people in previous generations tended to be more stoic in the face of adversity. To have a “get on with it” attitude?

There are obvious downsides to that attitude, but it can have lots of benefits to have that approach to life.

AIBU?

Just deaf that's all . Hence why couldn't ever pass medical.

1500 deaths Not outside NI. . More like 90-100 in the 80s directly attributed towards them
It was as a society people become " weak" due to life being easy. Inner strength comes from survival needs. But you either choosing to try and twist things or too ignorant to get the point.

You clearly didn’t understand the sarcasm. And I’m not the one blindly ignoring statistics to suit my narrative, but call me ignorant. You have at your fingertips a plethora of information yet you say ‘Well I don’t remember the deaths in the 80s therefore…’. I am not the one twisting the narrative here, I have provided facts, you just say whatever ignorant crap comes into your head.

Societies become ‘weak’ when people like you make up narratives to suit your weird agenda. We are stronger when we support each other, stick together, weaker when people like you say shit like men getting mental health support is causing high rates of suicides - something you made up entirely. Making up lies and attacking other members of society weakens society.

Anyway, you don’t want to change your opinion OR do you own research so I will leave you in your own echo chamber of bullshit.

Another woe is me and it's somebody else's fault.

I can't be bothered to list the things women born between 1946 and 1964. (now aged 80 to 60) had to put up with and, thanks to them, you don't have to.
What is infuriating is generalising that people born in specific years are all the same and are collectively to blame for you not being able to cope with the challenges of your life.

I leave you to your inability to read and quite things I never actually said then example " shit like men getting mental health support is causing high rates of suicides - something you made up entirely"

I did not once say that did I?

Oh and a quick look up on deaths fromm the Troubles outside NI
1982 – Hyde Park & Regent’s Park bombings (London)
11 soldiers killed.
1983 – Harrods bombing (London)
6 people killed (including 3 police officers).
1984 – Brighton hotel bombing (targeting the Conservative Party conference)
5 killed. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher survived.
Other shootings and bombings in England during the decade brought the total for Great Britain in the 80s to roughly 60–70 deaths.

Absolutely. If there was no money, there was no food, they lost fathers and brothers, then fought for the rights of women and life today would be much harder if they had actually been ‘petulant’.

subsequent generations have expected everything handed on a plate.

Every time you use your own bank account, pay your own mortgage, go to work, use birth control, just remember that these are the things they fought for.

I think they all had experienced great trauma and lived a very different life to what we do now.
we should be far more resilient but there is a fine line between resilience and ptsd where you no longer feel anything

i work in a job where I have to deal with harrowing sights / experiences and take risks - I come am amazing in a crisis and little bothers me- because nothing seems to matter anymore- if it’s not life or death it doesn’t phase me

this is not healthy

Well, as a boomer, born in 1951, I do feel that my cohort had to learn to be resilient because life in the UK in the 50s was really pretty hard. So much so that it made us particularly determined to ensure that our children would have a better life than we had. And by and large, most of us succeeded in that ambition. But the truth is that although their life is much better in many ways, it's more difficult in others. Now I can see that my grandchildren are having a better life than their parents, but once again, they are facing their own difficult challenges.

Every generation has it's own issues to deal with, which are no better or worse, but are different.

Interestingly, I always think the people who are most likely to accuse others of being snowflakes are those who have had the easiest lives, and have had the good fortune to cruise along untramelled by life's worst slings and arrows.

Thechaseison71, the ira is bombed a pub in Woolwich, the Caterham arms,a soldier lost both legs and an arm, they came into the hospital where I was nursing, and another pub,where there were people killed..I forget the area.

1975. What's that got to do with stuff in the 80s which was when the suicide figures were documented. I think you find that the examples I gave were 80s

I have had some awful things happen to me recently but the thing that really broke me was not being able to find where to put the plug on my sky glass tv!

They rather unreasonably hid the plug by sending the tv in so much cardboard I could have started a box factory, I thought I’d ordered a giants tv but for some reason the massive box it came in was also full of multiple little “empty” boxes.
I was convinced it was missing till I phoned sky and they admitted they hide it in one of them.

Then it was impossible to find where to put the plug so I sent a photo to chat GPT (after wasting time watching YouTube videos to set it up that skipped that part assuming it was common sense).
ChatGBT told me where to plug it in based on the photo but there was no socket where it insisted there was after several photos from multiple angles.

At the side of the tv were multiple ports but none housed the plug so I ended up sitting on the floor sobbing in frustration and calling the tv all the names under the sun which was strangely therapeutic.

After almost an hour of being a distraught mess and seriously questioning my intelligence my DP got home from work and worried that some kind of tragedy had occurred, I insisted the tv was faulty and had been made without a port for the plug.
He said he’d take a look and without hesitation found the port after a brief glance and plugged it in. I was filled with an irrational hated for him and refused to speak to him for the rest of the day and sat sulking in front of the tv fearing I’d lost all reason!

I think I have PTSD now and have punished the tv by refusing to watch it and settling for the smaller one in a different room.

It’s funny how I’ve dealt with so much without breaking and have showed remarkable resilience until such a trivial problem, I think it’s probably quite common - the straw that broke the camels back.

I still have flashbacks to when I broke down after putting my slippers on the wrong feet in 2019 after surviving a difficult few months without shedding a tear 😂.

I have boomer parents and inlaws who all came from very poor difficult backgrounds born during the war. All have said how much easier it was throughout life for their generation than it is for younger generations now. I’m in my late 50s and agree.

Haven't RTFT but your first story is laughable.
Nobody having their leg amputated without any anaesthetic is 'joking with the surgeons.' They have to sever the sciatic nerve for one thing...

I do think we are less resilient, my dad grew up in poverty in a way most people in the Uk couldn’t comprehend (I couldn’t either tbf). He had to build a life from scratch, none of the support systems we have in the UK. He had little patience for people complaining about their lot. I’ve met people who’ve grown up in war zones, some have got PTSD and anxiety etc some are absolutely fine, what they have in common though is they just get on with shit regardless, very little self pity. I don’t think you need to grow up in a warzone to achieve that though.

I don’t think you can teach resilience in a school, I think resilience is taught to kids by letting them fail and then telling them to get up and try again, allowing them to take risks, helping them have a sense of perspective. I do think our parenting styles have got too overprotective and it’s damaging. A bit of benign neglect is a good thing,

What a load of nonsense. People had the same choices then that they have today when something bad happens. Either deal with it or go collapse in a heap.

Oh the anti ageist thing didn’t take long to start then. 🙄. It’s rubbish anyway - we didn’t expect the world handed to us on a plate, and we didn’t need counselling if we stubbed our toes. We got on with it.

I was thinking about this yesterday.
In my job I see students.
Over the last week several requesting certificates so they could spend longer completing exams and be in a quiet room because anxiety. Studying law, psychology, teaching.. all stressful jobs where you need to front up and are under pressure to perform. I wondered why nobody suggested they study something else ? How will they to cope.
All these young people came from homes which had well provided for them… good schooling, music lessons, sport
I studied too. I came from really really adverse circumstances.. not having enough clothes, bedding. My dad was alcoholic and Mum never functioned.
i suffered with horrible anxiety at that stage but I was really determined.
I just felt sad for these young people… we have let them down.

But frequently ime support today can mean parents allowing their children little to no independence in their activities and micro managing everything. People afraid to let their children walk to and from school, go into town or park with friends etc where there is no reason for this. Parents who don't as their kids get older encourage them to deal with issues themselves first etc.

I understand why parents do it and sometimes it's very hard not to , but that kind of parenting by refusing to encourage your child being independent, making and communicating their own decisions etc can be damaging.

The people who lived through the trauma of that bombing campaign and all of us who grew up with the threat of IRA bombs were still living with it in the 80s and yes it in part contributed to the high suicide rate.
We also grew up in the cold War with the constant threat of nuclear anhilation we even had lessons on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack and on MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). When you have the constant threat of death, destruction and diseases like aids. Then there was Thatcher smashing the unions and closing the mines so mass unemployment entire communities were decimated.
All of the above contributed to a suicide spike, but it also made many of us more resilient.
We also didn't have mobile phones or tracking apps, health and safety was unheard of and tbh childhood was survival of the fittest or more accurately the luckiest, i mean even our climbing frames were above concrete and/or tarmac no nice rubber surfaces or wood chips, i don't know any of my friends growing up who didn't end up in hospital with broken bones, gaping wounds and/or internal injuries from playing out. We needed to know what to do when our friends got hurt, where to go for help (no mobile phones remember ) and what to do until help got there.
In trying make life safer for children we as a society have gone to far and coddled and indulged our dc too much, everything has to have a label even normal emotions, nobody can lose a game, kids are tracked and monitored at all times and their days are stuffed full of activities, groups and clubs. They get no time to be free and explore so is it a surprise that they haven't learned resilience

Why are you telling me all this stuff? As though I'm a 20 year old who didn't live through it?

No tracking apps when my eldest kids were teenagers either

I fully agree with your last paragraph btw

Kids also need to be bored, to let be bored, so they can figure what they want to do, think about things...... Anecdote but true, I had a friend who went to teacher to complain her child wasn't being challenged in reading, talking about first year in school... At same time my son had made same complaint to me, that he was bored etc and i said sure nothing wrong with that, enjoy having no issue with reading , think of other stuff...relax. In all honesty my friends comments made me think a lot about this, but in end I decided , it's probably better for child for parent not to say , oh u must be completely engaged, not bored, ever and try and "sort"childs boredom. I mean boredom's a part of life which imo can be v beneficial to an individual...

I may be wrong... Reminded me somewhat of parents of v young kids in school , who on mumsnet i recall would complain about kids spending half day before Christmas watching a film , on basis that this wasn't education... Tbh , watching a film with your friends, before Christmas, in school, so a treat.... Probably might be hugely beneficial to them... Social engagement, new experience, peer relationships, general fun.....

Boomers went through the extremely high unemployment of the 80s and the closure of many industries previously relied upon for jobs. It wasn't the walk in the park you're suggesting.

Not to mention that being a woman in the world of business would've been much worse than nowadays. Society was way more sexist.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if future generations try and claim reparations for their ancestors enduring the trauma of lockdown. 😆

15% mortgage rate. "When are you planning to start a family? " a routine question at interview. Careers teachers who steered all the girls to a clerical job in the Civil Service or Teaching. No private pension schemes available of you were in an occupational one. Reading glasses only available from an optician at vast cost, opticians allowed to keep your prescription from you and make you buy glasses where your eyes were tested and charge accordingly. No morning after pill. No pill at all, depending on your GP and his antedeluvian attitudes. Having to beg for an abortion if you were a married woman. Police asking rape victims why they wore what they were wearing. Oh I could probably go on all morning 🤣

Too much emphasis is placed on exam results.
The people who get the best scores are often autistic or very introverted and lack basic social skills.

I think it's also an issue with the medical profession in particular with too many doctors having little or no empathy or ability to understand ordinary people.
I honestly think we should be selecting doctors using other criteria than who spent the most hours studying for their exams.