To hate my former self?

[LittleMissLateForWorkAgain]

I m made the big mistake of reading my own teenage diaries and oh God I want to go back in time and slap my former self!

Whiny, selfish, moaning about a (perfectly ok) part time job. Lazy.

Moaning about being asked to babysit younger siblings while my parents were at work.

Completely taking for granted nice parents and a big house in the country. I moan about the lack of buses and the highlight of my week seems to be going to town and drinking as much as possible with my friends.

I moan CONSTANTLY about my A Level coursework and say I don't want to go out with a perfectly nice boy because he has spots! I then virtually throw myself at the good looking "bad boy" of the sixth form

Arggghhhh it's in the bin now.

Aibu to cringe and hate my rotten little self?

I promise I grew up into a much nicer person!

Aren’t all teenagers like that?

Its a bit cringe but your reaction is OTT.

I didn’t keep a diary (thankfully) but I know I was an utter nob at school. But you learn and move on.

I reread my teenage diaries during lockdown. Then I shredded them so no one would ever find out what a horrible person I was!

All mine went in the bins years ago, I was a complete douche bag to put it nicely.

It sounds almost like a cliche of a teenager

Why do you care? You were a completely different person then, and your brain hadn't even finished developing.

I honestly wouldn't have put it in the bin. You might find that, decades from now, it's really good to look back at what your life was like.

I also complained about things, but when you're in the moment, with the hormonal fluctuations and confusions that come with being a teenager, you feel like you're being completely reasonable!

My kids often say to me that they would love to have met me as a teenager. I tell them that they would have hated me. Attention seeking, whiny, more attention seeking. I just laugh about it now honestly. It's a rite of passage being a bit of a dick in your teens.

I did exactly the same!

I care because I would hate my adult dc to read that if anything happened to me.
But also I really forgot what I was like!
In my mind I was a lovely teenager!

Teenagers are rarely their finest selves. Feeling hatred for yourself over what ultimately sounds like fairly typical teenage emotions and attitudes is counterproductive and isn’t going to do you any good. You probably were a fairly nice and ordinary teenager - you didn’t say any of this stuff out loud, or hurt anyone, you vented it in private.

Really? You don’t think they’d find it funny? It reads like a TV stereotypical teen tv character in a comedy drama!

Aww forgive yourself - you were growing into the idea that there were new responsibilities which is totally understandable!

There is a huge amount of learning that happens in your late teens/early twenties.

We met a group of young people recently on a night out- one was 18 and the other 3 were between 24 and 26- and the difference was massive. The 18 yo was clearly a child, making jokes about farts, throwing things around, squealing, starting arguments with strangers. The other 3 were not really much different to my husband and I (36 and 45). Most of us get through that phase eventually, it's when you're in your mid-forties and still acting like a teenager that you need to worry.

Could it be you had nicer thoughts but you used the diary more to vent? I used to use diaries that way. It’s not that I was acting on those thoughts but sometimes it’s better to have a moan to a diary than a person 😂 I’m sure I’d sound terrible if you read them.

You were a child. Your diary was your safe space to vent. You were probably much nicer in real life.

Your mates will have been self absorbed teens too so nothing to worry about!

I got access to my old psychiatric records from when I was a teenager a couple of years ago.
I was dreading reading them in part from embarrassment, remembering what I was like as a teenager.
They were nice though. My consultant clearly liked me a lot more than I thought she did!
I think I subconsciously treated her a bit like a mother figure which is embarrassing in itself. I remember yelling at her a lot, crying and getting in moods with her.
She was obviously very professional but there was a warmth in her notes that was completely absent in any of the other doctors’ notes.
She said some very nice things and I can see now that she really pushed to get me access to different treatments etc and advocated for me.
She included in her notes things about my personal style and the music and books I liked and had little notes on the sides of ideas for courses and things that I might be interested in (I had dropped out of school).
It actually changed the way I look back on that time because I now see it through the eyes of someone with compassion.
Looking back through your own eyes is nearly always going to be really harsh. Most people go on to develop emotional maturity and become less selfish etc. Looking back at your teenage self and thinking God I was so selfish and self absorbed! is a bit like looking at a photo of yourself as an infant and thinking God, I couldn’t even walk!

@ARKane that is a good point about looking at pictures of yourself as a baby and criticising yourself for not being able to walk!

I m glad you read nice things about yourself.
My teachers seemed to like me looking back now.

PPs are right too. Diaries are almost always the worst of ourselves because they are the thoughts we wouldn’t tend to share with others. If you wrote down all the thoughts you wouldn’t say out loud on any given day it would probably sound just as bad. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.

I cringe when I think about how I was sometimes at school. I look back and think I was a narcissist but I like the fact that our brains were still forming etc.

Give yourself a break, OP! You were that weird thing - a teenager.

When I think of the awful way I behaved and the things I said to my parents at that age....

It’s astonishing when you see things as they used to be (and how you felt) through adult eyes. We really do gain so much wisdom as we age

Oh a big part of summer was taken up with how in love I was with said bad boy.
And then he dumped me for another girl and went with a girl in the year below behind her back.

Cried a lot and cuddled the cat 🐈

I bet you were a lovely teenager. To the uneducated eye 😂. All teenagers are horrid and self centred and whiny op it's all right. You have a total empathy bypass at about 12 I reckon. I'm sure you're lovely now though. Enjoy not having to decide if you do everything through a filter of whether a boy will like you if you do it.

Aw go easy on yourself! All teenagers are like that. Your moans sound normal and valid and your 'bad behaviour' is very mild. You were developing and learning how to be in the world.

When I cringe or feel guilty or embarrassed about things I’ve done or said in the past, I try to remember that that’s a sign of personal growth. If I didn’t feel embarrassed or guilty it would show I hadn’t actually developed as a person. I hope you can reframe it in a more positive way.