I absolutely missed some social developmental windows, somewhat like the kittens who, never exposed to horizontal lines during a critical point in the Blakemore and Cooper experiment, were unable to perceive them later on. Nothing I have been able to do in terms of reading, groups, exercises, and the like has been able to grant me the easy camaraderie that comes readily to others. Instead I am typically watchful and quiet, on the periphery of any group. Carnegie, Toastmasters, and all of the glad-handing can provide at best a kind of thin simulation that never takes root for me. I have faked it and been unable to make it, leaving me with a somewhat guilty fear that any charm I may have would be greasily like that of any garden variety psychopath.
Perhaps the most "positive" thing to come out of it would be near-schizoid levels of self-reliance and an ability to acquire local accents to better fit in.
Some kids get over it, some ... do not.
>I am typically watchful and quiet, on the periphery of any group.
>I have faked it and been unable to make it
I know other people who moved several times as kids, and these are very common sentiments among them (and many other people as well, who didn't move).
I don't have much else to say, other than you're not alone and I hope you find peace with this.
Thank you for saying it. The frequency with which I see positive expressions of humanity on HN is a big part of what makes this place special.
It's the difference between volunteering at a soup kitchen, and recommending the installation of those anti-homeless spikes at your building entrance.
I may be miserable, but it's misery with purpose.
Being at peace with something is not the same thing as being happy about it.
Things finally changed for me in college, joining a campus youth group which functioned more like a spiritual fraternity. I was able to finally create life-long bonds with people. Weirdest of all was I actually became an extrovert!
Now I have very little problems making friends. Generally I can chat up strangers. I do have to work very hard to maintain friendships, but it's something I work very hard at.
Coming back to Facebook, I can’t quit Fb or Youtube because they are my only friends. I have some, but they have girlfriends and kids. I just wanted to highlight that addiction usually come because there is a void, and getting rid of the addiction is not so simple. Same for those addicted to alcohol: Stopping alcohol is actually the easy part; Finding friend who don’t revolve around consumption is the harder step. I insist, I’m a functioning adult, actually founder with 2 employees, but I really don’t spin round.
I wouldn’t have thought this was disruptive, but I also recall manually learning how social behaviors work in 11-12th grade and had always assumed I was just a bit of an aspie
I am fine conversing with people and making friends, I actually like to, and I think moving around a lot helped me learn the skills to size people up, but I am also evaluating how useful /enjoyable someone is to me so that I invest my time with the greatest return.
I also don’t care much for personal photos on work desk or other memorabilia and generally dwelling on the past. Just another data point. This is not to say that I don’t care about people, and I do like helping, but I don’t need to get all deep and emotional with anyone. Who knows if it has anything to do with me moving around as a kid.
This really does seem like a common thread among us who were uprooted and move around during elementary and middle school.
Moving sucked, but i hadn’t until now considered it traumatic. I’ve always chalked up these feelings to being smarter than average and more self monitoring. Alternatively, being comfortable with losing relationships because I’m sure I can make new ones
As an example - if a person was bullied in school, and has subsequently built up impenetrable walls in relationships, it could be helpful to re-enact an act of bullying in a safe setting. Only this time, the person is fully in control and can create an alternative ending - e.g. by letting an 'ideal friend' or an 'ideal parent' join in and stop the bullying. Now a synthetic memory is created - sure, it does not replace the old memory. But now you've got to experience that there are different outcomes possible, now you feel more protected.
The power of this method lies exactly in the experiencing. Before being exposed to this approach I thought my problems would go away, if only I could really really understand them. Now I see that experiences can be quite a bit more powerful than words and concepts. I can also see where all the rituals in human cultures are coming from.
What is created is the knowledge that a different experience is possible. Not just textual knowledge, but lived knowledge. Examples of the correct behaviours that you may see in movies or read in books or even witness in your friends are still not your lived experiences. This approach changes it.
This being standard talk therapy and not what grandparent poster was talking about, so the approach he talks about doesn't sound pitiful. Your emotional system (which drives a lot of cognitive behavior) responds to things differently than your logical self.
Also your post seems pretty harsh and judgey for someone that hasn't tried what they've tried, and potentially hasn't had the same life experience.
I've been diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder. It's uncomfortable knowing I fit in so well I'm basically invisible and when I'm not, it's more often that I'm being judged for having flat affect which I think is only exacerbated by being female. I don't know what emotions I'm not showing, I don't know any other way.
When I read your post it felt like you were describing me! You're certainly not alone in this. I've long thought that instability of this sort in your early years makes it more difficult to form lasting bonds with people, but on the flipside it also makes you so much more independent. So great to see someone mirror that thought! The psychopath thing has bothered me as long as I can remember - obviously I can't be one, as I do have compassion for others, but the outward behavior still feels like I'm "playing a role".
Perhaps the worst part of constantly being uprooted was that as the new kid in class you are a natural soft target for bullies.
It lead to the vicious cycle of: I'm new and afraid of my new peers, so I'm on my own most of the time, so I'm an easy target for bullies, so they go after me, so I become more withdrawn.
It was relentless and it has made me very anxious of social settings with new people. You eventually learn to fake it, but the emotional scarring remains.
I would definitely say the moves were very difficult. Leaving the old and the shock of not knowing anyone at a new school had a deep effect on me.
> Although several important confounders were adjusted for, the observed independent associations may nonetheless have been prone to residual confounding. This is because many salient adverse childhood experiences, including most instances of abuse and neglect, are not routinely registered. The underlying reasons for residential change, such as family dissolution, were also unknown. Furthermore, socio-economic trajectories among the cohort members beyond their 15th birthdays, which could have mediated the observed associations, were not examined. Selection of potential confounders was essentially restricted according to their availability, which is a common limitation of many studies conducted using administrative registers. An unknown degree of reverse causality bias may also have been present. Earlier unregistered problematic behaviors among older children and adolescents may have motivated some families to relocate to start afresh. However, it seems unlikely that these hidden biases could wholly explain the strong links observed between residential mobility in early/mid-adolescence and subsequent adverse outcomes. Finally, the findings may not apply universally beyond Denmark, although it seems likely that they are relevant to other western societies with similar drivers of residential mobility.
It isn't a great look to snidely put down people who have experienced difficulty and are simply trying to understand themselves better.
Guess I'm lucky?
As you say, each location is a new start, a break from earlier expectations, and a chance to reinvent yourself. I strongly feel the benefits outweighed any negatives.
I am friends with some folks who have lived in a single area their entire lives, and while they do have a feeling of 'roots' that I will never have, they also have a smaller worldview. Not their fault, in the sense that you can't expect someone who hasn't experienced something to understand it, but I'm glad I lived the life I did.
If you have friends who immigrated at a young age, I highly recommend talking to them about the experience of returning back to their birth countries (if they’ve done so). Especially for those who no longer speak the language, it’s often a reverse culture shock.
Now I wonder what implicit lessons I may have taken away from being one of the few "old timers" as everybody else kept cycling through.
Returning to the US, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that some kids went to the same local schools their parents had.
Moving before the school year starts isn’t as bad. Half the kids in class don’t know each other and it’s a great chance to start fresh. You don’t really feel left out at as much.
As an adult, I somewhat accidentally ended up moving step-kids (a bit older), and I deeply regret it. They had far better educational/career opportunities in the new place, but I think they probably would have ended up happier hanging out with their goofball/stoner friends for a few more years.
So be cautious. How likely is she to say 'no' if she knows that you want her to say 'yes'?
Celebrities may have a much higher rate of suicide (2.9%) vs the general population (.013% in the US): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13524696_Suicide_in...
That doesn't seem like the opposite conclusion to me.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that moving could possibly give you skills, deficiencies, and desires that make it more likely you become an actor either, but that seems like a little more like speculation at this point.
Millions of people are affected by problems in childhood. There are 500 people, tops, on the planet who have monetized the resulting personality disorder into some kind of mass-media fame.
Here's one article [1] that found:
"Elevated risks were observed for all examined outcomes, with excess risk seen among those exposed to multiple versus single relocations in a year. Risks grew incrementally with increasing age of exposure to mobility"
Examined outcomes consisted of "attempted suicide, violent criminality, psychiatric illness, substance misuse, and natural and unnatural deaths."
There are many more studies if you search for them that show a range of affects including worse academic performance and one I found that included a higher rate of hospitalization in kids who moved (although the cause was unclear).
It's a traumatic event.
[1] - https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(16)30118-0/pdf
[2] - http://theconversation.com/moving-home-can-affect-your-child...