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Comment by temp246810 | Hacker News Reader

Heh. My problem is that I am so damaged that when I become friends or find girls that care for me unconditionally, I devalue that relationship because it feels un-earned.

Something that comes un-earned to me has no value.

This extends to my relationship with myself. I'm hard on others so it only makes sense that I'm hard on myself.

This is what happens when your parents get divorced and you're raised by a shitty step mom. Not that my own mother was that great to begin with (cheated on my dad etc.)

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Personal thoughts: Perhaps some of the people offering you unconditional kindness are doing so from a position of emotional wellbeing. They offer their kindness in the hope that you use their kindness as a model to find your own wellbeing. There is an unspoken hope, that one day you will be strong enough to be unconditionally kind to others.

It’s a pay-it-forward kind of model. And if you choose to you can absolutely “earn” (or at least repay) every bit of kindness that’s offered to you. By stepping up and also being kind to others in need.

The good thing is that you have self-awareness about it, so you can identify when your mind or emotions are basically playing tricks on you to make you feel that way. Everyone has their quirks, and there are lots of people whose experiences growing up cause all sorts of emotional reactions that don't always map to reality, but as long as you're aware of it and understand it you can manage it and gradually recover from it (speaking as someone who had a ridiculously alienating childhood and absorbed all the baggage that comes from that when becoming an adult).

For sure man, appreciate the words. I've been working on this with a therapist for a long time, it's only now starting to make sense or I am only now starting to internalize it.

Stuff is hard.

But you have a choice in most of these sorts of things.

For example, you can decide that by simply being human, one deserves to be treated well as a standard, taking that away when someone earns the right to be treated lesser.

You can decide that you earn someone's affection simply by being yourself around the person. That's more work than folks let onto.

You can decide that sure, the past was shitty - but you've worked and persevered nonetheless and earned the things you have. You can choose to see that while those folks were shitty, others around you haven't been. You can choose to not be a victim to the past. People do it all the time.

You can choose to be a bit easier on yourself. This isn't easy and takes a bit of detachment and reminding yourself that you tend to be hard on yourself so that you can set more obtainable goals.

You can choose to get therapy to help you with these things. You've already the self-awareness of much of this, which puts you steps ahead of others.

Look, I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to reply, but this advice is a prime example of how some people just don't understand mental health.

This sounds an awful lot like the "happiness is a choice" speech. If self improvement and changing deep seated thought patterns were as easy as just choosing and deciding to act and think a certain way, the world would be a much better place.

The truth is it is a lot more complicated than that - it takes effort, practice, and guidance over a long period of time to actually enact these choices and decisions.

I do choose to fix this, I do decide to be easier on myself, this is why I've been seeing a therapist weekly for almost a year.

That is exactly why I wrote the last line, as there are lots of choices and not everyone can just snap out of it. This is my own fault, as I probably should have written more. It isn't that I've not suffered from depression - I've taken medicine for it for a while after my ex's suicide attempt because it got bad - normally, mine is just a depressive bend on life (dysrhythmia as some call it). But in the end, I had to decide these things for myself. I had to change my life, and it took years. This doesn't make any of this untrue. No other thing has worked. Yes, it takes reminding myself that perhaps, maybe, I'm expecting too much of myself. Yes, it takes practice. But it sure as hell beats expecting folks to act like my ex, who on top of being schizo-affective also turned out to be fairly abusive. I left him about 10 years ago, which kicked off a bunch of choices that vastly improved my life, then started looking at the general outlook.

To be fair, though, I'd have said many of the same things in your response 6-7 years ago. One day, it just clicked.

On a different note, happy to hear that you are getting help. I hope things have eased up over the last year for you and that they continue to do so.

Kindness and caring isn't a finite resource that has to be "earned". If you begin caring for others by default, you might find that mindset disappears.

I hear you man, and that's a good point. It's just a lot easier said than done. I've been working on this stuff for over a year and it's just now starting to sink in, but barely.

Hey, at least you have recognition of this, so you can begin to try to account for it. You are way ahead of many in that regard.

Friendship isn't earned, it is discovered and built up :)

>This is what happens when your parents get divorced and you're raised by a shitty step mom

No, this happens when you accept that you are a victim and declare that you have zero control over your emotional shortcomings because of a past event. And it will continue to happen aslong as you reinforce this in yourself.

You have no clue how this works and you clearly didn't read the article.

It's not about identifying yourself as the victim etc., it's about identifying patterns that you're not even aware of.

My comment was now in retrospect - I didn't even at the time consider my childhood to be especially bad until after therapy.

This post is riddled with misunderstanding and you have provided a classic example.

> My problem is that I am so damaged

At what age do you want to stop seeing yourself as a victim?

This is such a tired trope in the realm of mental health that it's become cliche.

CHOOSE to be happy and you will!!! Embrace change!!

What a load of crap, you shouldn't be commenting on things you aren't familiar with.

Go stay up for 6 days in a row and then tell me how well you function, how well you can make sound decisions and control your thoughts.

This is very similar.

My comment judging myself and about my childhood is in retrospect after now having spent a year in therapy. It's really brought these things to light and now that I am aware I can attempt to fix them.

And I can assure you fixing them is a lot more fucking work than making some trivial declaration that I choose to be X or choose not to be Y.

What a fucking a joke to hear people talk about this when they have no clue.

Let me test a pet theory:

You're probably a cat person, and definitely not a dog person?

In hindsight, I guess "pet theory" made this sound like a joke question.

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