Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods
wsj.com
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We moved to town and my siblings were born in town. To this day me and my older brother, the village kids have always been more independent. During the time I was in school my parents didn't glance at my homework. Later on when my younger brother who is 11 years younger than I am was in school my mother had "learnt" that good mothers help their kids with homework. To this day my little brother cannot do anything on his own without help (accept poetic license for the sake of being brief).
I read somewhere though, I think one of those decade long Harvard studies that having chores when young was the biggest factor in how successful people became. I presume poor kids have to play a bigger role, hence have more chores in ensuring that household is fed and clothed.
On top of that my parents fought like cats and dogs almost everyday.
The only thing that helped me survive and succeed was my competitive nature and perseverance. I worked hard, and still do, for things I want. I am not trying to brag, but starting in abject poverty and then ending up in a one of the biggest American cities making $200k is surreal.
I see the term surviorship bias quite a lot on HN and I sometimes feel it applies to me. When debates happen on Africa and poverty I tend not to be as sympathetic. I get impatient and rather want Africans to discuss how we can start building our own electric cars and solar power stations. Which is interesting because most of my cousins are still in the village and running water and healthcare are their biggest concerns. Having ended up in technology and living in a fairly modern city I have to consciously change mindset between understanding the latest features on Postgresql and applying my mind to getting basics such as runnning water to my village.
I "made" it because I am stubborn, had parents who believe in education and because I hate being beholden to someone. I am beholden to by boss but hey we can't have everything.
There's definitely a survivorship bias. It worked out for me with lot of hard work and few strokes of luck here and there. I know bunch of my classmates from grade school who couldn't do much with their lives because they lacked resources and opportunities.
I understand your impatience with your countrymen, but without enough resources and opportunities, it's hard to make any progress for vast majority. I know Americans like to tell their less fortunate to pick themselves up with their bootstraps, but that's an almost impossible task, literally and figuratively.
...and lucky. One African to another: it took me hard work, determination, and a whole lot of luck. It wasn't just one thing - but a chain of fortuitous events. My path is certainly not repeatable, so I'm certain my story is that of survivorship bias. I know lots of smarter/more hard-working people who didn't catch the same break that I did. Can you honestly say that you're that much better than your cousins?
I agree with you on the determination and hard work. There is no substitute.
On luck, do agree it plays a role. I think the first bit of luck is the parents you are born to. My grandmother had seven children. I have at last count between 50-60 cousins. Probably higher number of nephews and nieces. Some of my cousins are already grandparents. My dad was the last born so some of my cousins are almost as old as he is.
Now back to luck, my observation looking at my large family is that the values and principles your parents instill in you have an impact. Some of my cousins believe success comes from witchcraft, so much so that there are tensions within the family as some branches accuse others of witchcraft at their expense. Having good parents even just one parent who doesn't poison your mind is the first bit of luck. The rest is how you use it. The second observation I have made is that kind people seem to make good parents. Hear me out. I have aunts in similar position, poor, uneducated and largely dependant on the land. When I visit, I have observed one will complain about everything and offer me nothing to eat or drink. Another aunt in a similar position will offer me whatever little she has. She will make it a point to collect some of the wild fruit I used to love as a kid. She does not act poor and helpless, she just acts like my aunt and treats me like a visitor not a savior. I suspect she doesn't view herself as being helpless and poor but she feels she can contribute in her own way. I think she instills these same values in her children. My observation is that children from such families tend to be more successful, at least this is the case in my extended family. Success is relative off course.
They do sometimes highlight things that wouldn't be what you would have, or distort things a bit, but it would get out there.
At risk of sounding pretentious, as you move through the economic strata of society, you realize that most people don't move - they are just where their initial socio-economic status put them.
So as a poor kid moving, you understand the ability to move up at a deeper level, and you are also capable of making moves.
I do find that the higher I move, the harder it is to compete.
Anyway, that's my rant. P.S. I am not implying I am somewhere high in life - far from it, but took a lot of little jumps to get even here, which is kind of depressing.
On definition of success and adding another zero to your income. I don't hold an idealist view of village people. Having grown up with them I see them as normal people. You get happy village people you get vindictive villagers and your get carefree villagers. Having said that I have to conceed that village people seem to be less stressed than city people. They own less whether it is clothes, cars, bicycles ... and they worry less. I often look at how much we have in the cities compared to the villagers and intrigued by how much we have is still not enough. I guess we measure ourselves againsts our city neighbours and our "needs" grow with time. It seems the more we have the more we want and the more taxes we pay. I always make it point to visit the village once a year. Sit around, do nothing, with no urgency. It gives one more perspective on life.
The final point you touch on is how we may have started our journeys in different places and positions but we end up in similar positions (yes I know surviorship bias comes in here). Some of my colleagues come from gang ridden townships, some had a silver spoon and went to the best schools. You would never be able to tell listening to our conversations. We all discussing the Soccer World Cup, our kids coming birthday parties, corrupt politians, our bosses and the rising taxes. We all just people.
On money, it feels like a double edged sword. It makes life convenient, but it also disconnects us. As you point out, it only holds value in a situation, and it doesn't buy health, relationships, or time. I ride public transit to work for perspective. If I could teach my kids only one thing, it would to be empathetic towards others.
Just pointing out that the parent didn't imply a dysfunctional family in their upbringing. Familial dysfunction is orthogonal to poor, hungry, and having old clothes; and in my opinion can be a far more life-constraining factor for the future.
Do you ever sit and think sometimes how weird it is, to know all these things and have all these skills from your earlier life that have, like, no relevance or use in your current life?
It's weird to me how much I know about pigs, tractors and corn/soybeans/wheat that just doesn't come up much when you're sitting at a computer typing all day. (Hay bales should be stacked "sideways", to allow air to flow up through them, so that they will dry safely and not spontaneously combust. With straw it is fine to stack it any which way; some people prefer to stack it with the wires up so that it is easier to walk on, others the same as hay for consistency.)
Hay is basically grass clippings bundled together to feed to grass-eating animals when there isn't any.
Great care must be taken to collect hay when it is as dry as possible and store it in such a way as to dry it further and keep it dry because wet hay rots. Decay produces heat, and because hay is also a great insulator that heat can even reach the ignition point for the dry parts of the hay.
It tends to smolder, since it is predicated on being fairly wet at first and the middle where it is hottest will have bad airflow until the whole "being on fire" part dries the rest out, but it will set your barn on fire easily enough, and it's a real devil to put out, since you're usually trying to spray water through dozens of feet of hay to where the core of the problem actually is.
That seems to make sense.
> I presume poor kids have to play a bigger role, hence have more chores in ensuring that household is fed and clothed.
But this seems to imply that poor kids are more successful because they do a lot of chores by virtue of being poor.
having chores when young was the biggest factor (after we controlled for wealth, class, race, etc)
Could have learned so much instead.
Edit: I think the main benefit I got from it is time to think about other stuff and some apathy to comforts/luxuries which a lot of my peers don't seem to be able to related to.
This may be due to factors other than having been helped with his homework. Beware the narrative fallacy.
A couple related articles from NPR:
- https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...
- https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/6217527...
The first article was discussed on HN:
But I bounced back quicker than my siblings, all of whom ended up dealing with drugs, alcohol problems, social problems, abusive relationships (they caused, and were afflicted by), and they are all in their 30s and 40s now.
I really wanted a peaceful childhood, but even today I struggle with the affects of it. Chores to us were more like punishment. When you knew you were going to get beaten, who can care if the house is clean? We would get beat whether we tried hard or not, so why try hard, better to try and have fun when you can... which is recipe for disaster and failure in adulthood.
I credit my resilience to a sense of absolute worthlessness.
If you have seen the film Gattaca and the bit at the end how the non-modified person can beat the modified person... it comes down to not being afraid of the consequences, of literally being willing to die trying because what do you have to lose? That you would accept that, to die trying, stems from the worthlessness that one feels totally, and the worthlessness that the world and everyone around you communicates when you are so low.
Resilience, taking risks, fighting harder than anyone else, needing to always drive forwards or else fall backwards... for me it has an underlying secret: the profound sense of worthlessness as a human. From never really accepting you are valid and valuable even when you have "made it" by some definition. This is why I've made some decisions the way I have, I have nothing at all to lose... not even the value of life itself.
Which loops back to another recent theme on Twitter and HN and elsewhere... those dark thoughts of suicide if once thought, they never ever really leave.
NB: I'm fine, just being honest, feeling OK, in a good place... but this is what a hard life creates and such lives aren't lived for the purpose of being a lesson to others, and I'm not sure anyone should learn this lesson.
That's not to say it didn't have inherent worth for you while you went through whatever you did that made you feel that way, but finding flaw in your own arguments/belief systems is a pretty significant skill set to learn too.
Learn to be resilient against yourself. Learn to take risks against yourself. Learn to fight harder against yourself, than anyone will ever fight against you.
Maybe you can, maybe you do, but that loop that brings you back to suicidal feelings is neither strength nor weakness.
"I never saved anything for the swim back."
I think people spend way too much time wondering about their self worth, or if they will fail or are good at what they do, they confuse task strength with self worth, but if you have no self worth you can avoid a lot of time wasting mental loops, instead it's a focus on task assignment/alignment where you happen to be the person involved.
For me it's basically, the fact that external indicators will tell you you failed or suck and don't worry about it so much, just keep failing but learn each time.
I try only to change myself through knowing more, being more proficient, learning skills that are hard for me to learn, understanding things more holistically.
I haven't really struggled with suicidal thoughts though, I think that there is a certain level of self worth or ego required to be suicidal... to me, all of the existential questions, questions of meaning I don't have an answer for... I just don't know, I'm keeping my eyes pealed for Truth but to say it doesn't exist to me denotes a level of certainty I can't muster either, despair seems like it comes from a place of certainty, so I'll just keep my eyes open until my body gives out or Truth becomes apparent, after all I've go nowhere else to be.
Tragic.
FWIW, in my opinion (and in the opinion of evolution and biology), raising children is the purpose to life. By having children, we give another human the ability to experience life. And, for most of us, they are the only lasting mark we will leave on existence.
Can you give me an example of what you would consider a “real goal”?
I have a few takeaways from these experiences:
1. The difference for me between "succeeding in spite of" and "failing because of" was in a few areas. One, good help being available if I sought it out. Two, being able to find a few niches - academically or in extra-curriculars -- where I could excel and feel mastery. And three, having involved, concerned adults around who cared -- even if they weren't "yours" (not your family, not teachers in your major -- they're still there and they still care).
2. Other peoples' judgments about whether you are "succeeding" or "failing" are, in fact, part of the problem. That's why I put those terms in quotes. Sometimes leaving a bad situation to take care of yourself is success. Sometimes forcing yourself to look good on paper but ignoring your insides is failure. Who knows what's really going on with other people? Not me.
3. Good health care, especially good mental health care, especially good mental health care that looks at the whole body -- these are extremely important.
4. Focusing on resilience is important, but it's only half the story. The truth is, most kids who experience hardships are affected by them, often quite seriously. It's better that we as a society figure out how to reduce poverty and misery to help most kids, rather than figure out how to help a few more kids be the exception to the rule.
We need to get back more to a group mentality, rather than an individualistic rising-from-the-trash-fire mentality.
The people/environment around the person going through the trauma makes a big difference to outcomes imho. And usually it "takes a village". Because though most people who care will want to help, they each bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table. It's a magic combo of the different strengths that make a diff. And realising that and raising group consiouness about it I agree is badly needed these days.
Being an outsider in a field can be a huge advantage sometimes. You know things other people in the field don't, you aren't bound by the same prejudices and preconceptions as the insiders, and you'll try things no one else would consider because of your radically different starting point. It can be a huge advantage, setting you apart from the crowd and letting you succeed where others fail.
But you'll also make mistakes no one else in the field does, suffer from and for gross misunderstandings of the simplest things everyone else takes for granted (and never be corrected of them, because no one could even conceive you would not know such a basic thing), and waste huge amount of times and money and effort going down dead-end rabbit holes everyone else would discard out of hand.
At the end of the day, most outsiders in a field will fail - hard and fast - because of the handicaps, but every once in a while an outsider will come along and revolutionize a field, because they are an outsider.
(Or at least, that is the cultural myth ;-)
The pain of early trauma never goes away. But, I would never be able to cope with that pain if I didn’t have the ability to reach out to people I trust for support.
The biggest problem with childhood adversity is that you are risking your health. My physical health started to fail and I’ve been unable to work for the last few years. I wasn’t born with the strongest constitution, but I do think my upbringing is a large contributor to my health problems.
I have friends who grew up in wealthy supportive environments, they are doing absolutely fine but the article is right in that they don’t have the drive or sacrifice to accomplish huge things. They are also by and large, very healthy. On the other hand, with my immigrant friends (many of whom are very successful), even though most are healthy there is a way higher percentage of health problems.
Another problem that I have is that I have some poor people impulses and habits, like issues with instant gratification. I did get some benefits in that I am amazingly resourceful and have great problem solving skills. I have the resilience to navigate awful bureaucracies and deal with everyday problems which has been helpful in my attempts to restore my health. I do know a lot of normal people would’ve given up by now.
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The animals we had to sell to get basic necessities such as salt, paper, clothing, gas and oil for light and cooking. We ate meat for at most 10 days a year. Always for a special occasion. The rest of the time was mainly potatoes, cabbage, and carrots. Usually diluted into soup.
Coming to America where even poor Americans can enjoy something like a McDonalds burger every single day was unimaginable.
Sadly there are still people right now in these rural impoverished areas growing up like I did. You don't realize it when you are poor and haven't experienced anything else.
One of the most amazing experiences was flying in a plane for the first time in my life.
-From my father who managed to obtain a PHD after fighting through hell created by Communism
I grew up dead broke. It's in the very core of my being that I have to succeed. There's no home to swim to.
Drifting along as a peaceful and well brought up youth can often continue so you don't have that drive and determination deep rooted in you.
I suspect that if you took random samples of young people from several generations and followed them throughout life, the rate of success and failure relative to their peers would be the same across generations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
I wonder how this would look in a chart.
Also, there's a lot of terrible ways to manage stress without going postal (or some variant thereof) and there's plenty of things other than stress that can lead people to going postal.
What is interesting is not that there aren't mass murderings in the desert or the sea or that more people are shooted where the bulk of the people lives. This is obvious. The interesting part is that there are a lot of mass murderings in USA and a lot of children and young people killed also. (and those are only the first six months of the year).
Was the same trend in 1970 or 1860 after adjusting the diference of population? If not... well, maybe something has changed.
The things that cause of typical murders and the things that cause mass shootings are very, very, very different as are the options for solving those problems. Trying to consider them as related is not productive unless the goal is to create confusion in order to push an agenda that is not supported by facts and statistical evidence we have.
Most murder is basically a symptom of illegal drug trafficking (either directly or indirectly) and the problem is made worse and harder to solve by a bunch of systemic issues (racism, incompetent government, etc.).
Mass murder (the real kind where people commit senseless violence, not the kind where it's just multiple normal murders at one time that people use to inflate the numbers) is basically a publicity problem[0]. Once a few people start doing it and everyone becomes aware of it the people who were on the fence figure why not. Same goes for suicides, riots and a lot of other things.
[0] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-do-mass-shootings-...
The society was overall more violent with a lot of violent rhetorics everywhere around.
There is also interesting question on whether you would rather raise kid for the hall of fame or whether you would rather raise kid for what you think is good for that kid. The two goals are not always the same.
Current society does not exactly have surge of poor kids raising through the ranks and rich kids struggling. It is other way round, poor kids tend to remain poor whole their lives and rich kids tend to remain rich. There is enough of data on that nowdays.
When you look at past generations and look at details, you see a lot of problems in them too. Plenty of them had real problems - be it violence, alcoholism, drug abuse or other self harming ways to deal with problems. We tend to look at past people through rose colored glasses, but they were real people, not always best of best.
[x] Hitler was homeless at one point. Lenins brother was executed. World would be better if those two did not became resilient and capable in way they did became.
We learn that our families aren't the same we see on our favorite TV shows. It hurts & its sad for young children to experience a struggle, but I think they can ultimately strengthen them -- unless the difficulties are so severe, or misguiding, that they lead children down the wrong path of life (i.e. severe psychology disorders, crime).
Again though, the world/nature is a tough place, and its nice to want to enforce being easier on and conceal realities from children, but I think there is something of value in experiencing "realness"/struggle -- a simple & less-harsh example is the losing team getting no trophy.
I was bullied to the point of physiological symptoms - by everyone except my family. This carried on well into high school (I finally broke free when we moved to a different country). My "friends," at least the closest I had to that idea, all abandoned me in the most demeaning way possible. A teacher picked on me, telling me that I would amount to nothing.
I decided that I would never treat any person that way. Everything changed. I was still (and still am) meak about what is done to me - but I stood up for outcasts. Spreading my time across cliques took effort initially, but it became natural. People started seeing me as a leader, even the popular crowd. The students around me became intolerant towards bullying and ostracization (through avoidance though, not action). I work hard to make people feel special, but it does come off way too too strong right now :).
I'm still broken in many ways, but I am aware of them and work on them. Thanks to the abandonment I experienced, if I feel as though I am being abandoned or betrayed I have an extended panic attack: becoming distrustful and pitiful as it subsides. I'm told I'm attractive, but my mental image is still a 15y/o kid being told "I don't know why anyone would kiss him" by my crush/bully (Stockholm Syndrome much? :)).
It all came down to a choice, spread acceptance, and I've often wondered if explaining that choice would amount to anything. That choice was made more than half my life ago and it is so critical to my being that I couldn't be swayed any other way. If I had chosen to isolate myself, that would have worked perfectly for avoiding those situations - it would have become a reliable and trustworthy solution. Even if I wanted to change that, after being convinced to, it would be habit.
The only real advice I can offer is to teach your children acceptance. They even have to accept the bullies. They have to understand why bullies do what they do. They can be guided to the choice to not repeat what was done to them. I have no idea how to approach an adult with advice: I strongly believe that an adult needs therapy (CBT or somesuch) after a difficult childhood. You just can't let go of nature that has worked for at least a decade based on advice.
I would err against resilience: that is inaction. Becoming the opposite of what tortures you is action.
I was severely physically and emotionally abused throughout my childhood and have suffered bipolar 2 disorder my whole life. I am only in my early twenties, but I might be lucky enough to be considered one of those who became "successful" after experiencing such hardships as the article fetishizes: I am attending a good college, earning a good degree, developing experience in a high-demand field, and well on my way to becoming materially successful. By all measures, I am doing very well compared to my peers. In this, I think I am in the minority of people who have gone through similar experiences. I think the majority of people who have experienced these things end up either addicted to drugs, developing alcoholism, living with severe depression, or committing suicide or struggling with self-harm. I don't think there is any difference in the personality or resilience of these people and myself which led down paths different than mine. I think it's just luck.
I don't think I am a winner. This kind of trauma, especially trauma in your formative years, changes you whether you want it to or not. In order to survive, I learned very specific behaviors as a child, such as deescalation and avoidance of conflict, lying effectively about what I've done and how I feel, telling people what they want to hear, and pushing down and ignoring my feelings. I think everyone who goes through experiences like this learns skills that help them in the short term. If you are very lucky, I think (at best) you can learn not to automatically revert back to these behaviors as an adult most of the time. The people who can learn let go of those behaviors well enough might be the lucky ones, but I think they are rare. Don't get me wrong here: I don't think my fate is sealed. I know how to work on unlearning deceptive and destructive behaviors. I always do my best to work with what I have (I learned to do that as a kid, too), but realistically speaking, I will probably never have (for example) a trusting relationship with a woman or ever trust myself enough to raise children (I'm irrationally worried that I would abuse them and become just like my parents).
In a strange way, perhaps some things I learned in order to survive helped me after the abuse, but by and large they were terrible for me. When I was a teenager, I made it my one goal in life not to kill myself. Anything else I accomplished was just extra credit. When I fail in a big way, it's not a big deal for me because I've always had low expectations for my life. I think this might help me instantly rebound from failures and rejection, and end up with opportunities less persistent people might have not gotten. I still force myself to go out there and try my best, because the medication that keeps me functional probably won't keep working forever, so the time I have left is probably significantly limited.
Do you think I'm resilient? Do you think I'm one of the winners?
I'm somewhere around 20 years older than you, and I feel like I could have written this at numerous times in my life.
I don't really have answers, but I have learned some things about myself and in general that I think are important.
If you have a fear that you may become abusive you should take that fear seriously and be proactive.
Go to therapy now if you can (maybe you already are, I'm just talking). I avoided this for a long time because I had bad, or no, health insurance. I wish I had made the investment in myself early.
Be very careful with alcohol and other substances. Dependence and substance abuse creeps up on you. That quote about day by day nothing seems to change, but looking back everything is different applies to destructive behaviors too.
Deprogramming/unlearning unhealthy coping behaviors is really damn hard and never stops. Things can seem perfect for months and one day you catch yourself taking a step backwards. Don't get too hung up on those steps backwards, two steps forward and one step back is still forward progress.
Almost every day the thought I want to kill myself enters my mind. It's all but lost it's meaning, but I've never completely eradicated the thought. I have no intention of ever doing it, but I find it strange that the thought never goes away.
I never wanted kids either, because I hated every day of my life as a child. But, now I have two. Their mother committed suicide a few years ago and they live with me full time. They are a great motivation and have taught me so much about life I would have never learned without them. It turns out I'm a pretty decent father and have been able to give them love and understanding I never had.
No amount of anger or frustration is going to change the past or fix the future. Acceptance (of self and past experiences) and seeking therapy (group and private) have been to the two biggest positive influences on my life.
I'm not SV successful, but I provide for my family financially and emotionally. I feel resilient because I could have given up before I even tried or after any number of shameful personal failures. I feel like I've won because I have things I never thought possible 20 years ago. A loving family. A pretty decent job that I enjoy. A place to live that I'm not ashamed of.
It's ok to hurt. It's ok to have bad habits. It's ok feel everything you've expressed. I thought I was the only person on Earth with my issues, but it turns out there are many of us.
One thing I didn't realize in my early twenties was just how much life laid ahead of me. It felt over before it started and because of that I wasted most of my twenties and early thirties.
What you went through sucks and you didn't deserve it. It won't always be fun. You may wake up at 40 with some of the same emotions you have now.
That's just from my personal experience. I'm not a doctor of any kind. I don't even pretend to have any answers. I often think if I knew then what I know now how different life might have been, but maybe that is impossible. Or maybe something I said will help someone. I wish you the best of luck.
"Time heals all things...but you might not live that long..."
More here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...