Okay. Learned helplessness has rather crippled me most of my life.
How I learned it?
I got hit and punished for things that had little to do with my own behavior, and everything to do with the feelings of my parents towards one another and towards the outside world.
It's not that I did not bump the tripwire and set them off. I was a normal kid, doing normal kid screwup things, or just normal kid things...I was slapped more than once for trying to climb into my dad's lap. I was slapped for acting as if I'd been slapped, for crying, if it was my dad. Dad terrified me. I got the impression he could beat me to death, that he hated me. I loved him, though, I don't understand why it took me until age 12 to stop.
Mom had a ritual in which she'd force me to do housework but it was never right. She'd make me do it to her satisfaction and do it over or I didn't do it fast enough and " what is WRONG with you?" " stupid!" " why can't you EVER do what I say?" "You're slower than molasses!"( I was trying to get it right...)
...Eventually, my alters and I figured out she just wanted to scream at us and slap us. So we would piss her off ASAP. That way she'd hit us and tell us that she could not stand to look at us even faster. So we could go play in our room.
Argh, WHY did we write about this again? Let's take a walk down triggerville road! Anyway...
Point is we learned that nothing we did made anything better. That the best thing to do was to hide, to be quiet, to stay in our room, to present as little of a target as possible. This minimized random smackdowns.
So, doing nothing was rewarded by less punishment.
...This worked out to a fear of failure that crippled me so badly my life is a failure. I have had no trust in myself ( nobody else did ), no willingness to gamble ( failure means I'm loathsome and need to die ), no belief that my hard effort is worth anything.
...So now I have to fake it until I make it, risk student loan debt...which is betting on myself, basically. Betting I will finish, that my dyscalculia won't stop me from completion.
...I could end up with the student loan debt of doom following me around like other people I know, so it's not risk free. I need to anyway. I can't live on a low income anymore, not and afford the health insurance i am going to be forced to buy next year due to the county clinics eliminating the sliding scale.
( I think it's going to be almost double my car payment).
Plus I want, want, want to be with my fiancée, and England isn't just going to let me in easily. He's poor. He can't just go out and make $35,000 a year for 5 years running, which is what it would take to sponsor me to emigrate. So I need a work visa to stay there, while i try to find another way to become a permanent resident. Thus a degree is needed.
I'm the problem. GRR. ARGH.
How I learned it?
I got hit and punished for things that had little to do with my own behavior, and everything to do with the feelings of my parents towards one another and towards the outside world.
It's not that I did not bump the tripwire and set them off. I was a normal kid, doing normal kid screwup things, or just normal kid things...I was slapped more than once for trying to climb into my dad's lap. I was slapped for acting as if I'd been slapped, for crying, if it was my dad. Dad terrified me. I got the impression he could beat me to death, that he hated me. I loved him, though, I don't understand why it took me until age 12 to stop.
Mom had a ritual in which she'd force me to do housework but it was never right. She'd make me do it to her satisfaction and do it over or I didn't do it fast enough and " what is WRONG with you?" " stupid!" " why can't you EVER do what I say?" "You're slower than molasses!"( I was trying to get it right...)
...Eventually, my alters and I figured out she just wanted to scream at us and slap us. So we would piss her off ASAP. That way she'd hit us and tell us that she could not stand to look at us even faster. So we could go play in our room.
Argh, WHY did we write about this again? Let's take a walk down triggerville road! Anyway...
Point is we learned that nothing we did made anything better. That the best thing to do was to hide, to be quiet, to stay in our room, to present as little of a target as possible. This minimized random smackdowns.
So, doing nothing was rewarded by less punishment.
...This worked out to a fear of failure that crippled me so badly my life is a failure. I have had no trust in myself ( nobody else did ), no willingness to gamble ( failure means I'm loathsome and need to die ), no belief that my hard effort is worth anything.
...So now I have to fake it until I make it, risk student loan debt...which is betting on myself, basically. Betting I will finish, that my dyscalculia won't stop me from completion.
...I could end up with the student loan debt of doom following me around like other people I know, so it's not risk free. I need to anyway. I can't live on a low income anymore, not and afford the health insurance i am going to be forced to buy next year due to the county clinics eliminating the sliding scale.
( I think it's going to be almost double my car payment).
Plus I want, want, want to be with my fiancée, and England isn't just going to let me in easily. He's poor. He can't just go out and make $35,000 a year for 5 years running, which is what it would take to sponsor me to emigrate. So I need a work visa to stay there, while i try to find another way to become a permanent resident. Thus a degree is needed.
I'm the problem. GRR. ARGH.
