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oh hey look, its my childhood trauma that led to me being unbearably boring in conversations
Is this not normal?
OP is full of shit.
Everyone was mocked and belittled for anything and everything they ever say or do, right?
Thenwhen what they say and do is nothing, they get physically assaulted and punished for it, right?
I mean, that was my experience. Niche interests? Lol. Fucking queer.
Man. Texas sure was a great place to accumulate all this trauma!
I love plushies. I grew up AMAB which meant that after a certain age (typically before 10yrs old, somewhere around 7~8yrs old), it became unacceptable to have plushies. I held onto them long past that age and didn’t “put them away” until I was well into my teens, but I was still very aware of the fact that I couldn’t let anyone outside my family know that I still had my plushies because I might get bullied if I did.
Afaik, no one outside the family ever found out, but it took a long time for adult me to accept that it’s okay to like plushies and start pulling my og plushie crew out of the closet. Now I’m starting to expand my plushie portfolio again and I have a small army of protobeans, several high-quality dragon plushies, a medium-ish roadkill opossum, a few makeship/misc plushies like a Gardener from Gemini Home Entertainment or Acrid from Risk of Rain, a big moth, backstories and names for almost everyone, and I still have my OG beanie-baby crew (some of whom I’ve discovered would be fairly valuable if they hadn’t been well-loved).
I regret letting my fear stop me from covering my bedroom in plushies.
No one will ever stop me loving my Indi-Bear. I’ll fight em.
It’s never too late for the plushie army to rise.
What is AMAB?
assigned male at birth, it and AFAB are often used with the intention of being inclusive of NB and trans people that you may not know the gender of or in OPs case implying that’s not the way they identify now(although that’s just an assumption, could be inclusive terminology for inclusivity’s sake)
I’m not at all into plushies anymore, though I do like to cuddle a plsuhie some times. Anyways… my mom saved the dragon plushie I had when I was a kid. It was obviously a bit roughed up, but I send it to a “doll doctor” and now my son has that same plushie I used to have. I’m not the sentimental type, but I’m super happy how that I got to share this with my son even though he just threw it in the corner and never uses it 😄
Oh, hey, stop that.
Fuck Texas
I’m being punched right now.
That seems to have changed recently.
Just painstakingly craft different personas based on the people you’re around, including a bland generic person for mass appeal, because you simply can’t handle the unending stream of ridicule.
The most important part is to not let different groups of people mix until you can safely merge the corresponding personas
Is this a thing? I thought I’m the only one who did it
A lot of people wear masks. Life’s a stage and we are just performing for the masses.
Baby
Take off
Your coooool
I want to
Get to
Know yoooooooou
If that’s what they were singing about, I’d guess this isn’t all that weird.
Unfortunately, that fear is not based on instincts, but on prior experience
After “fear of getting ridiculed or mocked” I’d also add “or told you’re going to go to hell.”
Ugh.
What hobby/intrest got them to say that?
Anne Rice novels and heavy metal. My step dad quite literally thought I was in a cult.
Ha, I was expecting heavy metal
Honestly it was more the Anne Rice novels and witchy shit. Aesthetics.
I was expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
OP be like, “You have to start slow and work your way up to the girthier toys.”
I remember saying “I don’t listen to music” in high school and half of college because I didn’t feel I could listen to the music I enjoyed without being made fun of. I basically didn’t listen to music until I was in college and I had space to explore what I liked and didn’t like without peer pressure.
To this day I don’t listen to music in front of anyone other than my wife and kids. I still remember the exact derogatory quote that a person I thought was my friend said in regards to me showing them some music I liked… from about 40 years ago.
That’s one thing I instill in my kids, everyone is allowed to like and not like what they want and they should not be made fun of for any of their preferences.
What kind of music?
Yeah, music is a weird one. I also always said I didn’t listen to music. I did listen to a lot of songs from video games though. When I was annoyed enough I told them something like Rock, but that always led to the question if I can name some artists or songs. Didn’t knew many. I hate these kinds of conversations.
You’re taking the one bad experience with a so called friend too far.
"Hey, I know barely anything about you but I can tell your feelings are not valid’.
Trauma doesn’t work like that, you don’t just get over it on command.
And hes proactively ending it with him by helping his kids learn healthy views about individual tastes and respecting others.
Even if he can’t “fix” it for himself, he has already protected others.
Yep I get it now.
I still wish his friends get shafted tho
It wasn’t just one experience, that’s just the one that sticks in my mind the most.
I was also a shy dorky kid and I avoided social conflict and I didn’t care enough to dive into music and find what I liked back then.
Sorry to hear that
F your so called friend. And I hope you get to enjoy music without shame for the rest of your life
It hurts the most when it’s your family :/ I’m 30 years old and I still have trouble saying “I want to watch this movie” when it’s just me and my husband having a movie night. Literally anything I wanted to watch or do in that house was somehow the weirdest thing anyone had ever heard of. That’s growing up in an Arkansas white-flight suburb for you.
I just plain don’t tell my mother anything. Every hobby is an opportunity to criticize and belittle, so why bother?
Exactly, think: How does my mother treat me? How should I treat her?
And then they get mad that you don’t tell them what you’re up to. Either listen and don’t belittle, or be a belittler and don’t expect to hear anything.
Pick one, you can’t have both.
I genuinely wish there was a license, or barring that, at least mandatory psych evaluations and training, to be a parent.
because jesus christ so many people seem to actively hate their children. You should encourage your children and hope they flourish. Not stamp them down and grind them into the concrete like an finished cigarette.
the real solution is that individuals shouldn’t be solely responsible for raising children, children should be raised collectively by at least like 5 people and ideally more like 50…
think about how kids would grow up in the past, they might not even be with their parents most of the time! Running around the village or local neighbourhood, staying at their friends’ house, buying groceries for old lady Stephens (who is effectively everyone’s grandmother) since she’s too old to walk to the store and then being treated to her homemade pastries, etc etc
humans just aren’t made to raise kids on their own, we’re made to share the responsibility so the kids can actually get all the attention they need, and they can get varied perspectives and knowledge.
There are plenty of people who have support networks and still treat their kids like shit, and/or abuse them.
I actually forgot how to be interested in thingd
Same, brother. Same.
Friends!
Let’s not be presumptuous. Like. I don’t even know if he likes Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I think I remember the film.
Well if you even barely liked it, so did I so that’s enough of an excuse to keep our bad, unhappy relationship going just a little bit longer. At least until it absolutely crumbles apart beyond recognition.
That song is so sad.
I’d rather not give my family anything on me. I don’t like being judged or tasked to do things for them because I’m the techy one.
Also hate the spotlight
I still feel I need to hide when I am interested in something. Am I not the only one?
Definitely not, and the solution is to stop hanging out with people who ridicule or mock you for your interests and hobbies, and find those who admire and/or encourage you instead.
It’s not that easy when those people are your parents
Once you’re an adult, you have no obligation to spend any time with your parents if they do not appreciate you for who you are.
Unless you still live at home, that is, in which case, you should probably fix that first.
You can’t just find different friends. You just meet people by chance, so you have to be loyal to people no matter how much of an asshole they are.
What if I told you you do not have to be loyal to people who don’t respect you?
A very small part of people who I call friends are people, who I actually care about. I’m just forced to communicate with others to get important info I need for school.
Well, people you HAVE to see for professional reasons aren’t your friends, and you shouldn’t really care what they think about your hobbies or interests.
At school, it’s different, than at work, as children/teens (including me) are generally less mature, which means most of them don’t help you or inform you unless they benefit from it. TLDR: I make people think they are my friends because I’m forced to.
Okay, I understand that, and that’s fine, everyone has people like that in their lives at some point.
But if you KNOW they aren’t really your friends, why would you complain that they don’t act like they are?
You can just ignore the first part of my advice (about not spending time with them) because it doesn’t apply to this situation, but you should probably still try and find people who you can actually be friends with based on your hobbies and interests.
Nah this is completely wrong, move your body to somewhere else where there are different people. Interact with them. That’s it, you have a different social circle now. Find a new hobby or pick up an old one in a different place, decline to hang out with people who ridicule you and invite people who do not.
Tried it. It didn’t go well.
You should be loyal to people, they might also be afraid to show their interest in the stuff you like. But don’t stick to them “no matter what”. That can bring you into dark places.
Enforcing boundaries helps, talking about things helps, but sucking it up and abandoning people seemingly willy-nilly will leave you alone and angsty pretty fast. So will just taking everything from an asshole.
I don’t have an answer to finding friends yet. Try going to social stuff about the things you like. If you have stuff you deliberately hide then try not to go to those things first, as the shame might make you lash out at potential friends. Wait till you can come to terms with yourself.
This is actually inspirational, but the point of the post is, that you are on terms with yourself, but you know they won’t respect you.
Apart from what other people have pointed out- what if one of your friends does great harm to another of your friends? How do you stay loyal to both of them?
You pretend to be on the side of both of them, but it could fall apart very quickly. So I don’t do it anymore. I just make my own arguments and side with the victim.
So you were lying to your friends about having their back? That makes you the bad friend.
Yes, that’s kind off true. I don’t lie to them about having their back, I lie to them about my opinion as I try to avoid conflict. I don’t do it against my actual friends, just to people I’m forced to communicate with to function in society.
What is the difference between your friends and your actual friends? Because I thought we were talking about your friends and I also thought that friends are actual friends.
Just yesterday, my teenage daughter (not trying to say anything about your maturity level here) said to me that she didn’t like it when I talked about anime because she thought the word was embarrassing. She really likes anime, but she is embarrassed about it because even though she knows anime is fairly mainstream now, she likes more obscure stuff.
I told her that apart from it being a perfectly acceptable word to describe the art form both in and outside Japan, if you spend time worrying about what people think of your interests, you’re wasting time you could spend on those interests- and actually stopping yourself from doing it. And then while you’re doing it, you’re wasting time feeling bad for enjoying yourself when you could just be enjoying yourself.
On top of that, if a friend is going to judge you for your interests, maybe they’re not really a friend. And everyone else? Fuck them. They have to share the Earth with you regardless and if they don’t like it, that’s their problem.
I too grew up in a southern military family. Interests other than football or otherwise hurting other people? That’s a paddlin
Did you know you can do both at the same time? Bonus
Kids in my sons junior high school are unapologetic weirdos now and are embraced for it. Normies watch anime.
Contrast when I was in high school and you were called homophobic slurs for liking Star Wars or reading manga. Bizarre times indeed.
I don’t know about y’all but when I was in school there were only three kinds of kids; bullies, victims, and the ones who weren’t noteworthy enough to be victims most of the time. Nobody was immune to mockery, but at least occasionally people would have friends to stick up for them.
Honestly wonder if I was just too oblivious to be bullied? Like, if you tried, I might just be too confused by what they were trying to accomplish that they just feel like they’re the one being made fun of? Like, I thought being gay was cool, so its not like you could use that as an insult for me. It would just be stolen valor. Guess it could fall into the group of “weren’t noteworthy enough to be victims.”
There’s the stereotype of the quiet kid who eventually does a mass school shooting. That might also discourage would-be bullies, but doubt it.
I had people try to bully me. I was tall enough that most kids thought I was strong (I wasn’t, I struggled to build muscle even when I was a gymnast, but they didn’t know that), so they almost never tried anything physical. Furthermore, I was kinda too ADHD (or possibly autistic) for insults to work. They just didn’t register as something I was supposed to be offended by. In my head, that was just someone’s opinion or someone teasing (in hindsight they weren’t, but at the time I thought they were); for the former, “opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them are full of shit” while I interpreted the latter as someone just trying to play around.
People tended to just give up when they realized that they couldn’t find my buttons but I could find theirs very quickly.
I was tall enough that most kids thought I was strong (I wasn’t, I struggled to build muscle even when I was a gymnast, but they didn’t know that), so they almost never tried anything physical.
As a small child, I was probably decently capable of holding my own enough to deter physical bulling. Starting in 8th grade, I was a good size to deter bulling and not big enough people took it as a challenge. So, never had anyone pull anything physical with me as far as I know.
Also, was weirdly on good terms with a diverse crowd for reasons unknown to me. /shrug
After years of the school doing nothing, I punched my bully. That got me in trouble and I had to switch schools.
So what’s it called when you get picked on for being outside the norm so you decide to try get the interests of everyone else but go too far in that study and end up with so much knowledge, hobbies and interests that you go right out the other side of not being relatable anymore. And while people no longer directly mock you for not having their interest they find you weird and untrustworthy to be in their social circle because they don’t think you actually belong there?
autism
I don’t know about anyone else, I’d call you a goddamn king
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.
Several times I would end up in a situation where I’m talking to someone and they mention something that peaks my interest. After that encounter, I would go home and furiously research the topic of interest becoming, essentially, a “prosumer” overnight in the subject.
The next time I see that person, I’d talk about that subject and I would have so much more knowledge than they do that I’d talk over their head.
Oh well.
People just want to enjoy their thing, not be infodumped at by an encyclopedia. It’s fine to read everything about the hobby but try using that to understand what interests them about the subject and relate that way.
I’ve gotten a lot better about it over the years, but this is good advice for anyone still in the situation.
Yeah I think it’s something a lot of us do.
Masking is definitely a skill that can be developed. I don’t even think of it as a negative thing really, it’s just knowing your audience and trying to relate on a similar level.
Until your entire personality is just masking.
Took me a while to unlearn that one.
I guess I find it interesting that if people truly enjoy their thing, wouldn’t they want to know/hear more and not be turned off by a person who might know more?
Hey ! It’s me !
Thanks op, I really needed that psychic damage out of the blue.
