Do you believe that some of your problems were caused by being spoiled and sheltered?

I may have been bullied (Actually it's a given), but most of the times I was hurt by a word, it's because there was a grain of truth in it. Yes, I didn't have to listen to every bad word that was said to me, but it's true that I coasted through childhood and failed to learn various unwritten social rules because of all the adults around me that thought I was really smart and ahead of the curve, and while sort of true, it led to the point that I thought I knew everything.

Bump....

I guess I now know how to articulate how this all had an effect on me: in the tail-end of my childhood, like when I was pushing 13, I remember noticing that I was living in a bubble and every time my bubble would get popped, somebody would just blow me a new one. I remember complaining about how unreal my life was, and to an extent, I was just being a brat who didn't know how much I had it good, but I was also right in a way. The problem here is that my childhood taught me that everything was gonna be fine. Which isn't inherently bad, but it taught me that everything was gonna be fine because somebody was gonna catch me when I fell, not because I was gonna get used to things. Now, look at me, with the mentality that if something goes wrong, it's straight to "I DON'T WANNA CLOSE MY EYES I DON'T WANNA FALL ASLEEP 'CAUSE I'LL MISS YOU BABE I DON'T WANNA MISS A THING" mode.

I was never spoiled or sheltered. Igrew up in extreme poverty with a single (abusive) mother and didn't know my father (divorce). joined the army right out of high school and worked hard....divorced an abuser after 31 years ofabuse..... I used my life story to win a scholarship and began school at 60 and am a Sophomore at 71! Life really IS what you make it...I have written my memoir anda poetry book and am a moderator of anabused survivors' group; I believe we are here to make a difference ..I was born standin' up and talkin back!

Also, I have to admit that the reason why I'm still ruminating about my frenemies from when I was 16-19 is not even that I'm especially hurt by the specifics of what they said. (I mean, some of the words they said still sting, but it's the bigger picture that makes me all depressed.) As a 15 year old, I created this own hypothetical situation in my head that I was assured was gonna come true without any effort. That was what I wanted someday, and um, sad to say, but I wanted a group of friends with a very specific set of attributes, that's the friggin' problem. I mean, I'm not friendless anymore, but part of me still feels that in order to recover from my traumas, I would have to have a very specific kind of life, one that is out of reach for me.

Definitely not. We were very poor. My father had his own business fixing things like TVs, cars, tractors, etc. A lot of his clients were elderly or farmers who couldn't always pay right away. And my dad is not exactly normal to deal with. He was often angry and verbally abusive. He spanked way beyond the age it was acceptable. And I think he has Aspergers syndrome, though of course, they did not diagnose things like that when he was growing it. He talks at you, not to you. He doesn't listen to you. As a result, I don't have much beyond a surface relationship with him though I have noticed as he's gotten older, he's mellowed out a little bit. Not to mention childhood sexual abuse by an uncle (through marriage, my aunt later divorced him). We never got to go out to eat. I went to the movies maybe a total of 5 times growing up. When there was spare time, I had to help my dad with his business or work in the garden. My maternal grandparents did spoil me to the extent that when I slept over, I could watch all the cartoons I wanted (they had a color TV while ours was black & white), would give us ice cream, pick up toys for us at garage sales. At school, I never had designer clothes. I graduated first in my class, but I worked hard for it, and I didn't have any friends to speak of, just kids I'd talk to at school. I graduated summa cum laude from a large respected university (only one B in Physics II) with a microbiology major and grades higher than many pre-med students, but again, I worked hard.

Yet, I ended up with an eating disorder (anorexia), bipolar depression (misdiagnosed as major depressive disorder for 10 years), panic disorder, PTSD. I've had a lot of really rotten stuff happen in my life. I don't think I was sheltered or spoiled in any way.

Yeah I definitely think that I have been sheltered often. My parents still want me to be independent but not too independent.

Strictly bad genes.

TL;DR summation of my rants: I'm afraid of reality. Because in childhood, people unintentionally taught me that I was above following the rules of socialization with same-age peers and that I knew everything, and of course, the fallout was messy once I realized the truth. I knew they only meant to praise me, but that's the message they accidentally gave me. To an extent, it would be disingenuous to say I had a participation trophy childhood because I only received a participation trophy once at a bowling game and people did indeed praise me for my good grades, but in practice I pretty much had one because my talents ensured that I coasted through lots of things and if anything, it's more praiseworthy when someone is inherently untalented and yet they work themselves up the ladder by improving themselves. As you could see, the bubble I lived in fell apart. Also, I believe now that even if I weren't bullied in my teens, I would still have some psychological problems, they would only be milder. I would probably still see through the fact that reality is biased against me in some ways. One could only be left oblivious for so long, after all. I mean, reality is biased in my favor in some ways too, but I guess I just tend to focus on which ways life is stacked against me because I'm that kind of person.

Another point I tried and failed to prove by constantly bumping this thread: believe it or not, it's not even the bullying that affected me all that much: I mean, it affected me, sure, but this all happened at a time when I realized certain truths that I could not accept, and I believe that the harshness could have been less if only I learned said truths earlier.

I was certainly sheltered (because of my abuse), and I think it has played a huge part in not only my anxiety issues, but also my lack of understanding and experience of the world.

sometimes I am embarrassed that I know so little of what people my age should know

and that's all because I wasn't given the oppotunity to learn. the oppotunity to find out

I personally don't group together 'spoiled' with 'sheltered'. I was very sheltered growing up but far from spoiled. As for the link to being sheltered, in a round about way I definitely do feel my problems are linked. I was incredibly bullied on account my being sheltered made me different from my peers. Thank you so much mom for starting the business of my feeling scared, unworthy, and inadequate.

I found out that most of my issues, as for their existence, it all comes back to me being allowed to get away with having screaming tantrums even when I was almost a teenager and adults just shutting down rumors that I had some kind of disability. And the bullying only affected me because my childhood turned out to be a lie. Before it all happened, I didn't even have a low self-esteem and in fact, I was almost incapable of caring about what people said, like people could piss me off a little and I would not think of it again and that would be the most that people were capable of doing to me when they tried to lower my self-esteem. But high self-esteem or not, realizing everything you knew was a lie is traumatizing. Need I say more that it all comes back to my anger? As a kid, I would shout until I blew off steam. Part of me is still used to that and wishes I could do that every time I got angry.

Now I believe that I started to care about what others said at a time when so many things turned out to not be real, which was traumatizing on its own. Even if people were nicer to me, that could only have delayed my traumas.

I do believe being sheltered can cause some problems later in life, vafhj. I'm so sorry you're hurting. Sending many hugs to everyone

In a way, I was "sheltered" by my abuse.

My mother wanted to garner sympathy so she would lie about my mental health issues and purposely have me on medicine that I didn't need so I would be easier to control. If I defied her or acted out, she would threaten me with hospitalization (often times even acted on it). She also wouldn't allow me to have friends after I was around 8-9 because she told me how much I am a "danger" to other kids all over a single incident where me and a kid were pretend sword fighting with sticks and I scraped the kid a little bit. She also failed to teach me essential skills like learning how to socialize properly, how to drive, how to cook, ETC... Life has been much harder for me as a result since I've had to figure a lot of things out on my own with nobody to help me.

Even now, I still struggle with self discipline and taking care of some of my basic needs. I also am prone to fits of rage if I don't get something that I want. I've only recently (as in within the last couple of years) learned how to control this when I'm around other people. When I am at home though, something as simple as dying on a video game or getting my headphone cord caught on something when I'm listening to music can set me in a fit of rage.

I wasn't spoiled. Parents weren't capable of doing that BUT the sheltered rings true. My mom didn't drive & me parents didn't know people & couldn't drive share anyway. My life was limited to school & the neighborhood I grew up in. My parents led a very sheltered life because of their issues.

The thing is I FOUGHT it & them. I have no idea how I even knew I didn't want to live like them because it was mostly all I ever knew but I sensed there was much more out there than what I was limited to experience. From a young age I felt like being an only child they wanted to keep me their baby & that was the last thing I wanted.

I know that fighting against things I didn't want my life to be like did cause problems in my marriage & other areas of my life. I learned to fight rather than solve my problems rationally which did cause some serious problems until I finally escaped that whole family & marriage environment. It continued to cause some problems until I learned better skills to interface with people with which has only been in the last 11 years....54 years of learning to undo but it has happened with success.

The mind has neuroplasticity & can unlearn & learn new functional ways even at my age.

Despite the name being like that, this is only partially about being sheltered. I believe an even more significant amount of my problems would be because it was hard to make me conform. Most kids are afraid of what others would say, I wasn't. So when there were a bunch of botched attempts at bullying me in childhood, the most they managed to do was annoy me. You see, I only started to care about what others said when reality was starting to have an anti-me bias. Like, when I overheard two occupational therapists speculating about what disability I might have, that was pretty disillusioning. I thought to myself, "Wait, if my individuality could be attributed to being sick, why should I be proud of it at all?" Honestly, it was kind of a build-up. I guess the moments I realized there were still reasons for me to care about what others said grew more and more. I realized that so many things in life required social harmony. So many social circles would go all "you can't sit with us" on your *** if you don't assimilate. Then again, looking back, even in childhood, I recall people making jabs at how weird I was, maybe I was the one that changed, not other people.