Either from abusive parents, toxic relationships, short or long term bullying or any other kind of traumatic past that gave you some survival reflexes that are not longer relevant but are hard for you to get rid of.
Lost everything in a house fire, an electrical fire, in high school. So 30 years later I’m nervous around new appliances or lamps or, really, anything that plugs in except low-voltage. I don’t trust PoE, I don’t plug things in overnight until they’ve logged some daylight hours under monitoring, etc. My sister keeps a number of fire extinguishers around the home, so I think she’s got some PTSD over it too.
House fires change lives.
I mask around white people to appear non threatening and I don’t like it
I’d be interested to understand this better.
What is your race, and what do you do to mask?
I don’t like being around drunk people, and I rarely drink myself. My father was a very abusive and violent drinker throughout my entire life. He is still alive now at 70 years old and has drank himself to-the point of feebleminded. He is still very ignorant and yells at anybody for absolutely no reason when I am not around him I feel the need to face him for all of these years of abuse, but if I am ever in his presence, I always feel like I am a small child curled up the corner. I do and have enjoyed drinking, but only one drink here or there once every couple of months and even then I can’t fully enjoy it because it puts me in his mindset and I just can’t enjoy myself.
Never wanted to rock the boat and never felt the need to growing up. Or at least conditioned to feel that way. Now I often screw myself over by nodding and agreeing as my default response. I like to think that I have ideals, but I hardly defend them, can’t bring myself to be reasonably confrontational. Also really bad at coming up with and asking questions and end up nodding along even if I don’t really understand.
I’m 44 years old and I still can’t stand people standing behind me if I’m sitting down. When I was a kid and I did something wrong my dad would sit me at the table while he walked around yelling at me and every so often he would walk behind me and slap the back of my head.
To this day I still get so uncomfortable that I have to get up or ask the person to move. Even if it’s my own kids, I can’t stand it.
I am just like that and was surprised how few people mention this when I searched it online. The other day, I stared down a group of people standing and chatting behind my seat while I was trying to eat my lunch. Thought it was just some common etiquette or evolutionary instinct and stared until they walked away.
Can’t recall if there was any specific thing in my childhood that causes it, but reading this made me realize that I’m not alone in this survival reflex.
I refuse to say anything that creates any unnecessary expectations of me. If asked whether I know something I will always downplay my knowledge. If asked whether I’m interested in something I will always downplay my interest. If asked whether I can commit to something I will always say something to the effect of “I’ll think about it” rather than yes or no.
I would like to be more open and easygoing but it’s hard to do. I would rather people expect little of me and be surprised than expect a lot and be disappointed. As I have gotten older I’ve started to suspect that this is more like building a wall between myself and the world than I’d like to admit.
Reflexively answering to an innocent question with a harsher tone than I meant to.
Oof. I do this to my sweetie. Thank you for the reminder to work on that some more.
I’m a queer person raised in the US but now living in a saner country. I’m slowly realizing how much living in the US has traumatized me.
- Whenever I go to a large gathering I instinctually look for the exits and try to stay near them.
- Still scared to go to the doctor.
- Minor one, there’s a lot of apartment buildings around me named “__ Arms”. In the US, I would expect anything with that name to be a huge gun store covered in white supremacist branding. I still side eye the sign whenever I pass by.
- Expecting government offices to be heavily armed and require going through TSA levels of security. Turns out other countries aren’t police states that treat you like a criminal by default.
- Same thing for small venues
- Driving is its own ball of anxiety and trauma
- Expecting anything with sugar to be sickly sweet. It’s no wonder why the US is so obese
Expecting government offices to be heavily armed and require going through TSA levels of security.Turns out other countries aren’t police states that treat you like a criminal by default.lots do but not that openly
edit: strikethrough for wrong quoting
Oh for sure, but in the few cases I’ve gone into a routine govt office here it’s usually just a few guys at the front by reception.
In the US, they X-ray everything and question me about my (fairly mundane) fidget spinner like I’m carrying around a WMD on my keychain. I have to empty my purse and take out anything that a schizophrenic might consider suspicious.
oh I did not mean that part, I was quoting it wrong
Lmao
If I have access to free food, I eat it. Doesn’t matter if I’m hungry, as long as I physically can I will.
I was only broke and homeless for a little over a year, and now I always know wherey next meal is coming from, but I can’t seem to shake the mindset of that low point in my life.
I tend to be distrustful and keep people at arm’s length. Sometimes it’s for the best, but other times it has probably cost me the formation of close relationships.
I do this too. That and just waiting for the day that whoever it is will fuck me over. I literally am expecting it and will see it in innocent actions then get pissed off and have a go at them only to realize I misinterpreted their actions
This is me also.
Living like a hermit, go to work go home, maybe go grocery shopping one a month, repeat forever.
I keep back any feelings in arguments, most interactions and also intense situations. Makes me loose a lot of arguments because I almost freeze and I appear as a person which distances from others. On the other hand I am able to keep calm in a lot of professional situations and act deescalating.
I think calling it “survival reflexes” alters the truth of the matter. After all, other people live without being paranoid/aggressive/excessively fearful just fine. Better, actually. And this is coming from someone that used to consider some of my more unsavoury behaviour as “survival reflexes”…
I will only ever explain myself once. If the person I explained myself to seems to completely misunderstand me, I’ll just shut down and search for an escape from the conversation. I’m just so used to never getting through to people, and being misunderstood. No, I didn’t mean to upset you, and you insisting that I did is getting us nowhere. Accept that I’m sorry.
But no. Never happens. So I barely try any more.
