Growing up cold

[Clues_Of_Blue]

I've mentioned in my other thread that my parents weren't the warmest of people. I'm not saying they didn't care at all, but they were so, so bad at it. They modelled a lot that made the rest of the world seem alien to me. It was only toward the end of their marriage that they were fighting a lot. Other than that, I have few memories of seeing the two of them together. When they were, there was no real love there or affection. One kiss I saw, or two, between them - and that perfunctory at best. Significant signs of any kind of emotion other than the odd burst of anger between themselves or toward my siblings and I were virtually non-existent.

I was talking to my sister today about our upbringing. Neither one of us could remember a single hug from our mother, or any kind of touch at all, really. Nor could I remember a hug from Dad, though my sister was less sure. He played with us on occasion, but was usually working. We saw a lot of his back, in essence.

When I think on it, I don't really feel much of anything about it. It's a curiosity, but I think something that did a lot to shape the way I am. It wasn't until well into adulthood that I really understood that affection was a thing of importance to people outside of courtship. It seemed weird and alien receiving a hug from a friend. Relationships seemed like the only appropriate place for touching, since the media loves shoving all that kissy goo goo stuff at us and a lot less of the apparently normal affection between friends and family on other levels, and I had no experience with that sort of thing myself. I only had a couple of friends at school when my folks were still together; sisters, and their parents were quite affectionate... I honestly thought that was the abnormal thing, and it wasn't how things happen for most of us.

It seems strange to say this, knowing I have clinical depression, but I detach from emotion very easily. Though my gut may be churning and my face wet with tears, my mind is in the middle of it saying "What the...? I didn't authorise this." I'm constantly analysing, calculating, observing, and separate from what's going on. I keep wondering if this is simply my personality or a product of my upbringing. Perhaps a mixture of the two. My siblings turned out so differently to me.

I'm not really sure of the point of my ramble, here, other than to say it's not a cry for sympathy. I guess I wonder if others have been through the same, and how they turned out as adults.

[lookingforme]

I, being a self-proclaimed scientist (backed by a science degree) love the nature vs nurture talk. I saw the post at work and I was so tempted to just stop everything. Yes, it is all a balance of nature and nurture, but I like to think that the way humans developed changed things. We have thought and we have choice. We can choose to go against our nature (however hard that may be because genetics is a hard thing to run from) and we can certainly choose to change from how we were nurtured, and choose also how to nurture in turn. For example, I have moved very far away from being family centric when my entire family is that way. I didn't want to learn the lessons I was being taught because of the people who were teaching them. And I find it fascinating, Blue, that you and your siblings cover the spectrum as it were between emotion and logic, even though you were essentially "moulded" in the same environment, and can agree on those missing components. To me also, nature is definitely stronger. And literally, I think the way our brains develop, our emotions can render our logical side useless at times. I think there was a study done that showed people who had impaired emotional capacity but otherwise fine, were less capable of making decisions. I like my logical side, it lets me cut through most of unnecessary bits of life when I have to, but I am pro nature because if our logical side improved, we could reason out anything with good argument. Sorry guys, went partial nerd there.

As for my gran, that did suck the big one. I don't think I'm over it actually. I didn't know how to grieve as a child. I remember the funeral very well but, it felt what I would call surreal now. Like I was in a movie. I wondered what the big deal was because we were getting all this attention. In Sri Lanka, often people walk behind the hearse from the funeral home/church to the cemetery, and being the family, we were ahead of the line. I wondered what the fuss was about. She was here, she isn't now. That's all that happened. Quite clinical for someone to whom I attach all my good emotions now. I retroactively grieve from time to time, and her memory is my go to when everything goes wrong, because the way I remember my life, that was the last time I felt happiness. I've been dissecting my life of late. Finding my own "origins" story. I understand the anger. I have the anger still. But, I hate that I have it.

[Maggie_Mae]

Hey blue, yes I am very lucky. My siblings and I are very close and see each other at least once a week. We don't hug or anything like that but share and always there for each other if needed.

i am like you and don't hug friends or people just to say hello or good bye. Basicky only people I hug is my husnand and children. I am sure this makes me seem cold to people but honestly I don't care I am not hugging people I don't trust.

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Joelle, I wonder if we shouldn't hop back a step and get on the same page with how we define nature. I could be misinterpreting, but it seems to me you're looking at nature and logic as separate entities. It's possible that's true of your experience. Less so with mine. Employing thought and logic can very much be part of someone's nature, as they are a part of mine. I find myself inevitably drawn toward logic and to separating thought and emotion as my go-to strategy for life. I definitely haven't had to fight myself to do that, even in the midst of my depression. (And my already logic-centred nature was solidly reinforced by how I was brought up, or "nurtured", ill-fitting word though that seems in my case.)

In terms of the point of emotion vs logic, I think they both have their uses. Too much of one or the other will definitely skew perception and lead to a poorly functioning human being. My natural inclination to disregard emotion has bitten me in the behind on more than one occasion, and sure doesn't get me far navigating human interaction. So for me, it's not the emotion that I count as nature, but almost the opposite. Turning around and engaging with it is where conscious effort comes into play. Which isn't to say I never acknowledged my emotions, or actively tried to run against them, I just underestimated their relevance (I would call that a learned trait, or the product of conditioning).

It's true that grief is a confusing thing for children. My grandfather died when I was three or so, and I remember nothing of it, or of him. I gather he was the one person in Dad's family that Mum got along with (she moved half way across the country to marry Dad, so that was significant). I'm glad you remember your gran, and I don't think deferred grief makes it any less relevant. As for your anger, you're entitled to it. Your thought and logic can help you get a handle on the reasons for it and what to do with it, and that's good.

Maggie Mae, I think you're right not to worry too much about what others think of your pickiness about who you hug. Touch is such a personal thing, it isn't for all and sundry, it's for those you trust and are comfortable with. You have affection for the people that matter, and if that is sufficient for you, it's no-one else's business.

[lookingforme]

Ahhhhhhh.....(that is not a scream but a sound of enlightenment)...you're talking about our nature, what comes naturally to us in an environment of other people trying to teach us. I went too literal, my apologies. Logical is more toward where I lean but I have also learned that logic changes between people though it is supposed to be, in theory, unbiased. My environment was an emotional one, but that emotion wasn't necessarily positive. I think what I took from my family environment was how not to do things, and that I'm better off learning how on my own.

Social interaction doesn't exactly come easy to me either. I wouldn't say I've got worse but I generally invest less of myself in the interactions because of how I was treated by other people. When I was in high school, the only outlet for my emotions was toward my friends. So I put a lot of myself into the friendship. But I never got that in return. I would call all the time, I needed other people to talk to but they thought I was annoying. So when I became distant and having depression hitting hard, no one really took notice. I guess they were glad. I'm actually sitting here and thinking what an idiot I was. Hmmm..

[Clues_Of_Blue]

All good, I just wanted to clarify. So, in working against the emotional environment in which you were brought up, have you been consciously seeking logic against your own nature to deal with it, i.e. fighting both nature and nurture, or do you naturally lean toward logic? As for bias in the use of logic, it is inevitable in emotional beings. The logic itself may not be flawed, but emotion does give us specific goals, motivations and perspectives that drive where we want our logic to take us. As humans, we do struggle a bit with embracing ideas - even well constructed ones - that run against our aims and it's a job and a half not to be biased.

Try not to be too hard on yourself about stuff that happened in high school. That's the time when we're learning who we are and how we fit (or don't) into the world around us. No-one else knows who they are either, so they're running around acting like twats more often than not, looking for acceptance. Over time we learn to judge who is worth putting our effort into, and to see the signs when someone just isn't. You have come away with a sense of caution, and that isn't a bad thing.

I guess I'm lucky in that part of my nature and emotional disconnect allows me to easily see through people to their motivations and archetypes, I guess. I've had a fascination with profiling people based on personality, and I'm definitely seeing trends that back up less defined observations I've made on my own... Sorry, going off track. I'm referring to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which has proven a pretty good breakdown of personality and "nature", and which has helped me a lot in understanding myself and the poor sods around me I've been enthusiastically cataloguing. Wondering if that's something we can explore here or something I should make a new thread for in the Community forum. I'm thinking maybe a new thread.

[lookingforme]

Naturally, I am more logical. Choosing to not be like my family was easy actually. The difficulty came when I had to constantly justify my character to people who claimed to want to understand but never bothered to listen, and instead belittled me and degraded me and in general told me I was not up to their standard. The emotion/logic struggle was my own. The internal kind. I questioned my own worth based on the input I was receiving from people who were supposed to be my teachers in life, and the people who I chose as my friends, and all this data was clashing with my opinion of myself, which was that I was generally a good person who tried to be kind and decent to everyone. But surely, if these important people are ignoring me or demeaning me, not taking me seriously, then my opinion must be wrong. I would reason my way into an emotional hurricane and then reason my way into controlling that hurricane so that no one but myself would be hurt. That pretty much describes my life.

Go with your gut Blue. I'm fairly certain I've taken a personality test based on that. Can't really remember what I was. You've spoken to me a fair bit, profile me.

[Clues_Of_Blue]

I try to be a bit holistic in my profiling of people, and I would want significantly more information to give a comprehensive analysis (it's all about data being as complete as possible, with me). From what I know, you show clear characteristics of Introversion. On the all the other points, you're sitting on borders, as far as I can tell. You're kind of intuitive, but what you've just said and your general inclination to ask for clarification hints at Sensing being more dominant than Intuition. I'd say you lean toward Thinking, but from my observations, you're perhaps a bit more feely than I (my brother is the same personality type as I am, but less heavily on the thinking side, it may be the same level of difference). You walk the line between Perceiving and Judging from where I stand, as well, possibly more on the Judging side. There's an element of sitting back and observing, but you also have a career direction that you seem pretty decisive on, which is the sort of thing we Perceiving types tend to fall down on. End result is, I don't have a clear picture, and there are a handful of types you could fall into. If I were to put my money on one, it would be ISTJ, but I say that with the reservation of someone with gaps in my data and the acknowledgement I could be off base.

I think, when I muster the energy for it, I'll strike up a new thread for personality. It's a broad and interesting topic. I'm an INTP, by the way, if it's of interest.

[lookingforme]

I got INTJ

I found the conversation I was having which involved this very topic.

INTP ey, I shall check it out. Not totally knowledgeable on this topic, but definitely willing to do some research for a discussion. *pulls out library*

[Clues_Of_Blue]

I was close, and can't say I'm wholly surprised by your answer. I think the main reason I didn't pick it is because I encountered you in an environment where openness is kind of required. INTJs are typically very, very guarded. I know the type well, from being in a relationship with one, and share a few traits with it (I only just nudge into the Perceiving category over Judging). There are a few key differences between the types, but as we have demonstrated, the two mesh very well.

[blondguy]

Hey Blues Clues

" I have few memories of seeing the two of them together. When they were, there was no real love there or affection"

I am a tad late in my response...sorry. I quoted what you wrote as I had the same combined with dictatorial control.I am actually not surprised that I have clinical depression after the violence/anger I have seen/grown up with.

If I cry now I get a headache so I dont..it hurts too much Blue. I am not a player of the violin but reality exists.

The formative years are approx between 0-3 years of age....as per the 'book'. We are a 'sponge' for more years than that where growing up is concerned. I hear you loud and clear.

I grew up cold too. Not to mention being brought up in Niagara Falls ONT.....that was cold!

I just read Geoff's post...what a legend...I wish I was his his brother