That not everyone secretly wanted to be a woman.
Well, not the women, obviously, because they’re already women.
Lucky bastards.
I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
That’s me. I had no idea other families were affectionate and said crazy stuff like, “I love you.” My god, they even hug.
To this day I struggle with affection, even though I love it. If you touch me unexpectedly I’ll involuntarily flinch. I don’t mind, at all, but I still jerk and can’t help it.
Heh that was my experience too. But I grew up with a single parent who spent all his time working, so most people’s childhoods weren’t spent climbing 5 floors of scaffolding for fun
Met my partner and was astounded by her loving family
Excruciating period pain that would leave me fainting and vomiting every. Single. Time.
“Every girl goes through this” said the doctor, convincing my parents that I was just “dramatic”.
Turns out I had huge polyps growing out of control! Left scarring in my uterus and high-risk when pregnant.
Dealt with that hell every fucking month since I was 11 until I got onto birth control in my 20s.
Poor you! It must have been terribly frustrating that the doctor wouldn’t take you seriously. Seems to be a frequent thing women go through in the medical world. Hope you’re okay now.
Thank you.
Birth control was my savior and actively allowed me enjoy life again. 💕
Amazing! I wish it worked for my GF but that gave her (we found out very late), terrible side effects.
Getting locked in the basement without water, or thrown out into the streets for half a day, when you misbehaved as a child.
If I may ask, where are you from?
Germany
I mean, yeah? Is that really so bad. I guess it depends what the intent was. The town I grew up in was pretty tame, and the room I’d get locked in without food or water if I’d misbehaved had books
I was locked outside of the house for long periods of time and had to drink from the garden hose / garden faucet, and pee in the bushes. We also had like 10+ apple trees. It wasn’t that bad. A bit boring sometimes.
But that’s because it was outside and I could get my needs covered and meet friends.
Locked inside without these needs covered for extended periods is a lot worse in my opinion. Even cats and dogs have those needs covered.
It’s also about the lack of freedom when locked inside.
I would not treat my own children like I was treated, and especially not like you were.
Yeah, I just remember it being boring too. I’m also not really a person who can’t go a few hours without water, so I never felt I was being neglected.
I dont think I’d lock my kid indoors, but I do admit that when it happened to me after I’d been fighting my siblings or something, it was just treated as a time where I would chill out and read a book to wind down. Once dinner was ready, I’d get called for dinner, and everything seemed normal.
So I’d probably try to create a cool down zone with my kids if I ever have them, maybe a comfy chair they’re not allowed to leave for a few hours?
Children (humans) should always have access to clean water. That is not normal in the slightest. A time out shouldn’t include torture.
Today you are learning it’s not normal to lock children away with no food or water.
Knee pain. Everyone told me it was normal growing pains, until one little league coach notice I run weird. Queue years of doctors and specialists and tests and scans and surgeries, and now I’m a 40 something guy with advanced arthritis that could have been much much worse if left untreated.
way to go attentive little league coach!
also wtf parents?
“Well it’s not hurting me so it can’t be that bad.”
My parents took me to see doctors, who told them it was just growing pains and suggested I exercise more to lose weight. I saw three specialists and had a bunch of xrays before anyone noticed the shady spots on my cartilage. Osteochondritis Dissecans occurs in 15-30 people out of 100,000, and most of the primary care doctors I’ve had in my life had never heard of it.
I can’t blame my parents for that. I can blame them for a lot of things, but they did their best.
I remember one day realizing it was odd that my dad would hug my mom but my mom would never hug him back. She would just stand there and let him hug her. Yeah he was an abusive husband and I was very happy for her when she finally left him after over a decade!
Homophobia
I was raised in a right wing, rural area, and i didn’t meet a gay person til higschool. When he said he was gay, i assumed he was joking.
Im trans now lol
Dude tells you he’s gay, immediately turns you trans. The danger is real, people! 😭
if my grandma were to be believed my dad’s babysitter when he was 4 years old infected him with homosexuality then he passed it onto his children because one (me) is trans and the other is bisexual
She’s not very harmful about it but is just really damn confused lol
So if I get this right, your dad turned homosexual from his babysitter… Then proceeded to have two, presumably biologic, kids?
presumably biologic kids
Yeah, my dad fell for the “get a woman to protect you from same sex attraction” propaganda. Over the years he changed his mind and learned that it’s not something to be ashamed of, but he was in a relationship with kids now.
when I came out and my mom was very verbally abusive he kinda had the realization that the relationship wasn’t benefiting the children either. Also my mom was very very controlling over who he could talk to/make friends with.
He is currently in the process of a divorce after 22 years and is coming to terms with how he let fear control his life for that long.
It’s kinda sad.
Nah the dad was too strong to be brainwashed by the babysitter’s sexual deviance. But those poor baby sperm overhead everything and became infected with the gay.
I grew up thinking it was normal for grown men to be attracted to little girls. My mother had a habit of pointing out random men who just happened to be around and telling me they were staring at me/thinking about how beautiful I was/in love with my/trying to look up my skirt. The way she talked about it made it seem like it was a common, acceptable thing.
What, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the fuck
I think she had undiagnosed mental issues, tbh.
I hope things are better for you now x
Yeah, I realized as an adult that most grown men actually aren’t interested in kids.
As a man, I was worried about that growing up, but the women I’m attracted to has aged with me. I’m friends with some women under 30 from the dog park, and I can appreciate they’re pretty but they also look like kids. I hope they meet nice guys around their age.
holy crap I hope you got out of that situation quick, this should NOT be normalized
My heart breaks for you in this
I distanced myself from her after college. Her behavior was unacceptable in a lot of ways, and she wasn’t willing to change. Thanks for the kind words.
Being unable to think of something without a prompt.
I guess most people can just remember things without sticky notes and calendars.
Genuinely. This is sadly how my memory works. It’s gotten better since I had a partner who I would talk to everyday with the inane question, “so how was your day?”
Then suddenly I had to learn how to summarize recent aspects of my life.
And then you’re like, “shit, that happened to me today? shouldn’t I be angry about that?”What are you, an LLM?
I might be. Give me a topic and I’ll spew out all sorts of obscure trivia, but until you mention it, I don’t know that any of it exists.
Is that a challenge? Tell me what you know about Living Card Games without looking it up!
So, “Living” card games doesn’t mean anything to me, but you did trigger card games in general, which could take me a while. I’ve probably spent a majority of my waking life playing Magic, Poker, Hearthstone, Silver, Smash up, and various other card games. Most recently, I’m obsessed with Balatro.
That being said…
Are you about to open a Pandoras box by making me look up Living Card Games?
Mate, if you’re into CCGs, you really missed out by not getting into LCGs! Android:Netrunner, a remake of the original Netrunner from the 90s is the absolute GOAT CG out there with a close second being the Doomtown:Reloaded (which I helped design). Basically it was CGs without the luck/gambling. Just get all the cards and make exactly all the decks you want.
Unfortunately Netrunner and Doomtown run out of steam half a decade ago, but they’re still developed by their fans, but usually the only way to play them consistently is online in places such as Jinteki.net. There’s a few others still in production, but iirc they’re co-operative ones, like Arkham Horror
Linux
In high school, my friend ran Linux. I was over at his house and he had to go take a shit or something, and I was trying to see what games he had on his computer. When he got back he asked what the hell I did because he now has to reboot, and we’re going to have to watch it do that for the next half hour. And penguins and hats.
That’s pretty much everything I ever needed to know about Linux.
I call myself mlm: mediocre language model
Hopefully not engaging in Multi Level Marketing
You can actually train for this!
You can train yourself to become more attuned to your interoception. This will make it easier to identify internal prompts like anxiety or hunger. In fact, a friend of mine was studying to become a psychotherapist and last year had me serve as a guinea pig for interoception interventions. In summary, if you find mindfulness practices that involve your body and your own thoughts, you’ll be more attuned to your interoception. Things like active meditations can help a lot. You can check out evidence-based and peer-reviewed programs like Healthy Minds.
You can train yourself not just to notice your interoception, but also to use interoception to build habits. I suspect this is what the people who do not use external prompts (like stickies) do: they have habits that kick in with not-so-evident prompts. They could be using something called an ‘action prompt’ or an ‘internal prompt’. I’m using the language of Tiny Habits because it’s helpful in this context.
Tiny Habits can teach you how to create habits of all kinds, whether you use external, action, or internal prompts. Tiny Habits prefers prompts that are actions (e.g. “After I put the toothbrush down then I will pick up the dental floss”). But internal prompts are perfectly viable (e.g. “When I feel the heat on my skin and the tension in my jaw, I will describe my inner emotions to myself as if I was listening to a good friend”).
You can understand cues and habits more in depth with contextual behavior analysis. CBA or a qualified professional can help us notice when we struggle to pay attention because of conditions like ADHD or anxiety. Something else that CBA can reveal is that, sometimes, we struggle to pay attention because we haven’t developed the mental information highways that can make our thoughts flow freely. Things like relational frame training can help us build those highways faster. Another option is to learn to think visibly (Harvard’s Project Zero) about our everyday life, so that we build dense information highways that we can later use in daily life.
Of course, the fact is that plenty of humans use external prompts deliberately to help them coordinate and remember things. There’s a reason Scrum boards and Kanban are so popular. There’s a reason calendar apps and Getting Things Done are so popular. There’s a reason many societies have daily, weekly, or yearly rituals. You’re among friends :)
i have approximate knowledge of many things; accessing it without the right trigger may take a while though.
i know i know something but i have accepted that my brain will often only grant me access days later in a completely unrelated situation 🤷🏼♂️
You ADHD? I was almost 40 before I learned about inattentive type ADHD. As far as I knew, ADHD was spastic kids that couldn’t sit still. Since I was more of the daydream and fall asleep type, I never would have thought I was part of that crowd.
Pretty sure, yes.
I’m over 40 and i’ve had this and many other symptoms my entire life.
No official diagnose though; but this 160 questions-test for example says i’m pretty high up there: https://www.adxs.org/en
I’m also the daydream and fall asleep type ☺️
Not everyone has tics they must surpress while in public.
This was a really recent realization for me. I am one of the people who can voluntarily activate the tensor tympani muscles in my ears to create a low level rumbling sound. I recently tried explaining this to someone else and they still think I am making it up.
Social democracy
In general the political system you grow up in seems to becomes a normalcy in your mind when in reality there’s so many different ways of governing
Most fish probably never even realize that water exists till they are yanked out of it by the fisher’s net
Reading.
Or rather, how so many people seem fear and avoid it, or can’t do it. Something like 21% of adults in the US are illiterate, and the majority – 54% – read at or below a 6th grade level.
I’ve been a sight reader probably since I was about six years old. I absolutely cannot look at any words legibly written in my native language and not understand them. You couldn’t force me to look at words written in English and not digest them if you held a gun to my head. I fear no wall of text, no matter how tall it is.
It takes some effort to wrap your head around the notion that not only can most people not do this, but statistically speaking most or at least a plurality of people have to struggle or exert conscious effort to read and many of them are loathe to do so. And roughly one in five people simply can’t. This did not sink in for me when I was younger.
I can’t imagine having to live my life that way. You nerds have seen how much bullshit I write in a day; I’d go absolutely bats.
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Apparently, it isn’t normal to just space out during a test. Yeah, I went through K-12, undergrad, and grad school with an undiagnosed learning disability. This was only one of the symptoms…
wait, it isn’t normal?
I’ve never been diagnosed with a learning disability and I would often space out sometimes during a test. The brain gets tired and needs a break/reset before going back to the task. Now, if it was constant or for long periods of time, maybe that’s different? I’m not a doctor and this person didn’t specify.
