Any of you grow up with parents that centered everything around intelligence or being "smart"?

The Emperor's Lounge
#1

I’ve been running RoM and I’m uncovering some key stuff that I think is contributing to my mediocre life experience.

Basically my parents were obsessed with intelligence. If they weren’t praising my brothers and I on our intelligence it was criticizing everyone else out in the world they ran into for being “dumb”. Customer service rep on a phone that didn’t know the answer? Incompetent. Cashier that missed bagging an item for groceries? Stupid. Me not picking the right tool while helping my dad with a project around the house? Embarrassment. Not loading the dishwasher right? Criticized instead of shown why. And the list goes on. My relationship with them is complicated, they do love me but this was the stuff I was subjected to growing up.

This has amounted to me only sticking to professional jobs where I know I won’t make mistakes or I’ll make minimal amounts of them. It eats up mental real estate in my head. My potential is nerfed in everything I do because basic learning which involves mistakes has now become a crippling source of anxiety.

I don’t even know how to begin to fix this so I’ll just continue to run RoM. But I’m wondering if anyone relates or has recovered from this. It’s not even being “gifted”, my academics were mediocre, I excelled in nothing, yet I was held to a standard of needing to be an all knowing omnipotent being as a child that never sunk so low as to tarnish my intelligence. I see the utter stupidity in being ruled by such a simplistic mindset, yet here I am.

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#2

I can see that they always told me I was smart and even until grade school I was straight A’s, loved to read.

But I kind of fell apart at the social game. As I’ve gotten a lot older I see it was how I was talked to by them. Told I was smart yet everything I say was framed and came off as if I was wrong even if they agreed with me. And I’m still working through that stuff. So it definitely contributed to my lack of success with people, and I’m finding that dealing with people is the number one thing if you want to be successful at anything.

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#3

I still struggle with this I have a fear which brings me anxiety at work of looking incompetent, dumb etc. That fear of being found out prevents me from taking risk at work and working shifts where I know I’m going to run into challenges. I’m not someone who picks up on things right away I need to repeat stuff and do things over and over until I understand that helps me be competent. This Definitely stemmed from childhood. I had a really smart sister and anything I did I was compared to her and was told I’m not bright or heard my dad say things about me not picking things up right away. Also my sister was judgemental when I would ask her for help for hw.

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#4

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” - Albert Einstein

Your parents upbringing makes them behaves like that. When we go to unfamiliar places and we saw something we don’t have, we tend to get those things to show to the world that we also have them - even it isn’t necessary.

Ignore your parents or people who treat like a lesser human.

There is a book, “Why smart kids have lower grades?” Having honors or awards in school or university does not count that your intelligent (there are types of intelligence), it does not even guarantee your success to the world.

Fairy tales can teach kids how to better handle and deal with their emotions. If only parents didn’t allow us to hear their ‘regrettable’ emotions on us, then most of the children are successful right now.

Dragon Reborn, Love Bomb, Genesis:Joy and Happiness.

No not IQ, if you can shift the situation from bad feelings to good feelings everything will be fine.

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#5

Obviously, there’s no perfect upbringing.

The parental/familial influences that you are successfully able to adapt to and harness will be the ones you view as assets or strengths.

The ones that give you enduring problems will be viewed as mistakes, obstacles, or stumbling blocks.

Much of it comes down to the chemistry and combination between a child and the parents/family-of-origin.

Ultimately, parenting (and all communication) comes down to your ability to clearly perceive how your behaviors, actions, and messages are being received by the other person. Too many parents just try to follow a semi-reasonable script and then ‘cross their fingers’. That’s leaving a lot to chance.

Instead of checking to see how their messages are being received, they focus instead on whether or not they are ‘right’. This is normal human idiocy (in my opinion). I think we all do this all the time.

Usually, in any of the ‘good’, there’s still a kernel of something problematic. And within the ‘issues’ and ‘dysfunction’, we can find some elements of potential strengths.

Either way, the goal is to get enough internal personal power to reframe/convert/adapt what we’ve got into something useful.

You know me. I think the very fact that you’re writing about this issue in this way indicates that you are beginning to process it and, ultimately, to deal with it and integrate it. But there’s a whole lot of time and details between point A and point B. So hang in there.

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#6

I wonder what will happen to humanity once “care bots” are replacing humans in childcare and do it all right and well based on science and psychology. Giving love and attention and setting the right boundaries, etc. Will the human race be “better” without all this childhood trauma we all deal with?

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#7

There’s this phenomenon in animal behavior studies and attachment studies known as ‘imprinting’.

You’ve probably seen pictures of it:

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It’s something to the effect of: a safe, sufficiently caring animal to whom a baby duck is exposed during a critical developmental window will become defined as “Mommy”. The duck will then continue to follow after that animal until it matures into independence.

While this is very striking and clear with ducklings, I believe it also happens with us.

And I think that AI and carebots would be wise enough to recognize this phenomenon.

This means that a sufficiently advanced carebot as part of its effective functioning would probably make sure that human beings were still included as crucial elements of the child-rearing process. It would probably involve itself in more of a supervisory role to compensate for the weaknesses of the specific human parent in question. Something like “[alarm sound] hey you just missed an important request for reassurance, connection, feeding (or whatever else)”.

I think such a resource would be helpful. It would be like training wheels for parents. Until they learned to pay attention to and read the signs well enough without external assistance.

Also, it’s important to note that too much attunement and responsiveness may not be ideal. It should fall right within the sweet spot so that the child feels sufficiently supported, connected, and understood, but is also motivated to work towards an independent, autonomous life.

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#8

Thank you @Malkuth for this, as always, profound answer. Food for thoughts…

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#9

What might help get any negative, critical voices out of your head?

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#10

I really don’t know. It’s just like every little thing I do is paralyzing and held under a microscope because my mind has associated mistakes with danger. I have to figure out how to rewire my brain not to feel that way.

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#11

How is neurofeedback helping?

#12

It’s going well. A little difficult, but I’m noticing I’m less reactive to certain things. So I think it’s like layers of fears, some more deeply entrenched than others.

#13

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Code-Principle-Achieving-Happiness/dp/1101902833

Thank me later

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#14

I have been through self help book hell and pretty burned out on most of them.

How has this improved your life?

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#15

Your parents must be Africans or Asians.

#16

Lmaoooooooo omg I’m dead. You’re not the first person to assume that. I’ve gotten told I got the asian style parenting without asian parents. They are both white.

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#17

I know the African culture best. It’s not just the parents. Even in dating. Girls prefer dating the engineering student or the med school student than the guy on the soccer team. :rofl:

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#18

I can relate with some of this.

I’ll tell you exactly what worked for me.

#19

I don’t know if it’s safe to post in public honestly, lol. Just check your pm.

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#20

Give it a shot.