What was your childhood like?

I've wondered many times in my life how childhood experiences play into mental health issues later in life? Are people from happy, positive homes and families more likely to escape mental health issues in adulthood or is there no particular correlation?

The older I get the more convinced I am that my own childhood experiences and family atmosphere have affected me more dramatically than I ever realized. I make a conscious effort every day not to dwell on things I wish had been different during my formative years but they're so obvious I can't totally get past them...I'm old enough and bright enough to know or believe the never ending negativity, criticism and somewhat overbearing/unrealistic demands I grew-up with have left an indelible mark on who I am today that I'll never overcome.

I'm curious. What chance do people who had negative childhoods have to reach adulthood unscathed by the past? Do those from happy, supportive, understanding, encouraging families usually grow up with those traits or do they have the same odds of having mental issues to deal with as adults? Are negative childhoods self-perpetuating? If an adult's mental issues stem from childhood and cannot be overcome, to what extent can they hope not to treat their own children similarly because that's all they've ever known?

My childhood? I'd like to forget it. I was sexually abused for many years. I grew up to be a professional white collar worker. My Mom died 3 years ago this October. I have 4 siblings, only 1 I have contact with, my sister, she is a wreck too. The others can go pound sand for all I care.

Hello, Queen of Chaos. This compendium of articles address many of the concerns you ask about. http://www.helpguide.org/topics/emotional_health.htm

There will be many here who will have different perceptions. Nonetheless, being cognizant of our own uniqueness and having insight about potential problem areas we must deal with is a great skill.

Have a good day.

I had a wonderful childhood. I remember playing in the snow and picking wild violets in the woods in the summer... I rememter getting into my sister's dancing clothes and her skates and making her mad. Playing with neighbors making mud pies.. Playing hopscotch and jumping rope and hoola hoops..Collecting pop bottles to get money for candy and money to go swimming..Making mother angry tracking mud through the house. climbing trees and eating strawberries in the neighbor's garden. It goes on and on and on.. Oo yes, Mr. Penrod, the old man that lived across the road from us. I loved him so much. I even packed my clothes and told him I was moving in, but he sent me home :*(... He was the best person in the whole world. .... Good memories make me smile...

I don't think my childhood made me crazy.. I think mama must of dropped me on my head when a baby.. grins...

I had (and still have) wonderfully supportive parents and a great childhood. I am an only child, so growing up I had to learn to entertain myself. This is where the fun began. Much of my early memory includes my dad working and my mom sleeping, so I'd go into the kitchen and try to "cook" something. Once I tried making Reese's peanut butter cups using globs of peanut butter covered in chocolate syrup, then put into paper muffin cups in the freezer. They didn't taste good. I was always into crafts, and looked forward to the middle of the month when the new issue of Highlights for Children would come in the mail so I could go to the crafts page. Once I made a skirt out of fabric scraps and glue!

I had a great childhood up until late elementary school and early middle school. When the bullying began, so did the earliest symptoms of what would become an anxiety disorder and possibly depression. This was in fifth-sixth grade.

I'm not crazy, because what is normal? My childhood and upbringing are not responsible for the problems I face today. My problems stem from the maladaptive way I dealt with unfortunate yet typical childhood experiences, such as the bullying. Really, I didn't handle it as well as I could have - but at 11 years old, how was I to know the right way?

What was my childhood like? It was what it was. Whether it was good or bad or in between is entirely subjective.

So I was a bastard child (in the original sense of that term, i.e. born of parents that weren't married) living in a single-parent home on Welfare (public assistance). So what if my mom spent most of her time sitting on a bar stool at one of a few bars she frequented while the five of us kids (three from one guy, two from two other guys) and her mentally deficient brother (his IQ was very likely in the 50s; he couldn't say actual words and couldn't do much of anything to take care of himself) to fend for ourselves. We had a roof over our heads (even if it was occasionally condemned by the health department) and food in the cupboard (even if we did have to make our own meals). We only had two rules at home: go to school every day it was in session and take a bath once a week. We weren't molested (my dad raped two of his daughters by one of his wives; he later told one of them in his deep Appalachian drawl, "Oh, I only did it a little bit"). We weren't abused (well, there was one incident where my two older half brothers were being beaten by our mom's then boyfriend and another incident where my younger half brother and I were being chased with a plastic baseball bat by this guy our mom had checking in on us from time to time).

Of course, it was the 1960s and 1970s (I was born in 1963); so, it was obviously a very different era.

Our mom died in 1975 (at age 41) and the five of us kids were split up - I went to live with one of my dad's daughters (the one he later told "Oh, I only did it a little bit"). She was 22 at the time and she had no clue on how to deal with an 11 year-old that had already started puberty and was used to running the streets unsupervised. A few months later I went to live with my dad's cousin (who adopted the son of my dad's oldest daughter who died in a motorcycle accident when the kid was three months old). What a culture shock that was! All of a sudden I had rules, responsibilities, accountability - not to mention having to bathe every day and being in a middle class neighborhood. I started junior high school around the same time, which is a traumatic experience even under normal circumstances.

But there weren't any drive-by shootings or drug sales on the street corners or gang bangers trying to force us into their gang.

What can I say? It was what it was. If anything, it made me a fiercely independent individual.

Both full of love and good things, and horribly horribly awful. At least I knew my parents loved me. But some things were just bad beyond the telling of it.

My childhood consist of sexual abuse and neglect and abuse that happen that I don't know what or how to classify it as. Of course emotional abuse happen that usually that's a given when someone is being sexually and physically abused. I saw and witness a lot more than I should being real young. My mom was hardly around because she worked a lot and I was around other family who were drug dealers, prostitutes, drug users, just basically unstable people. They did a lot of that stuff in front of me. However when my mom married my stepfather things got better because I wasn't around that as much but abuse still accrued. However knowing my family history and my own history I am susceptible to mental illness.

Thanks for the link, I'm looking forward to checking into it further tomorrow. I feel like I'm eternally looking for an explanation or a specific reason behind what I view as unreasonable behavior my siblings and I have lived with our entire lives - that if I could ever understand how it all got started, it would bring me a greater degree of peace.

My childhood wasn't so much about physical abuse as verbal/mental/emotional abuse and it still exists today. When a child, for all practical purposes, never hears a positive, happy, encouraging or supportive word, when all he or she is subjected to every single day is criticism, ridiculous opinions, humiliation, etc., I don't know that it's possible to ever feel positive and if one cannot feel positive, how do they instill happiness and self esteem in their children?

My childhood days were pretty awesome until Dad came home from work. He yelled, screamed, abused all of us. I'm the middle of 3.

When he wasn't around I had freedom to grow, play and learn.

Mum was diagnosed with cancer when I was 9 and it all sort of changed then. She and Dad split up because he is an alcoholic bully after she recovered from that cancer issue but was then diagnosed again when I was 13.

She passed away when I was 15 and that's when life got too hard to talk about.

Basically in short form... horrible. And when people say things to me like, "don't you wish you could be a child again?" I really fail to understand why I would want too.

Actually I came across this question on some forms yesterday that I had to fill out at the eating disorder clinic. The question was repeated a few times in different ways on the forms. I have multiple dx's so I'm sure my childhood has a big role.

I found myself saying that. I don't say that because I thought my childhood was so great but I say that because I want to take back a childhood that was taken away from me. Start on a clean slate with a better situation pretty much.

Most of the things that went wrong in my life were my own doing from childhood in some way or form, in many ways I have to say I was a "spoiled brat" who manipulated her adoption parents.

I always thought I had a bad life as a child but today looking around me I know different, many people have it far worst than I could ever dream and some evidence even suggest my bipolar could have been helped on by my use of drugs in my teens.

I think this is a huge part of my problem. I feel like FOR SOME REASON (was it something she had no control over, was it deliberate, etc.) my own mother ruled my childhood with such a strong hand that I don't altogether feel like the years were "childhood". I want some happy memories or some sense that I ever felt loved. I grew-up feeling more controlled than loved.

My mother is 89 years old, in good health, her mind is sharp, but she would pop before she would say anything lighthearted, happy, positive, complimentary - and, she'll immediately get angry if she hears me tell someone who has asked about her that she is doing well. She'll correct me and say she is doing horribly, that nothing is right, etc.

Holidays are a big deal for most children. For my family, they were (and still are for my mother) obligations to be met as quickly as possible with not even a pretense of fun or enthusiasm.

While most parents encourage their children to succeed, my mother wouldn't do anything like that for any reason. When high school was over, she decided what college course each of her children were to pursue. She never has approved of her sons-in-law or daughter-in-law and thinks her grandchildren are all rude because they don't want to spend time with her.

There is no doubt a lot of folks grew-up in worse environments than I did but I guess, in spite of how hard I try to forgive and forget, a bitterness still lingers, a wish that can never be granted to, as Erti said, start over. Sometimes I just wish I'd had more of a chance to be who I could have been had someone encouraged me rather than discouraged every attempt I ever made.

Do I think my childhood was the cause of my issues today? Yes and yes. My upbringing is definitely the foundation of who I am today.
My childhood very summarized- my mother was 18, my father was 30, both of them are alcoholics, they met in a pub one night and were together for 3 months, then my mother found out she was having me and left without telling him I existed. I was neglected and abused my entire life, my mother spent more money on drugs and alcohol than on food so a lot of people thought I had an eating disorder because I was so thin. My mother had no qualms about having sex with the door open, and she had relationships with men who were also drunks and into drugs. She ended up with a guy that ruined our lives, we lost everything but the clothes on our backs. We had the NCA following us undercover because of their involvement in a drug ring, they’d sit in their unmarked car outside our house all day, and follow us in our car wherever we went. They knew that my mother and her boyfriend knew, so the NCA would actually beep their horn every night when they left our house.
I lived in my room and NEVER came out while my mother boyfriend was there, not for anything, even food or needing to pee. When I had the house to myself I’d live it up, cranking up the music and bounding around the house and eating, all the while watching for them to come back, which is when I’d frantically turn everything off and race back to my room.
He used to tell me I was selfish, a drama queen, and a manipulator that played mind games with people to control them and get my own selfish way. I was 13. He also used to say that my negative thoughts were creating negative energy that was causing all the bad things that were happening to us.
When I was 14 I was basically dumped with my auntie for 2 years while my mother lived in a car with her boyfriend doing speed. Then he went jail I went back with my mother because my auntie didn’t want me with her, we stayed at my grandparents for a little while until my grandfather beat me up one night and my family (other than my mother) took his defense.
We nearly ended up in a shelter but my mother begged a land agent to let us stay in a house we put our names down for, telling them if we didn’t get it we’d have nowhere to live. Well we got the house, but we had no beds, and the carpet was riddled with fleas that would crawl up into the blankets at night and I’d wake up with bites all over my stomach. My source of entertainment was basically sitting on the floor picking fleas out of the carpet.
We had furniture donated to us by the church, my mother got her bed first so at 15 I was sharing a bed with her. Eventually I got my bed. Then her boyfriend got out of jail and came back, he smashed our bathroom window, he used to sit in his car out in the street and watch our home.
When I was 17 I moved out of home, the 13th time I moved house, and I’ve remained here ever since. One of my cousins moved in with my mother at 15 and was dealing drugs, even to my mother. She is sober now, but I think she still smokes weed.
I met my father when I was 18, when I called him his girlfriend thought I was calling to buy drugs from him. My father isn’t a very nice guy, very melodramatic and gets angry at the drop of a hat. His girlfriend gave someone my address, phone number, and told him where I worked so he was rocking up everywhere I went. She got him to tell me it was my father who gave him my details but it was actually her trying to find out bad things about me.
I try to keep to myself. Things aren’t any less stressing, currently my auntie is engaged to a transsexual paedophile, and my cousin lost her virginity to his son (her step brother basically). My grandfather is still an alcoholic, my cousin is in a relationship with a guy who beats her up, my father is dying of cancer and won’t acknowledge me as his child, my mother is living in Salvation Army housing on disability and can’t leave the house for more than 2 hours at a time before she has a panic attack.
I have still not moved on from my past, I am currently in therapy every 2 weeks and seeing a dermatologist because of stress related hair loss. Because of my stress I can’t work, find it hard to be with people (I was also bullied in school), and my memory is as bad as my 70 year old grandmother. I can barely get out of bed or clean my house from exhaustion. I think I am welcome nowhere because I have never been welcome, I wasn’t born because someone WANTED me, my grandfather wouldn’t speak to my mother for over a month when he found out she was going to have me, my mothers boyfriend spent his time trying to get rid of me, my auntie wanted me out of her house, nobody wanted to be friends with me in school, my mother was glad I was gone when I left home, and my neighbour wasn’t exactly keen to have me here. I am in constant torment of my own thoughts, always thinking worse case scenario because I was so used to having to do that to be prepared. I get very snappy and have a lot of built up anger. I used to have so many ambitions when I was young, I KNOW I could have been big, but now I barely have the enthusiasm to check the mail.
I wonder what my life would have been had it been different, I wonder what kind of person I could be or where I would be in life.

What an incredible story, Evening. There is an old saying that the extraordinarily difficult things that happen to us, if they don't kill us, make us stronger.

I know nobody guarantees any of us that life is always fair but how you have survived is amazing - undoubtedly you couldn't help but have deep scars from the past but for as beat down as trying to survive has left you feeling right now I have to believe you're more resilient than you dare believe you are, you've got to have a deep reservoir of reserve strengths, mentally, physically and emotionally, to have made it this far.

It's not fair when one person pays such a heavy price for the actions of others but many of us face that realization every day of our lives...some much more so than others.

I pray you'll find happiness - you deserve it and no doubt would appreciate it more than those who always take it for granted.

I can't help but think of something when I read threw this. My best friend (possibly soon to be ex best friend) does a lot of crazy things. She lied, betrayed my trust, and chose a guy who have controlled her after myself and another friend of mine had manage to help her get her out of that relationship. The girl lives on drama and I do my best to help her out because her and I have been threw a lot of the same things but in return she doesn't listen to my problems. The relationship is one sided and it probably going nowhere but south. Everyone blames it on her past and not her herself. It irritates me. They believe because of her past she is doomed to make choices like her mother and in turn I bet she believe it herself. I don't do half the stuff she does and I can't say my childhood was the greatest. What also irritates me is that she realizes she's doing it and isn't making an effort to change. I cannot make decisions for her. I don't know what to think about her anymore to be honest.

My childhood absolutely sucked. I was abused when I was about 6 and 7 yrs old. And I denied the abuse for a long time and that made me deny a lot of my feeling and I have a big problem now opening up to other people and excepting my own feeling. On top of that, when I was around 12 or 13, when I finally excepted the fact that I was abused I became depressed. So yeah, my childhood was no fairy tale whats so ever.

My younger childhood (I am still considered a child in different situations, society, family parties, my licence...etc) was great, I played outside with my sister and neighbors all the time, didn't lose anyone, didn't notice anything wrong with my family, we moved when I was 5 so I didn't have to deal with being the new kid. My sister and I always got along well, we had our fights, but we're sisters so that's normal. My parents and I had a great relationship, talked all the time and did things together. In my mind we were almost perfect.

But, when became a teenager I started noticing how imperfect things were, family tensions, parents fighting, stuff that is normal in families. Sometimes I believe it is worse than in other families from listening to my friends families problems, but it hasn't spiraled out of control.

As to answer your questions, I think it is a mix of both. Childhood and family has an effect on someone's personality, mental health, and overall self, but I think that everyone has a chance to have mental health problems no matter how good or bad their childhood was.

My childhood (I don't like to be thought of as a child now) wasn't that good. I was born in Germany, we moved to Taxes, we moved to Tennesse, we moved back to Germany, and then back to Tennesse. I haven't lived in one place for more than 5 years. It's hard to get close to anyone when you keep moving.
The first time we moved to Tennesse is where I have my earliest memories from. I was in first grade then. My parents would fight almost every other day. My earliest memory is of my dad leaving after a bad fight, but he came back in the same day. Me and my brother would fight so much my mom said I almost killed him once. I had few real friends because I was a little odd then. My dad's side of the family that lives here, didn't want anything to do with us. My grandmother moved when we came, and my uncles and aunt didn't come around much. Well my one uncle ,Mike, I don't know because he doesn't want anything to do with the family and we don't want him. He supposedly touched a little girl inappropriately, so my dad doesn't want him near me. Then my mom's stepdad had a heart attack (her real dad died when she was 4). It was really hard on us. He died that year.
The second time we moved to Tennesse, my parents decided to stay. We've lived here for about 8 years now and in only two houses . In 4th grade I started getting bullied on almost a daily basis. I'm in 10th grade now, and I still get bullied horribly. My parents still fight, but more now than back then. They tell eachother all the time that they need a divorce. The longest they've gone without a fight is two days. My brother is a creeper! He will watch me take a shower if I forget to lock the bathroom door!! My aunt on my dad's side is in and out of jail. We have legal custody of her two girls. My great-grandmother died this year, I was pretty close to her. Everyone on my mom's side of the family took it really hard.
I guess I should be glad my dad's side of the family isn't around. All of them are into drugs, not a single one of them is clean. My aunt can't stay out of jail and is high 95% of the time, my uncle uses different drugs, my uncle's girlfriend is an alcholic, and my grandmother sells her meds and is crazy according to the government.
I really think my family and childhood has something to do with how I am now.

Well,
At 3 months old I was thrown by my dad and ended up in a coma. After my dad got out of prison for this, my parents didn't divorce because of my mother's severe health issues and inability to work. For the same reasons I basically grew up taking care of my mom instead of it being the other way around.

My dad always preferred to sit in the corner and drink beer instead of actually getting to know his kids or help with my mom. He was also physically and emotionally abusive, particularly when I was younger. It was either that or basically be non-existent as a parent.

I was homeschooled almost my entire life because my mom even included my (and my brother's) education in her need for excessive control. That and the fact that I moved 14 times by the age of 12 made it generally impossible to make or keep any friends. By the time I was a teenager I just decided to totally isolate myself and escape in music. My mom was also emotionally abusive in my early teens, though with her the problem was mainly the over-protection and having to take care of her (which I know is NOT her fault, but it still affects me).

I have one brother who is only a year and a half older. When we were young his main hobby was kicking me into furniture. Once I started martial arts, he switched to just making fun of me. Sometimes he's joking, sometimes not. I don't know if this affects me much, but I know it doesn't help things.

I was never sexually abused that I remember, though there are some mainly blurry memories from very early childhood or parts of stories I've heard that I sometimes question, but realize I really don't want to know.

I'll stop ranting now, but do I believe childhoods play a part in mental health problems? Yes. If it's not the cause, it definitely contributes.

It was dark, lonely, without comfort and love. I was invisible-no one talked to me or asked my ideas. All was fine until Dad left for war when I was about 5 yrs old. The darkness grew everywhere.

Only child. Mama worked long hours as a nurse. Sick people don't take holidays. My parents divorced when I was 4 or 5. Don't remember it. And she never even dated after that. Don't remember anything before about 4th grade. I have maybe 3 memories but that ain't saying a lot considering I was already.. 9? I've always wanted to be hypnotised to find out what I don't know. My Grandma always called me "Little Dennis" because apparently I was so much like my father, whom I never saw... who she also hated. Love you too grandma. She preferred the males in the family. I looked for love and acceptance from "men" in any fashion I could get it until I was nearly 30 and realized I didn't need it.

I do remember planting the gardens with my Grandaddy and boy cousins. One would make the hole, usually with a broom handle, one would drop the seed or plant and I got the dirty job of covering it up. I hated that part. lol I wanted a CLEAN job! I always ended up filthy. maybe it was because I was the youngest.

Edit to add: I believe grandma was there with the water... had to get it some how... Told her to Kiss My Foot once but she couldn't run as fast as I could! lol

...I still remember hiding the head nun's shoes one day, if I remember correctly I was about twelve.

....I was a little trouble maker..........

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