Core wounds don't fade for all of us...

[Fish_astronaut]

...even after putting in the "work", becoming "successful", etc.

Some choose to live with that. Good for them!

But I do not think there is a replacement for the personal foundation and emotional infrastructure that a functional upbringing provides.

I will never be fully happy because I was denied that..and I still have family members that remind me, even the "good" ones...

Everything is a lie, success doesn't change anything.....

I don't want to live with the "pride" of getting through a hard life. That's bullshit. Also, it does NOT make me appreciate things, it makes me mad that a healthy mind free of past issues is forever unavailable to me.

 

[pepperfarmer]

All that happens to us and all that we do, one way or another, becomes part of us; the good and the bad. It's only from there that we can decide what to do next.

There's no replacing the past. Some people manage to spin their suffering in a certain way to encourage themselves or give themselves meaning, and it can make for a nice feel-good story, but the water that hardens an egg softens a potato.

I think many people push the narrative of 'pushing through the pain' so that neither their suffering becomes meaningless nor their wrongdoings become a burden to shoulder. It is an incredibly distressing idea to realize a lot of suffering is unnecessary, preventable, and utterly meaningless.

The true wisdom that can be learned from suffering and hard times is that they suck. Suffering sucks, hurting people sucks, and we should spend our lives alleviating it whenever we could. It is preposterous that in a society made of problem-solving animals, there exists such an intense, global resolve to never solve problems.