Rough Christmas with the family huh?
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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I am not a prisoner.
I learned to keep a good, respected career that I've enjoyed for almost 40 years vs. week to week figuring out how many paid jobs = enough $.
And I absolutely, positively made sure to tell my son I "love you" and give him plenty of hugs.
I also give good hugs to any of my friends, female & male.
We are certainly shaped by our upbringing in a big way, but we can learn throughout life and change whatever concerns us
It depends on how you define prisoner.
For some reason, I've been thinking about that stupid-ass Kamala Harris quote recently.
"You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?"
Fuck, she annoys me. But that's honestly pretty astute. I believe we are inseparable from our upbringing as it gave us the lens through which we view the world. Even when you go against the grain, you have to draw from your experiences to know what not to do.
So, is one a prisoner? Only so much as one's experience is a prisoner of oneself. It's a give and take. Everyone comes into this world unable to meaningfully impress upon it, and so we are formed by those initial experiences that we cannot choose or define. Those experiences inform our actions which inform our future experiences and so on and so forth.
At the end of the day, I think we're just truly reactionary beings. I believe we've just been reacting to the experience of the universe since we popped up in it. I've yet to see a single human creation that wasn't a reaction to a condition or behavior.
Mother Necessity, some call it. But I think we can see in other sentient creatures the experience, act, experience pattern as well. We're just fully sapient so we get to struggle with concepts such as fate.
We are deeply shaped by our upbringing, but not permanently imprisoned by it. The past explains us, but it does not define what we do next.
There's a great book that goes into detail on this called 'The Courage to be Disliked'. I highly recommend it.
In my opinion (and the position of Adlerian psychology) is that no experience (however painful) is in itself the cause of our current unhappiness. What constrains us is the meaning and goals we attach to those experiences. When someone says “I am this way because of my childhood,” the book would argue that this is often a story chosen to justify a present goal (for example, avoiding risk, intimacy, or responsibility), not an iron law imposed by the past.
Freedom begins when we separate “what happened to me” from “what I am choosing to pursue now,” and take responsibility for our own life tasks instead of living to meet others’ expectations. That is the “courage to be disliked”: accepting that if you start living according to self-chosen values rather than your upbringing’s scripts, some people may disapprove. Yet that is the price of genuine adulthood.
I like this superficially, but it doesn't seem to address deeper meanings of OPs question.
Our experiences in youth shape our framework for evaluating the future. For example, if no one in your family went to university, you would likely not ever have considered it yourself. Conversely, if your parents talked about their experiences in qualifying, selecting a school and program, the experiece of it all, the person's perception of the possible becomes greater.
Just like a poor kid has much less ability to start the next Amazon than did a rich kids who is a self made man with a large loan from his parents.
If everything you know is a black circle, and what you can push through and learn and discover yourself is a slightly larger white circle that is 10% bigger than the original. Consider that two people of equal health intellect and aptitudes will have different potentials based on upbringing. 10% of 100 of the poor child achieves 10 units of life's adventure. The rich kid's circle of experience because of enrichment from their privileged upbringing starts at 200. 10% of 200 = 20 units of adventure from the same abilities.
I come from a upper lower class family where before my generation no one went to university but from us 5 children 3 have a university degree now. This as a counter argument or different point of view. But I am from germany, it is very likely that our free education system is responsible for that mismatch.
I am the same, but anecdote doesn't equal evidence. It's a generalized principle, not a hard and fast rule too where one violation causes us to abandon the principle.
It doesn't abandon the principal, and I never wanted to state that it does. If I did sound like I had then I am sorry, it must have happend due the an error when i translated my thought to english.
I also was referring to child abuse and other childhood trauma. It can take many forms but all of them leave deep emotional scarres that don't necessarily heal.
I think child abuse specifically tends to run along family lines. You grow up being abused and then abuse your children.
abuse is a choice. you can choose not to abuse people if you were abused.
true though, that most don't and view their abuse as a justification for their abusing others.
The problem is that it really hard not to be like your parents. Kids learn by mirroring the behavior of adults and if the adults are poorly behaved it has a massive impact.
It is hard to know how to be loving if you were never loved
it's not hard if you understand your parents are idiots who make bad choices and their not loving you or treating you well is also a product of their bad choices.
and then at some point you will have to take care of them and that will further make you realize how stupid they are/were.
No, it is a part of our overall experiences and while it tends to have a very strong impact we can change and overcome negative impacts. We are not prisoners, but we might have a hard time leaving voluntarily.
Yes. We are not trapped; we are only the hero trying to escape Dracula's castle
A lot of us are. I see so much hopelessness and apathy among my generation because of how much they believed the bullshit of the previous generation.
Trauma literally rewires your brain
It is even worse than that. Your brain is still developing as a child and being in a bad situation literally prevents your brain from developing correctly.
Having small children it's even more obvious to me how the environment in the first 2 years shapes you. Just look at learning how to speak. Every baby is able to produce every vocal sounds but later in life will only be able to produce the ones it learned in early life.
And speaking itself is even more obvious. Just by being in a certain environment a baby learns to speak a certain language which also shapes how we think and feel.
And this only are the observable things. The environment also shapes the formation of the babys ego and all the other basic psychological functions.
And all this happens without us remembering it (because there is no independent psychological entity before. It is when and how the "I" is formed which then can have memories).
On the other hand though it became also obvious that babies already have different personalities (or rather tendencies), so I guess it really is 50/50 when it comes to nurture vs nature.
later in life will only be able to produce the ones it learned in early life
Early years for speech (and a ton of other things) are extremely important, but humans can definitely learn new sounds. People study new languages and learn to correct speech impediments all the time.
Our upbringing leaves huge impressions on us that help us shape who we become, but a prison implies a freedom you are kept away from.
If we had no upbringing whatsoever (how would that look like?) would we have more potential?
Even if we could engineer the perfect adult body to be born as, would we retain our reality of unique individual lives or would we all become the same flavour of person?, limiting the range of what humans combined can experience (highs and lows).
I’d argue the restrictive prison is individual life itself, you can never become someone else that exists or experience things as different species. You can only really experience your own perspective of lived experiences.
The people around you are modifiers they may enable you, hinder you but others are never and never have been in charge of your person, regardless of how much they/parents may pretend to be.
No.
But a lot of people choose to be because it gives them a built-in excuse for their perceived failures and faults. I notice with people who 'struggle' at life that they continue blame their parents for their failures, and then often end up moving back home anyway and 'settle' for a mediocre life because living on their own was 'too hard'.
I am nothing like my family members because I choose to be different than them. Not the same with many of my peers I grew up with... most of my high school friends were poster children for bad choices or refused to leave the 'nest'. However, as I have gotten older the limits of my background have been made very obvious to me and as i got even older, I have faced straight up discrimination I hadn't felt earlier. I 'pass' as being two social class above where I was born, but among the upper classes, accomplishment doesn't matter much and birthright is everything.
That said, I'm talking from a western viewpoint where independence from your family is the goal. There are different cultures where trying to get away from your upbringing/family is consider sacrilegious and families are much more dependent on one another. I had friends who lived at home until 30 and even then their parents dind't want them to leave, but they were eastern.
I am never sure how time works at all. It’s possible that everything we experience is just rolling out from some original cause, everything happening is just an effect caused by what came before, essentially has already happened, in a way, you cannot change anything.
In a kind of way? Our material conditions are a large factor in our development and decision making ability.
This almost gets into "do we even have free will?" territory which is a hell of a question.
"But your honor, humans have no free will, I couldn't have done otherwise"
"I agree, which is why I have no choice but to sentence you to prison for the crime of murder"
I honestly do not think so, I have seen people truly radically differ from how they were raised to be in very healthy ways
How much of that is still a reaction to their upbringing though?
Say someone is raised in an abusive situation, and because of that they decide to be nothing like their parents when they grow up and become the epitome of a loving, nurturing parent, or maybe decide to not have kids at all to make sure they break the cycle.
Would that same person make those same choices if they were raised in a more "normal" household?
We can't really know for sure, but I suspect in a lot of cases the answer would be no.
And of course there's all kinds of little butterfly effects.
For example, I've known one of my best friends since preschool. We attended the same public school from kindergarten through graduation, but after pre school I never had a class with him again until 10th grade. If my parents had decided to send me to a different preschool, it's very likely I'd have a different best friend, and who knows how that might have affected my life?
Or later in life, when my grandfather was no longer able to drive, my parents ended up with his truck, they could have sold it but instead they held onto it and when I started driving it sort of unofficially became "my" car that I used to commute to community college. If they hadn't kept that truck, or just didn't let me use it, I probably would have had to take the bus and would have had to arrange my class schedule differently and never sat next to a guy in a history class who would eventually introduce me to the woman who is now my wife.
So those two little decisions made in my upbringing had big effects on the trajectory of my life. I'm quite happy with where I've ended up, but I had no say in either case, so I think you could definitely argue that I'm a "prisoner" to those decisions they made. I'll never know what twists and turns my life might have taken if they'd chosen differently. Maybe there's an alternate timeline where my best friend from a different preschool convinced me to buy a bunch of Bitcoin in 2009 and I could be a retired multimillionaire right now.
Sure it can be a reaction but is that sort of growth indicative of inprisonment?
I don't think growth is a determining factor for imprisonment. If someone is sent to actual prison and is successfully reformed and rehabilitated and able turn their life around, does that mean they were any less a prisoner than someone who didn't learn and grow from the experience?
I don't think so, though you may certainly feel differently. I think the defining characteristic is the lack of agency. You are the product of countless choices that you had no say in during your childhood, you are a prisoner to those choices, nothing you can ever do will undo those choices, you can work around them, overcome them, and make the most of them, but ultimately you are who you are because of them.
Prisoners? No. Influenced to varying degrees by everything we have experienced, including, obviously, our upbringing? Certainly.
I believe it depends on the severity of the trauma. And of course our mental strength and if we are on the spectrum or not, have any abnormalities and so on... So many components.
If you had a single Mom and you only met your dad every weekend that could affect you.
If you were starved, beaten sold into sexual servitude and then failed by the legal system... I don't think you can get over that.
But the first step is to understand how messed up it was and you didn't deserve it. No child deserves any trauma.
Nope.
This is a really good question. I wouldn’t say we are prisoners always, but circumstances at birth and even prior to birth (during development) play an enormous role in shaping us. For many, to escape the circumstances of birth are insurmountable. Things like medical conditions or extreme poverty in isolated locations and no access/opportunities to change or grow. Or lack of resilience even if there is access.
Now, imagine you have all the potential in the world, but still have to overcome poverty. That means more resources are required to gain similar positive outcomes as your better positioned peers. It means an automatic higher risk of negative outcomes, and almost guaranteed trauma and health impacts.
Heredity and environment walk hand-in-hand and both have an impact on development.
I was brought to to spell truely differently and not to swear. So truely fucking no.
For the most part. There will always be exceptions, but social mobility in the western world is decreasing, and in poorer countries the situation is even worse. When you are born in a specific social "caste", there's a good chance that you will never get out of it. The probability of a child exceeding the education level of their parents is also low.
poorer countries the situation is even worse
Hukou System has entered the chat.
My parents were born rural
My mom said she needed government permission to even move to Guangzhou (a city). Before the Opening up and Reforms, it was impossible to move outside of where you were born.
I was born in the city, but I inherited my parent's status as a rural person. 2nd class resident 🙃
Being born in China was a statistic. 12% chance I was born there that year, on par with India. By total population, its 1/7 chance. Not surprising.
But what is surprising is I somehow was born into a family that was about to emigrate.
Horray!
Plot twist, 2025 comes by and its authoritarianism again. 😭
If reincarnation exist, statistically, next life I'm gonna be born in "3rd world countries" again (sorry I know its not a Politically Correct term, but it's the most commonly understood one)
India is the top one, then like China is in the top 10 again. Imagine if I get born into China again next life 💀 god damn firewall... it's not even about the politics or outside news, it's the boring domestic media, most TV show is boring
Or I could be born into India, yay poverty (no offense to Indians).
Or, depending if reincarnation is limited to humans, I could be born a factory farm cow 💀
No.
I think genes have more to do with it than upbringing. You can definitely screw a kid up with poor upbringing but a good one doesn't steer them away from what genes "predestined" us to become. Obviously it's much more nuanced than that but I don't think that parents have that much influence over what their kid becomes
In my view and understanding, genes define the potential, environment defines the realization. I mean environment in a broader sense though, I read some time ago that for teens the friend group has a bigger influence than the parents, who's impact on development is close to zero at that point.
It'll shape you and sometimes give you extra things to deal with that others don't have to, but free will is God's inalienable gift.
Idk I sure seem to be
I am never sure how time works at all. It's possible that everything we experience is just rolling out from some original cause, everything happening is just an effect caused by what came before, essentially has already happened, in a way, you cannot change anything.
If that is true, then yes. You are an effect caused by your parents' actions and they in turn were an effect of their own parents' actions, on and on back to the origin of the universe.
If it works the way it feels to us, and we are choosing actions, then no. You can modify yourself and choose to do things not caused by your upbringing, there is not just one path already laid out before you. If that's the case, I'd think just asking the question at all is a good start, deciding what you want to keep from your past and what you want to change, living intentionally, mindfully.
I do think upbringing plays a big part in shaping a person and have often said that if a baby was dropped on my doorstep I do think it would end up being like my other kids, more than different. Especially at this point when all those other kids are adults and would also be influential.