First 20 years of my life was me waiting to get out of the environment I was in. The next 5 trying to stay alive. The past 5 improving myself, my mental health, the way I view life and relate to others.

It's all good in the end. For 25 years of my life I thought everyone faked being happy. I now know that it actually is possible to be happy :).

I was sexually abused by a family member at young age. It certainly affected me in negative ways, and should be stopped, but it is also important to emphasize to current victims that being abused doesn't make you uniquely and shamefully damaged. Some large percentage of humans have been traumatized as children, and many of us find our way to a fulfilling and good life. Lots of therapy, maybe a few sharp corners that won't go away, but still healing is possible, and not even algorithmically difficult, just a lot of hard work and awareness and willingness to question deeply behind the surface of things.

I might sometimes get triggered by certain textures while I am eating, but I am able to trust people and tolerate being hurt without totally shutting down and enjoy my family and work and leisure.

Some people are tremendously evil, but most people are surprisingly resilient. We didn't get thru human history without being able to overcome a lot.

Both the cause and consequences of this need to be addressed, but the problems are twofold; one is that - of course - it's hidden, and most cases of abuse are never made public; in my personal experience (not me but my SO) it's the victim that doesn't want anyone else to know, and I'm confident that this is the case in many cases.

And the other part - the consequences - need to be addressed too. Many people I know are in a mental health program of sorts, myself included although that was mostly last year and nothing major. But a lot of people in their 30's finally have the awareness that something is not right, the time/means to pursue it, and the access to mental health, and get a lot of epiphanies on themselves - be it trauma, neurodiversity such as ADHD/ASD, etc. At least four adults I know have started on ADHD medication and have had an emotional moment where for the first times in their life their head emptied and they could think straight or not go through a dozen mood swings a day.

But we're in a mental health crisis; a lot of people grew up with "just suck it up", "deal with it", "there's others that have it worse", or "this is normal", but thanks to awareness, the internet, and reduced stigma to talk about mental health, there's a lot of people now who realize they need help, which is overloading the mental health systems. In my country there's at least a year long wait period for some of the most vulnerable people (teenagers), which is a big problem because teenagers are also more neuroplastic still, so they would benefit the most from mental health help compared to people in their 30's.

TL;DR, while the root causes from an older generation will be difficult to solve, I have high hopes for a younger generation that has more awareness and access to mental health problems and who can hopefully resolve their own issues growing up and not pass it on to the younger generation.

However, I'm also aware that the above is a very "western" point of view; there's plenty of situations worldwide, right now, that will result in generational trauma for decades to come yet. The people currently living in warzones, poverty, etc will never be the same again. "Our" generation is the children and grandchildren of people who lived through WW2, who themselves or whose parents lived through WW1 and the Great Depression, and this generational trauma is still very much affecting "us" today to lesser or greater degrees.

I get that feeling of feeling like everyone is faking being happy, and I'm glad that you've found a way to overcome it.

For me, I've always struggled with being overly cynical. I can't let nice moments be, and I can't let accomplishments lie.

I feel like I'm somewhere on the journey you are on, and I hope to get to the same destination.

I'm no psychologist but I share the sentiment, a feeling of "this'll all end up in tears anyway". From the point of view of attachment theory, it may be related to avoidant attachment; don't get too attached to nice moments, accomplishments, good times because something will go wrong.

I'm fairly sure I'm in the avoidant quadrant; as to what caused it, I'm not entirely sure but the things that fit are that my mother was very ill when I was 3 (thrombosis, she spent a few days in ER), and that a friend who sort of "saved" me from being all alone at school just left one day (her parents moved), which re-emphasized my already present feeling of "shouldn't get too attached". The rest was probably self-inflicted, feelings of superiority / being more mature than the other kids, fear of rejection, etc. But it adds up and resulted in growing up awkward, immature, single, boring, etc. I'm 38 now and have been through some mental health stuff, but it's expensive (since it's not clinical) and ultimately pointless unless I throw my life around, become a more social person, and get a lot more reinforcement that I'm wrong and my cynicism is not justified. But instead I get reinforcement that I'm not wrong. To a point that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, but at the same time society is going through a loneliness crisis and focused on individuality, so... I'm not wrong?

Anyway; avoidant attachment theory, have a look.

Netflix, movies, TV shows, hobbies, personal life. Sometimes work stuff.

Hey, thanks for this! I've been considering going to the doctor for a long time, but never have. I just sent my GP an e-mail and hopefully will have an appointment set up soon.

I wouldn't say this is necessarily true in younger generations. I grew up with kids from Russian families in school & kindergarten and the distrust of Russians instilled in you by your parents quickly fades.

Older generations are a bit more problematic in this regard. I would say there's a general hate towards older Russians that still can't speak Estonian, even from younger generations.

However, I would say Russians are generally disadvantaged in Estonia and that's a big source of issues. In my childhood, younger Russians tended to be poorer and therefore were more involved in various criminal activities. Most of my friends and I were afraid of Russians in our area, as they liked to pick fights and generally mess with you.

I was addicted to computer games for a while. I never even really liked gaming, but it was a way to tune out the horrible life at home. Eventually, I kind of trained myself to like games; it's really weird too, thinking back I was the kid who liked long-term gratification over short-term, but eventually gaming changed me.

After I moved out, it was an anchor of sorts and I started playing even more. By this point, my gaming habits definitely matched up with the definition of addiction - at one point, I even went ~2 days without sleeping and eating.

The big change for me was getting a job. I couldn't fuck this up (considering I had already flunked out of university, getting a job in my dream field was a miracle), so I quit computer games. I've "relapsed" a few times since and every single time it has been horrible. It consumes me completely. I have now also decided to basically cut out any easy-to-consume entertainment out of my life. I spend my free time on books, nature and sports.

Looking back, it's the experience of totally fucking up my life through addiction that has helped me beat my addiction.

I was extremely desparate when I realized I could no longer pay for my World of Warcraft subscription when I was a kid. To the point of trying to scam people to pay for my account, trying credit card number generators and all sorts of silly things.

I would wake up early in the morning, play the game until someone mentioned I should eat, I would eat, then continue playing, until someone mentioned I should eat, I'd continue playing until late at night, go to sleep and continue.

I was extremely addicted and attached to the game. I dreamt about it, I thought about it, fantasized about it.

1 year passed, I started 8th grade and all of a sudden WoW and other computer games were extremely boring. I could play them for about 30 minutes and would just get fed up with any game.

I was like that for years, and just recently I started Super Meat Boy and it had the same addictive fulfilling qualities that I felt when I was a kid, and I could spend hours on it. I completed the game, switched to playing others, but still couldn't get addicted to anything.

I rarely play games now. Max 8 hours total playtime per year.

> I dreamt about it

I would not believe that this was possible if the same thing didn't happen to me. Also about World of Warcraft. Just once.

The next day I got bored killing creatures on some side quest, a thought came through my mind ("what am I doing with my life?"), and I've never looked back.

Happened to me all the time. I fondly remember dreaming of an infinite minesweeper plane where I could effortlessly solve pattern after pattern, forever.

That's when I realized that dreams are a mechanism the brain uses to train itself in a best-effort simulation of recent new challenges. Probably for committing new learnings from conscious understanding roughly analogous to symbolic AI to subconscious pattern matching more similar to ML. Months after I remembered those minesweeper dreams, I was able to multitask any though process that did not involve eyes and hands parallel to the game, in fact I solved my fastest boards when my conscious mind was completely distracted from the game. (and it was an addiction, and I've grown or of it)

Dreams are some mixup of things that happened during the day. No need to read too much into them. I've dreamt of work, people, hobbies including computer games and cherished activities not practised for years at the time of the dream. Dreaming of "stuff that happened", basically.

Dreaming of stuff that happened can be useful if you take it seriously. I often visit experiences in sleep which, when they happened, had led me to say to myself, "I should think about that, figure out what I could have done differently, what might have been going through their heads."

Evolution doesn't tend to waste things. As long as some processing is happening, it might as well be put to good use.

What kind of games did you play if I may ask?

I'm a casual gamer but at times I do lose grip on reality when playing certain games. I feel like understanding what causes the addictive behavior really helps.

For instance most RPG titles employ the same techniques as gambling, and gaming addiction is often equivalent to gambling addiction. Before getting excited about that item drop, think of it as just pure math (probabilty theory) and that it's nothing special about you finding that item.

Unfortunately this type of gambling in video games has a more severe form these days, with the increasing trend of microtransactions and "loot boxes". These can impact your wallet as opposed to just your time.

> I have now also decided to basically cut out any easy-to-consume entertainment out of my life.

I am by no means addicted to easy-to-consume entertainment, but I'm worried that it does impact my ability to focus on boring but important things. Could you share what steps you took, or what process you followed, to cut those forms of media out of your life?

Has doing so reaped benefits besides more time to spend on other things?

Congrats on your ability to recognize that it was a problem, and then intelligently bust out of it and move on. That's the stuff! Whatever 'that' is that enables us to fight and claw our way through ... I love those gritty people.