Does the environment you grow up in have an effect on your personality today?

I am wondering this because I grew up in a very tumultuous environment and I know it has had an effect on my personality today and social skills. In no way am I complaining, because I know everyone struggles someway in life and everyone is dealt a different hand and some people are way worse off. I grew up with an alcoholic and mentally ill parent. Later in my childhood and early teens, around 12-13 years old, things got really bad. Money troubles, moving a lot and my family being homeless are some of the challenges I was faced with. I am asking this because I feel like my social skills didn't develop properly due to lack of confidence and stress because of these hardships going on at home. I felt embarrassed about who I was and withdrew from people. Today, in college, I still find it difficult to make friends with people and initiate friendships and conversation even though I am on my own and have a very good life.

Why I am asking this is because I am wondering if the hardships I have had to deal with at a young age affected my social development?

Thanks

If you need to rewire things, then therapy is made for that. Also after 18 you carve your own path, make your own choices and build who you want to be.

Courses and learning are everywhere, including developing social skills.

I feel like my social skills didn't develop properly due to lack of confidence and stress because of these hardships going on at home. I felt embarrassed about who I was and withdrew from people. Today, in college, I still find it difficult to make friends with people and initiate friendships and conversation even though I am on my own and have a very good life.

You can put two people into an identical environment and one person will move on and become successful and the other will forever remain a damaged victim of their past.

How you tend to react is actually nature, aka you are born with certain tendencies and personality. The good news is that you can absolutely rewire your brain to think and perceive differently. As the above poster noted, that's precisely what behavioral modification therapy is for. It teaches you how to get beyond the past and move forward and be a happy, healthy, well adjusted person. All you need is desire and a willingness to work hard at it.

Only to an extent. I grew up with two alcoholic's. I don't drink I don't smoke. I'm not saying I'm perfect. I have my faults but I don't blame my environment.

Environment can absolutely change a person it's a combination of environment AND how you're wired. If you need to develop healthier ways of thinking and really getting to the meat of your problems, that is what therapy is for. I've found it very helpful.

Hello and thanks for the posts. I am not necessarily damaged by the past and I have let go of it. I have created a life for myself which I am very proud of. The only area I fall short is social skills and friendships so that is why I am asking if these experiences could have somehow subconsciously made it harder for me to have good social skills.

are you looking to ascribe your poor social skills to your past to justify them or are you asking what the solution is for the effects early life experience has on the developmental process and their manifestation in adulthood?

Absolutely, how we grow up affects who we are.

Reading your post, it could honestly have been written by me. I'll say this: I definitely live every day with issues from my upbringing with my alcoholic/ depressed dad (he was also emotionally abusive and would stonewall for weeks sometimes and over punish). I saw a vicious cycle of the hit on my self esteem at home making me overly sensitive everywhere else (causing me to be teased at school) and also overly-achieving; needing to excel everywhere and taking it personally when I didn't - or feeling like I was going to lose something important if I failed somewhere. I developed a pretty bad fear of failure and some social anxiety I'll always have to deal with it. So it is a real thing to be damaged by that kind of upbringing, and it isn't playing a victim to recognize it.

But the important thing is to see that you maybe have a deficit in that area and to do something about it. I know that I have to work harder than my friends to feel ready for a social gathering. I've had to go to therapy to find coping skills I wasn't raised with so that if I go through something, I don't take it on as if I am losing everything. I worked extremely hard on myself and would say that pretty much every day I have a thought that comes from those years, but can easily look at it for what it is and let it go. You have to learn not to cave into the dark parts of yourself - that's everyone's challenge.

Hello and thanks for the posts. I am not necessarily damaged by the past and I have let go of it. I have created a life for myself which I am very proud of. The only area I fall short is social skills and friendships so that is why I am asking if these experiences could have somehow subconsciously made it harder for me to have good social skills.

To answer your question, yes and no. I've been through traumatic experiences as a child and growing up in high school. My main disadvantage is that it's always been harder for me to trust someone or accept that people love me. However, I've come very far from that since college. Yes, you may have a slight disadvantage but it's no reason to let that affect your social skills and friendship. I used to view myself as very introverted and shy. But I pushed my boundaries by doing improv comedy, public speaking and putting myself out there. Now most of my friends would describe me as anything but shy and I have a very great group of friends. This would NOT have happened if I did not put myself in situations where I could push my boundaries and do things out of my comfort zone like learning to hug people and being affectionate, when these things did not come naturally to me growing up.

So yes, your past has some influence but you can make that influence minimal by doing things to push your comfort zone.

Read up on introversion. /

That's not about 'damage', it's not the same as shy. Not everyone is a social butterfly with hundreds of acquaintances. What you can do is join some things. Things that interest you to find like minded people. Book clubs, any clubs, volunteer someplace animals? another cause?

Finding others is really about finding yourself. many people with zero damage and superior upbringings can be introverted or lonely at times. In fact overcoming hardships or coming from humble beginnings and getting your life on an even keel in the direction you want it to go is a testament to your fortitude. No one needs your life story right away they need to see you as you are now.

The only area I fall short is social skills and friendships so that is why I am asking if these experiences could have somehow subconsciously made it harder for me to have good social skills.

Have you tried therapy?

There's something that happens when we come from tumultuous childhoods. I'll try to recap my own experiences on it, and maybe it will resonate with you.

Growing up as I did, it became obvious that other kids weren't going through the same things. There was pressure from my family to keep things secret and "uphold the family name". There were painfully awful reactions from friends if I said anything about my home life that was drastically different from their lives.

I learned to be silent. I learned that I would be rejected and punished if I was honest, or myself.

Because we are healthy people, we installed defense mechanisms designed to protect us from all that. Please understand this. We are not sick, or stunted, or twisted. We simply developed protections to help us survive a difficult environment.

But now, we no longer need those particular defenses.

It takes a lot to recognize what defenses we have, and

then examine whether we still need them or not, and

then how to make a conscious effort to get rid of what isn't helping us anymore.

That's where therapy can be helpful.

It would not take much for you to teach yourself how to approach people, how to start conversations, things you can talk about - the trick is that you still need to be genuine, yourself. This is where you'll need to focus your efforts. Your defense mechanism is saying you need to hide yourself, hide the truth, feel shame. And you don't. You never did as you've done nothing to be ashamed of. Your defenses are saying you shouldn't even risk talking to people because surely you'll be rejected, you're different, you're .... you get the idea. This defense protected you from pain. It worked back then. It was a healthy thing to do at the time.

Bu today, a healthy defense mechanism has become unhealthy. You no longer need this one. It isn't helpful any more. Focus on getting rid of it. It's not easy. But you are worth it.

thank you for the response and sharing your experience with me

Yes, it does. How it does can vary from person to person though. Some people who grow up poor, stay poor. Perhaps they didn't learn any different, or perhaps the behaviors that kept the family poor were normalized. Others, in the same environment become extremely frugal. Like anything else, that frugality can become a vice instead of a virtue when pushed to extremes.

In your case, people who grew up without learning social skills can go either way, being extremely introverted or working hard to be extroverted. While your environment definitely affects your outlook, it is by no means your destiny.