Why do so many people rationalize/ deny and oftentimes make positive

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   gmwilliamsposted 12 years ago

   
   their negative situations that occur in their lives instead of facing and stating that such situations were negative?  There are people who grew up in less than idea circumstances, they KNOW this; however, they claim and assert that they had happy childhoods; however, in their unguarded moments, they maintain that their childhoods were dismal to horrifically abysmal. 
   
   For example, there are people who grew up in penurious socioecnomic conditions where they struggled constantly and did not have enough for the basic rudiments. However, they DENY this, always stating "how happy" their childhoods are.  Are such people totally illogical?  What makes people live in an unrealistic world of their own making instead of facing the facts that their childhoods were less than ideal?

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      MelissaBarrettposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      It's all a matter of personality.
      
      I think it's presumptive to believe that people are being "unrealistic" because they view their situation as happy.  There are people who are horribly unhappy because they don't have a Porsche and people who can be deliriously happy with nothing more than the clothes on their back.
      
      I've come to realize that happiness vs. unhappiness has very little to do with situations.  It has everything to do with self-pity.  If you are the kind of person who is going to dwell on everything bad in your life, then the bad really doesn't have to be all that bad to make you miserable. If you are the kind of person who shrugs things off, then you are going to move on regardless of what horrible things might happen.
      
      I call it the broken-nail test.  I can tell everything I need to know about a person by how they react to a broken nail (or a flat tire... or a fenderbender... whatever).  If they do the "oh poor me" thing, they are the type that is going to hold on to every single "traumatic" event in their life.  I eliminate people like that from my life QUICKLY.  Those kinds of people will never be happy, and they tend to irritate me on a pretty regular basis.

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   Emile Rposted 12 years ago

   We weren't affluent when I was a child. We lived on a farm in the countryside. Honestly? Those were incredibly happy days. I may have worn hand me down hand me downs. (No, that isn't a mistype. I wore clothes both my sisters out grew) I loved it. I spent my teens in an affluent family. So we had everything material we could want. I suffered from backstabbing associates who were jealous of what we had. I never knew if someone disliked me for who I was, or what I had.
   
   Adult life. I enjoy the struggles much more than the easy times. I love it when I have to think about food purchases and make every penny count. We eat better because we have a need to be more creative with less variety.
   
   Penurious economics are subjective. Money isn't everything and I do think it not only can't buy happiness; it can stand in the way of it, if money is your primary motivator. But, I have never lived in a ghetto with high crime rates and I have never lived in abject poverty. I feel for people in those situations. But, you can find an upside to everything. People in those situations who are happy have found the upside.

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   Lisa HWposted 12 years ago

   Who are these people anyway?  Do you know them?  If you know them  you ought to just ask them any questions you have.  I don't know...   Anyone I've ever run into is either someone who is more than vocal about having had a miserable childhood, someone who is thankful to be able to say he was fortunate enough to have been a happy kid, or something in-between.  (Things aren't necessarily "either/or".)
   
   I do know it's not very productive to assume people are lying when they may, in fact, not be; and it's certainly not fair to those people to assume one knows someone else's truth more than that "someone else", himself, knows his own truth/experience.
   
   Might there be someone out there who had a difficult childhood and prefers to only talk about the nicer parts of it?  Sure.  A lot of people don't think their personal gripes about childhood is anyone else's business.
   
   All I know is that if someone wants to understand someone else better, most people would far prefer to simply be asked than to have a bunch of other people make guesses and imagine things that can't possibly be accurate (in view of the fact that the very person who can most make himself best understood, or share his own experience, has not simply been asked).  People who say they had happiness in their childhood are generally pretty pleased to share why/how they were happy.  So I'd say you should ask them.

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