How do you guys deal with how you were raised?

Usually she would start yelling, and a few times she would get really out of control and call me a useless piece of shit. To this day any time my mom asks me to do anything I get very nervous, and apparently start to "bug out."

So, remember that your parents are human to, and considering that you're saying you're still in college, this is actually really good on her part for divulging this to you.

For my parents and me, it took my mom to be in the hospital at the verge of her dying to finally open up and say things like that to me. So the first step towards improving yourself and removing this tick is to forgive. Once you forgive her for that, you will bug out less, because you'll start to loose the associative memories of it being bad. Replace said bad memories of her calling you a useless piece of shit with new memories of your mom repenting and wanting to be better.

I'm always trying to be perfect. I try to make the best grades I possibly can. Nothing is ever good enough for me. I avoid doing things I know I'll fail at. I care way too much about what my parents think. I will only do things that they would react positively too, even if it means not doing things I want to do.

Welcome to being a Millennial dude. A vast majority of people in their 20's-30's were born and raised this way. I know I was. The strive for perfection, the risk averse nature, the need for constant approval from our parents and general attention from everyone? Oh boy that's a whole lot of us.

I used to be like this. Back in grade school I was fed the same bullshit, where I got "good" grades and was raised by my parents to be this perfect poster child. Same thing happened in high school; I went to a good high school and was told the world was my oyster when I went to college.

The facade started falling apart when I realized that when I went to go for my originally intended major, I quickly figured out that there was no possible way everyone was going to be amazing at everything. I was lucky enough to go to art school, and a really hard truth that you learn in my field is that there is simply people out there who are better than you.

A simple example is painting. Now technically speaking, someone can teach me how to oil paint. I can go and watch Bob Ross as much as I want, and learn all the motor skills to accomplish what it takes to make an oil painting. But, just because I do this, doesn't mean I'm a good painter. There were so, so many people in my classes who were leaps and bounds better than me, and this confused me. I was raised to believe that if I tried really hard at someone, and applied myself, I can do anything!

Nope. While drive and determination are great, the hard truth of life is that some people will just be better than you at stuff. While I don't know your major, I'm sure you notice this from time to time. There's always someone in some class that just "gets" things. They're just naturally good at it, and no matter how hard you try, you can't be as good as them.

This is how life actually is. It's what our parents never wanted to admit to us, because they wanted to keep us optimistic of the world. I'm going to table other factors that people usually bring up, like social standing, income brackets and race, and just keep it at it's core truth. Your parents weren't perfect. My parents weren't perfect. I'm not perfect, and trust me, you're not as well.

For a lot of us, when we reach this point, most choose to turn their optimism into pessimism and cynicism or apathy. They suddenly choose to not care about anything anymore, because what's the point? If I can't be #1, why do anything? Or, they get bitter about their newfound reality, and choose to wallow in self pity about it. Suddenly, they don't want to try to improve, because they're scared. What if I try to do something, and I'm not good at it? It's all a waste of time. I should only focus on what I'm good at.

The problem with going this route is that you become a self fulfilling prophecy. If you start thinking you're going to fail, you're going to start subconsciously doing habits and traits which will help you fail. Same goes with being risk averse. If you avoid trying to do things you know you'll fail at, then that means that you've closed off a lot of things in life. Because as a 20 something, like it or not, you haven't experienced the world long enough to find something you're really "good" at. And you just stopped yourself from finding potentially what you could be amazing at, because you're scared you might suck at it.

For me personally, once I reached the truth that I wasn't special or perfect, I had a different outlook on it. When I realized that for my first major, that I sucked at it.... it was actually pretty freeing. It was like being freed from my chains. The pressure was lifted off of me, because when I found that I sucked at what I thought I was good at, I then opened myself up to other opportunities. My thought process was "Well, crap. I suck at this. I wonder what else I should try to do now?". Since I didn't care about being perfect anymore, I embraced failure.

My rationale was less about being perfect, but rather, being happy. I knew that perfection was not attainable (at least right now), so fuck it, let me keep trying things out and see what sticks. As Jake from Adventure Time went and said, sucking is the first step towards getting sort of good at something.

I had a blast in my sucking period; I went and changed my major three times and took a ton of intro classes to feel things out. It took me until junior year to finally find something that stuck, but once I did that, it was smooth sailing from there.

Why was that? Well, because in my journey of sucking, I started learning more about myself, and what I liked, and what I didn't like. Every failure was a valuable life lesson towards figuring out who I was as a person, and what my tolerance level was for life. Since this was an internal journey, I never gave a shit about what people thought about me. I mean, why should I? That random asshole from my New Media Studies class who said my project sucked doesn't mean anything to me. To the point that I don't even remember his name. Back when I was in high school, I would remember the time and place anyone every told me anything negative about me. But now, all that stuff is just in the past. The negative shit kept on getting replaced by new and wonderful experiences and I kept myself open to all new opportunities.

Because of me being open to failure, and letting myself do stuff for myself, I actually ended up making some really great friends and going on some awesome adventures. When I was in my junior year, I went and did all my school work for a month ahead of time and went and took a one way trip to California to meet my friend. From there we went and drove across the United States, going from CA, to Las Vegas, to Utah, Colorado, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York and finally to Boston. I went and traveled to Europe and Hong Kong while in school, and still managed to graduate and land a full time job before I got my diploma.

I would've never been able to do these if I still thought that way I did before. If I still kept my expectations too high, or kept being risk averse, I would've never done the things I did in college, which have positively shaped me into the person I am today. If still gave a crap about my parents approval, I wouldn't have gone to art school; I would've been in college back in my hometown going for engineering or being a doctor. If I still went and focused only on the approval of others, I wouldn't have gone and jumped between majors and took classes in things people didn't think were "cool".

I know my path isn't typical, and isn't as easy as I'm putting it. But I hope that I at least brought up a couple things that were food for thought. Understand that everything you said here:

I'm always trying to be perfect. I try to make the best grades I possibly can. Nothing is ever good enough for me. I avoid doing things I know I'll fail at. I care way too much about what my parents think. I will only do things that they would react positively too, even if it means not doing things I want to do.

Is going to only lead you to stress, a lonely life and a constant sense of you feeling inferior and inadequate. Like, looking at all of these things you're saying, outside of the good grades (which trust me, not too many people actually care about in the working world), everything else is something that's not working in your favor.

You need to let go and relax for a bit. Stop avoiding stuff that scares you or makes you uncomfortable and understand that yes, when you first dive into new things, there will be a period where you're not good at it. But no one expects you to be perfect. There will be people who will bring you down and make fun of you, but remember that these people will mean nothing to you years from now. Also, when someone judges you, remember that you have to opt in to have them affect you. Trust me in saying that I'm sure in my life people have hated me or thought my actions were not right, but I literally don't give them the time to day to even remember who they are. They keep doing what they're doing, and I'm right here extremely happy and satisfied.

Stop trying to be perfect, and start trying to be you.

/r/AskMen Thread