I know it may sound like a broad or impossible question, but in your experience, when you were 18, how would you judge your thinking skills then, and whether they were distorted by hormones etc or not?
I’m 33 now, and I’d say I’m less cocky, I now see the gray instead of just black and white, and I have more patience and understanding. I’ve also seen a lot of stuff since I was 18.
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When I was 18 I was mostly alive, mentally, but Isolated nevertheless but with a girlfriend.
I had trauma and hormones might have played a huge part in my pathological psychological development, I don’t know.
The brain is undergoing construction at 18 and finishes at around 30. 18 year olds behave like part of their brains are missing because they are, in a sense.
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my pdoc says that with brains “its never too late to fix” at any age. is this true??
To “get” an illness?
I wouldn’t call it distorted thinking, I don’t think that’s the right word. My thinking was not very mature and I did a lot of stupid things but at that age it’s natural. I didn’t want to kill anyone or really hurt anyone. But I did what my friends did and that got me into some trouble. But hey, I went to school every day, I wasn’t abnormally too weird but I followed most of societies rules and getting in trouble was actually adventurous and fun because I had energy and brains. Now if you throw drugs into the mix they are what distorted my thinking. But that’s the definition of mind altering drugs. I knew what I could get away with and what was acceptable. my problem was that I didn’t think, I acted, but that’s typical at that age. NOW, at age 54 I think before I act. I analyze and ponder.
I think there are two very distinct and different questions here. One is, “How would I judge my thinking skills at 18?” The other is “How were they distorted, and by what?”
Taking the first first (but keeping the second in mind): I was so instructed, conditioned, mesmerized, socialized, normalized and brainwashed by the time I was 18 that I could not understand what the philosophy prof was saying then that I can so easily understand now. My head was so full of common cult-ural beliefs, ideas, ideals, rules, regulations, requirements, mandates, doctrines, dogmas and other WORDs… that there was no room left for observing to notice to recognize to appreciate to understand what was actually going on.
Taking the second second (but keeping the first in mind): Are my thinking, feelings and behavior any less effected by neurosteroids than they were when I was 18? Please. Get a grip. All I have to do is step back, look, listen and feel to answer that (or any other question of similar gravitas). Hint: The hormones are still there.
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When I was eighteen it seemed like everyone else had a little instruction book to life that I didn’t have. In AA they call that “judging your insides by other people’s outsides”. It still seems that way to me now, but I don’t worry about it.
It seems they have it together no?
They say they don’t.
That’s simply not 100% true. Adult brains, by adult I mean older than 35 are WAY less easily rewired than younger ones. Neuroplasiticity is a real phenomenon yet there are windows of time in which it is possible, in most cases. Studies on deafferented limbs of monkeys and stroke victims and crap only support the notion that there is a time window for change to become permanent.
There is such thing as too late.
Im eighteen at this very moment and im not completely distorted…
I did not like who I was at 19 and 20+… At 18 I was in hospital…
I was angry and blaming my family for trying to kill me… for abandoning me…
I was sure the drugs I chose (XTC… amphetamines… pot and Alcohol) were far better for me then the meds my doc was trying to get me to take.
I was stubborn and cut a lot of people out of my life for little things.
I’m so glad I’m over all that and that my brain has calmed down.
I’ll take issue with that up to a point. And the point is senile dementia of any sort.
Ouch. (Pulling arrow out of my butt.)
I felt the same about others and myself. But I guess I listened to DR Phil and got “excited about my life”, then I cared less.