Comment by samaltmanfried | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samaltmanfried | Hacker News Reader

ACE 4. I generally feel like adult life is very difficult for me, but I'm a fully functional adult. I'm in my 40s, married with young children. I suffer from depression, but I've come to terms with the fact that I'll be living with it forever. I'm totally functional otherwise. I have a career in software, a mortgage and I'm in good physical shape. I've spent a bit of time lately thinking about how childhood trauma may have affected my adult life in negative ways. I get bored and disillusioned easily in jobs, and find myself changing jobs every 18 months on average out of sheer frustration with how unfulfilling they are. I find myself annoyed at bureaucracy, and get impatient with less competent people. I never express my frustrations with them, but I feel a lot of negative emotions about my coworkers. One day I'd like to make some effort to address my frame of mind.

I'm in basically the same situation, although not quite 40. My ACE score is 1 or 2 - I didn't have a very traumatic childhood, but I was an only child and my parents were never really mentally present for me. My parents themselves had a pretty traumatic childhood and early adult life.

I went through my 20s by keeping my self busy with work and side-projects. I guess "high functional depressive" is the term. Financially I've done pretty well - changing jobs often has some perks. Working for early stage startups you can avoid a lot of the corporate BS which has become my niche.

The hardest part of life has been since I had kids. Trying to be present for them, and not making the same mistakes as my parents.

Anything you would have done differently in the past? You're describing me but two decades younger hahaha

For me the greatest help was therapy, and if advised by a professional, medication.

It's really hard for me to answer this question. In hindsight, I feel like I should always have been more stubborn, more intransigent, more uncompromising. However, who knows how things would have really turned out if I'd have lived life like a wrecking ball.

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