Taking pride in achievements

If you have nobody who supports you in your endevours large or small and you grow in a praise free zone and are never encouraged or asked what you want to do only told what to do and all you burgeoning dreams are strangeld at birth how do you feel a sense of achievement, have a ambition or a sense of pride in yourself?

My parents had unrealistically high expectations. They expected me to be the best at everything but they offered no help in getting there. They did not recognize or encourage incremental improvement. If I did manage to earn top marks, they offered no praise but instead took this as their just due. They would even scold me for not having done this earlier. 

At some point, I just gave up. I studied if the subject or topic inerested me. I went through the motions if I was bored. 

It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that I realized that my success or failure had nothing to do with my parents and everything to do with me. I subsequently went to graduate school and graduated with honors. My parents didnt attend my graduation because my degree was "only" in education and not anything "important".

Although my mother used to sneer and tell me that I was stupid and ugly and would never amount to anything, I went on to buid a career in education. I taught for 32 years. 

Bottom line, my parents are divorced. I broke off contact with my mother when I was 18. I last saw my father in 2000 after I turned 40. Although I stayed in touch with him via email, I stopped writing to him in 2022 atter I belatedly realized that he would never tell me that he loved me or that he was proud of me.

He went into hospice care in 2023. I did not attend his bedside or his funeral. Niether did my sister. 

I'm ambitionless, I don't think I've ever had one and don't really seem to have a sense of achievement or pride. Quite the opposite, I've always felt anything I can do must be easy and simple and not worth mentioning, or its to be hidden like a guilty secret in case somebody tries to take it away.

Motivation has to be internal. Do well to please yourself. Do well to advance your life.

Although I am not rich, I am comfortably well off financially. What's ironic is that I've heard through the family grapevine that my mother has fallen onto hard times. Although I could help her, I have chosen not to do so. She metaphorically made her own bed many years ago and decided upon how our relationship (or lack thereof) would go. While I could contact her and rub her face in my success, I have decided that this would be mean spirited and petty. It is enough for me to know that I could help her but will not. 

She will die in poverty, on government assistance. 

As Aristotle once observed through the theory of casualty, every consequence has an antecdent action. My mother chose to be physically and emotinally abusive. She destroyed our relationship. 

To heck with her. She made her bed. She may now wallow in poverty. 

I do do stuff for me, I got a degree that was about what I wanted to do and not what others thought I ought to do, I just don't really feel any sense of achievement in the way I see other around me feeling. I don't know if I do feel it and don't recognise it, which is something I'm told is common in ASC people. But everything I've done has happened sort of organically, I've just got very good over the years at seeing an opportunity when one comes over the horizon and taking it, providing I do see it of course, I still miss an awful lot of things.

I want to say something wise and positive about you and your parents, but I can't think of what to say, except that your choice would probsbly be mine too.

I do do stuff for me, I got a degree that was about what I wanted to do and not what others thought I ought to do, I just don't really feel any sense of achievement in the way I see other around me feeling. I don't know if I do feel it and don't recognise it, which is something I'm told is common in ASC people. But everything I've done has happened sort of organically, I've just got very good over the years at seeing an opportunity when one comes over the horizon and taking it, providing I do see it of course, I still miss an awful lot of things.

I want to say something wise and positive about you and your parents, but I can't think of what to say, except that your choice would probsbly be mine too.

As I planned to go back to being self employed after graduating, being over qualified was never a problem for me, but I see how it is for others. I think it's just another hurdle put in the way of people seeking work, I notice the over-qualified thing mainly applies to jobs anyone can do like shop work etc, what I think these employers mean is that being educacted you might be stroppy about poor working practices and workers rights and that you won't want to talk about soaps and strictly, because all of us people with degree's don't so anything "normal". I think it's part of bad attitude towards education in this country, it's not someting to admire or celebrate, its something, to seperate us and sneer at.

I, personally, found my degree to be a millstone round my neck. After being unable to achieve a career out of it, I was then denied access to retarining programmes; due to 'Being Overqualified'.

In the end, I was a Government Statistic on legs. So many labels, but trapped in the entitlement of them.