Please change my view that being a nerd is a bad thing

[Urchin]

Hello forums. 

 

I am a 24 year old with a history of major depression as well as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). 

This thread is intended for both support and a kind of ''change my view'' thing. I hold the view that being ''nerdy'' is a bad thing, because throughout my life my parents have given me much grief for it and I feel like it's significantly affected my life and my mental health.

I feel a lot of inner conflict with myself, that causes me daily stress to the extent I am having heart-related symptoms and also ringing in my ears that doctors say is caused by my body releasing too many stress hormones that are effectively poisoning my body from the inside out.

 

A vast majority of this stress comes from my parents, and how my family sees me.

 

When I was a meager toddler, instead of drawing stick men like most toddlers would, I would draw things that I'd call 'inventions'. A lot of these were aircraft designs, but others were gadgets, for example a hybrid of a mobile phone and a TV that you could wear on your wrist to talk to people. Sometimes, my school teachers would see these drawings and remark on how impressive they were, and how advanced my grasp of aerodynamics was for such a young age. My parents did not appreciate this behavior, and threw my drawings away, saying that they were a ''waste of paper''. I immediately felt guilty, as if I was a bad person for drawing what I liked to draw. I was more interested in chemistry sets or model solar systems than toy trucks or cars. My parents told me I was not normal, in the worst way possible, and rushed me to every pediatric mental clinic as possible, rabidly trying to get a diagnosis so that they would not appear as bad parents for allowing their child to be ''nerdy''. 

My parents would tell literally every single person on the block that I was ''crazy'' or ''retarded'' before they even layed eyes on me. When I told my parents how this was affecting my mental health for real, they ignored me and pretended that me being upset was a part of my ''craziness'' or ''retardation''. 

In high school, I'd enjoy hanging around with ''nerds''. I am an extrovert but I am what you may call a stereotypical nerd, so I fit in with them pretty decently. My parents shamed me for this, telling me to ''stop hanging around and talking with nerdy people''. They would also try to discredit their intelligence, by saying how they weren't smart and looked 'gross' just because they were skinny and wore glasses. 

When I was in college, I studied science. My parents argued with me not to go to university, and I got so discouraged and upset that I dropped out of college. As a result I currently have no job or aim in life.

In my adulthood and recent years, I have come up with more inventions. I have not told anyone about them. But a part of me is aching to get them out there, even though I don't know how. I have three big inventions, and two of them are aircraft. Actually, both of them would be considered entirely new types of aircraft. The first one is a wearable flying machine. It isn't a jetpack, it'd use electrical energy, it would be a lot quieter and less bulky. It'd likely be a lot less expensive than a jetpack, and people would probably use them to fly to work since it'd be light enough and small enough to be in an ultralight aircraft category and require no pilots licence or training. 

 

The second one can best be described as a train in the sky, with the capacity for the aircraft to be thousands of feet long, powered by solar energy and would require very little electric motors to get around, because its design would allow it to drift through the skies like a jellyfish drifts in the oceans. They would be the cruise ships of the sky, and would operate at altitudes slightly higher than that of commercial airliners.

 

The third one is a forcefield and one of the most technical designs I've come up with. It would basically replace normal barbed fences and would be implemented in areas such as high security prisons. The design would act as an invisible forcefield that would stop specific people from getting close to the generator of said 'forcefield'. It would also only activate when the person gets within a certain distance of it, saving energy. 

 

I have 3D models, schematics, drawings, and documents about what these concepts would look like and how they would work, along with the physics behind each function that they would have, as well as their applications. The sky train one is one that I've had since I was around five years old and was one of the 'inventions' that I drew. 

But yet a part of me doesn't want to get those concepts out there, because being 'nerdy' is apparently a really bad thing. For instance I told my parents about that launch last week, and how they shot a car up into space, followed by the boosters landing autonomously sci-fi style and how amazing it was. My parents looked so disappointed in me and looked at me as though I was a witch. They then promptly ignored me and changed the subject. 

 

I really don't know what to do. I turn 25 later this year. What's more is I feel like I am starting to hate myself and hate ''nerdy'' people in general because I feel like my parents have warped my mind. Meanwhile my brother got all F's in school and does drugs but my parents and family don't demonize him as much behind his back.

 

[successful_workthru]

On 15/02/2018 at 2:17 PM, Urchin said:

Hello forums. 

 

I am a 24 year old with a history of major depression as well as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). 

This thread is intended for both support and a kind of ''change my view'' thing. I hold the view that being ''nerdy'' is a bad thing, because throughout my life my parents have given me much grief for it and I feel like it's significantly affected my life and my mental health.

I feel a lot of inner conflict with myself, that causes me daily stress to the extent I am having heart-related symptoms and also ringing in my ears that doctors say is caused by my body releasing too many stress hormones that are effectively poisoning my body from the inside out.

 

A vast majority of this stress comes from my parents, and how my family sees me.

 

When I was a meager toddler, instead of drawing stick men like most toddlers would, I would draw things that I'd call 'inventions'. A lot of these were aircraft designs, but others were gadgets, for example a hybrid of a mobile phone and a TV that you could wear on your wrist to talk to people. Sometimes, my school teachers would see these drawings and remark on how impressive they were, and how advanced my grasp of aerodynamics was for such a young age. My parents did not appreciate this behavior, and threw my drawings away, saying that they were a ''waste of paper''. I immediately felt guilty, as if I was a bad person for drawing what I liked to draw. I was more interested in chemistry sets or model solar systems than toy trucks or cars. My parents told me I was not normal, in the worst way possible, and rushed me to every pediatric mental clinic as possible, rabidly trying to get a diagnosis so that they would not appear as bad parents for allowing their child to be ''nerdy''. 

My parents would tell literally every single person on the block that I was ''crazy'' or ''retarded'' before they even layed eyes on me. When I told my parents how this was affecting my mental health for real, they ignored me and pretended that me being upset was a part of my ''craziness'' or ''retardation''. 

In high school, I'd enjoy hanging around with ''nerds''. I am an extrovert but I am what you may call a stereotypical nerd, so I fit in with them pretty decently. My parents shamed me for this, telling me to ''stop hanging around and talking with nerdy people''. They would also try to discredit their intelligence, by saying how they weren't smart and looked 'gross' just because they were skinny and wore glasses. 

When I was in college, I studied science. My parents argued with me not to go to university, and I got so discouraged and upset that I dropped out of college. As a result I currently have no job or aim in life.

In my adulthood and recent years, I have come up with more inventions. I have not told anyone about them. But a part of me is aching to get them out there, even though I don't know how. I have three big inventions, and two of them are aircraft. Actually, both of them would be considered entirely new types of aircraft. The first one is a wearable flying machine. It isn't a jetpack, it'd use electrical energy, it would be a lot quieter and less bulky. It'd likely be a lot less expensive than a jetpack, and people would probably use them to fly to work since it'd be light enough and small enough to be in an ultralight aircraft category and require no pilots licence or training. 

 

The second one can best be described as a train in the sky, with the capacity for the aircraft to be thousands of feet long, powered by solar energy and would require very little electric motors to get around, because its design would allow it to drift through the skies like a jellyfish drifts in the oceans. They would be the cruise ships of the sky, and would operate at altitudes slightly higher than that of commercial airliners.

 

The third one is a forcefield and one of the most technical designs I've come up with. It would basically replace normal barbed fences and would be implemented in areas such as high security prisons. The design would act as an invisible forcefield that would stop specific people from getting close to the generator of said 'forcefield'. It would also only activate when the person gets within a certain distance of it, saving energy. 

 

I have 3D models, schematics, drawings, and documents about what these concepts would look like and how they would work, along with the physics behind each function that they would have, as well as their applications. The sky train one is one that I've had since I was around five years old and was one of the 'inventions' that I drew. 

But yet a part of me doesn't want to get those concepts out there, because being 'nerdy' is apparently a really bad thing. For instance I told my parents about that launch last week, and how they shot a car up into space, followed by the boosters landing autonomously sci-fi style and how amazing it was. My parents looked so disappointed in me and looked at me as though I was a witch. They then promptly ignored me and changed the subject. 

 

I really don't know what to do. I turn 25 later this year. What's more is I feel like I am starting to hate myself and hate ''nerdy'' people in general because I feel like my parents have warped my mind. Meanwhile my brother got all F's in school and does drugs but my parents and family don't demonize him as much behind his back.

 

Ask your GP for an asperger's test. It is a neurodevelopmental condition and is a blessing rather tthan a curse. Look up national autistic society. Many adults feel relief when they get diagnosed as they realise their brain is just wired differently. Einstein was asperger's. Google it, loads of people are crying with releief when they get a diagnosis after years of being called weird and misdiagnosed.

Life often starts a new for newly diagnosed aspergers people they get a new lease of life.