unlearning
Won't work unless replaced by learning something better.
I am grateful that many more of today's people are becoming aware of the rampant abuse of the Troubled Teen Industry, myself being a survivor among them.
It is not easy trying to uncondition myself from the harmful thoughts, train of thoughts, and mental patterns that were quite literally forced on my by those who claimed they were doing this "for my own good".
It still makes me sick when I think about the man I used to be, a hollow man who was robbed of his own autonomy, agency, molded into something that I simply wasn't, a complacent and capitulant in the face of adversity, manipulation, and susceptible.
It took all the strength I had to carry on after the mental conditioning I was fed, and being the young man I was, was led to believe that I was the source of my own problems, and that the solution was to be critical of myself, and deny myself that which other children of my age were enjoying.
To think that my adolescence was robbed of me, even at 26 is...unnerving.
My parents, much like others, have been fooled into thinking the same thing as many of these institutions who profit off the generalization and subordination of the teens as a solution to their behavior by suppressing their emotions, suppressing their personality and turning them into....machines.
It wasn't until Covid shined a bright mirror onto our broken society I knew the full extent of the damage that had been done to me, as my time in isolation was unbearable, I was slipping in and out of reality.
I strongly believe that the adults of todays world have failed its children.
The hardest part about growing up is unlearning all the harmful things I was taught to accept as truth.
When the harsh reality was I was gatekept, isolated, mentally abused, and denied the same opportunities as the rest of my peers, and for trauma I didn't cause...
I strongly believe that the adults of todays world have failed its children.
I suspect that's long mostly been the case, which, mathematically speaking, makes it normal. Not good/right. Normal. "Fucked up" is the "old normal".
Conditioning is repetition of thought(s) that repetition of faith in makes real to/for you - which ("you") is also a repetition of thought believed in, thoughts about other-than-you merely being thoughts nested under the thoughts of you.
Find and adopt a better set of thoughts, and repeat the fuck out of them while simultaneously repeating believing in them: all the way unto your new normal/reality.
Mental practice - aka repetition - makes mental perfect.
Said another way (in line with words you used), strongly believe something else. What you currently strongly believe ("the adults of todays world have failed its children") may be true, but believing it and repeating/reiterating it mentally - instead of something Forward Focused Better - keeps you stuck in the old normal.
Let that shit go, and get busy with the new normal you're on the precipice of literally repeating into existence!