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Implications of chronic pain on my future success?
17M here. I've been suffering from an incessant headache for 20 months, which has escalated into a monstrous, migraine-like intensity for the last five or so months. I can't think, I can hardly go anywhere or talk to anyone; it's basically analogous to being dead. I'm trying my hardest to get help for this and I'm seeing medical specialists.
To contextualise this, I think it'd be useful to quickly run through my adolescence:
* At 10, I was flourishing in school, and I also got into programming.
* At 11, I fell into a deep depression and quit programming because of it. This depression persisted for a few years, and was exacerbated by COVID.
* By the time I was 15, I'd worked hard to eliminate any factors contributing to my depression and adapted a totally different outlook on life. This was the golden period between my poor mental health and chronic pain. My lingering obsession with outer space since early childhood had mostly persisted, but by this time, I began devouring documentaries, books and YouTube videos on the subject matter. Eventually, I had an existential crisis, through which I figured out my purpose in life and career aspiration. I begun to excel academically again. However, the tides were about about to turn. My headache struck.
* By mid-16, I had largely ignored my new headache, despite it slightly hampering my efforts in most things. I'd finished school with excellent grades, and was about to go to college. I had a renewed interest in technology, and took up programming again. I was sure that nothing would stop me from excelling in anything I wanted, not even my pain; I felt invincible.
* Once I started college last September, my headache mysteriously skyrocketed. I was promptly forced to abandon everything - studying, socialising, programming (I wasn't even slightly competent yet). It's gotten so bad, that I often can't walk without stumbling or falling over. To this day, it is continuously worsening.
My days largely consist of slowly and painstakingly trying to get through books and educational YouTube videos because I'm adamant on continuously feeding my brain with stimuli, staving off my apparent and inevitable decline in cognitive ability, or else, lying in bed. My theory's that I've spent so much of my earlier adolescence in emotional pain, that my body is wired to just feel pain, regardless of whether it resides within in my thoughts, or somewhere external. Getting rid of my depression just caused the pain to physically manifest itself elsewhere.
I feel as if I've been robbed of my entire adolescence, and I haven't gotten a chance to get good at anything. This is harrowing, because the high-fliers, especially those within fields like technology, tend to start very early on, and spend their most neuroplastic years feeding their intellect, developing problem-solving skills, networking and forming valuable relationships, etc. Meanwhile, I've been raised by poor mental health and pain. I try to find solace in the fact that extremely successful people tend to be recipients of trauma, but mine seems to reside largely within my own mind and body, leading me to perceive it as weakness rather than something that will make me stronger and wiser.
I'm aware I can still get good at something later. I just don't think I will be able to become a pioneer in any industry, or contribute anything of immense worth to humanity. At best, I feel like I can start learning a skill as soon as my pain has subsided (which likely won't be soon) later than most, and perhaps earn a comfortable living, rather than building or running anything groundbreaking, because my brain hasn't been wired to think like the geniuses, nor is it as experienced as the young veterans.
Are my sentiments regarding this matter completely unwarranted, and wrong? Can I still really excel at something and achieve world-class competence? And how can I expect my experiences as a teenager to influence my path later on, be it positively or negatively?
#inspiration
source
17M here. I've been suffering from an incessant headache for 20 months, which has escalated into a monstrous, migraine-like intensity for the last five or so months. I can't think, I can hardly go anywhere or talk to anyone; it's basically analogous to being dead. I'm trying my hardest to get help for this and I'm seeing medical specialists.
To contextualise this, I think it'd be useful to quickly run through my adolescence:
* At 10, I was flourishing in school, and I also got into programming.
* At 11, I fell into a deep depression and quit programming because of it. This depression persisted for a few years, and was exacerbated by COVID.
* By the time I was 15, I'd worked hard to eliminate any factors contributing to my depression and adapted a totally different outlook on life. This was the golden period between my poor mental health and chronic pain. My lingering obsession with outer space since early childhood had mostly persisted, but by this time, I began devouring documentaries, books and YouTube videos on the subject matter. Eventually, I had an existential crisis, through which I figured out my purpose in life and career aspiration. I begun to excel academically again. However, the tides were about about to turn. My headache struck.
* By mid-16, I had largely ignored my new headache, despite it slightly hampering my efforts in most things. I'd finished school with excellent grades, and was about to go to college. I had a renewed interest in technology, and took up programming again. I was sure that nothing would stop me from excelling in anything I wanted, not even my pain; I felt invincible.
* Once I started college last September, my headache mysteriously skyrocketed. I was promptly forced to abandon everything - studying, socialising, programming (I wasn't even slightly competent yet). It's gotten so bad, that I often can't walk without stumbling or falling over. To this day, it is continuously worsening.
My days largely consist of slowly and painstakingly trying to get through books and educational YouTube videos because I'm adamant on continuously feeding my brain with stimuli, staving off my apparent and inevitable decline in cognitive ability, or else, lying in bed. My theory's that I've spent so much of my earlier adolescence in emotional pain, that my body is wired to just feel pain, regardless of whether it resides within in my thoughts, or somewhere external. Getting rid of my depression just caused the pain to physically manifest itself elsewhere.
I feel as if I've been robbed of my entire adolescence, and I haven't gotten a chance to get good at anything. This is harrowing, because the high-fliers, especially those within fields like technology, tend to start very early on, and spend their most neuroplastic years feeding their intellect, developing problem-solving skills, networking and forming valuable relationships, etc. Meanwhile, I've been raised by poor mental health and pain. I try to find solace in the fact that extremely successful people tend to be recipients of trauma, but mine seems to reside largely within my own mind and body, leading me to perceive it as weakness rather than something that will make me stronger and wiser.
I'm aware I can still get good at something later. I just don't think I will be able to become a pioneer in any industry, or contribute anything of immense worth to humanity. At best, I feel like I can start learning a skill as soon as my pain has subsided (which likely won't be soon) later than most, and perhaps earn a comfortable living, rather than building or running anything groundbreaking, because my brain hasn't been wired to think like the geniuses, nor is it as experienced as the young veterans.
Are my sentiments regarding this matter completely unwarranted, and wrong? Can I still really excel at something and achieve world-class competence? And how can I expect my experiences as a teenager to influence my path later on, be it positively or negatively?
#inspiration
source
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