Have any of you ever had too much of a sheltered life?

Yeah. For a little while I was pretty sheltered.
It effected things like how I socialize with people, it made me pretty insecure, it also is the reason why I hate leaving people in the house alone or being alone for a long time.
It’s also the reason for my stress issues, which are never fun.. But I’ve learned to deal with it and now that I’m out of the house I’m a lot better than I was.

Nope just the opposite. From the time I was 13 both my parents worked and hardly ever saw them as they would get home at the time I was heading out to hang with my friends. So since then I have fended for myself and learned to discover the solutions to life’s problems on my own.

I think the sheltered life affects your decision making in jobs too, because most of the times people in that kind of lifestyle get their parents to choose the career they get into. Later on they realize that this career is not what they really want to do.

@cornbird As sheltered as I was, luckily that’s now how things panned out for me. What I wanted to do was always what I wanted to do.

I think I have sheltered myself as adult in many ways – my upbringing was pretty wild and hairy.

@janbb – You know, me too! Instead of going wild and crazy, my overly-eventful childhood just put me in retreat mode, to my detriment.

@aprilsimnel You can sequester yourself for a time and then move out again under your own conditions. In recent years, I have traveled alone to Paris, ridden in a World War 2 bi-plane, visited my dying estranged mother, won a poetry contest and confronted my abuser. But it is a continuing process.

I was very sheltered as a child. It made for some catching up, but it was also a protected and treasured time in my life.

I used to think that I was pretty savvy but subsequent events have shown me that I was perhaps sheltered in that I was unable to recognize when a person is on pills. If I don’t do something, it never occurs to me to think that someone else might be.

I’m still trying to recover. A couple years ago I accidentally locked my steering wheel and I didn’t know what happened the next day when my car wouldn’t start, I had to call a few people to tell me what to do. My mom didn’t teach me how to drive or anything about, well….anything lol.

@Trillian Ain’t that the truth! When 5% of the US population is clinically depressed and at least another 5% self-medicating drugs and alcohol for depression, and according to the CDC another 20% of the US population on opioid pain medication at some point in the year and who knows how many others are just self-medicating with drugs and alcohol…yep odds are you will be rubbing elbows today with more than one person who isn’t all there mentally.

Up to a point. I couldn’t wait to get my own place. In retrospect I think that a sheltered youth does more good than harm.

Oh, yes.

My case is on the extreme side, though. I wasn’t taught how to drive, or how to recognise when a car is having problems. I had no idea, for example, that one is supposed to change transmission fluid at regular intervals. Oops.

I don’t know how to talk to people in person. I thrive socially on the Internet, because I don’t have to actually look at anyone’s faces and try to determine whether the look on their face is hiding disapproval.

Filling out a job application is stressful enough to literally give me panic attacks. Forget interview day. I had to meet with a claims adjuster with the insurance company of someone who rear-ended me a couple of weeks ago, and I was awake crying the entire night before. Couldn’t sleep.

Gods, I do need therapy.

@mattbrowne I agree. I hated it then, although I think it might have made me a better person lol.

@Seek_Kolinahr I’m right there with ya sister. Seriously. <3

Actually, I wish I had more of a sheltered life.

I don’t think so. One might think that I would have had a sheltered life since I grew up wealthy and in a wealthy area of California, but I guess I’m not exactly sure what “sheltered” means. Let’s just say that it hasn’t become apparent to me yet that I was “sheltered”, so I doubt that I was.

Sure, I had a “comfy” life. But I was always taught how to do things on my own, unlike some people I know who can’t cook to save their lives and don’t know where to begin with solving computer problems, and don’t know jack shit about maps and navigation. No, my parents never taught me “how to fight” and I don’t know anything about shooting guns, but I was taught a lot of practical things and as a child, my parents allowed me a lot of freedom and independence. I think I have benefited greatly from that. I even went to public school, for goodness’ sake.

People take one look at the wealth factor of my childhood and say “must be sheltered”. But I don’t think that’s really true.

I didn’t think so, but someone recently mentioned this to me.

No. In fact I was pretty much neglected and ignored so now I’m all angry and emo, but at the same time I pretty much just did what I wanted.
Then I was put in group homes where you’re barely allowed to go take a fucking shit, but I wouldn’t call that being sheltered. I still ran away and then proceeded to continue doing whatever I wanted haha. Some of it was bad, some of it was good, and in a way it was like being spoiled, but haha it’s so retarded as back then I used to wish I had super strict parents who would give me curfews and make me follow rules and stuff. XD

Yes, very much so. I grew up in a very close knit family surrounded by Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and grandparents. We all went to the same church every Sunday, and participated in church activities at least twice a week in addition to that.

I was treated horribly in the school, but at home my life was heaven on earth.

In a strange way, yes. My parents raised me with their hippie mentality that if you do good then good will come to you and to give people the benefit of a doubt and that people are inherently good. I kind of ran with this and forgot the part about the not good people still exist and you shouldn’t dismiss a person’s bad traits just because they have some good ones you feel “you owe” them to put first even if it means you yourself are being put 2nd, 3rd, 4th, whatever. I wasted a good amount of years trying to do “the right things”, be “the good person” and blah blah blah waiting to be treated well in return. Got me a lot of d—k and not much else.

Yes I know how you feel. My mom passed away when I was 12 and my dad always bent over backwards for me. He cooked dinner so I never had to, and handled all the household chores by himself. When I moved out on my own, I had to learn everything the hard way

@Blackberry – Looking back many things look somewhat different ;-)