Do people who suffer a lot/ have suicidal thoughts grow faster mature?

[noname223]

I have been through a lot of shit. The domestic violence started with 5. The bullying in school was also very traumatizing. It is a conventional wisdom people who suffer grow faster mature. I think this partly fits to me. Not in the sense I turned faster independent. Quite the opposite I am a mental wreck that is dependent on help of many different people. But I have started to become very reflective and thoughtful.

I know there is a picture of me when my family was in a theme park. I look pretty sad and really disliked that they made a picture. I think I partly remember what I thought to that time. I was self-conscious that I ate way too unhealthy stuff and always bought expensive unnecessary products to fill that inner emptiness. I was a young teenager to that time.
There was always this deep sadness, emptiness and pain inside myself. Everything felt so shallow and artifical. All the joy I had was so superficial. When I turned manic I made huge changements in my life. My personal philosophy changed too.

But there was also a very infantile side of me. I trolled a lot online when I was a teenager. I wanted to be edgy. Sometimes I was really unfriendly to other people online. I think I compensated the bullying in real life. I think this is a common way to handle bullying at teenage age. I feel sorry for what I did. I also made a lot of stupid jokes with my friends. I wanted to provoke a lot. But I never showed this behavior to other people in public or the society. My friends were sometimes shocked by my jokes or the stuff I talked about. (gore for example)
However this was all caused by the pain I was experiencing at that age. (I made a huge thread on SS where I explained that I really regret having watched this gore content due to ethic reasons.) It was my way to cope. My suicidality and my mixed manic state started with 15. My life was and is horrible. This was an unhealthy coping mechanism.

I think for me I can answer the question of the title with "yes". When we define being mature means being more serious about life and thinking more about the consequences of our actions and trying to act like a responsible citizen I think this is true for me. But there were and are always childish elements of me. But I think most people know that. Though I never had a sentiment of childish innocence. I always have been very scared about life and I probably ever will.

 

[Sanva]

pretty sure studies have actually shown that traumatised people mature faster. personally I feel like I'm way less mature and intelligent than most people my age though

 

[Bone]

Could go either way, I'd imagine it depends on a lot of factors. A person's resiliency, support network, intelligence, adaptability, what age certain things happen at, what exactly happens, etc. Maturing faster isn't always a good thing, though with the right person and set of circumstances it could be.

There's also a whole array of types of suicidal thoughts as well as the reasons behind them, so it's hard to generalize here. I do think it's an interesting question, along with many of the topics you post, @noname223 . I can speak for myself personally that the times I've spent suicidal have basically been really depressive periods, I've lost years of my life to them-I know for sure I am quite resilient and adaptable, but I'm not sure that equates to maturity.

Rather, I do feel I have a relatively mature outlook on things but also very bleak and nihilistic, though realistic and generally well-informed. As you said, I can see just how futile a lot of human behavior is, particularly these days. I...guess that's a type of maturity? I think for a lot of people, "maturity" is quite relative. For example, we have grown adults doing drugs somewhat responsibly, playing video games, spending tons of time on the phone and computers or watching Netflix, etc. A few decades ago this stuff would have been considered really immature, but now it's become quite normalized (in my opinion.) Being serious about life these days means acknowledging how absolutely fucked everything is-so, on some token, a lot of us suicidal people are quite mature.

Lots of younger people see gore as well as porn these days, and the latter has proven to be changing behavior on a mass scale, or at least a part of it:

People Have Been Having Less Sex--whether They're Teenagers or 40-Somethings

Among the young, social media, gaming and “rough sex” may contribute to this trend

www.scientificamerican.com

I think for many people, especially older generations, being mature means having a career, family, retirement, all that shit, which can be harder, generally speaking, for people like us to attain. I tend to not use these as metrics-take, for example, the whole "Karen" "Let me speak to the manager!" stereotype that exists (for good reason)-nothing mature about that shit.

My mom was "mature" in many outward-facing areas, had career jobs and took care of the kids without fail, but drank herself into a stupor every night (she will die today, as a matter of fact, of alcohol-related liver failure), locked her doors whenever she saw a black person (even in the Food Lion parking lot), and thought mental illness was the fault of the individual "not accepting consequences of their actions". Behind closed doors, talking with her was usually impossible-if you disagreed, she acted like a 5 year old and would shut down or even start throwing and slamming things. Incidentally, she had a hard, abusive childhood which largely caused her to be a psycho who in turn abused me. She suffered a lot and was forced to mature in some ways, like I said, but aspects of her personality were extremely ignorant, almost infantile. When we were kids though, people in the community had a positive perception of her.

Anyway, like often, I've begun to rant a bit.

TL;DR: Maturity is relative and difficult to define. Some people go through suffering and come out superlative individuals, some come out awful humans, and some just are fucked up beyond belief and wanna die. I am grateful for my honest outlook about the world, even if I don't give a shit about making my bed at age 36.