My new neighbours have invited my parents and I for dinner, which means I'm going to have to lie about being unemployed. I hate having to do this. The alternative is too humiliating.
What up NEETs. I'm not a NEET but I was a hiki for a lot of my life. Around 10 years. Looking back a lot of it was abuse and neglect from my parents. And I was wondering if a lot of you can relate.
I've been doing a lot of internal work in therapy over the past couple of years, and I realised a lot of my difficulty in slotting into society is because of deliberate sabotage from my parents.
My parents never let me do any extracurriculars as a kid, or buy me the latest console, or fashionable clothes, or let me go to sleepovers and high school parties etc. Everytime I'd show interest in something they'd discourage me. They wouldn't even let me have get a cat lol.
Naturally this let to me not developing social skills, getting bullied and ostracised. The only thing I could do really was play videogames and be on the computer all day. This eventually let to a serious internet addiction and the start of my hiki life.
But since finally escaping my internet addiction getting a corporate job, I've realised that I can actually get along pretty well with other people if I'm just given a bit of encouragement and patience. Instead of beratements and put-downs from my parents.
And holding down a job has forced me to grow in many ways as a person. Now I'm pretty much a normie compared to me of 10 years ago. Even been in a few serious long term relationships.
What I'm getting at is that maybe a lot of you guys were also abused and sabotaged as kids by your parents. And you're not actually lazy, shy, or irresponsible or any negative personality trait you think you have. A lot of you just never got the opportunity to develop these skills in a safe environment because you were too busy surviving abuse or neglect.
I'm not making light of people who genuinely can't work. And I some of you actually like being NEETs.
But I think a lot of you that want to escape are like me. And if you can internalise that actually your parents are the ones that failed, not you, you can generate enough self belief and motivation to escape NEET-dom. And maybe explains some of the deep depression common in NEETs.
it seems like i know nobody who wasn’t able to launch like this.
i came from a family with 0 connections in my industry and 0 network at my school really, and my college was mostly remote during covid times. i had a useless unpaid internship during the height of covid at a gym. i got a business degree which was generic and that’s all my college had for business. my parent is in healthcare in an extremely niche sector and my other parent was a fuckoff so none of their networks were fruitful for me in finding a job that way.
i finally found something in marketing after thousands of job apps but was forced to train my replacement. i am feeling really down that i’m here AGAIN. and feeling unemployable. my skills and abilities just dont seem to translate in the real world and i am socially a recluse.
i have siblings but one is a server at 25 (no degree) and lives with her bf and another is 23 also living at home with me, and she’s working as an ABA tech, $19 an hour after college in a major HCOL city with us.
is there anyone else in this boat???