A major negative side effect of growing up in care is the severe disconnection from your peers that you experience. I found myself being stuck between wanting to really connect with new people but being scared of people not liking me. There’s a huge amount of shame and insecurity for being bullied/teased as much as I was. Making friends is also really difficult if you’re a target of a bully. Largely due to the fact that the bully can make up anything about you. So what can you really do? React too much and the bully realizes that’s how they get a reaction, but their rumour could be believable just enough to make you labelled as “weird”. Now classmates/peers have a negative view of you so it’s even harder to just be yourself. The final challenge is trying to navigate small talk, as a kid where the only engaging topics are, “what do you do for fun?” “What’s your family like?” Normally this opens the potential for sharing stories and making connections. Growing up in a turbulent environment magnifies the difficulty a lot because I can’t talk about things at home or my life story.
They’re so different from everyone else, it gives ammo to bullies to validate their dislike for me. The only two solutions I could come up with were, to lie or just avoid the question. Lying was the hardest one because you had to keep up a story, thus connections don’t feel as genuine. The benefit was a temporary escape and wonder of what my life could have been if X, Y, Z happened. No one likes to be lied to, and eventually, you get confronted and have to make a choice to lie better or lie less. For me, I didn’t like how lying made me feel and the mental gymnastics was too much. Avoiding was easier and gave me a comfort zone that I needed. Throughout elementary/junior high I don’t remember talking much if at all about my living situation. I am so thankful to have those patient friends, because of them I was able to open up so much more, and trusting they would tell me how it is. But the largest barrier to connection has always been money. Starting off most people I know stress about money. It’s a messy subject, often divisive but not talking about the effects on people causes more harm. In my opinion money and family are much more connected than people may think at a first glance. They are very opposite in my view because to make a lot of money, you have to work a lot. If you are working a lot you get much less time with your kids/family. On the other end of the spectrum, some people can’t work and have families. In the case of my mom, she had trauma and a whirlwind of responsibilities as a single parent raising two kids. This complicated my relationship with my mom a lot. I got so angry at her for not being able to give me opportunities other families could give effortlessly. Which built resentment because I didn’t understand all the stressors she was bearing. Isolation begins forming when you start running out of people to confide in. Not having a family I felt close with forced me to be even more independent than my peers. Without money, leaning on friends and their families was how I survived. I got to learn key life lessons indirectly, sometimes one on one. Most importantly I learned how to earn presence by helping where I could. A friend and parent are much more willing to allow a multi-day sleepover if I helped clean their room. Even random acts of kindness like seeing the parents being stressed and just doing the dishes for them.
Despite being fully out of care, this disconnect is still very present for me. If someone wants support from getting a bad grade, losing a romantic relationship, friends drifting apart whatever it may be it is very hard to match their emotions. They are likely crying, feeling so many consuming emotions and they may think you just don’t understand. You aren’t crying but do whatever you can to be there for them. In my experience, I have been seen as cold or in worst cases a psychopath. Simply because I react differently, specifically because I have been emotionally numbed. Even after therapy and medication I still catch myself numbing emotions/experiences. This is my main point to youth in care feeling disconnection/dejection from others. It can be hard to bond deeply in important emotional moments. Despite our best efforts to match that friend's emotion, engage in social situations, or even basic self-care. Everyone’s struggles in life are uniquely theirs. That means the pain they feel from their struggle is much more intense for them. Which is why I advocate for therapy and all the benefits that it provides.