I’m starting to think that my life is over and I don’t want to live anymore. As of writing this I am a 23 year old woman with no qualifications or education. I have learning disabilities and my IQ is just 76. I struggle with things like talking, maths and spelling and I can’t find a job.
When I was a kid I knew I was different. Things that were easy for the other kids to do took me ages to learn. Kids used to make fun of me because of the way I talked and in general I could fit in. As I got older my learning disabilities become more noticeable. I was diagnosed with ADHD and low intelligence and therefore struggled academically but my dad refused to put me in a special education program because he thought it would be an embarrassment. School was very hard for me. I would work my ass off just to get C’s and B’s and my father was very abusive. He would expect me to do well in school and if I didn’t he would beat and punish me. I had to repeat the 7th and 9th grade but I eventually graduated but very poor grades and no qualifications. When I was around 15-18 started to do drugs like weed and alcohol just to cope.
I left my parents house when I was 19 and went to live with a friend. I have very little money as I’m addicted to drugs and my lack of education makes getting a job practically impossible. I don’t see my life going anywhere and when I’m not on drugs I’m miserable. My brothers and sisters have done so much better then me and it makes me so jealous, angry and ashamed. I know this may sound cringe but I honestly can’t do this anymore.
EDIT: I now have a job at Burger King as a cook. It’s not glamorous but it’s some money.
I wish you can find yourself more comfortable with yourself going forward. It sounds to me that your previous environment wasn’t the most nurturing for your school needs, and you shouldn’t let this mindset carry over anymore.
With your new freedoms (salary yeey) and environment (roommate, adult life) you’ll be able to re discover yourself and your expanding limits. I think you’ll be surprised of what you’re actually capable of.
It can be very demoralizing, but remember that IQ is only a part of intelligence, and grades in school matter a lot less than you think. Also C’s and B’s are respectable grades. Focus on the things you are good at and enjoy doing. Do you like animals? There are people who pay for grooming or dogsitting. Maybe you have a good sense of humor and can make it as a comedian. Perhaps you like outdoors and plants?
Please don’t give up and lean into your strengths.
I’m ok with animals and I don’t think I’m that funny. I really can’t think of any strengths. Maybe cooking as I now have a job at Burger King which I’m pretty excited about
Awesome that you have a job. If you like cooking, I highly recommend getting as much knowledge from free platforms like YouTube, there are a lot of great and passionate creators to learn from, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Watch videos, try to pay attention to techniques more than the recipes themselves. Keep an open mind and jump at opportunities when you see them.
I believe in you!
There is no reason to be bad at cooking in 2024. I mean Gordon Ramsey has a cooking channel for christ sake
Exactly. I used to be bad at it, but then I discovered Chef John from Food Wishes and this got me to cook better, and these days there are so many incredible cooking creators on YouTube that I have an endless stream of inspiration.
P.S. If you like Italian cuisine, I highly recommend watching Italia Squisita.
I’m gonna be the cynic and say it - I think what we have here is a scammer hoping people will reach out with donations.
The account didn’t exist before this post was made. OP has a 76 IQ but uses perfect sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, paragraphs and five-syllable words like qualification. My spidey sense is tingling.
I support you on the cynic side. But in case this post is authentic, I hope OP struggles through all difficulties in her life with modern technology like spell-checkers.
Good luck, OP.
I’m looking for evidence that this post is real. It is too perfect, like the stuff chatgpt produces. But I’m old and very cynical.
One alternative is her low IQ diagnosis was off. I suggest seeing someone to have that rechecked. If it turned out to be closer to the average 100 it could make her feel more positive about her own potential.
Absolutely this. This is a scam and a completely unconvincing one.
Thank you. I’ve worked on my grammar a lot. I struggle with it. I sometimes wonder if I’m doing something wrong or if I’ve misspelled something. A lot of the time I have I commonly misspell things or forget to include words. My speech-to-text thing on my phone helps if it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t be able to write things this well.
When I was that school during my last year and a half my English teacher finally let me use my phone in English. I was able to check spellings and and find words if I was struggling. It helped a lot. As for the donation theory. I didn’t include any payment offer so that wouldn’t work but know that I think of it I wouldn’t be against it. Lol
I read this post yesterday and I went back to find it to write a response.
First, let me clarity when I give advice, I speak my mind, saying what I would do if I know what I know now but were in your shoes. It isn’t intended to make you feel better, but genuinely a matter of “this is the easiest way to reach my goals”.
First, let’s address the problems you can fix, and ignore the ones you can’t. You say you’re 76 IQ, but to be honest you wrote a more comprehensive post than most people can. In any case, check out this video by a guy who claims to have 70 IQ and how he holds down a job at McDonalds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjDXvXACIEA
Why a job at McDonalds? For a few reasons:
- You already live with your friend. You’re not about to be homeless. This is the best time to start working.
- Getting a job means getting experience working. You might not think much of it now, but that’s step 1 to getting a job at a company with a union, or a company that will offer you full time for health insurance
- Getting a job will preoccupy your time. You can’t quit drugs and alcohol if you’re not distracting yourself with something else
- A new job means meeting new people and learning new things. You might find another path yourself
- McDonald’s will let anybody interview and start working. So you can get this job
Second, you need a long-term plan. This is why I mentioned a full time job with a union: it doesn’t matter if it’s an Amazon Warehouse or a Walmart, a union will look out for your best interests. They will give you a livable future and be the backbone you need for support, since it seems you can’t turn to your family for that.
Getting a job at a company with a union is harder, but that’s why you do step 1 first. When you have experience and a reputation working, these doors will always be easier to open up.
Survive out of spite. Fuck these assholes. Fuck this way of life. Fuck this “civilization”. Fuck them all.
Nobody with 76 IQ will get past the Lemmy landing page when they start talking about instances.
Its a good thing I never saw that page then
I didn’t see that page either
There’s a lot of good advice here. I have a son not too different in age than you. Your post made me want to give you a long hug. I’m sure you have many things about you that are assets and you haven’t had anyone in your life to help you find them.
As others have said, you sound smarter than you think you are, and your writing is good!
Small steps, and celebrate the small victories. Make one little thing better about yourself or your life every day. No matter how small. And be proud of yourself when you’ve done so.
Go take the good advice from others, but here’s a Dad Hug™.
How sweet but how am I similar to your son?
You’re a human and you need someone to validate you. I can’t do that from a keyboard, but I can offer an internet hug.
And he also is overwhelmed by needing to do things in life but not knowing where to start.
Use Syllogimous relational frame training to improve reasoning (IQ)
Use Dual N Back to improve working memory by 40% (Crucial component of intelligence)
Dual n-back working memory training evinces superior transfer effects compared to the method of loci
Practice both of these for 20 minutes a day and you will see results within a few months.
By the way, you speak very well and I wouldn’t put too much stock in a test that judges fish by their ability to climb a tree. And you should know that intelligence is only partly heritable, meaning your abusive environment likely contributed to you falling behind which is in NO way your fault.
And like everyone else said, get sober.
You vastly overestimate the competence of the workforce in general. If you show up on time, work hard, and work to improve over time (don’t expect to be perfect! Just learn from mistakes!) you will be a coveted employee.
Hopefully this leads to improved feelings of self worth.
Reminds me of the YouTuber Mat Armstrong w/motto “Hard work beats talent.”
As others have said, pick a trade. Make bank. Get some friends who value you for you. F everyone else. Not literally lol
“You don’t need to be smart, you just need to be useful.”
I live by this creed everyday and it’s served me well. I don’t count myself as smart, but I do have some skills that others dont and vice versa and that’s enough to get stuff done
Yeah well good luck with adhd at: work hard, show on time, remember that you have any work at all
First month is always all cool and nice thanks to inhumane amount of energy but then it catches up with you and you plunge hard
The more monotonous and routine something is the worse it gets. Same tram every day at same hour? Two weeks max before inevitable disappearance to never appear again.
It’s like walls are closing on you and anxiety attacks start and you have to run and regain your strength to try anew somewhere else.
Once it got so bad I almost got paranoidal psychosis because I just felt so bad so to preserve my mental health I had to disappear and barricade for half a year to recoup.
It’s no fun standing in public and feeling like you are about to die, freaking out about it, freaking out about freaking out about it and that you are crazy, running like mad from the place that gave you this suffocating feeling
I dunno if all ADHD is exactly like yours, but I doubt it. Your version sounds pretty hellish, to put it lightly.
Good info though, thanks for deeming us worthy of your time (not sarcastically) and sharing your experience. Pretty eye opening for us neurotypicals.
Your English is perfect. There is no indication of low intelligence from the way you described your issues. B and C grade are pretty average and indicates you can learn with hard work. I think what you might be experiencing is anxiety and that is causing you to think you don’t have skills or intelligence. I am not from US so I don’t know what kind of help might be available for you there, but I would suggest you to look for a job with something you like to do even though the pay might not be great and then eventually your interest will take you further in your career.
First off, I’m so sorry you had that much pressure put on you in school. Your father should have helped you and instead he needlessly made things harder. One thing you should keep in mind is a saying I see every now and again: “Comparison is the thief of joy”. You’re not your brothers or your sisters and that’s okay! You may have the same parents, but that doesn’t mean you have to be clones.
Distancing yourself from your abusive father was a good move and I applaud you for that! Parents who don’t accept their own children, especially including their quirks and flaws, don’t deserve them. It sounds like he wants you to be someone else, but tough shit: you’re not them, you’re you. And you have zero obligation to become this perfect person in your dad’s head.
And to answer your question: yes, there is hope. You got out of a bad situation and it sounds like you’re still recovering. For now, forget math, grades and employment and just focus on getting better. Good grades and a stable job don’t mean jack shit if you’re miserable anyway.
There is very much hope for you. I used to be addicted to drugs/opiates for 15 years, I’m sober almost 3 years now.
You’ve got challenges, and you can overcome these things, but you have to try to get clean, no matter what. You have to be clean to do the things you need to do.
Ever try being clever? Pay attention to things, and try to predict possible future outcomes. Be observant, and try to be aware of all your immediate surroundings.
Congrats on the almost-3-years! Been there and it’s good to keep celebrating the achievements imho :) I have a mini celebration each year to reflect on all that’s happened since I stopped doing drugs and it’s only for the better, even though the craving never fully goes away for me.
Prefacing this by saying this is in no way directed towards you/meant to undermine your post, but IQ really is racist pseudoscience. “Low IQ” is always used as a cudgel against people who otherwise do not come across as unintelligent (such as yourself, imo) to discredit them. I’m thinking of a lot of instances of young Black people who have been subjected to the criminal justice system and their demands for autonomy being dismissed with BS “low IQ” claims (despite the fact that they come across perfectly eloquently in their writings).
I don’t have personal experience with addiction so I can’t give targeted advice there, but I know there is support out there to help people overcome addictions. If you’re worried about getting a job, definitely you can learn a trade, find an apprenticeship or something like that. I do also have a diagnosed learning disability btw, and didn’t finish high school because of it, and in my opinion the only ways that has held me back is through school systems refusing to accommodate for my learning style. I’ve had no problem self-teaching myself skills aligning with my interests like programming. I’m not saying that applies to all intellectually disabled people, but evaluating your intelligence by school performance is a really shit way to do so especially if you have any kind of learning disability or neurodiversity. Some years at school I would get Cs and Ds, some years at school I would get straight A*s; is it more likely that my intelligence wildly fluctuated between years, or more likely that there are so many circumstantial factors that affect academic performance far more than inherent intelligence?
This isn’t entirely correct. It’s kind of like saying “SAT score” is a racist pseudoscience – which honestly I can kind of get behind, heh. “IQ” is not a property of a human the way height or eye colour is, it’s just a test score. Yes, it’s used by racist people for racist ends, but racist people use everything for racist ends. The actual science behind IQ has always shown that (a) individual variation in IQ score is vastly, vastly greater than any potential racial factor in IQ, and (b) different research findings on racial averages in IQ score are varied enough that it’s hard to draw much of a conclusion. It’s also well known that IQ tests have a bias in favour of people from western developed nations. To me, it’s most likely that racial averages are similarly biased by the test.
Dowsing is a pseudoscience – it falls apart under scrutiny. But under scrutiny, IQ test scores still correlate with success just like SAT scores do. They are slightly heritable, just like SAT scores are. It sucks, but that’s our capitalist society for you. (Let’s revolt.)
But to the OP, please understand that these correlations are nothing more than correlations, and they are meaningless when you zoom into the individual level. Statistics about groups of people only make broad guesses but are meaningless about individuals. Statistics say the average person has one ovary and one testicle. Statistics say the average American has never heard of lemmy. So, don’t let statistics define you – that would be pseudoscience.
If it helps, remember this: it’s not scientific to say “my IQ is just 76.” You should say “My most recent IQ test score was 76.”
I think part of your problem is you’re comparing yourself to others that are different to you. It’s like thinking you’re lesser because you’re not a tall basketball player, when you’re not meant to be a basketball player. IMO if you can hold a steady job to pay yhe bills that’s probably the first thing. Then a good way to get off the drugs is to focus on exercise and eating healthy. If you can keep that up for a year theoretically you should feel a lot better about yourself. Maybe get into reading books as well. Even the most trashy of books.
How can I control my own thoughts? I can’t choose what I think. The truth is that my brothers and sisters are just more accomplished then me. There all in university or graduated. They’ve all got there $hit together. Why me? Why can’t I be like that? I hate to think what they think of me. Don’t get me wrong I love my brothers and sisters but I don’t like talking or seeing them because it fills me with such shame. They all look down on me and makes me so mad and sad at the same time. I just don’t understand why I didn’t turn out like them.
I’m not good at reading books. I’ve tried in the past but I can’t. They always take forever to read. The words go everywhere and they get so boring.
Sounds like you might have ADHD. Anyway, don’t give up. I found mindfulness practice 15 mins a day helped me a lot.
Crack your knuckles, solve your problems your own way, stop comparing yourself to other people, ditch the drugs, and turn your life around. You’re the main character; this has been episode 1, now let’s do episode 2.
You’re the main character
Come on man… don’t do this.
