I would argue that opportunity is the biggest factor, and most places in the world don't give you a lot of opportunities.

There are a ton of situations that you can have, just in the US, that can stop your social mobility and/or keep you in the poverty trap.

Not being able to afford school; not being able to afford to survive while you go to school; not being able to access the health care you need to maintain enough functioning to get into a higher paying field, learn a trade, or go to college; being in a situation where you feel that you need to take care of a sick relative or younger siblings because you've been raised to put yourself second for the needs/convenience of others; becoming a single parent too "early" for any possible reason...

Someone I know has their extended family paying $50k out of the $80k they need to go to their university every year, and the rest is covered by scholarships. They have OCD and generalized anxiety disorder, but they get the health care that they need to manage that. You may see how this person might have a lot more opportunities than most people to "get ahead", so to speak; and I think that a lot of people would be as or more successful than they are in the same position. They just don't get the same kind of support. Hell, even this person's sibling doesn't get remotely the same kind of support.

IMO this is where the government should come in, but obviously (at least, again, in the US) it doesn't. I know a whole bunch of motivated people who can't get ahead, and the reasons are almost always systemic. I also know some people who don't want to get ahead, so to speak, but they are few and far between and they're also my immediate family which is made up mostly of grifters.

I'm gonna ask my psychiatrist about whether my insurance will pay for me to get EMDR and see my current therapist at the same time (since I'd have to see someone else for EMDR). Fingers crossed, I guess.

I'm pretty much open to anything that will realistically help, not that EMDR is anything crazy. I like that it's basically a way to take advantage of loopholes in how your brain works. It's neat.

DBT can help a lot with symptom management, and is a good starter therapy for CPTSD for this reason, but EMDR and inner child or schema therapy will do a better job of addressing the root cause of a person's symptoms.

It's unfortunate that there isn't a one size fits all treatment for stuff like this, but at least stuff like inner child therapy, DBT distress tolerance skills and journaling are all pretty helpful for me at this point. I'll take what I can get. (I went through DBT like 8-9 years ago, but I started seeing a trauma therapist in October.).

I personally found the ABCDE theory from Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy to be helpful as well. The basic idea is that a lot of mental health issues, grief, trauma, etc are caused by our reaction to or our beliefs about certain events in our lives; so if we change how we see those events, we can eliminate the problem. It's at least been very helpful for me in terms of reframing stuff that's happening now, and putting it into perspective.

Emotional accounting can also be helpful, but for some reason journaling has taken over this skill for me. I was never really able to make it the consistent habit that I wanted it to be.

Disclaimer: I am far from healed, or even doing well, but I'm doing better and this stuff is a large part of why.

Edit: I also went through a CBT workbook for PTSD, and that also helped a lot with symptom management.

Edit #2: to clarify about DBT -- it's helped my self esteem and self image a lot, but it has never been able to do much once I get triggered and that switch flips in my brain that takes me back to my past. I still use DBT techniques for symptom management, but they're not my only tools.

I think it helped me a lot, but what's worked has been kind of ingrained into my behavior, and what hasn't worked has been dropped. I still think that it isn't going to be as good as other therapeutic modalities to treat the core issues behind CPTSD, but your mileage may vary.

If someone has CPTSD, they should see a trauma therapist; and someone specializing in trauma will be able to help you go in the right direction. For a lot of people, DBT is at least a pretty darn good start. It is 3:30 AM and I am probably contradicting my own earlier points.

There is also the fact that if you have generational wealth and connections through your family, your life is just a whole lot easier than if you don't. A lot of stuff that has totally fucked different members of my family over would be a complete non-issue to my boyfriend's family, simply due to the income disparity.

My sister couldn't afford to go to university despite being a straight A student, so she dropped out for 3 years. My bf's sister has her immediate and extended family covering $100k/y in tuition and living expenses per year while she's in university. There was never even a chance for my bf's sister to have that problem.

If people are less stressed and have more medical, educational and financial resources in life, they are more likely to succeed. Poorer people tend to have far fewer of these options (if they have them at all) than people who come from families with money.

You can't always get out of the poverty trap simply by trying to improve yourself. That's why it's called the poverty trap. You can increase your chances, but I don't think it's fair to act as if poor people have simply given up on their own lives and don't know how to act. People take the best options available to them, but that doesn't help if all of your options are terrible.

Edit: people in this thread are talking all about how wealthier people "emphasize learning and education" but seem to conveniently miss the fact that you can make straight As in high school and not afford college, or how you can technically go to school but you can't pay for your living expenses while you're there, so it's still not an option. Or you can need health care to be functional enough to go to school and make good grades, but if you're from a poorer family than that may not be available either. Or your siblings all need your help or they're going to get fucked too, or your parents are sick, or whatever else that your family might not have the financial resources to solve without you giving up on your dreams.

Talking about culture is a form of intentional ignorance if you're going to ignore how that culture forms in the first place, why it persists, and what is actually happening.