Really sorry you went through this. Your experience reminds me of mine, which left me to contend with a lifetime of challenges.

> Just like you can't out-train a bad diet, you can't out-live a shitty childhood.

I think I’d challenge this slightly. Out training a bad diet probably doesn’t work, but is better than a bad diet with no training. And when you fix your diet, the training can start working wonders.

My childhood left deep and unhealthy imprints, but I’m no longer in that environment. I think you can out-live a shitty childhood, by changing your diet so to speak. This is grueling work, painful, slow, and often frustrating. But replacing old patterns can really transform living in the same way changing a bad diet can transform the process of training.

Over time I’ve come to believe strongly that the only thing harder than dealing with the past is not dealing with it. And over time, this gradually transforms the present. I very much prefer the late 30s version of me to all of the preceding iterations.

Best of luck on your own journey. Send me an email if you ever want to chat. (Not selling anything, just someone who cares about this topic a lot).

That is something I share too, I had similar experience.

Faced with hard task, I ended up not even trying - penalty for failure was the same as one for not doing something.

With math specifically I had a good teacher in high school who made us practice in class together. He'd get everyone to sit around a table and he'd give handheld whiteboards to every fourth or fifth person (depending on the number of basic steps in the problem), and then the person with the whiteboard would do the first step and pass it to the person on their right. That experience stuck with me because just forcing me to get started (with help available) was enough to quickly clear up anything I was avoiding getting started on at home.

I still avoid doing things because they're emotionally uncomfortable occasionally, so I haven't really found a general solution. But it's gotten better over time and it's less of an issue when I'm more invested in something.

I have found the advice in this Andrew Huberman video to be helpful. Long version: [1] Useful clip from that longer video: [2]

TL;DR: motivation is a muscle that can be developed as long as your efforts to do so are voluntary. In other words, do the hardest thing that you can actually do, even if it is just pick up one piece of trash and put it in the garbage. Or wash one dish. The list of possibilities is endless. The idea is to face your discomfort, and as you do so repeatedly, your ability to do so increases.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OHYynw7Yh4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoutTY8XHSc