We all grow up in our little bubbles, surrounded by what we’ve been taught is “normal.” Because of that, it’s easy to go through life thinking everything around us is just the way it’s supposed to be—until one day, something makes you realize that some of those experiences aren’t quite right. In fact, they can be downright concerning.

In a recent r/AskReddit thread, people shared some of these eye-opening examples. Find them below, and feel free to add your own similar stories in the comments!

#1

Thinking burnout was just part of working hard. Turns out, it’s not a badge of honor—it’s a big red flag.

Image credits: elainesbaddecisions

#2

Parents fighting *viciously* quite frequently across the scope of my upbringing then immediately act like nothing happened afterwards

Image credits: ikindalold

#3

My childhood was worse than I thought. Not as bad as others, like nothing physical. But those are extremes and I need to understand that you don’t need to go through extremes to go through a bad time.

Image credits: mnl_cntn

#4

When I was younger I used to hear the ice cream van at night as well as all throughout the day. One day I mentioned it to another kid and they all said I was crazy. Turns out, it was a stress reaction from what would go on to be my bipolar.

Image credits: BananaHairFood

#5

The level of anxiety I felt growing up. everyone gets nervous sometimes. Not many people get nervous enough to start vomiting about minor stressors.

Image credits: Kasmusser

#6

Snoring. Turns out I have sleep apnea and stop breathing 80+ times an hour.

Image credits: jono454

#7

Hoarding. Grew up in a hoarder house, didn’t realize until my teenage years that living in a house covered with hundreds of boxes, decade-old food, and cat p**s is actually bad for one’s health and hygiene. It’s also incredibly hard to unlearn.

Image credits: Dagid_pl

#8

Having skin like velvet and being super duper flexible. turns out i have ehlers-danlos syndrome. whoops.

Image credits: wifeunderthesea

#9

Drunk driving, parents did it alot and honestly drove better drunk than normal, it wasn’t until I was 14 and a friend was driving me home after a beach party late at night and almost killed everyone in the car because he fell asleep for a few seconds.

Image credits: GreatAd6193

#10

I thought everyone had constant suicidal ideology for years. I thought depression just meant you had it worse.

I still have a really hard time believing people who tell me they’ve never even considered killing themselves.

Image credits: Intotheopen

#11

Was always tired. Sometimes multiple naps a day, sometimes falling asleep doing something. I figured I was just a sleepy person, or maybe it was because of my autoimmune disease. My dad kept telling me I had to see a doctor because how much I slept wasn’t normal. Turns out it’s type 1 Narcolepsy, worst case my specialist had ever seen.

Image credits: Kirst_Kitty

#12

My sister going to the bathroom after every meal. She told me she had a bad stomach, but it turns out she’s bulimic. Wish I could help her, but I can only support and love her with all my heart. We’ll get through it, Cara.

Image credits: Dressed_Up_4_Snu_Snu

#13

I thought that my brother coming into my room every night when i was a child was normal until my first boyfriend in middle school told me otherwise.

Image credits: WonderfulDrawing8585

#14

Eating the same thing for a couple weeks in a row like rice or baked chicken.

Image credits: sweetpealadyyy

#15

Wife had weird fleeting stomach aches that would flare up conveniently when I wanted to go out to dinner or the kids needed a ride to school. We chalked it up as ulcers and she adjusted her diet. Turns out it was cancer—a really f****n deadly one—which announced itself when a tumor perforated her bowel and sent her in to septic shock.

Image credits: Changeurblinkerfluid

#16

I thought that everybody has to go to a hospital at every three months for a check up and has their blood sample taken and ultrasound done.
Turns out no, my classmates where horrified when I began to explain in detail how does certain medical prodecures work and where I got my scar on my stomach.
To sum it up I had kidney cancer at the age of 4. It was so bad the surgeon had to remove my whole left kidney.
I really thought that this was normal.
My father is a cancer survivor, my mother has rheumatoid arcthitis. Going to any kind of doctor is basically a family trip for us.
Now I am more mindful of how I speak about this, because when I was younger I used to say things like “and thats how I got my blood drawn sixteen times on one day! But the nurse was so nice she played polly pockets with me after that! :D”
And the face my classmate and her mother made is burned into my head this day.

Image credits: luca_aaa

#17

I grew up routinely bullied by cousins for everything from the way I talked to the music I liked and even the way I walked and stood up. I didn’t think much of it because I assumed if they’re family it means they love you and the behavior is normal.

Image credits: thedustoflife

#18

For me it was that my bed, which is just a box spring with legs, is supposed to have a mattress. I mean i do but its only an inch thick and cushions as much as your hoodie. So yeah, turns out i’ve been sleeping on a super hard spring for the past ten years. F**k you dad for cheaping out on my bed.

#19

Health insurance. Masquerades as a way for people to be able to get healthcare but really doesn’t give a damn about you or ensuring you actually get healthy. .

Image credits: greenmachine11235

#20

My Dad’s abusive and controlling angry behavior.

Growing up I think you just convince yourself that your life is easier, or better than SO many others, especially living in rural North America. It wasn’t until me and my siblings were in our early twenties that we even TALKED about the way he acts and even then it was just a “oh man, he’s crazy, what a psycho haha”

Queue me being in college, hanging out with most of my class on a Friday evening as we all sit around drinking / chatting. The topic of “crazy dad’s” come up and I think, oh here we go, this will give me something to talk about.
So after a handful or stories I chime in with my “funny angry dad” story.

“haha yeah my dad would always break into the bathroom because he was so impatient, it was nuts. He’d just barge in and start screaming at you even if you were mid dump because you were taking too long. On time I went to get in the shower and when I stepped a foot in, I realized I had to pee. So I turned around to the toilet, butt naked while the showers running. A moment later I hear the door get violently shaken as my dad jimmy’s it open with a butter knife. He slammed it open, causing the doorknob to hit the small of my back and make me lose my footing and fall into the corner mid p**s. I’m literally upside down, p**s everywhere, I look up and see his face beet red pop around the door and scream “WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU DOING” and I go “ME?! What the f**k are YOU doing!?” and then he just loses his s**t at me.. haha it was insane.. haha … ha ….” (realize nobody is laughing and everyone is awkwardly quiet)

The dude sitting next to me, just goes… “dude… that’s crazy abusive and f****d up”

and me, still not catching onto that fact goes “Hahaha oh man that’s nothing.”

“THATS nothing!?”

Oooo boy, did I ever walk away from that hangout with a lot of reflecting.
My mid twenties to early thirties has basically been a bunch of emotional trauma time bombs going off regarding my dad’s side of the family after ticking away for 10-20 years.
Just a lot of angry, manipulative, lying, cheating and monstrous men gaslighting everyone to put up with them.

#21

Smoking in adolescence. Well, I’ve been a smoker for 15 years now.

Image credits: NoRecording66

#22

That your partner shouldn’t cheat on you. I grew up with my dad constantly cheating on my mom and being her therapist through it. I would go through his phone for her or listen to them fight and then be the therapist for her the next day. I never knew how bad it was until I met my friends parents who loved one another, rarely fought, and never had issues with cheating. When I spoke about the things I knew (like my parents swinging) and how my life played out, they were HORRIFIED. I still struggle with being the therapist friend and allowing myself to be treated like s**t and cheated on….

#23

I had a headache, which happens sometimes. I don’t know that I’d call it “normal,” but it’s not so abnormal that I saw it as cause for immediate concern. Whatever, I’ll just go to bed early, surely I’ll be fine the next day.

A visit to the emergency department led to a nearly two-week stay in the hospital, where they administered an MRI, which led to a diagnosis of acute autoimmune idiopathic dissemminated encephalomyelitis.

In other words, for no readily apparent reason, my immune system decided something it should attack is the protein sheath that is the insulation for the complex circuit that is the brain. It’s not supposed to do that.

Image credits: metalvessel

#24

Antagonistic parents. People succeeding in spite of them instead of with their support. My parents abandoned me, my guardian was super abusive. The kids I knew at school also had wildly s****y parents in different ways (some had cult-level religious brainwashing, some were narcissistic and relied on children to take care of them instead of the other way around, etc). For the longest time I thought everything I and the people I knew had to deal with was just normal.

#25

I thought movies and shows of parents caring for their young kids was like Disney with princesses. I thought being 8 and knowing how to cook (self taught) was completely normal. It wasn’t until I was around 14 I realized how fed up my life was.

#26

I always thought my mom just really loved me a lot since I was her only child. But looking back now as an adult, I think I was a victim of covert incest.

#27

When i was a little kid i thought it was normal during big thunderstorms to hang out with your neighbors and shop vac water out of basements. turns out there was an actual problem in a wall of the basement that took* a while to find and fix.

#28

To some degree I knew that my partner drinking a whole bottle of wine plus 6 beers in a day wasn’t a normal thing when I first started dating him but the extent of the addiction and the affects of his health didn’t become fully clear to me until some time had passed .

#29

Grew up with an erratic volatile unpredictable very unusual quite beautiful mother who I thought was “eccentric” and it was just normal to me. She spoke with a strong accent and was very silly and flighty and energetic and would enroll me in things but then sabotage the event—children’s pageants, department store modeling runways, local tv shows, summer children’s events, acting auditions, pets that were gifted but always disappeared after a week or so. I learned not to get attached to any thing or situation.

The upside tho was that I very quickly realized that, even as a very young child, I could not depend on her much and needed to always rely on myself for planning and safety and care. I became super-independent and capable at a young age. It made me very strong and creative and self-confident.

But it all got much worse later—public fits, outbursts, arson, nudity, inappropriate language—and we realized that she was mentally ill, finally diagnosed as schizophrenic, moved on to near-constant paranoid hallucinations and a frightening death.

This was all a long time ago tho. She passed more than 35 years ago.

#30

That repeat illnesses with pneumonia and sinus infections was just part of having allergies and asthma. Two years ago, at my annual appointment, my immunologist asked me to get a blood panel I’d never heard of before. I’ve had the test several times now, and it turns out it’s an antibody titer, and I don’t retain immunity to polysaccharide bacteria, even with repeat immunizations. I’ve had a pneumovax every year for almost 15 years and I have almost no immunity to 14 of the 23 variants tested, and, of the ones I do have some immunity to, only two have fully “protective” immunity. What kills me is that my mom, who was a critical care nurse, was convinced that I had something amiss with my immune system. She passed away in 2009 unexpectedly and I didn’t get to tell her she was right. Way to go, Mom!!

#31

That my dad would never speak to me. Like, at all. He would rarely eat meals with me, never asked about my day, or had any interest in what I’d been up to.

But, he would pounce on the opportunity to yell at me or belittle me for any perceived failure. There were never any mistakes or accidents, only personal failures that meant I was doomed for failure forever, and that meant I was utterly worthless.

It never ended as long as I lived with him, but he chilled out later after getting cancer. I intentionally rebuilt our relationship, mostly because I think he’s probably autistic, definitely was abused as a kid, and was not able to form emotions in a healthy way, and because I want that closure when he does eventually pass away.

#32

I thought being light headed and almost passing out and then panicking was normal for people. I had random spurts of it often, especially in middle school. My parents thought I was making it up, even after I did pass out once.

Turns out it was a mixture of anxiety attacks and chronic dehydration, with the stress of school. I can’t hold water like most people can so I drink a lot every day. If I don’t then I start getting the symptoms again.

#33

Lots of abusive behaviors from my parents. I knew my childhood wasn’t awesome, but didn’t realize the extent until I’d pop jokes to my friends about some of that s**t and they’d look at me like ??. Then I’d get self conscious and say something like “just a joke, it wasn’t THAT bad…” It was usually worse.

#34

When the light switch finally came on and I realized I was, in fact, raised in a cult. I would not be able to list all the things that I was raised to believe were normal lmfao.

#35

A few things tbh. I thought it was normal to be home alone a lot, normal for mom to spend loads of money on herself but then plead poor to me when I asked for anything as a kid, thought it was normal to not be allowed to visit friends or have sleepovers, and normal to not be allowed to select my first job or learn to drive. Also not allowed to stay home when she wanted to go shopping even though I was usually home when she was at work all day. I wasn’t allowed my own bank account, either, and had to have my name put on hers. My friends were the ones who opened my eyes to my utter lack of freedom. Especially since she started hoarding things as I got older and she became more and more angry at any instance of me wanting agency over myself. I couldn’t go in by myself for doctors appointments and I barely got to talk in those appointments, either. She even picked where I was going to college and also picked my major, so I wound up at community college across town from her house so I could live with her still and an art major because “it’s what you’re already good at”, not what I was interested in. Luckily the college but fell through because they didn’t tell her I’d have to move 4 hours from home in order to take some of those art classes because they only hosted them at main campus, so I got to switch to general studies.

When I wanted to hang out with my friends, I just had them come over when she was at work since she was usually there past midnight. Or I just said I was going for a walk and went to see them myself. I got my own bank account by waiting for her to leave for work and then going to the bank by myself. When I was finally ballsy enough and had saved enough money to move out, she would get angry at me talking about looking for a place. “If you’re so unhappy here why don’t you just go live under a bridge. Go live in the street! You hate me that badly then hide in the woods with the rats.” When I’d never said anything hateful, it was just stuff like “oh I saw this apartment listed and it’s only $650 a month.” She also would tell me I don’t know how to live on my own, that living away from home is harder than I think, I won’t make it with our her, ect. Eventually I was just pissed about it and ordered a bed and mattress online and had them shipped to my best friend’s house. Told her I got a new bed set, told her where it got sent to, and gave her a date as to when I’d start taking my stuff over. She was livid and also started sobbing. But I was only on the other side of town so its not like I left the state.

I’ve since gotten married and have been living with my husband for the past 7 years. She isn’t as dramatic anymore, but for some reason she still has it in her head that I’m an idiot. She thinks my husband and I don’t pay our own bills for some reason even though she has seen the checkbook and pile of mail on the desk when she visits us. She thinks his mom pays our expenses. If we talk about wanting to find someplace closer to where he works, she gets pissy again saying “you two don’t realize how hard living on your own is. You two don’t even pay for everything yourselves, it’s expensive!” Meanwhile he makes more than she does. “He’s never had to take care of himself.” He went to a real college and had an apartment of his own near it, he has taken care of himself more than I was allowed to.

#36

A school I went to used to give out around 10 pieces of homework everyday and at least half have to be handed in by the next day.

Turns out even by Asian school standard mine was insane.

#37

Mormonism.

#38

I remember being a kid, my sister was barely 16 and invited some of her friends of the same age. One of them was dating a 24-year-old guy. I thought it was cool but as I grew up, I realized how f****d up it was.

#39

My mom discussing all of her life and marriage problems with me in middle school. Basically *wanted* me to believe my dad was up to no good and cheating. Also shared way too many details about their sex life, or the lack of one.

Their parenting was just a big mess, but everything seemed fine because there was no physical abuse, they had jobs and we lived in a nice house.

#40

Constantly ruminating about things. Apparently not everyone does this.

#41

My mental health.

#42

I had a friend growing up when we were 14 who had an older brother in his 30s that would hang out with us when we had parties and him and his friends would flirt with the girls. At the time we thought he was the coolest dude but now looking back at it he was just a predator.

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