Hello fellow warriors, first of all, I want to thank you for reading this. It's not for the faint-hearted:) After months, I have finally written my introduction! My name is Singh, 45-year-old male, father to a 22-year-old daughter who is HSP and gifted (I am not gifted myself). Inner child As a child, I was always very cheerful and adventurous, very energetic. I was a big fan of Hulk Hogan and He-Man, perhaps I always missed having a strong father figure in my life. I also loved Batman and found him very relatable because he was a person with a strong mind, and on the outside, you didn’t see anything, but inside, something was broken—a deep trauma, profound sadness, and pain. A deep longing for his parents, an only child. Early life stress As a small child, I was told things like: - "You ruined my life by being born!"; - "As black as you are on the outside, you are just as black on the inside!" And many worse things happened, but that would make for an even longer story. This led to not such a happy childhood 🙂 Patterns were created I learned to make myself small and as quiet as possible because then I was a good child. Not that I would received love, no, I then received some form of validation. It was never said that I was loved, I never received a hug or a kiss. I was made to understand both directly and indirectly that I was less, so I always had to do more than others. I also took this into my school days without realizing it. For example, when buying gifts for friends, it was normal for me to give more expensive gifts while they gave me basic priced gifts. Heightened senses I also quickly picked up on things, like identifying people who were con artists, and I would say so as a child, but the upbringing was very authoritarian. Even if the caregiver was wrong, you were never allowed to contradict them, even though we experienced extreme poverty because of it. I was greatly shamed for my intuition and insight, treated with disdain, instead of being encouraged. This was due to insecurity. As an adult, it is very easy to silence a small child.