Brazil study: Hidden survival patterns mistaken for brokenness

The writer grew up in a public housing unit in the 1970s, in an environment where children were expected to be seen and not heard. They were sent outside in the morning and told to return when the streetlights came on. On the surface, it seemed normal. But what happened behind closed doors did not feel normal at all.

The writer did not have the words for it then, but always felt different. People thought they were shy, and they were. But it was more than that. Being around people felt overwhelming, like they were constantly on edge, scanning for something they could not name. They did not feel safe, even when nothing obvious was wrong.

When the writer was six years old, their parents divorced. Their mother left and started a new life with their sister. The writer stayed behind with their father. They did not understand the full picture at the time, only that everything had changed overnight. Before their mother left, the writer’s father told them that if they went with her, he would kill himself. The writer believed him. As a child, you do not question those things. You take them in as truth. So the writer stayed, carrying a weight that no child should ever have to carry, the belief that someone’s life depended on them.

Looking back, that is when the fear really took hold. The writer’s father was deeply hurt by the breakup. He drank heavily and did not work for long periods. The writer did not understand his pain at the time, only how it showed up: anger. The writer became the place where that anger landed. Some days, the father would be waiting when the writer got home from school. If the writer was even a few minutes late, they would be hit. It was not a one-time event. It became a pattern, something the writer learned to anticipate, even when they did not know what they had done wrong.

You start to live differently when you grow up like that. Always alert. Always careful. Always trying to get it right. And somehow always feeling like you did not. The writer’s father was not a bad man, the writer can see that now. But he was not capable of being a father in the way the writer needed. There was no warmth, no reassurance, no sense of safety. The writer was not allowed to sit in the living room. Most days, they stayed in their bedroom with nothing to do but look out the window and imagine a different life. They built entire worlds in their head just to escape the one they were in.

The writer had friends, but was always on the outside. They could not go out as often as their friends did. Slowly, they got left behind. At night, the fear would come out in ways they did not understand. They wet the bed until around age twelve. They carried shame without knowing why. Something in them already felt wrong.

By the time the writer was eleven or twelve, they found their first escape: butane gas. They used to steal lighter refills from a local shop. The shopkeeper left a small window open behind the till, and the writer would reach in and grab them. They would spray it into their jumper and inhale it. For the first time, they could leave their head. It did not stop there. Glue. Petrol. Then cannabis and amphetamines by the time they were fourteen. It was not about getting high, not really. It was about not feeling what they were feeling.

That became the writer’s life for the next twenty-five years. Getting out of their head was not just something they did, it was something they needed. Substances became a daily habit, and eventually, they took over everything. The writer lost friends. They lost direction. They lost any sense of who they were. But in a strange way, they also found something they had never had before: belonging. The people they used with became their world. In that chaos, they felt understood. There were no expectations. No pressure to be anything other than what they were. For the first time, they did not feel like the odd one out. And that made it even harder to leave. Because how do you walk away from the only place you have ever felt accepted?

Then in the late eighties, something changed again. Ecstasy arrived. And with it came something the writer had never truly experienced before, what felt like love, connection, openness. For the first time, they felt close to people. They felt part of something. It was overwhelming in a different way. Beautiful. Powerful. Addictive. The writer did not want it to end. But it was not real, not in the way they needed it to be. It was a chemically created version of something they had been searching for their entire life. And once you have felt that, even artificially, it is hard to go back to emptiness. So the writer stayed. For years.

It took a long time before something began to shift. There was not a single moment that changed everything. It was slower than that. Subtle. Almost unnoticeable at first. But somewhere along the way, the writer started to see that the life they were living was not the only option. That maybe there was something else. And more importantly, that they had been ignoring it. Life had been trying to show them another way for a long time. But they were not ready to listen. As soon as they did, things began to change.

Stepping away from that world was one of the hardest things the writer has ever done. Not just because of the substances, but because they had to face everything they had spent years trying to avoid. The fear. The loneliness. The sense that they did not quite belong anywhere. And the truth that along the way, they had hurt people who cared about them. That is something they had to sit with. But they do not carry regret in the way they once did. They carry understanding. Because something unexpected happened when they stopped running. They began to understand themselves.

The writer started to see that they were not broken. They had simply adapted to an environment that did not feel safe. The anxiety, the withdrawal, the need to escape, it all made sense when they looked at it through that lens. Their body had been trying to protect them all along. That realization changed everything. Because when you stop seeing yourself as the problem, you can finally start working with yourself instead of against yourself.

Now, at fifty-six, the writer’s life looks nothing like it did back then. They live on the other side of the world. They have a family they never believed they would have. They have built something meaningful out of experiences they once thought had ruined them. But more importantly, they feel something they did not think was possible: a sense of safety within themselves. That does not mean life is perfect. It is not. There are still hard days. There are still moments where old patterns try to creep in. But now they understand where they come from. And that changes how they respond.

If there is one thing the writer has learned, it is this: what looks like brokenness is often adaptation. The things we judge ourselves for, the anxiety, the coping mechanisms, the ways we try to escape, often began as ways to survive. And survival is not something to be ashamed of. It is something to be understood. The writer’s story is a success story, but not because everything turned out perfectly. It is a success because they can now see a way through. And if you are in a place where it feels like there is not one, the writer wants you to know this: there is. Your life can improve when you begin to empathize with yourself and take even small steps toward change. And when you do, something begins to shift. You begin to move. You begin to heal. And eventually, you begin to build a life that feels like your own.