Many Realizations. Primarily Lifelong Emotional Abuse

[jpcguy89]

So, after hiding in the basement during a tornado warning, I walked out of the basement and my mom asked for help unloading the dishwasher. I thought it was weird and confused. Because it’s an easy task. So I eithe gave my mom a look or said something like “What?” Or “Really?”. I had drawn a bath right as the tornado sirens had come on. And this is something that is hard for me to do. Probably my first wash in weeks. So I was looking forward to getting in.

Anyways. My mom grits her teeth and does her aggressive threatening voice saying my name. And starts ranting about how she swears to god she’ll throw me out of the house. She specified she means it. So I go upstairs after helping her unload 5 plates, a handful of silverware and 4 mugs. And I slam the door. I take my bath. Hating myself. Calling myself shit. Worthless. Unlovable. The usual.

And then I go to my room and cry as silently as possible at my desk to avoid incurring more wrath. And that’s when I realize I’ve been enduring emotional abuse from my family for years. I’m trapped in their home. They probably feel trapped with me. But I don’t threaten them with making them homeless. Or at all for that matter.

When I did research on what emotional abuse looks like I check out 5/6 of the examples they listed. Just for fun let’s list some.

Threats and intimidation. Check. Just talked about that.

Manipulation and gaslighting. Yep. Dozens of examples of my Mom making me doubt my memory. Took me year, if not over a decade to get my ears tested because my mother kept telling me she doesn’t hear things sometimes and it’s normal and I’m being dramatic and over reacting. I have 70% hearing loss on my left side. Too many to list.

Withholding affection or giving the silent treatment She’s currently giving me the silent treatment. Although frankly I have no inclination to speak with her either. But I have to ask for a hug. And often shamed for it (you’re a big boy now). I’m never give encouragement. Or complimented. I constantly feel starved for affection to the point where when someone shows me the most basic kindness a perceive them as a savior who just performed some miraculous feat and endure relationships with people who manipulate me because they throw in affection every once in awhile.

Constant criticism or belittling.

It’s pretty much the only feedback I receive.

I learned about RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) from TikTok. Which I hadn’t ever heard of but explains so much in my life. Like why I won’t even try. Because I feel doomed to fail. I love art and drawing. But I can’t put pencil to paper because I immediately feel like a failure and give up. Or why it’s so hard for me to approach someone and talk to them. I know they’ll hate me in advance. So why even bother trying.

And I learned about how much all of this can screw up your ability to maintain and make relationships if you don’t get out of the situation. But it’s been 20 years of this. She was much more loving and caring when I was much younger. But after we moved and she got a more stressful job, that was it. I became unloved and abandoned. My dad sides with her almost exclusively in all cases. I suspect because as he’s told me previously, the only way the relationship works with my mother is if he just nods his head and says yes.

I looked into my options. Calling and getting a social worker. Calling Adult Protective Services or something like that. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m assuming most of those roads lead to me living in a group home cut off from my parents and my extended family. Best case. I don’t make enough of disability to move out on my own. And frankly I’m scared of what happens if I live alone. Though these days my parents leave me for weeks at a time while they go up to their vacation home and invite my sister, their friends, other family members. But I’m explicitly not invited.

I’m pretty sure this is just what I deserve at this point. I mean, clearly I’ve done something wrong for the universe to subject me to two brain tumors, autism, and an emotionally abusive family. A sister who inexplicably ignores my existence. One girlfriend who asks me to move in with talks about marriage and then tries to break up with me 3 times before sending me a text message that says you need to be out of the apartment before I get home. I’m no longer attracted to you. I mean what kind of idiot am I to believe someone could actually care about me.

[Micro]

@jpcguy89,

Thank you for writing all of this here, friend. It is good that you’ve taken the time to write it down and just let it all out somewhere safe. You are safe here.

I’m sorry for everything your family has put you trough. Coming from a family where abuse was legion, it breaks my heart that this is something you’ve been knowing for such a long time. The primary role of parents is to nurture their children with love, affection, care and safety. They are the first people in this world that we learn to trust unconditionally. Unfortunately, sometimes parents do break this contract by hurting us in ways that shouldn’t be.

Although it makes sense to try to find an explanation to why you have known rejection and abandonment by several people that you trust(ed). Your mind tries to find patterns and a reason why these events happened, because otherwise it’s just hard to wrap our mind around it.

I can assure you though, that you have never deserved to feel betrayed, hurt, rejected in any way. Everything you’ve described is not something you’ve asked for, provoked, or deserved. There is nothing in who you are that would ever justify someone else’s behavior. When a person doesn’t respect you, when they respond in ways that are emotionally immature or intentionally hurtful, it is their behavior, their decisions, their choices. No matter how much someone could describe you in ways that cause pain, no matter how much one could try to justify the cause they pain to you as being your fault, that would never reflect any tangible truth. The truth is: we are accountable for what we do and what we say, even if we had a shitty story, even if are learning to communicate better, even if sometimes emotions cause us to say things we didn’t want… accountability is still present.

And I learned about how much all of this can screw up your ability to maintain and make relationships if you don’t get out of the situation. But it’s been 20 years of this.

It is true that shifting your environment may be a major component of healing there. Mostly because when you’re in an environment with someone abusive, they are generally stuck in their own pattern that will keeps being repeated over and over. You start moving forward as you see that something is wrong, but at the same time there is someone who keeps trying to bring you back/down, and triggers wounds in you repeatedly. When we don’t realize it yet, we’re on survival mode and see it as just the way life is. But when you start to look at it with fresh eyes and name it for what it is: abuse – it starts to become more difficult to endure such an environment. And to be fair, no one deserves to have to endure someone else’s poor behavior.

I want to bring a bit of hope there though: the fact that you’re coming to this realization now and starting to name things, as well as talking about it, is already huge. And all of the steps from awareness to taking steps forward is part of healing as it contributes to re-learning to embrace your own value, and make decisions that are safe to you in the long run. When we are subjected to abuse, we often believe that it is what we deserve and we must be utterly bad. Learning to shift this perspective, little by little, is an essential component of healing as you learn that you have worth and no one could ever take that away from you.

Abuse wounds our ability to create and maintain safe relationships, but it is also through safe relationships that you will re-learn the opposite – that there are people who are safe, who care without hidden agenda, who see the beauty in you and respect you. Thankfully, not everyone out there is going to hurt you. It will take the time that you will need to allow yourself to trust again, and even more to trust yourself again. As you are not an empty shell or someone to be belittled – you are a unique human being with a bright personality, unique dreams, and a unique journey to explore too.

Because I feel doomed to fail. I love art and drawing. But I can’t put pencil to paper because I immediately feel like a failure and give up. Or why it’s so hard for me to approach someone and talk to them. I know they’ll hate me in advance. So why even bother trying.

Yes, it’s really hard to experience this cycle of thoughts and inaction. You have been told and shown lies about yourself that make it hard to see any potential in you. Somehow, not trying is a way to not end up more hurt or disappointed. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: I’m worthless, so what I’ll create will be worthless, so why even trying.

You and I talked about coloring pages in the past, although I never realized that we shared this emotional/life experience. For what it’s worth, what you have described is very relatable to me. Drawing (and creativity in general) has always been this overwhelming space where freedom is key, but I would always end up putting so many restrictions, unfair expectations, the need to build processes before even getting to actually creating… And to be honest, it’s because I’ve had a hard time figuring out how I could use all of this freedom that creativity enables. Deciding for myself, choosing to draw this or that thing, enjoying the process – sometimes it all feels very wrong, almost forbidden.

As an encouragement that comes from the heart: keep trying as much as possible to let creativity be your space of freedom. The great (although intimidating) thing with it is that it doesn’t need to follow rules that are pre-determined for you. YOU get to create them, and no one has a say on it! Yes, someone may not like the result, but ultimately you do this for you. And in the midst of being subjected to emotional abuse, having a space for you, where you can experiment being yourself without any restriction, there is a lot of potential for it to be a great support tool to you at the same time. If sometimes you catch yourself being unkind to yourself: take a pause, acknowledge it, remind yourself that this isn’t you speaking, but the result of what you’ve internalized over the years. Allow yourself to doubt your thoughts when they are objectively hurtful to you. You do deserve a huge amount of kindness, patience, grace, just like you would do with someone you care for.

I looked into my options. Calling and getting a social worker. Calling Adult Protective Services or something like that. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m assuming most of those roads lead to me living in a group home cut off from my parents and my extended family. Best case. I don’t make enough of disability to move out on my own. And frankly I’m scared of what happens if I live alone.

Well done for looking into potential options. It is possible that the end goal would be for a social worker for example to help you get out of this home and having a place of your own, based on your income or the financial aids that you could receive. Overall, having a social worker by your side can be helpful because (1) it is someone who can be physically present and listen to you, (2) they are equipped with networks, information and resources to help you identify which route to take and what could be your options. While you feel overwhelmed by your home environment, they are there to do the work for you and alleviate the heaviness of having to also care for administrative stuff on top of everything. It can be a real crutch to you – and whether it leads to something tangible or not, you would still have gained the experience of knowing that asking for help is safe, and that YOU can do it.

I’m proud of you for reaching out about this, and deeply honored for getting to know you a little better today. Thank you for being here, @jpcguy89. You are loved - truly, genuinely, safely.

[ManekiNeko]

I don’t think you’re an idiot for believing someone cares about you, I think that people haven’t been giving you the care you deserve. It is really stressful and hard to live with someone who is heightened and becomes emotionally empty, and even harder when your dad takes her side when she’s in that state.

I can only imagine that the continual wearing down starts to create doubt in your mind of your value. I can imagine that being in that environment causes you to then start to treat yourself the way they’re treating you.
Like the example of you going to bath and then telling yourself these negative things. Because it sounded like you gave a very innocent reaction to something that wasn’t a very big deal. She could and probably should have just said “I just want a hand because I’m stressed and busy”.

It sounds like she has a lot of low tolerance for stress right now and that is very hard to be around for everyone. That isn’t your fault or anyone else’s fault, it just means she probably needs to take a step back and figure out how much she can take on before the burn out starts to make her feel too overwhelmed.

It absolutely sucks that we can’t make other people take this step back and communicate effectively to resolve these issues, but the fact that you are communicating it and being aware of it is something that I hope helps when the time comes for you to be able to shift away from this environment.

I totally understand when you say that you don’t try for fear of failure, I lived with a similar feeling for a long time. Sometimes it’s okay to do something for the enjoyment of it and not be ready to share it with others. I’ve made a lot of art just for the fun of it and I keep it because it brings me personal joy to see. That is okay and that is enough. Bringing yourself joy is such a hard skill to learn and accept especially when you feel like you have to serve others and be aware of their feelings constantly.