Messages

Hi, loooong time no see! I came back because I've been spending time with my family and I discovered a heinous little cycle I didn't realize was there but it's been ruling my life! I felt like I needed to share.

I had a discussion with my mother last night about our relationship and (as always...) when I start focusing on any problem she may potentially be responsible for, she brings the conversation back around to me and my faults (real or imagined) and how, actually, perhaps this indeed is not her fault and there is no problem but maybe there is something wrong with me instead.

It got me thinking, when I'm upset about other things in my life that mentality is my go-to. Perhaps there's something wrong with me. I always think that there's some way for me to do something better when something goes wrong, as if I could prevent it. When I was little, my father would treat me that way when I was happy about things. As if, actually, this expression that I'm having and this thing that I like is a bad thing. I can think of so many examples it's crazy.

And when I'm with my grandparents (I lived with them for a time too) I always feel like I can't emote or express myself genuinely because they don't like it when I have real reactions to the way they behave. They'll gaslight me and try to convince me that my expressions are weird and disordered and that actually, out there in the real world, they're the normal ones and I have no idea how the world works. They also end up having ridiculous expectations about what I should tolerate and what I should be able to do and when I can't because I have needs and feelings it's like the sky is falling. I feel like I've done something wrong or I'm acting unreasonable.

It's no wonder I'm constantly analyzing myself! Every time I have a genuine feeling, every time something is wrong, "Maybe there's something wrong with me?"! I'm trying to find the thing that's wrong. But! I think it's a cycle. Because the thing is, all of them act like that because they don't analyze themselves. They rope me in because they don't want to deal with their own stuff. So I'm stuck here thinking, "If I stop looking for the thing that's wrong with me, I will suddenly be just like them!"

I'm afraid I'll become a bad person if I stop analyzing myself but I'm analyzing myself because I think I've already done something wrong! Damned if I do, damned if I don't, right? I don't have the answer, but I feel like I associate giving myself a break with the way they never think they're doing anything wrong or how they make excuses for themselves by blaming me. Maybe I just need to learn the difference between giving myself a break and blaming?

 I've been going through a lot of big life changes lately and the result of some of them is that I will be seeing my mother more often. I've been having more clarity in the realization lately that she has based her entire personality around "being a mother" and it looks like she may have been leaning on it heavily as a coping mechanism through mental illness and trauma. I don't think this actually includes doing motherly things like preparing your children to be capable adults but rather doing things which make her feel motherly at any cost, even her children's well being.

It's complicated because it feels like she doesn't actually love me, she loves the way it feels to be a mom. I'm receiving all this affection and attention that I'm starving for but my true self isn't the actual target. My actual feelings and personality don't seem to factor into this equation unless being considerate of my feelings serves her. It's inconsistent and sometimes she's inconsiderate to the point of cruelty or she'll start snapping at me randomly.

I think my point in wanting to share all of this is that I'm beginning to feel confused. Even when I'm away from her I'm starting to have a harder time feeling genuine. Finding that core in myself that I like, identify with and feel can give and receive love genuinely is getting harder. I feel like I'm loosing it in a haze. When I'm in a situation where affection is being given or received I just snap back into that old mentality and even though I hate it and it scares me it's like I'm wearing a mask I can't take off. I feel like I have to be something other than myself or act a way other than what I feel. Present a front. I wish I could understand it better but it scares my brain numb and I feel like I'm trying to think with a block of swiss cheese.

I understand that I've conflated receiving love with embodying someone else's coping mechanism and internalized it to the point where it's difficult to "take off" when I'm dealing with people who aren't my mom.  But I feel so sucked into it when I'm with her. How can I be around her and not be sucked in?

Hi, sorry I never replied to this post!

Slim, those traits do run in the family. If you come across this reply it would be interesting to know how that relates to this problem? The person I was talking about in the example is married into the family though, so we're not blood related and the same problems don't run in their biological family so far as I know.

Everyone in my family is really, really bad about confrontation. To the point where none of them do it at all. If I even touch on a sensitive subject with my brother, he'll straight up walk away in the middle of your sentence. My mom can admit that she isn't good with conformation but she'll let anyone treat her any way they want and she'll spin the situation around in her mind to make it where she was passive on purpose, like for some moral reason or something. When she gets in a situation where that doesn't work, she gets physically ill. My grandmother is similar.

I don't want to be like them and I've worked on it but this seems really unnatural to me? And there's so many scenarios that I don't know how to handle. If someone is actively talking to me and I need to confront them I will, but just now another family member was all worked up and having a tantrum and they just barged into the room I was trying to do schoolwork in (complicated math, I was trying to concentrate!) yelled one sentence at me about what was happening and then stormed out. I wasn't even acknowledging them and they had time to realize that but they just kept yelling about it anyways! At me! With flamboyant foot-stomping anger! They weren't even mad at me, they were mad at the situation and just wanted someone to yell about it at but I was BUSY and they were yelling at me? Who does that? And the situation itself was something I told them would happen the last time they got this upset and decided to make ridiculous decisions (that effect me) and now they're yelling about it as if it's someone else's fault.

They left as quickly as they barged in and I had to finish what I was doing. Their mood is so flippy, they're calm now but I feel like if I confront them about acting like a tantrum pitching toddler they'll just treat me like I'm overreacting.

Also, I produce more cortizol (fight or flight hormone) than other people along with having CPTSD, so every time something like this happens it spikes and it's very hard to deal with. It's like my body thinks I'm in the middle of a house fire and I can't focus on anything. And the CPTSD acts up too and it's like everything anyone around me does feels like a very real threat and I can feel my perception of the world being off but it's so all-encompassing. I can tell myself that it's not logical for everything to be like that but I genuinely can't tell which parts of reality I'm perceiving correctly and which I'm not. After the thing causing it has gone away, it takes about 2-3 hours to work its way out of my system. I don't feel normal afterwards but I feel like it's gone and I'm only suffering the after effects, if that makes sense? It's like my mind is on fire the entire time.

How am I supposed to deal with this? I feel like so many people have had power over me that I've subconsciously just...absorbed the way that I deal with them when there's conflict and the way that I feel and now I act and feel that way during conflict with anyone. I wish I could speak out more.

What I really want to do is get in a screaming match with this person. I feel like real family would be concerned if I were upset, even if I was screaming and being very mean. It's not like I ever have done that before. They go crazy all the time. But I feel like if I were to really express myself they would kick me out. They expect me to have all this acceptance and maturity and they have none.

I was in that sort-of half awake dreamy state this morning thinking or dreaming about social anxiety things and these two words popped into my head. I've been figuring out my social anxiety and how I connect and relate to people, and I think these two things are what I never had the chance to naturally and fully understand when I was a baby kid when I was supposed to be developing an understanding of this. And my understanding turned out a different and unhealthy way because it was shaped by a different and unhealthy environment.

Anywho they where just acceptance and empathy. I feel like that's not earth shaking news to a lot of people and it seems obvious in retrospect? I guess it just took me a minute to put all my experiences and feelings together and see the bigger picture more clearly.

The acceptance part turned out to be... not what I expected? I guess that would be why I hadn't figured out the problem earlier. I'm finding acceptance can be a really casual sort-of... like... lack of judgment. Just kind of a casual acceptance. Like. You're good. It's like being one step above completely neutral? It's like if someone magically removed all of the negative ingrained beliefs and bad feelings you have about yourself and then plopped you in public with people who also have no negative beliefs or bad feelings about you. And they would often prefer to err on the side of assuming you're an okay person. But it's genuine. I wish I could better put the feeling into words.

Also acceptance can have to do with your personality I think? You can emote and be whoever you want. You can be loud and expressive. You can be wrong. You can be bossy or a know-it-all. This one is still really throwing me off. I still feel like any error of mine is a grievous one. I wear a mask of politeness around people and I feel like I walk on eggshells. I hate it and it hurts to admit but I feel terrified of presenting myself in a way that I feel would be less pitied or excused for any slight transgression. People often tell me I seem younger than I am. I feel like teenage girls are more forgivable. A safer thing to be.

I've had too many examples of very unhealthy, destructive personality flaws around me who where unforgivable and who no one wanted to be around. And, as a kid, I was so used to these behaviors that I would often be friends with kids who no one else would stay friends with for the same reasons and it was unhealthy. I'm so used to thinking about accepting people with flaws in an unhealthy way, that people accepting someone who's merely loud, bossy or sloppy feels unreal to me. I don't feel like I'm allowed to be those things. I don't feel like I can have flaws.

But! That's all part of this acceptance thing. Even when you do transgress I'm not sure that people really take it that seriously? People seem a whole lot more forgiving than I thought and not knowing where the line is is scary but the fact that it seems to take a lot more effort to get on someone's bad side than I thought is comforting at least?

Also all of this feels a lot softer and easier to live with when you consider the empathy part. I don't think about the fact that people might have empathy for me. Or, *, be capable of competently having empathy for if I'm upset or if I screw something up? I remember thinking that I must not be expressive at all because of my family's apparent inability to see emotions on my face. Or when people in my family would try to have sympathy for things but do it in a really screwed up backwards way to the point where you can see the conversations they have with people falling apart. Or sometimes they try to "empathize" with each other but they're actually just trying to excuse abusive behavior because they would rather explain it away than confront it.

It still feels complicated but what I think I took away from all of that was that I just wasn't the kind of thing people had empathy for and if I was, that was bad because it meant that I was probably doing something toxic. The most I can picture of someone trying to have empathy for me is if they did it in that same backwards screwed up way which is hard for me to appreciate. I associate that behavior with people I need to distance myself from and not take anything they say seriously.

I wrote a lot. I'm not sure what my point was? I hope if someone else hadn't quite connected the dots about their social anxiety yet, some of this can be helpful? It was good to get it all written down. It sounds really bleak but it really is more hopeful than it sounds.

I just wanted to chime in that I'm this way too and always have been. I used to not be able to tell male leads in movies apart if they looked anything at all alike. Female leads usually had different enough hair and outfits that it wasn't as bad. Lord of the Rings was unintelligible, lol.

Something I learned to do from doing portraits (Yes I'm face blind and do portraits and it's as funny in real life as it sounds.) is that since I've learned to appreciate different aspects about faces, I'll notice those aspects in people's faces and I'll remember that even if I don't remember their names. I find it gives my brain a little something to hold on to so it can start making other connections like "Oh, it's that lady with the cute button nose that was talking to me about history. History button nose lady!" Instead of just remembering that at some point recently someone told me something about history but not remember who or where it happened.

My advice, if you'd like to use it, is to start noticing facial features that aren't stereotypically considered beautiful and find value in them. I like big noses, or like when someone's nose bridge connects to their eye brow ridge in a nice curved way. Those prominent smile lines that some people have are good. I also feel like finding something to like about people lets me feel like I'm engaging with them as people and as something positive a bit more instead of navigating some kind of threat. It also helps if being anxious makes you awkward at eye contact. Especially with drawing people, I find that they can tell if you're not looking them in the eye if you're looking anywhere from like....lips down but any higher than that they can't tell unless you're making a weird squinty "Now how do I draw that eye wrinkle?" face.   

I wasn't sure if I should start another thread or not. Mods, if you me to continue this on my other ADD thread just say the word.

Since I posted my last thread about ADD I've been diagnosed, medicated and I've learned a lot. I realized that I have a lot of tendencies that I would get frustrated about or feel ashamed of which I didn't realize were actually symptoms I was pushing against and exacerbating. I've been having one all day and I'm pretty frustrated about it. I thought it might help to write it down.

Sometimes I just want to daydream or listen to music for hours and it's like I can't focus on anything else! I'm not sure yet if anyone knows why that happens but apparently it's a known about thing that serves some kind of purpose, like maybe processing information. I've been fighting it all day because I just want to get things done! Turns out I'm gunna daydream and be unfocused weather I like it or not.

I wasn't sure if I would still have to deal with this on medication but it seems to be the case. It's not as bad on medication, and since taking it I feel like I'm noticing that some boughts are actually worse than others? I'll barely notice a small bought when I'm medicated and I can work through it if I give myself something else to split my focus while working, like a show or music on in the background. Or I can take a small break. But I'm thinking if one is happening this badly while I'm medicated, it would be a monster of an episode off medication. Maybe I should stop fighting myself and consider that it might be really bad for some valid reason? Like a bad fever. If you're on fever reducers and you still have a high fever, it would be silly to be frustrated at the fever and push yourself to keep working! That's a serious problem, you would need to pay attention to it! I don't even know why I do this outside of it just being an "ADD thing", but maybe my brain is struggling to process something and I should be kinder to myself.

Do you know, I remember writing a reply to these helpful comments months ago and in an ironic turn of events I must have forgot to post it. Lol.

I wanted to come back and update that I'm on medication now and while things aren't 100% better, they're SO much better than they were! Also, it turns out that the medication I'm on treats a lot of my other non-ADD problems as well but no one had suggested it because no one knew how bad my ADD problems were until I spoke up about it. Heck, I didn't even know how bad they were comparatively. Apparently, they're pretty bad but I was managing them so well with my own tricks and problem solving techniques that I'm skipping ADHD therapy that usually teaches you all those things and going straight to meds. Couldn't be happier. I knew I had great creative problem solving skills.

I feel a lot more able to tackle all those feelings about schoolwork now, and they really don't seem as daunting as they did before at all. I think I learned an important lesson about not doubting myself so much and not letting other people (Even professionals, because they're fallible humans too.) tell me how I feel.

Thank you guys for all the support and good answers. What LilyITV said makes some sense to me but it all still feels raveled up. Rainagain, honestly I'm not sure if I feel that way or not. That might take some introspection.

LilyITV mentioned something about empathy which is a big thing for me. I believe my therapist would call it a "core issue". I also see what you mean about feeling remorse. An interesting thing that stood out to me when I read that was that when I think about it, for me it's easier to forgive someone when they both feel remorse and also take responsibility for what they did.

For example my mother, she feels remorse for things but she will skirt the blame. She'll feel sorry for blowing up at you but she'll blame it on hormones. She's sorry that the house is dirty but it's the fault of her job for making her too tired to clean. If you offer to help her problem solve it's just one excuse after another. If you ask her a day later, it's a different excuse than the first.

It's the people who are so deep in self-protection mode that they can't bring themselves to admit that they hurt someone are the people who get to me. 

I feel like this sums up her behavior too, even though I'm talking about taking responsibility and not empathy. (Maybe? I thought?) Whenever she's making excuses for things it's always stuff that seems like it would generate a whole lot of shame if she where honest with herself. It's like she just can't handle the thought of it.

I was thinking the day after I posted this topic, that I have the same attitude towards physical disability actually. I feel like people can't help their disabilities, of coarse, and they should be accepted, respected and given accommodations but I also have maybe some harsh ideas about being responsible for yourself and your disabilities. Especially about myself.

There's a core issue I've heard about that's one I know other people have because it's like a developmental thing or something. It's when a parent is unable to provide love and support and/or they're harmful in some way because of some shortcoming of theirs. Often because of mental illness. And the kid, being a kid, internalizes the parent's failings as a sign that there's something wrong with them. (The kid, I mean.)

As an adult, I logically understand that a lack of empathy can be due to mental illness and being in a self-protection mode as LilyITV puts it. But maybe I also rationalize my emotions by thinking that the adults should have been able to be responsible for their obvious problems. Most of the adults in my life were in positions where the could have gotten help if they really wanted to. Maybe I'm still trying to put the emotional pieces together about why they didn't.

It's difficult to comprehend that lack of empathy when you're on the other end. In my mind, I can still feel that internalized way of thinking. Why does the lack of empathy not seem obvious when it's happening towards me? I felt like if I were more important, they would do something about it.

As an adult though, I logically know that their "self-protection mode" was probably too strong to have been able to fully admit their problems and get help. But I don't feel that. It doesn't emotionally feel true even if it's true. Maybe this is what I've processed as "responsibility". Maybe I'm expecting responsibility in the face of the impossible from myself and others. Maybe I feel like I'll cause that much damage if I fail.

I have a sort-of hypothesis about being able to accept love and attention after or during isolation, and I'm wondering if it might not apply here too? I hope it's not an intrusion if it doesn't apply!
(TW using hunger as a metaphor)

I feel like hunger and love are similar things. When you're eating regularly and healthy portions there's no problem. The same is with love and attention. If you get a healthy amount of love and attention from a variety of people in your life, as often as you need to feel satisfied then there's no issue. Sure, you might feel lonely for a significant other perhaps but it's normal to want ice cream or pizza every once in a while even with a healthy fulfilling diet, right? But if you're not eating enough, you might be handed a plate that's a normal portion and still be hungry after eating it. If you're starved for affection, no matter how much you care for a single person and regardless of how much love they give in return, it will never be enough to satisfy a life completely starved of it. There's nothing wrong with you or them. It's just that one plate isn't enough to keep someone from starving.
You can't satisfy your need for all the love and attention you should have in your life, or should have had your entire life, with one person. You need a healthy support system of people who give you the care you deserve in your life.

I'm not saying it's an easy thing to accomplish. Some people survive on ramen noodles when they're having rough times, y'know? But you deserve better than ramen noodle relationships forever. This forum and maybe a therapist could help you work towards having a healthy mindset about attention and building a healthy diet of people in your life. (A sentence which was totally not written for vampires, I swear.)

I also think you're very brave for coming here. I don't know what's going on with you behind the scenes of course, but reading all the responses you've given people so far I feel like you're handling this with so much grace and courage!

I'm not sure if you'd be given to getting manicures? My nails are pretty thin, so when I paint my nails myself with more than two layers the nails become thicker and the tips become thicker and feel smooth instead of sharp. I usually don't do mine that way because like when you have an itch they're too smooth to scratch with! But that might be helpful in this case? If you would want to try it but aren't into nail polish colors, I believe there are matte clear nail polishes now that would be less noticeable when worn. (If you don't already know, matte is like the opposite of shiny.)

Also, I wanted to suggest maybe reading through the forums about other cases of neglect? There are so many others out there who have also had intense feelings of dirtiness and disgust with themselves. I think you'll find that all of these people are perfectly deserving of kindness and empathy. There are so many good kids out there who got stuck in a bad situation. And good adults!  Maybe seeing that in other people will help you realize it in yourself.

Even in cases which aren't specifically about neglect, there are many people who go through things so horrendous, they feel like the horrible things they've experienced are too far removed from polite society for others to understand or sympathize with. They might question how any normal person could get past the shock and disgust of the situation enough to ever wrap their minds around empathizing with them. Personally, I've heard some pretty shocking and gory things from people but I've never found a person who's opened up and not been 3000% empathizable and human. There's always a perfectly lovable and valuable person in there and their trauma is never too scary or disgusting to be empathized with.     

I feel like I've ended up with maybe some really harsh ideas about what it means to be irresponsible. I'm not really sure though, I feel like the line I've drawn for myself is the only line I've ever known. Lately I've had an opportunity to experience other people being genuinely accepting and forgiving of other people's failures in a casual way. Like, it wasn't some big deal that they forgave them. They just did. Like it was a normal occurrence. It's just kind of like "Oh, they're only human" and no one's feelings are hurt or anything. That's pretty foreign to me.

I keep hearing that "Well, people are only human" or like I'll apologize for something or explain myself and people will be like "Hey, aren't you human?" I know there's been times before where I've gotten mad at someone and like they couldn't understand why I was mad at them for being irresponsible because they didn't think they were irresponsible, that thought they had just made an honest normal mistake. I know I've definitely been in awe of people who's "That's too much to expect of if me, I'm only human!" line is much lower than mine is.

I think deep down I'm just terrified of being like the incompetent adults in my life. I'm afraid of causing that kind of destruction to other people. But also, I feel like there's a flip side to this? I feel like those people are so awful, and most of them are alone. I feel so hurt by them, I feel like if I were to treat anyone even remotely like that it would be unforgivable. I would expect to be dropped like a hot potato! And that expectation is visceral. It's like the word "unacceptable" as an emotion that punches me in the gut. I can't see past it.
And I think there's a nasty catch in that every time, with every adult, they act as if they don't see that they're wrong. I've heard iterations of "They're just doing their best!" or "They did what they thought was right at the time" or "They're not evil, they had good intentions." my whole life and that's terrifying? That someone could be so toxic, what? On accident?? Unknowingly?

How do I know I'm not that damaging on accident? I feel like I'm responsible for every emotion I have. I can't lash out because something is confusing, I have to figure out why I'm confused! What am I, a toddler pitching a tantrum? Can I not navigate my own feelings? Can I not take care of myself and clean up my own messes? I would be ashamed if someone had to put up with me just because I can't simply manage my own emotions! But other people act like that all the time? Where is the line? I don't feel like it's okay for anyone to put up with me making any mistakes at all. Every mistake is a sign of incompetence that I haven't managed well enough yet.

I try to line up in my mind all the shortcomings that other people accept in each other and all the things that I feel are unacceptable from the adults that were in my life and I try to see if they meet anywhere in the middle but it feels so complicated. I feel like I never know where the line of what's acceptable lies in any situation about anything and it's all for the same reasons! I feel like no one raised an adult when I grew up, I'm just an amalgamation of broken pieces trying to hold water.

I'm feeling a complicated way. I'll do my best to make sense?

I used to be pretty expressive when I was little. I think, for me, the urge to be self expressive is very linked to feeling loved and liked? It kind of reminds me of that thing people say about your body is a temple. Some of the most beautiful buildings are places of worship. People decorate these places as an expression of how they feel about their religions. They feel beauty, and they express beauty! They see sacredness and they want the thing to look sacred. That's how I feel about visually expressing myself. When I'm in an environment where I can feel like people care about me, it comes out in how I express myself. I dress and act different. That feels like me. It feels like that's how life is supposed to be, somehow.

I desperately want to feel this way. I feel like it's necessary to get back to feeling that way in order to keep healing. Or at least, to experience it enough to understand it better. But right now, I really feel like I don't matter. In the environment I live in now, there's this reoccurring theme where my folks will be very expressive any time anything doesn't go their way. Like if their football team is doing bad, something they baked turns out wrong, someone stubs a toe, etc. But also- and this could be me projecting- it seems like they both act like ...their very wellbeing is threatened? Really easily? At the drop of a hat. Like if the tv service stopped working it's like I'm all of a sudden living with a caged tiger ready to fight for its life! Not because they seem angry, but they seem scared and defensive like their quality of life is being taken from them.

I think they believe that people have a god-given right to express their feelings, even when feelings are explosive and you end up treating others badly. I think they treat that as a given, so they assume you'll forgive them and understand that they could't help it even if they're acting really extreme, unpredictable or immature. When I'm in situations where my wellbeing IS actually threatened though, and I have any reaction besides inhuman amounts of patience and diplomacy, they completely loose it. They always have. Even when I've had reactions to little things, like stubbed toes, they treat me like I'm overreacting because I'm emotionally unstable. They act like they "understand" that I've had a "hard life" and because of that I might "overreact" to things because of "mental illness"? But when they act that way it's absolutely normal. I feel like I've always been treated that way in all aspects of life. I feel like people can treat me any way they want and do things they know will effect me and they just don't care. Even if it's merely convenient for them they'll make things inhospitable or dangerous for me.  I'm reminded of that all the time by things that happen every day. I try to fight it and I try to feel valuable and loved and like I'm a good person anyways but when I ask myself, "What do you feel? What do you want to express?" those feelings are the last things I want to express. The thought of expressing myself as if I thought I was valuable in any way is painful. I don't want to be reminded of how it feels to have people care.

Sometimes I try to go with what I really feel instead and I end up wanting to look as formidable and intimidating as possible. It doesn't make any sense, but I guess I feel like if I look closed off, I'll feel closed off. Maybe I'll feel like I have some power instead of feeling completely unwanted. I still feel kinda stunted and dead inside though. Half the time I change into boring tomboy clothes because just the act of trying to look any certain way makes me feel ridiculous. Tomboy clothes don't feel like they're trying to look a certain way. They feel like they're just existing and nothing more, like me.

I just logged on feeling this exact same way. It's nice to have good company, I guess. 

Thanks for all the support. I decided to start acting on being expressive and promptly ran into part of the real reason I hadn't been. Now I'm an existential mess.

Def me, all the time. The  left with that big unsettling question? Who am I?

I'm definitely there. I feel like all I've ever known is isolation, I'm afraid that I'm too messed up and I'll never connect with people enough to feel like I matter again.