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adaptableOcean8068
890 M Little Steps 1
PathStep 46 Compassion hearts26 Forum posts15 Forum upvotes18 Current upvotes18 Age GroupAdult Last activeFebruary, 2024 Member sinceJuly 15, 2016
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I'm sick of hearing "it has to come from yourself".
General Support / by adaptableOcean8068
Last post
 November 19th, 2017
...See more I'll try to be clear because lots of people don't get what I mean. I'm aware lots of things have to come from myself. When I'm in a bad place and people ask what they can do to help I tell them nicely being supportive is the only thing they can do and everything else has to be done on my own. I know I have to be the one figuring out the issues I face in order to fight them. I know SOME things are supposed to come from me. But what I expect from a therapist is to help me build strategies in order to fight those issues. And they always tell me "it has to come from yourself, I'm not going to tell you what to do". And... I don't get that. Let's give an example. I get a lot of anxiety when I have to face lots of people I don't know. Firts day of school, first day of work, those are times when I don't sleep, carry a heavy weight in my stomach and everything in my body tells me to run away and hide at my place, where it is safe. And that thing was the last I had to overcome in order to sign up for a weekly physical activity. I dreamt about it for a few years and when I had the money, I made my research. I still had this anxiety issue and I knew I would have to struggle. So I used a strategy I found online (see, it didn't come from me). To be very short: you have to count backwards from five and then tell yourself you're not scared, you're excited (because physical signs are the same). So I used that. I had a good night and I didn't turn back on the way to the first session. I'm confused. I believe it is cruel from therapists to hold back this kind of strategies, saying we have to develop our own strategies. Let's focus a second on the results: thanks to this strategy that didnt come from me (I wouldn't have thought about counting backwards. I wouldn't have come up with this strategy on my own) I have a weekly activity that helps me both on the physical and psychological plan. I even chose a 9 A.M session in order to make sure I would get up at least one in the weeks. There is something positive in my life, something I can hold on to. How would it have been better to be left without any strategy and not go to that first session as a result? I don't understand. I would have lost such valuable time. I'm still losing valuable time because therapists refuse to share strategies with me, because they keep expecting me to develop my own. I don't get it. I don't get why they keep such knowledge away from us. Why does it matters so much that EVERYTHING comes from us? I just want to move forward. There are strategies out there that can help me do that. Plus, we know for sure those are healthy ones unlike those I tend to build up. I'm not asking anyone to do things in my stead. I just want to learn things that will help me deal with my issues. How is that wrong?
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Even therapies send me the message I'm responsible for my own condition
General Support / by adaptableOcean8068
Last post
 July 11th, 2017
...See more (I think this is going to be a long post) I don't know when this started, so I'll just talk about when it started to get worse. I stopped going to class early in my first year of college. I thought I had found an idea of career but it didn't last (it never does. I start to find something interesting, say "yeah, that's what I want to do!" Then I have to study boring stuff for years and I'm not interested enough to believe it's worth it). This is the year where it actually started. Doing nothing all day, only see friends. Until somehow I managed to do something some of them didn't like and I spend most of my time alone with my addiction except to see very fex friends once in a while. I tried another year of college, went to some classes on the first par of the year. Enough to pass the first exams. But I lost whatever energy I had and stopped going. I didn't make any friends (never been good at it). I still didn't know what to to with my life and decided to try college one more year but I it seemed pointless. At the time I had a therapist, I stopped seeing her after I woke up too late for our appointment. Most of the time I felt without energy or purpose, overwhelmed by the thought of normal things like washing dishes, buying food, etc. I don't have enough energy to get up and get out every day, and going to buy cigarettes 5 minutes away from where I live could actually be seen as sport for me. At some point I tried to do more and more stuff, and then tried to get a social life again. This is when my first (and only) long relationship began. I warned him about my "depression" (still don't have a diagnosis) but the first month I was different. I met people (didn't make friends), went out more started some paid work as volunteer in an association. At some point I met a psychiatrist who scared me away from any help of that kind for a long time. When I talked about my anxiety, and how awfully vulnerable I felt about going to class he basically said I had to make an effort. Work began to be a hostile place when I was given responsibilities I couldn't handle and some coworkers started to openly show their despise while I felt trapped I my relationship because my opinion and need weren't a priority and I barely spoke up (when I found how to do it). The funny thing is I'm know to be a girl with temper and people believe I always speak my mind. When both the job and the relationship ended I had nothing left, I didn't find the strengh to go back to school. I didn't even thought about another job that would only be for money since it ended up so badly. This is when the worst year I had started. I had nothing left, still lived in that insanely small flat my mother pays for. People think I should be grateful somehow when I still hate her for everything she did to me. I started to push people away and saw no one for month until my first suicide attempt. They ket me at the hospital against my will for 3 weeks and the doctors I met only cared that I tried to quit on my addiction and try to find a job. They said whatever sickness I have is not serious enough to keep me from working, that there is no serious handicap in my abilities related to self-care and social skills. When I left the hospital it didn't last for long, had to go back live at my mother's and try to find another hospital fit for me. I stayed there two weeks, doctors talked to the patients 10 minutes a day, when they did. I went back to my place and relapsed in the addiction. A few weeks later my mother threatened to leave me with no place to live and I attempted suicide again. I stayed in the hospital for 3 other weeks, had pills to take and the made me stupid. I thought I would be able to handle anything that could go wrong when I was on them. Obviously I wasn't. The doctors and social workers kept saying I wasn't sick enough to be unable to work. For the first time a doctor told my mother my problem was our relationship when I was there. I went back home, met a guy, started a relationship that ended up with lots of lying and cheating shortly after it began. Relapse. But I kept going to therapy with a new doctor and thought it would start getting somewhere. Except in 4 month it only feels like I go to the appointment, talk about my life and go back home. But nothing changes. I tried to talk to her about that and she said it wasn't her place to tell me what to do, asked what I was doing in order to change things. Yeah, nothing. Because it never works. It never worked. No matter what I do I still end up where I started. That same doctor told me I have no internal structure and I have to build myself up. I have no idea how to do that. She didn't give me any clue, like she's expecting me to find it on my own. She told me it's the same for everyone with depression I am the one supposed to find out what to do. I said I wanted help and she answered she didn't think I wanted her to help (not the first time I hear that) I mean is that for real? The way it feels is everyone thinks I'm just a lazy addict who justs sits around doing nothing all day long by choice who keeps saying no to ideas like "you should do some sport/ draw/write something" (because it doesn't make me feel any better) because she doesn't actually want to get better. I believe I tried and I'm just exhausted of it because no one backs me up. But hey, maybe they're right. I brought this upon myself somehow and I want it to keep going.
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Is it possible that some parents actually seem to do everything they can in order to help their child while they are the ones destroying them?
Trauma Support / by adaptableOcean8068
Last post
 September 13th, 2016
...See more I think I have been emotionally abused by my mother which seems uncredible to say. She is the kind of person who will always take the burned piece of meat, the broken piece of pie, or sacrifice herself if there is not enough of something and say she doesn't want it anyway. I was always fed, I had clean clothes. I wasn't physically abuse except when I was being a "difficult child" (that mostly involves slaps and spanking), which according to her I've been since my very first days. I have to say that at some point I had became so "difficult" that she didn't even took a second to think before acting when I did someting that upset her. That's what happened when at age of 9 or 10, after watching a movie in family, I just stood up and my brother hit me so hard the red mark of his hand didn't leave my skin for hours. I swore in front of my mother for the first time and she immediately slapped me. I remember a conversation after that, her looking at the damage on my skin. But I don't remember my brother getting actually punished for what he did. And I was always taken to the doctor when I was sick, except that time around 13 where she forced me to go to school before they called her. I was then taken to the doctor who said I had the flu. But my mother had good reasons not to trust me: she "knew" me and it was the day parents and teachers were supposed to meet. As well I was always encouraged to pursue the kind of carreer that would suit me. Except there were things like "you want to be a pet doctor? But you'd have to do long studies about science and you hate science". But then.. It is right, I wasn't so fond of it. She has leitmotives such as "you've been running things in this house since you were a small child" "you've always been a difficult child" (about those ones, I remember cries and shouting. I don't know how often it happened, but she says I was a crying baby, crying as much as the others slept.) She used to call the child and teenager me "tyrannical" when we argued. She told me "You are (just) like your father". My father beat her up before leaving her with me, but she said it anyway. After she witnessed him seize my throat and hold me agaisnt the fridge before slapping me, twice in the same day, she still used that line in arguments. I once threw a small table a few inches away from her for keeping on saying that, eventhough we talked about how hurtful it was for me. And that is the thing: everytime I bring up the hurtful things she did, she swears it never happened, she would never do that. But sometimes, she happens to admit it MIGHT possibly have happened but "you know how difficult you've been". At 13, after a year of switching between near-anorexia and overeating my wieght was 127 lbs for a height of 4,92. For several weeks, maybe months, my mother and brother called me fat (or fat-like terms) at such an unbearable extent I threatened them to stop eating if they kept calling me that. They did call me fat again and I did refuse the next meal. I got a lecture from my mother for not eating, but no ackowledgement that calling me fat was very painful. When I brought it up years later, she swore it never happened. And according to her, my weight has never been has high as I say. I remember coming back from the therapy she forced me to when I was 12, after my therapist said both of us might have to work together in order to fix our relationship. Once in the car I tried to support that point of view, no anger nor hard words, just "You know, maybe she's right. Maybe we do need to work together". Back home, it became hell. She was out of herself, shouting at me, blaming me for saying awful things to her. When I asked what I had done wrong, she answered "you said I was crazy" "No, I did not" "YOU DID! You said I had to see a shrink". That happened twice. My brother attendend one of them and replied to my complaint "do you get what this does means you think of me?!" that "it's not the same thing for adults". Of course, according to my mother, that never occured. I remember at the worst times, those i felt the less close to her and didn't wanted to share anything with her we had arguments about me not being interested into her stuff, not asking her any questions. About me not kissing her hello nor goodbye. We argued so much she kind of forced me to that. I'm quite sure it was more than implied that as long as I needed her, I had to pretend to feel affection for her even when I did not. She blackmailed me several times, often in order to get an apology for something. It got more noticeable when she started to pay a flat and sent money for my studies. She sometimes cuts me off, or refuses to let me come back home as long as I don't behave as she wants. Even as an adult, she controls at what time I get up when I'm home, and has something to say about my eating habit of the time (not enough, too much, eating to much between the meals..). When she found out about me being on weed, she had entered my room in my absence and texted me "cigarettes, booze bottles, empty junk bags. Congratulations for the use of other's money and self destruction. [...] I don't open any text that doesn't start with an apology". More recently, she drove me to a psychiatrist (I don't have a driving licence) and witnessed that doctor striking me down. But she had put so much hope in that appointment her world was collapsing. She wanted to talk about my future at home, but I said it wasnt the right time. So she did it in the car, while I was still crying for that therapist calling me "complaisant towards myself" and saying I didn't wanted to get helped. She told me about how hard my illness was for her, how hard it has always been. How expensive it was for her to pay for my flat and that she would pay my rent until she died. And things are still messed up in my head but I'm starting to think. What if she was never true about me always being a difficult and unhappy child? What if I had every potential to be an independent grown-up woman who faced emotional abuse their entire life instead? That would explain why, even after I aknowledged my psychological disorders, when I tell her that things like yelling at me all she wants is for me to get better is really hurtful, she just shuts down and never aknowledges it, never apologises. (I got silence treatment a lot.) I know she looks like the most permissive mother ever, paying me a flat for no studies, waiting until I heal and get independent after so many hard years spent raising me. But is there some kind of abuse in all of that?
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