Skip to main content Skip to bottom nav

My life struggle as the oldest daughter

User Profile: discreetTiger3771
discreetTiger3771 June 29th, 2025

am the oldest daughter of a immigrant family and I have been going through so much trauma at an early age from Bullying , Sexual assault , Emotional abuse , PTSD , Depression and Major anxiety , I feel no real emotions and don’t even feel like I’m real and I hit myself on the head every night and I cry the most at night and I have been watching shows and and movies too much instead of interacting a lot and going outside a lot and I tend to not take care of myself like brushing my teeth or showering and when I have to get ready I feel like I’m forced too and always listen to music and stay in my room while walking in circles listening to music and I don’t feel pretty without makeup and my value of myself I feel nonexistent without makeup , so much stress and expectations pressure on me when I’m going through all these emotions, and it hurts more because I’m seen as this tuff person who can handle everything and not cry when stuff happens but am I really ? , and every night when I’m staying up because I haven’t been sleeping good at all I would just stare up at my ceiling and think about all the life mistakes I made in all the traumas I went through from abuse and sexual assault from a young age and poor choices, I made in my preteen years and I don’t know how to ask my parents and I don’t know how to tell them how I feel because they wanna understand and it’s mostly my dad that has caused this because he was the one who gave me all this trauma of abuse, and he tried to apologizing and repeatedly with expensive gifts, but he keeps doing it every single time he always favors my little sister he yells at me for stuff that I didn’t even do and he keeps blaming me saying I don’t love my family because I don’t talk to anybody but I just want my space and hate things. I don’t love my family and he thinks I’m a terrible person but Other time he just tries to talk to me normally but like I don’t know how to like engage with him anymore because all the trauma he gave me in my body response with quite distancing myself from him and less communication and my mom wants me to talk, but I don’t want to, but she forces me because he’s my dad but my body automatically response to him of like the flashback memories of him, abusing me and I find it so weird that he is being so nice to me and I can’t get used to it so I hit myself in the head and punch myself until I forget , I don’t know how to explain my emotions, but it happens like this every single day. I am majority stay in my room and be on my phone and listen to music and create scenarios in my head and sometimes I randomly have to flashback about my trauma and then I hit myself and do something mostly just hitting myself to forget the pain and I cry a little and then I suddenly stop crying and then I act like it’s normal in front of people and then within a few minutes of talking to people I have this feeling or this mood where it’s like I don’t wanna talk to anybody so I just stay quiet and don’t talk to anybody so I just zone out and be in my own place and I don’t like to talk to people a lot and I’m very self-conscious about if people think of me a certain way because back then I used to get bullied because how fat I was when I was a little kid and on top of that with my situation with my father And it really shaped me the wrong way and I had such body dysmorphia ever since and now even overtime, I feel like it got worse and worse, especially when I told you those experiences of me having too many flashback about my trauma and me hitting myself in the head and now recently, I’m scratching my face until I’m bleeding And then it’s hard for me to talk to my family because I feel like they ignore and dismiss my feelings and my situation with my dad is so confusing like even though he tried apologizing to me in his own way with gifts and stuff. I just don’t really accept that but I feel like I have to accept it for my family sake so we can be happy but whenever he is around me, I choose to distance myself away from him, and I don’t like it when he touch me or tries to be affectionate because I never Had that when I was growing up and it’s so weird because sometimes I feel like I could be normal kinda where it’s kind of better but then again it’s like sometimes I just don’t feel it anymore and I resent him so much and especially when I’m working and stuff. I have random flashbacks and I hit myself during the work and I Don’t know really how to control it because I cry sometimes for a short while and then I stop crying and in public, I have friends who are good to me and treat me good but sometimes I can’t help. I feel jealous of them because I see how well they are doing and places that are going and I’m just here stuck and just going through so many stuff and it’s not fair for me because I feel like I’m missing out so much out in life and I’m just falling back while my friends are doing so good but they do treat me well and I do love them, but sometimes I just feel like I wish I was like them and then their situation, especially when my friends have a good dynamic between their families and I just feel so jealous and it doesn’t help that when I was little, I was sexually assaulted by one of my parents friend son and it really made me feel like that’s all I’m more of just my body and how I present myself and hyper sexualize myself and it made me feel like such a weirdo and I was so disgusted myself when years later me and that guy that sexually assaulted me started dating, but I thought when I dated him, it could be like a power relief that I have control over him and stuff, but it turned out to be bad because I feel like I was using him and I was not a good person so I broke up with him and I don’t know why but I just feel like I’m pretty but I feel like I’m not pretty enough for a guy would want to really wanna be with me and I just feel like I’m missing out so much in life because of what I’m going through and I am trying to make myself feel better and try to move on, but it’s really hard when these flashbacks keeps coming back and the same emotions keep coming back and it keeps happening frequently now because it’s summer I keep going to sleep late and I keep during those nights I stay up really late. I keep thinking about those flashbacks and I keep hitting myself repeatedly in the head and punching myself in the head or even scratching myself, and I just stare blankly up in my ceiling just thinking about my whole life and where it went wrong and how my life is just so terrible, I feel like ever since I was little I feel like I was not enough or I wasn’t doing enough and that just made me think that maybe I’m just not worth living and I attempted so much suicide and I cut myself on the wrist and I just stopped doing that because I had body dysmorphia and I thought it would make me more uglier and less attractive so I stopped doing it and then at first just for a few months. I thought I could handle it and I didn’t really hurt myself but later on during the year, I had discovered new ways to you can call it cope, but I just started hitting myself in the head and I start scratching myself and then times at work. I will randomly hit my hand against the table and just punch myself because these flashbacks keeps coming back, and I randomly cry a little during a work and I don’t like that, but it keeps happening and it keeps happening repeatedly when I have to help my mom and dad will work because around them. I am forced to be closer with them like proximity wise and these flashbacks keeps happening, but it happens more when I’m alone in the middle of the night and I’m just keep replaying all this that’s happening, I feel like I am such a failure as a older sister because I’m the oldest daughter out of five kids and I feel like I failed my brothers and my sister because my parents expect them to look up to me but like how I’m going how do I say this what I’m going through right now is not something they should be looking up to because I feel like I’m just such a failure and I’m not that good and I just keep feeling like such a failure even though we go to place or or whatever I don’t wanna go and I just wanna stay home But I just feel like my emotions are so confusing because even though I’m going through these crying episodes alone and hitting myself in the head and stuff one moment I’m around my friends or my siblings. I act completely normal and I laugh and I communicate like nothing is the problem But when I’m alone, that’s when everything switch and I feel like that’s so confusing because two people it will give it the illusion that I’m perfect looking fine and stuff, but it’s not and I don’t know how to approach people or especially my friends about how I really feel because I feel like I’m just gonna burden them with my experience and I don’t want them to be with me 24 /7 and waste their time because of me and because how unstable I am and I seriously don’t know what help I need because I feel like I’m only going to burden my family financially if I do get professional help because we already are struggling with money and I feel like me going to therapy and getting help with burden them even more with money and I don’t wanna do that But I also feel so dead inside and I just don’t know what to do because I don’t wanna burden my family with money problems, even more

1
User Profile: compassionateTissue2025
compassionateTissue2025 July 1st, 2025

@discreetTiger3771 Thank you for being this open. What you’ve shared is heavy and incredibly painful, and it makes complete sense that you’re feeling worn down, numb, confused, and exhausted. Everything in your message points to someone who has been surviving in a world that has not given them the safety or care they deserved.

The way you describe shifting between seeming okay around others and breaking down when you're alone, that's not strange. That’s what a lot of people do when they’ve been through trauma. The self-harm, the flashbacks, the need to escape your own thoughts, all of it is your body trying to cope with something that was never fair to begin with.

It also makes sense that you feel trapped between needing help and feeling like getting it would burden your family. That kind of pressure, on top of everything else, is a lot to carry.

You're not a failure. You’re someone who has lived through incredibly hard things and is still here, still speaking, still trying to find a way to feel okay. You don’t have to explain or justify anything. I'm here with you.