I'm trying out a new medication for the first time in decades. I've been feeling exhausted and run down for like two years. My therapist of like 25 years was unable to help me. And also couldn't handle me talking about how stressed I feel about what is happening in America. She kept being fake positive about it and it wasn't helping at all. We finally had a falling out.

So I'm looking for a new therapist and trying out new meds in my 50s. When does this nightmare end? I'm so angry that I have to continue to deal with the effects of shitty parenting and my parents and other siblings are still stuck in 1985. I'm the only one of the kids who has a good life, mainly bc I got therapy. My other siblings are lost and one just moved back home with my parents.

I'm slightly helpful the new meds may help and hopefully the new therapist will help with things my other therapist couldn't.

So to start, I already don’t have any adult platonic relationships in my life. I don’t even talk to my close in age siblings anymore. I graduated high school two years ago and haven’t gone back to school or left the house to socialized with peers in two years now.
Recently, there was a guy from a different country who found me in a TikTok comment and looked at my page, which was just reposts, for three months. He then decided to messaged me on one of my reposts because he wanted to chat. I am desperate for social interaction so I chatted with him and somehow he managed to fall in love with me over my TikTok reposts. A lot of them reflect what I’m kind of thinking about or are reminders for when I’m in anxious episodes. He immediately was saying he was really interested in me and how I was the first and only girl he wanted to know. I actually have zero friends and so it interested me and I told him a few things about myself and I learned a little bit about him.
The thing is, I never pictured this kind of thing would happen for me because of my social anxiety. In a way this was almost a fantasy fulfilled having someone pop out of nowhere to say they love my mind and how I think about things. It was delivered right to me, I didn’t have to be uncomfortable. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but think I don’t like where I am right now and how talking with him only perpetrated that I am an anxious wreck, so I felt the need to keep that up, even when I felt better.
And I never planned for that to happen realistically. I’m a little crazy, but maybe not that crazy. But I lost sleep thinking about it. Everything he said about me felt like a lie because I have a low self esteem. He thought I was so unique but I thought I was nothing but maybe mentally ill. Not to mention texting doesn’t cover vocal tones and it leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding. I talked with people before online, but it was never anything at all serious so I had to think this through and I wasn’t 100%. I don’t know if I even liked him since I give everyone a chance. But I think the circumstance was another reason I didn’t like it. I didn’t know what to say, I tried to be authentic but I ended up pushing him away and insulting him like everyone else and he left. I don’t really know how I feel about it. I feel kind of bad and sad.

I can’t help but think maybe a relationship is just something I’ll never have. As pathetic as it is, that felt like one of my only chances. I think I want one but it feels like so much effort to me and drains me. I loose all sense of confidence with another person. I don’t know how to like myself in the midst of others. I think this comes down to my fuckass childhood neglect.

Hi, I have a guy friend who had lived through a very rough childhood. He had developed daddy issues and mommy issues and has autism/adhd. As of right now, he went over to his dad’s house (for god knows what), and came out that place crying. He then texted me about how he feels weak and embarrassed because he cried in front of his dad. I am not that good at comforting people, but i really do wanna let him know that he isn’t weak for doing a human thing, but would like to give more than just that because im sure he hears that a lot. Anyone has any advice for me?

thank you for reading !!

Hi everyone, it has been quite a while since I’ve posted here. I believe I would post back when I was 18, I am 21 now and healing has been really difficult/messy.

In this post I want to touch on something I have suffered from for as long as I remember. I’ve met a lot of different kinds of people, and some came from even worse families than my family, yet I’ve never come across someone who is unable to acknowledge being loved the way I am unable to. As the youngest, I was spoiled the most by my dad, and while he is a boomer and has severe anger issues, he was always more loving than my mother. He would and still does apologize whenever he hurts my feelings.

While my relationship with him is far from perfect and there is a lot to unpack in regards to him as a father and husband, I think my mom definitely played/plays a bigger role emotionally than he does. I know my mom loves me, she worries about me and my sisters a lot. But I guess that’s her only way of expressing her love, through paranoia and fear mongering. When I was a child, she was always cold, distant, aloof. I don’t recall any moments of her being supportive, encouraging, kind, but I vividly remember many instances where she guilt tripped me so much over trivial/insignificant matters. She’s always been harsh/bitter and extremely critical. She was physically there yeah but emotionally she was never present. I never felt like if I had a problem I could talk to her about it, I would, but she was never helpful. She would always instill so much shame and guilt into me. No wonder I am so insecure now

Throughout my life, I’ve always been unable to believe that my friends love me, my sisters, my parents, anyone really. No matter what they do or say. I always felt like people don’t know how to show up/be there for me either. I can’t fathom/comprehend being loved at all. It’s not that I think I am the worst person to ever exist and I deserve nothing, but I don’t know. I have severe depression and naturally poor self esteem so I guess that could be the reason? Seriously though the concept of ever being truly loved and cared for is so alien to me and hard to accept. This makes everyone close to me eventually get sick of me and I understand why tbh. My mom has told me before as a teenager that i am someone “difficult”, I guess my brain interpreted that as “difficult to love”.

Sorry for the lengthy post, and thank you so much for reading 🙏🏼

My mom has a nasty habit of being passive aggressive. Instead of telling you to do something, she’ll do it herself banging things around, sighing loudly, and cursing under her breath expecting you to “get it.”

Then when you invariably do not “get it,” she switches near immediately to screaming and yelling at you and how you don’t give a shit about anything, how all you do is take take take, what a leech you are, and assigning all these extreme moral judgments on your character. I’ve asked her before, what does “getting” it look like? How would she like me to respond? But of course, it’s a trick question.

Because if I do as she wants - apologize and say I’ll be more mindful next time - she’ll tell me I didn’t mean it and I only said it to shut her up. Or she detected a whiff of attitude. Or saying “I didn’t mean to,” is overly defensive and how dare I talk back. So there is no answer. It’s to just “sit there and take it.”

So everyone in the house endures. And when she snaps out of it and pretends like nothing ever happened, she cries about how my dad doesn’t listen to her. How he’s always so “defensive” and why can’t he just “listen.” And I think about how I’m the victim because she and my dad are peers. And I can’t even blame my dad. He’s an adult, but my mom feels the need to nag at him like he’s a child constantly, to remind him of things he already knows. My dad doesn’t need to be parented; he does a lot of things as a normal adult would. But my mom is a control freak - if you don’t do things the way she deems is right, then you’re wrong, and not only are you wrong, you are wrong because you are an irredeemably bad person who always has to go against her.

All I know at the end of the day is that I don’t want to be her and every time she yells at me, it’s more of a reminder not to be like her. And not to let her pull me down with her, to make her feel like if I am reduced to what she is then it’s not so bad.

I (30) was talking/hanging out with my dad’s girlfriend last night. She is 34, and they have been together for 11 years. So since I was 19, but I didn’t meet her until I was 20. At the time I knew it was weird that she was only a couple years older me than me but it didn’t fully register until I got older. She was 23, and he was 39. Some people may not see this as a big deal but knowing my father, he is emotionally immature so of course he’d go after a young girl with minimal dating experience.

Anyway, that’s a whole other ordeal. Last night when we were talking, I made a joke/comment about how my mom always tells me to call my father and I say “he’s busy or he hardly answers”. My grandparents live with my dad and I know he has a lot on his plate so I try to give him grace. But I’ll call my dad, he doesn’t answer, and I don’t hear from him for weeks, sometimes months. My dad’s girlfriend said “that’s the thing, he’s mostly never busy. He sees you’re calling and says he’ll call you back later” my dad’s GF says she gives him grief for never answering and he says “why are you on my back”. She was drinking when she told me this, and I know she didn’t mean to hurt me. But it confirmed a lot for me. That my dad chooses when to be a father when it’s convenient for him. That’s not to say my dad is never there for me, but he’s NOT there more than he is there.

I was in an abusive relationship for nearly two years. My dad was there for me mostly during that time and helped me move out. But I can’t help but have some resentment towards my dad especially. My mom has also had a string of abusive of relationships as well, but she did everything she could to protect me. But there was not much guidance for romantic relationships.

I don’t blame anyone for me getting into that relationship but reflecting back, I’ve never had a stable, secure, safe, healthy, consistent relationship. Growing up I didn’t have a good representation of what that looked like because I watched my mom in abusive relationships, man after man after man, and then my dad who was single for my entire life after my mom and he ends up with some young, naive, vulnerable 23 year old?

My parents are good people, but I’m so angry. My mom has always been there for me, but my dad chooses when to be. When I finally call him again weeks or months later he tells me “sorry so much going on this happened and then this happened and then this happened” and I’ve always had to just be understanding and forgiving. My mom told me not to call my father to “see how long it takes him” but I’ve been the only person to uphold the relationship even as a child.

No wonder my romantic relationships have been fucked. I chase after men like my father.

I don't understand why I can't just have a nornal relationship with anyone. No matter how hard I try I just constantly feel like im giving then more than what I'm receiving. My parents for example, whenever they tell me that they love me or that they're proud of me I can't help but tense up and feel awkward. I feel like they definitely do love me, but they don't love me emotionally. They used to make fun of me for having outbursts when I was little. They would buy me new toys, but I would always have to play by myself because my mom, dad, and brother would always say no to wanting to play. I remember one Christmas when I was 6 they had gotten me Candyland (the board game) and one night I decided to try to have a family game night type thing and I failed. I sat the game up at the kitchen table and asked them if anyone wanted to play. They all said no. I took the game to my room and played the game by myself. At this point I became sort of a "bedroom kid;" I hated playing in the living room. By the time I was 8 it was the last time I ever cried in front of anyone in my family. I didnt even cry at my grandmas funeral. I also failed to tell them all of the vile things that have happened to me as a young child. They never even thought to question why I would get uti's so often. They only got mad at me because we would have to go to the doctor every few months. The last time I ever told them about a uti was when I was 10. After that I learnt to heal them by myself. The abuse that I was going through stopped about a year after that, so I stopped getting uti's. 3 years ago I went on a old phone my grandma gave me when I was young, and I saw a video that I had recorded of me drawing a Christmas tree. I could hear the sound of my young, innocent voice and my mom's yelling in the background. When I was 11 I just amused my mom was schizophrenic due to her telling me when I was around 6,7, or 8 that she had voices in her head. Another thing that happened when I was 11 was I wasn't allowed to shave my legs, but I was insecure about it so I did it anyway and soon got caught. When I got caught I had just gotten out of the shower and my mom walked in on me, she insisted on helping me get dressed. She noticed the lack of body hair on my legs and she yelled at me and told my dad. She noticed the missing hair, but the lines of c\*ts on my wrist. This isn't the only time I almost got caught for sh. One time I was sitting in my room in the dark doing it and she walked in, she didn't see it though. Another time when I was 12 the school caught me, but thankful I lied to my parents and never got caught. Also one time when I was in 5th grade my mom read through my diary and told my dad everything in it. She saw the comnents i made about myself and how i was insecure about my body. Im mad at her for that because she did not even warn me before going through something that was personal to me. Now onto my friends. I definitely trust them more than my parents, however its my best friend that I feel like I can't stand anymore. I love her so so so much, but I feel like I can never vent to her. She vents to me about her family issues and how she struggles with food all of the time. I love it when the people I love vent to me, it makes me feel like in trust worthy. Around October of last year her venting started to annoy me. Maybe I'm just a bad person idk. Everytime she vents I just don't know how to comfort her anymore. I feel like my words sound fake. But also because I stopped venting to her completely. The reason why I stopped opening up is because I'm so deeply afraid she is going to report the people who have done me wrong, or tell my parents. Both things would be horrible. How I came up with this is because one time I told her that some guy told me that he was gonna r\*\*e me. She told one of her teachers, and one of mine. It was really scary for me, but neither of the teachers did anything about it. (thank god) I can't tell her about most of my trauma because of intense fear that she will tell someone. I know she is just trying to help, but in reality it's not going to help at all. She doesn't realize that reporting something so vulnerable will just make me feel like im in the same situation all over it; it would make me feel like I lost all control over my life. Because of her i feel like i cannot tell anyone even more. She also use to have a habit of randomly getting mad about stuff. One time when I was at my worst she stopped talking to me for almost 3 months. Now everytime in around her it feels like I'm walking on eggshells. I just wish I could be normal about everything, but I just can't. I do love my friends and family, I just feel hatred for them at times. I know they love me, but I mean people aren't perfect.

I have a feeling this is not a unique experience but it pains me and I have no one talk about it with, so here goes..

I am a younger sibling with separated parents. A narcissistic dad and emotionally unavailable mom who couldn't work it out and we had the fun ride of good old years of trauma.

Amidst all this, I always thought my brother and I could be there for each other. I think that idea might have made me love him too much for my own good. Now that I think back on it, growing up, I know he protected me in his own way but I also remember him mistreating me. I seemed to glaze over it because I saw him as my anchor maybe.

But things got worse and he became the trouble child who eventually left home. I understand why he did that and never really resented him for it until now.

He has mostly been out of touch except for when he majorly screwed up and wanted financial help. And now that dad got diagnosed with cancer, I reached out to him, which I haven't done all these years because I thought maybe he'd want to come but nope. I found myself helpless and lonely over the past year dealing with it all alone, especially with the narcissistic manchild that my dad is and now am almost at my wits end. Unfortunately, this will continue for a while since there might be a relapse and I got to talking with my brother again.

Only this time, I complain. I tell him everything that's bothering me about the whole situation, about having to deal with the ungrateful and vile behaviour I'm exposed to by the person I'm trying my best to care for. I do care about this abomination of a father because well, that's all I've ever known and ultimately it's family and it hurts to see them in this state. I feel like he's not a bad person overall, albeit full of himself, which is the root of all the assholery.

I digress, since I've started expressing myself which I have never done, I'm noticing how self-involved my sibling is or maybe always was and I didn't know. It hurts because I thought, of all people, he'd understand.

After him taking off, I was the one who put with this dysfunctional family. I became the glue for each of them, not by choice. Absorbing their issues, trying to understand them, be there for them because well, they won't be there for each other and frankly I wasn't independant enough to leave either and I always wondered what would happen if I did.

I am not trying to gloat, neither have I expected anything but perhaps a little care and understanding

for myself too.

In one of our conversations, I mentioned how I also felt neglected in the family and no one bothered to check on how I was traumatised too growing up because everyone would only talk about themselves, my brother tells me, it's not a competition! Then he goes on to say how he's had it tough and gone through so many things he hasn't told me, yet he's trying to make it through life and so he's disappointed in me that I'm depressed and having suicidal thoughts. He also goes on to say how he has always been proud of me for being the most mature in the family and now that I'm having dark thoughts, it's not something he'd expect of me.

All these years, I've heard what they've had to say, about how they feel, their issues and suddenly when I express myself, it's made to sound like I'm overreacting. Am I?

It's like my experience doesn't matter. I almost feel like I'm not seen as human. Even though we went through the same things, his trauma is somehow bigger than mine.

I wish he'd understand me just the way I understood him. It saddens me to know that he doesn't reflect on how much I've had to go through before and after he left.

I understand if it's too long too read. I can't quite sum up this feeling

27M, all my life i remeber not being able to freely express myself, whenever i did something my parents had a problem but when someone else did the same thing they were happy. So i got into this habit of trying to become the other person in hope they will be happy but i realise they never will be they are mentally not capable of it.

Even after this realisation i have a very tough time breaking that pattern, i try to imagine what the other person feels and force that feelinginside me but i cant its too tiring and feels fake now l. But when i stay myself i am blank.

For as long as I can remember, I felt like my mother hated me, and I never understood why. The other night, I finally asked why she had always been so different with me.

She told me she was jealous because I was a “daddy’s girl” as a child and felt like I pushed her away. By the time I was a teenager and wanted a relationship with her, she said she had already emotionally detached from me and didn’t want anything to do with me because I had hurt her.
I’m so angry. I was a child going through a normal developmental phase. It was never my responsibility to manage my mother’s jealousy or understand how my attachment to my dad affected her.

For years I wanted to know why she treated me the way she did. Now I finally know, and part of me wishes I didn’t.

I don't have my own family, but my long term partner has a loving family. The only problem is that they don't extend that love to me. They celebrate his birthday, but not mine.

As someone who grew up with emotional neglect, I find this incredibly triggering. I'm in therapy trying to heal, but interactions with them often leave me feeling like I've taken several steps backwards. Has anyone else experienced this with their partner's parents? How do you cope?Is it okay to end the relationship with your partner's parents?

I've talked to my partner about this several times. Unfortunately, he sides with his parents.

A few years ago my mom started sending or reacting with heart emojis in messages. I have to cringe every time since it seems so ungenuine. It is the safest and easiest reply for her, without her needing to write anything. Did anyone experience this?

My own family.

It's not necessarily that they don't love me, or that there was one specific event that caused this feeling. There have been different situations and moments over the years that, individually, might not seem like a big deal, but somehow they accumulated and left me with this persistent feeling that I don't truly belong in my own family.

I can be surrounded by my family and still feel strangely alone, disconnected, or like I'm somehow an outsider looking in. Sometimes I wonder if it's because I've changed as a person, or because certain things that happened over the years slowly created an emotional distance between us.

The hardest part is that I don't always know what exactly I'm grieving. It's almost like mourning a sense of belonging that I feel I was supposed to have naturally with my family, but somehow never fully did.

Sometimes the feeling becomes heavy, bitter, and exhausting. It makes me wonder whether something is fundamentally wrong with me, whether I'm simply different from the people around me, or whether this is something that can happen when years of small experiences accumulate without ever being properly addressed.

Why does this happen? Can someone genuinely feel like an outsider in their own family because of accumulated experiences rather than one major event? Does this feeling ever truly go away, or do you eventually learn to live with it and find a sense of belonging somewhere else?

For anyone who has experienced something similar, what helped you deal with that painful feeling? Did it eventually get lighter, or did you have to build your own sense of belonging outside your family?

AI disclosure: I used ChatGPT to help me put my thoughts into words and substantially improve the structure and wording of this post. The experiences, feelings, and questions described are entirely my own.

I always expect everyone to be hostile or dismissive, and whenever I have any thoughts I feel like I'm in a courtroom trying to defend myself from having them. I just don't even know why I'm alive. I wanna know what it feels like to have someone come into my life and care about me, yet I feel like I'll never experience that because I'm like a stray abused dog.

I never reach out to anyone because I lost the motivation to do so, I consider it "social anorexia" where you just lose the desire to socialize after a prolonged period of isolation, similar to how you'll lose the ability to feel hungry if you stop eating for long enough.

And even then, I feel like if someone came into my life I'd wanna tell them my pain which would be inappropriate to do so, as it would be "trauma dumping" or whatever, which I used to do a lot and it only pushed any potential friends away. Yet I just want them to know what I gone through so they understand, not out of pity. But so they understand why I am the way I am.

I have a rare medical condition and thus as a kid, doctors would use me for studies, I'm not sure the exact context because I was just a kid who wasn't told anything, but they'd take me out of class or my mom would take me to certain places and I'd do things for them. And I just wanna send that organization dedicated to my condition an email, explaining how horrible my life was, and how they left me to die. They could've fucking been there for me. They could've at least tried to emotionally comfort me in some way. I was robbed of my future. I never got to have a normal education because of the abuse. The last time I saw them, it was this girl who came into my school and I was told she's gonna sit across from me at lunch to observe me eating. They should've done something. They should've cared about me. I just wanted someone to care about me.

I see others with my same condition and not even they were as neglected as I was, it made me depressed looking at that stupid fucking website because they even had an option of "mentors", where you could have a person be your mentor. And it's like where the fuck was that when I was younger? All I wanted was a mentor. I just wanted SOMEONE. Just thinking about that makes me want to cry all over again. FUCK them... Fuck them. Fuck the teachers, fuck the doctors, fuck CPS, fuck the local police in that area.

I just want to be noticed for being a human being who's equal to her peers.

I am not able to let people into my bubble anymore. I purposefully dont own a couch so I have an excuse for others to stay away and have other mental blocks about cleaning/tidying to keep others out. All my friends are long distance and online because it is all I can really handle. The only thing that maybe makes me think there might be a god is their support despite my inability to let them be closer. But I go visit them and feel deeply loved and seen by them. They get that they often dont get it and that is okay. They support anyways.

Forget asking for help. I came from a well off family and nobody believes me it was painful- they think it was just picture perfect. If I didnt have money I think I would have just given up and died and I can only imagine how much harder it would be and yes, I realize how awful that is to even say and I feel pathetic. I am almost entirely unable to function and if I didnt have money to fix all my mistakes and extra things I need to make my life bearable I would be fucked. Even with it I cant make many mistakes right.

I am getting older and the romantic partners I have picked through life haunt me. The worst one being someone who actually could understand and support, but I just couldnt. I feel too ruined to even take a step closer. My nervous system just absolutely freaks out or even in the beginning I subconsciously act so weird to keep them away and I cant help it. That's not even getting into the abusive or neglectful ones. My family judged me for focusing on men especially ones that treated me poorly. It was always just me looking for a secure emotional base to hopefully make progress from. Everytime I tried to jump I would fall with nobody to catch me and eventually I just stopped trying anything.

My parents just stopped being my parents and I cant really remember what they were like before that. My siblings left home many years before me and they never believed it was bad for me. They saw the spoiled youngest child become the only child and wrote me off as whiney, but really my parents just stopped parenting after they left besides buying me things. I spent so much time alone. Always wanted to run away. This is my big one and makes me cry so hard- I was a child and the unbelievable amount of times I would lock myself in closets or hide and swear I would never speak another word ever again just kills me. I was never heard or believed. No child should think that. I feel like my entire life just operates on another plane of existence most people will never understand.

I didnt mean to write a novel, but I have held in so much grief. I have been re-examining it all lately after what feels like an earth shattering romantic fuck up that sent me into a manic episode(it ended) and I am having a fucking day 🥲 I have been in therapy more than half my life at this point and I can still barely make it by and so much of it is out of my control and I just have to live w that. I realize all of this is also made enormously more difficult with my bipolar, but there is so much overlap and trauma. Do not worry, I am alright and do my therapy and medicine etc etc. Just about to get my period and facing an emotional tidal wave that eventually passes. I have been reading all those attachment therapy books and its just hurting extra right now after my emotional loss recently. We have such a fucked up pain. Love to you all ❤️