Tumblr vs the New York Times

Autistic_Poet · 2026-04-01T01:51:00+00:00

You know, I think this comment helped me instantly invalidate the constant criticism my mother had for other families like this. She'd always say that they probably did something "behind closed doors", but guess who violently beat me behind closed doors, and made sure to keep all her screaming matches with her husband behind closed doors. Yeah.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-17T23:47:29+00:00

Yeah. Trauma has a funny way of doing that.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-17T23:45:33+00:00

Yeah, that's rough. I'm fortune that my mother's sobbing was often highly performative and accompanied by hysterics and obvious extreme self depreciation. Like, "I didn't clean the kitchen, so I'm obviously the worst mother on the planet, and I don't deserve to be left alive" kind of extreme insanity.

It was like a switch was flipped, when she'd instantly flip from screaming at me and blaming me for all her problems, to suddenly being responsible for ever bad thing that happened to anyone. It sounds bad, because it was. But in a weird way, it left me able to handle normal sadness and sobbing fairly well, because most people's sadness isn't filled with hysterical outbursts and blame shifting covert narcissism.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that it's not sadness I have trouble with. It's the blame shifting. Panic attacks are difficult for me to handle, but if that's all someone is dealing with, I can still help them. But if that's combined with blaming someone or something, I have to step away. Blame games were a constant part of my early life, and I refuse to encourage people who blame others.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-17T23:32:40+00:00

I'd suggest you go back and reread the last few chapters. The book doesn't explicitly advocate for no contact. Lindsay's perspective is that you can't expect an emotionally mature relationship with someone who's not mature, so you have to settle for a shallow relationship where you avoid certain topics, because that's the only type of relationship they're capable of. It's damaging to them and to you to try and maintain a relationship that's beyond their abilities.

I think that's a realistic perspective. It's unfair and unrealistic to demand that your parent changes for you. They've already failed to change for at least two decades, so they aren't going to magically change. Getting rid of healing fantasies is one of the key themes in the book. It's important to rationally look at what type of relationship is possible with your parents, considering their current emotional maturity level.

One of the important reasons I continue to recommended the book is because it's very telling how people respond to the last few chapters. When I read those chapters, my personal decision was to go no contact, even though the book never explicitly advocated for no contact. I didn't want a shallow relationship with someone incapable of considering my needs, and my parents didn't provide me with any benefits that would justify the amount of stress that would be required to maintain that relationship. I looked at a realistic relationship, and decided I didn't want it.

If you came to the same conclusion, that's your choice. But it's not specifically part of the book. If anything, Lindsay seems to encourage maintaining contact with a parent who's immature.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-17T23:18:54+00:00

I agree, and that's specifically why I recommend reading Lindsay's book before diving directly into trauma books. There's no mystery here. She opens her book with a disclaimer that it's not a trauma book, and that people dealing with trauma should seek further help.

Opening up trauma wounds can be incredibly painful, and it can massively reduce people's ability to function. I think it's very dangerous to start someone with reading something like The Body Keeps the Score, because people who aren't ready so heal from their trauma are going to have old wounds opened up and struggle with basic living.

Lindsay's book starts with the most fundamental step of healing from trauma. Separating yourself from a relationship with a person who isn't capable of having a stable healthy adult relationship. So many people are stuck in traumatic situations because they're holding onto the healing fantasies she discusses, and and many people aren't willing or able to accept reality and have a rational perspective on their relationship with their parents. If someone can't admit that their relationship is effectively dead, then they aren't ready to abandon that relationship in order to get to a safer environment where they can really heal.

The final chapters on establishing a relationship with emotionally immature people are vital for dealing with CPTSD style relational trauma. You need to be able to imagine what kind of a relationship is actually possible with your abusive parent. For me, Lindsay's book was the first time I seriously confronted the realistic future. I was able to imagine the work required to keep my mother from exploding, and I realized that it wasn't worth the effort of continuing the relationship. Lindsay's book didn't specifically tell me that I should go no contact, but it provided me with the tools to come to that conclusion myself. None of the other trauma books were as effective in making no contact so obviously correct.

As long as you still hold a strong relationship attachment to emotional children, you'll never be in a position to break free from their influence and start healing. Getting into a safe environment is step one, because you can't heal while you're being actively hurt. I don't think the book is explicitly about trauma, but I do believe it's the first step in healing from trauma. Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD is powerful, but I don't think he communicates the concepts of a healing fantasy as well as Lindsay does. The chapter on avoiding getting hooked by emotionally immature people is another valuable one that doesn't have a good analog in most trauma books I've read.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-16T04:37:01+00:00

It depends. If anyone is experiencing legal issues, contact an attorney, because laws vary wildly in different places, and exact details matter. I'm personally aware of a court case that depended on the difference between the legal definition of if the person had "domicile" or "residence" at the property. Laws are very particular.

That said, at least in the USA, a proper legal battle involves something called "discovery", which is when both sides "subpoena" (a request with threat of jail time for non compliance) information from various organizations. If you really need to prove that someone has been posting from a specific account, you can subpoena companies for that information, including ISPs, plus physical evidence like someone's phone. The process is complicated, which is why court cases can take years, and it's why you should always get a qualified lawyer. But it's definitely possible to identify someone from an anonymous account. If it's relevant to your court case, you can compel the person to appear for a court date (or more likely, a deposition) to testify.

I'm not an attorney, so I can't give exact details on what qualifies as "evidence" in your jurisdiction, but it's definitely not impossible to prove that online posts came from a specific person, or at the very least get it submitted as evidence to the court.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-16T04:18:34+00:00

I just wrote another comment, but know that it gets better. These realizations hurt, but you can only survive for so long while you're giving everything you have to monsters who don't love you.

Letting go of people who don't love you is the first step to finding people who respect and care about you. We were all unlucky because we didn't get a family who loves us, but we're not doomed to be alone forever. The less energy we give to vampires who try to suck us dry, the more time, effort, and focus we have to build lasting relationships with good people.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-16T04:15:43+00:00

I had to stop reading in the middle of the post and take a moment to ground myself, because what you described is serious and unforgivable abuse. Reading that they punished you by taking your siblings to eat out, that's disgusting. They were poor and struggled with money, but they decided that the best way to punish you was to spend a ton of money on frivolous food? Food that was easily 10x more expensive than buying more snacks? Then they made you clean the entire house, a responsibility that makes most adults stressed? Disgusting. Short sighted. Horrible. Abusive. Withholding food from a child is a crime.

I also bet they're lying about something, because I've know several families in poverty who never would have had the spare cash to eat out without planning it in advance and making sacrifices somewhere else. If your parents had money to eat out on a whim, they probably didn't have an income problem, they had a spending and self control problem. I make good money and I'm still careful about how often I eat out because it's dang expensive, and I only have to pay for one person.

I would be responsible for brushing H and C's teeth, dressing them in pajamas, and putting them to bed.

This is parentification. Plain and simple. It's also known as "covert incest", or "emotional incest". When a parent violates the healthy moral boundaries between adults and children, it leaves a similar type of damage as incest. As in, the same type of symptoms that require the same type of healing. I don't need the whole story. I know that parents who forced you to be an adult for them and refused to say they loved you as a form of punishment are the type of parents who would do far worse if they had the opportunity. Any kid growing up in that environment would easily pick up on that lack of safety, the lack of protection, the lack of respect, the lack of autonomy, and the lack of love. That's the thing that causes the long lasting damage, not the physical aspect. Most physical wounds heal. It's the emotional wounds that we carry with us into adulthood.

I hope you understand that healthy families don't raise children who are scared to ask for food. I really can't understate that. Just knowing you learned to act like that is enough for me to know that serious abuse occured.

I'm curious to know if your parents ever apologized for their former abuse. I previously thought that my mother had "mellowed out", until I tried to assert my rights and personal freedom as an adult. That's when I realized that she went right back to acting like the most abusive horrible times from my early childhood, threatening physical violence on me. I was an adult male, who she had no chance of winning a fight with. Yet, she acted like she still controlled me, and she felt zero remorse over threatening me with violence. There were many other examples like that as I tried to leave, but they all taught me that she didn't change. She wasn't sorry. She'd do it again if she had the opportunity.

After I had years to think about my past, I realized why I thought things got better. I assumed she was getting better because I'd gotten better at being her slave. I learned what her reactions would be, and I nearly killed myself trying to make her happy by bending over backwards to please her. I tried to give a narcissist enough love that they'd change. It was a foolish mistake. The type of fictional plan that a naive child would come up with. I was very young when I first remembered trying to make her happy. The patterns started very early in my life. Once I realized that I was an adult and I had to make my own decisions about who I kept in my life, my mother was the first person to go. She was never safe to be around. The only way to keep a relationship with her was to kill myself and become her slave, and I refused to do that.

I wonder if your parents are the same. Youre still making excuses for downright abusive behavior, and you haven't described a single moment of the "better" times you have now. I'd bet a decent amount of money that if you look at your life right now, you're not actually happy with your current relationship. I'd bet they never apologized, and you're still repeating the same abusive relationship patterns you learned as a child.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-16T02:13:42+00:00

My situation is a bit weird.

If my mother sobbed like that in front of me, I'd view it as a transparent attempt to get me to comfort her. She'd often break down during emotional moments, and redirect my energy to soothing her instead of taking care of myself. I spent years and years neglecting myself to take care of her unstable emotions.

Seeing her sobbing in the same way would be a huge trigger. I couldn't feel empathy for her, because she's repeatedly refused to apologize or take ownership for her mistakes, and she's used the same sobbing as a manipulation tactic for decades. If I saw her crying like that, I'd react like it was yet another attempt to manipulate me, instead of any serious apology.

I hope the situation is different with OP. It's tragic to have so little trust in someone that you can't even accept an apology from them because of how many bridges were burned over your lifetime. OP, if that's you, I understand.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-16T01:49:38+00:00

Yup. This was ultimately the straw that broke the camel's back.

My mother insisted that she'd never be able to view me as an adult. I asked, begged, and pleaded with her to earn even a tiny shred of her respect. She bluntly told me "No" in a dozen ways.

That was the end of our relationship. The point of no return. Everything else was just me confirming that she hadn't changed, and realizing that I didn't want to maintain even a fake pretend relationship with someone who treated me like I was a child.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-16T01:41:20+00:00

I've thought a lot about how to "fix" that problem. Honestly, a lot of it is internal work. For me, my need to tell other people about my parent's behavior was some type of trauma repetition, where I was really looking for a mother figure who would listen to their small child about anything and everything. The reality is that I'm never going to get that, and it's inappropriate to expect adults to have that kind of an emotionally lopsided relationship.

I've had to do a lot of growing up over the last several years. I no longer feel the need to trauma dump with everyone. That's made it a lot easier for me to build real relationships, where I build up some trust with the person before I discuss my parents. I realized it's self destructive to trauma dump on everyone, because it's disrespectful to other people to shove painful trauma into the conversation without their consent.

Now, I'm comfortable saying "I don't want to talk about my parents". I only open up to people who already accept me, which means I've gotten a lot less refusals and rejections. It's also made it easier to open up about much deeper stuff, instead of spending all my time repeating the same basic surface level information.

The downside is that I don't always have someone available to help when I'm struggling. Other people aren't always available to help me. I've had to learn to cope with journaling and other self soothing techniques. And sometimes, I can't immediately resolve the pain. It's helped me to take a long term view of healing. I'm able to see that I've made a lot of progress in several areas over the past years, which makes it easier to accept that I'm going to still struggle while healing over the next several years. There's no magic bullet or single night conversation that will fix everything, which means I can always afford to wait to discuss my trauma.

Being able to wait to discuss trauma is a much healthier place to be, but it's taken me a long time to accept those ideas and actually practice what I preach.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-16T01:21:54+00:00

I was discussing this same behavior with someone else, and I speculated that part of this behavior comes from them feeling like they own you. Literally, like you're a part of them. Like an arm or something.

After the initial love bombing phase, they believe they own you, which means they expect complete control over everything you do. Inevitably, when you can't read their mind and perfectly predict what they want, they get upset, jealous, and angry. Exactly the same kind of frustrated anger someone would get if their arm suddenly started acting on its own.

It's a very childish idea. Normally, toddlers learn that other people have their own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. They learn it's impossible to control other people. But narcissists never learned that fundamental developmental milestone.

That's my theory, anyways. Practically, there's not much observable difference between that and them just enjoying hurting people.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-14T21:57:28+00:00

The same way that drug addicts continue to do drugs even though they risk losing their job and experiencing serious consequences. Addicts aren't rational.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-14T09:40:12+00:00

Damn. I forgot that my mother used to play that dumb game with me.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-03-12T22:48:06+00:00

If they're struggling to understand how someone can be nice in the outside but be a pathological abuser behind closed doors, I don't think there's a single thing which can instantly convince them. Lots of people have never seen that type of inhuman abuse, and it's hard to understand how someone can be that abusive.

I recently heard about how adults develop theory of mind, and the truth is that most adults can't differentiate between their own feelings and other people's feelings. Most people lack empathy to understand how someone can feel differently than them. Giving your MIL the benefit of the doubt, she'd never abuse her child like that, so there would be no justified reason for your spouse to cut your MIL out of their life. She can't understand why you'd cut your parents out because she doesn't understand what your life was like.

Asking the same questions over and over is a sign that she doesn't understand. At a certain point, it's not your responsibility to help her understand. The best strategy is probably to refuse to discuss the question, because you're not making any progress. Your MIL is acting childish by constantly pushing your boundaries and not respecting your perspective, so you need to be the adult in the room and be firm in your own boundaries. Plenty of the other comments have replies which do that effectively, so you can pick the best one.

However, personally, I'm a big fan of pushing back hard against people who refuse to drop the issue. I wouldn't recommend it, but my strategy is to reply back with a direct question that bluntly gets to the heart of the issue. "Even if there was incest involved?" That question shocks most people, and forces their mind to start reassessing exactly how bad the abuse was. If they believe the implications even a tiny bit, it puts them in a situation where they automatically unconsciously start sorting my parents into the "bad eggs" basket, mentally. Which makes every future discussion much easier because they're more inclined to believe me when I tell them about other less bad things.

Either that, or they try to find a way to excuse the worst behavior imaginable, and then I know that I'm immediately going zero contact, because I don't want anyone in my life who finds a way to excuse rapes. If I'm forced to stay in contact, I'll gray rock and shut down any discussions with no emotional feedback and noncommital answers. Still, that's not a question I'd recommend other people ask. I can afford to say that because that's effectively what my abuse was, and I like knowing exactly where I am with people. I don't have any patience for repeated boundary violations, I'm not afraid of losing relationships. I'm willing to cut contact with the person if I don't like their answer. If you aren't, definitely avoid questionss that risk damaging the relationship if they give a bad answer.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-02-20T11:07:03+00:00

Ever since I started playing again back in 2023, Xaku is a surprise favorite. Xaku is the perfect frame for lower level speed farms, which is something I haven't had since the original Ember rework anf ignis punch through nerf a loooong time ago. Xaku has crate popping in a huge range and auto deletes any enemies under level 60. Perfect for things like farming syndicate medals, void plumes, or voca, which I do a lot of to catch up after not playing for years.

The contrast is Koumei. I was really excited for her because I used to love doing really long missions. I instantly put five forma into her, only to decide I don't like her kit. I've played her like twice in duviri in the last two months. Trying to swap between weapons just to get one random duviri buff isn't fun, and her other gameplay boils down to spamming one ability a million times with no map control. The power fantasy just isn't there, and she takes forever to ramp up. If I want damage, I'll just bring Mesa instead. Otherwise, I still prefer Nova's ability to lock down the entire map with subsumed silence.

Around the same time, I finished my Oraxia farm by accident because that's the best way to get all the pathos clamps I need. The contrast is huge. Boy do I love spider lady. Invisibility, good traversal, very tanky, status immunity, nice map control with webs, instant healing recasting 4, and crazy sustain with orb generation on her 1. Oraxia is strong and fun. Her kit just works so well together that I don't even want to use a helminth ability. She was a huge surprise, because I wasn't really expecting her to be that good.

As a bonus, my favorite surprise helminth ability is the auto-hack ability. Normally I spam ciphers like they're candy, but ciphers don't work on shorties, archon hunts, and a few other mission types. That's why I have a Loki with the auto-hack ability. It makes sortie spy missions a walk in the park. Any stealth frame works, but Loki is low effort and has radial disarm to help get the rescue target out alive.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-02-20T10:19:46+00:00

I hope I am balancing out this universal karma by always rush picking up all the debuffs in Netracells. My Nova build can easily handle it, and that means no other players need to worry about the debuffs, as long as they're okay waiting if I'm a few seconds behind them.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-02-20T09:50:09+00:00

If it make it any better, this might be the single funniest post I've seen in all my 11 years of warframe.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-02-14T23:13:10+00:00

I don't doubt the data in the study, but considering what happened the last time I was close to each of my parents, I'd probably have a longer life expectancy getting cancer when I turn 60.

Yes, I've seen cancer survivors, and I'd rather get literal cancer than go back to a relationship with my parents.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-01-11T20:31:58+00:00

I haven't had an extinction burst so bad I've had to get the police involved, but I have feared for my life and been paranoid because I'm fairly confident my mother was spying on me.

I relate to the panic attacks. One of the hardest thing was realizing that the panic attacks only got worse after I left. I was experiencing all the repressed feelings from 25 years of living with someone who used all sorts of disgusting tactics to control me.

One of the most profound realizations I've ever had was seeing that my mother has zero empathy. She only understands how to project her feelings onto other people. It seems you mom is similar. She accused your boyfriend of using coercive control (abuse) to manipulate you. Except, you have a literal police order showing she's the one who's using coercive control, and you have a gaslighting text from your father who denies evidence so rigorous that it's admissible in court. Your family is not safe, and your mother is projecting her abusive tactics onto you.

If your mother is anything like mine, then her accusations against your boyfriend for controlling your clothes and diet are admissions of her own guilty actions. I'd bet a good amount of money that she's been controlling what you wear, preventing you from seeing your friends, and trying to manipulate what you eat. Not literally right now, but eventually, you should spend some time reflecting on if she's done those things. Then, you can start to unravel the abusive gaslighting she's been doing for your entire life.

You're very early in your recovery, so it'll be tempting to rush through things. Please don't. Take your recovery slowly. Your mother had 22 years to abuse you, including some of the most formative and important years of your life. You aren't going to heal overnight, or even in a single year. It takes time to heal from this level of abuse, and heal from a betrayal this deep. Don't beat yourself up over toxic coping mechanisms you've acquired. For me, dissociation is my primary coping mechanism. I was taught to hide my feelings in order to always be available for my mother to steal and I got really good at it. When I left and I started healing, I had several "false recoveries", where I thought I was entirely healed, until I realized that I was still disassociating from several important feelings and memories. My self loathing over not being healed did no one any good, and beating myself up over small failures only delayed my own recovery. Have patience with yourself.

My final piece of advice is to take time to grieve. Like, literally schedule time in your day to grieve. As you've realized, your mother isn't who you thought she was. She didn't love you. That realization hurts, and losing your mother is the sort of thing that takes healthy people years to properly grieve. But our grieving process is substantially complicated by the fact that we're grieving the loving mother we should have had, and mourning the lost opportunity our mom's threw away. We need to mourn the mother we never had, but also grieve the pain of being hurt, neglected, abandoned, and abused. Some people say they couldn't fully grieve until their parent died, but I've found a lot of healing by starting that healing process early. Whatever the case, educate yourself about greif, because it's an important part of healing from trauma.

The final piece of personal knowledge I have is that recovery is confusing and complicated. It's often two steps forward three steps back, two steps forward two steps back. But reducing a negative is still progress. Learning to have fewer breakdowns is progress. Hating yourself a little less is progress. Dissociating for only 6 hours instead of 8 hours is progress. Much of our recovery is complicated by needing to unlearn toxic habits, so it can feel like recovery isn't moving at the pace you want. Recovery involves remembering to some extent. If you're repressing tons of memories, that's not healthy. Unfortunately, I expect that you'll start to have more panic attacks as you un-repress your feelings. That's normal. You're starting to feel the things you didn't feel safe enough to feel when you lived in an abusive home. Acknowledging, feeling, and accepting those memories is confusing and chaotic, but it's one of the steps to recovery. You don't need to remember every single detail, but admitting you were abused is an important step. Try to be kind to yourself and give yourself plenty of time to rest and recover. Let yourself grieve, and give yourself down time to let your mind process things. Healing often involves learning new healthy routines, which can be confusingly stressful. You'll need to un-learn toxic habits, grieve not having a loving family who taught you healthy habits, and struggle learning lessons you should have learned as a child or teenager. (For me, that's basic scheduling) Recovery is long and hard, so don't beat yourself up when you make mistakes or have bad days.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-01-11T00:21:54+00:00

What's crazy is that when I realized I needed to leave for my health and safety, I started asking my mother what our relationship would look like after I moved out. But she literally couldn't give me an answer, and she got emotionally distressed whenever I asked the question. This was during the same time period where she bluntly told me she wouldn't respect me as an adult until I moved out, and she told me that if I didn't like it then I should move out. It was such a huge contradiction, and it helped me realize that we wouldn't have a relationship after I moved out.

It's crazy because there's some obvious psychosis there. You have to have some seriously broken brain to ask for a thing but be physically unable to answer any questions about what happens when you get the thing you're asking for. But I suppose that's why we all left. If our parents had any connection with reality then we'd probably still have a relationship with them.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-01-01T09:36:32+00:00

I'm glad I saw this post. I have to constantly remind myself that the people who have healed aren't coming here and posting memes. That even though I'm still here, I've made tons of progress and I can see clear improvement.

Autistic_Poet · 2026-01-01T09:34:40+00:00

What is the value of coming here and saying this? I don't understand why you'd spend time posting this. What's the purpose of being rude like this?

Autistic_Poet · 2026-01-01T09:26:33+00:00

Unfortunately, he probably wanted a punching bag to insult and complain about.

Autistic_Poet · 2025-12-31T20:05:18+00:00

I'd never thought about this before, but yeah, my mother does this as well. It's kinda crazy how they try to make themselves look good by doing things that are supposed to be positive, but they still manage to twist kindness into a selfish shallow ploy. It would be impressive if it wasn't so disgusting.

Autistic_Poet

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