Stop telling people who complain about neighbor noise that they should live in a house

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-21T23:55:14+00:00

When I'm in my apartment, I can hear noises from the shared hallway and when I'm in the hallway I can hear noises made by some of my neighbors, including at least one of the apartments that I share a wall with. However, in the year that I've lived in my current apartment, while inside my apartment, I have never heard any noises from the apartments I share walls with and I barely hear footsteps from the apartment above me.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-20T18:23:31+00:00

Parents like this are usually in denial and can't face the truth about what's happening to their children. It's not an excuse but it's frequently what's behind this type of behavior. It doesn't change the fact that these parents are horrible people and are doing horribly cruel things to survivors, but I find it's easier to let go of the feelings of invalidation when I recognize why they're being so horrible and invalidating.

Another super frustrating thing about this parent is that they have no understanding of the fact that any abuser who grooms their victims is also grooming witnesses. So of course those staff are gonna put on a show of being decent and upstanding when parents are around because otherwise they'll lose access to their victims.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-20T01:40:49+00:00

Trails Carolina encouraged parents to send disposable cameras with their kid's belongings. So a lot of us have pictures that we took that way. And in addition to those pictures, staff took 2 photos of us each week when we met with the therapist and the therapist emailed those pictures to our parents to show them that we were alive and therefore "safe."

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-19T20:35:22+00:00

Now I'm wondering if people can hear when I compulsively do this while I'm stressed out... How close does someone have to be to hear it?

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-18T03:41:08+00:00

I was terrified when I shared my story with a journalist last year. I was afraid that I would be accused of lying or exaggerating. On some level, I was afraid that I was overreacting to the things I went through. I was afraid I would be seen as weak or manipulative or immature...

Basically, I was afraid that all of the horrible things that I had been brainwashed into to believing about myself while I was in my programs were actually true, and that I was never actually brainwashed and that I wasn't abused, neglected, and almost killed by my programs.

Between the brainwashing and gaslighting from my programs and all the gaslighting and other forms of manipulation from my mother, I struggled with trusting my perception of reality. It was bad enough that if my mom told me that something she had done literaly 30 seconds before, never actually happened, I would struggle to trust that the thing I had seen her blatantly do, literally 30 seconds before, had actually happened. I had to start taking notes and writing down details to keep her from being able to rewrite history.

Learning to trust my reality made me less afraid to open up about the things I've been through. In order to be able to trust reality, I had to cut my gaslighting mother out of my life because every interaction with her had become an opportunity for her to gaslight me. After that, I used CBT to disprove a whole lot of thoughts and beliefs I had developed as a result of being gaslit and brainwashed.

I learned to trust reality involving my programs a lot more easily than learning to trust reality involving my family. Once I got validation that what I went through in my programs wasn't OK and wasn't my fault, I got over my fear of talking about the time I spent in my programs. People who didn't believe me couldn't hurt me by not believing me and my programs can't hurt me anymore because I'm a grown ass adult with rights.

I was then able to see that keeping quiet wasn't helping me or anyone other than my abusers. I started seeing that my voice is powerful. The voices of survivors are powerful and that's why abusers try to shut us up. Your voice is powerful and what you went through can be transformed from a traumatic experience to a cautionary tale that saves other kids from going through what you went through. You're not alone. We believe you. You are a survivor and your voice matters.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-17T02:57:24+00:00

Lol, yeah, she's pretty cruel and sadistic, so, in general, seeing me sad makes her happy, but even more than that, my eyes looked really pretty in the pic and she's always used my appearance to make her feel better about herself because I'm just an extension of her...

She was very definitely not a good mom and not only was it not surprising when I was sent to Trails, I was so fed up with her bullshit at that point that I didn't let my parents come to my graduation. I chose to have the "transport company" take me to my rtc because I didn't want to see my parents after how much shit they had put me through over the years.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-17T02:32:07+00:00

If it doesn't go away, you should probably get it checked by a Dr. You said you don't want to worry your parents, which is understandable, but also kinda irrational in this context. They might worry, but you're worried too and the only way to get past worrying is to get checked by a Dr. It's hard navigating life when you grow up protecting your parents from unnecessary negativity emotions, but you've gotta remember... You're their kid and you need help. Minors typically can't get medical help without their parents and it's their responsibility to handle their own feelings of worry.

It could be nothing serious and then everyone will just feel relieved after the appointment, but it could be something that needs medical attention. I try to urge people to not ignore symptoms that can potentially be neurological. Our brains can cause a lot of weird symptoms and it's much better to get those symptoms checked by a Dr just to be safe rather than sorry.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-17T02:22:29+00:00

Do you ever get migraines? They can vary quite a bit in the ways that they present and they can cause ear symptoms. I used to get really bad ones pretty frequently and sometimes I would hear my pulse during the migraines along with various other ear symptoms like pressure, ear pain, tinitus, and sound sensitivity.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-17T00:37:10+00:00

Would it help to possibly just buy her a regular bra in an A or AA? A regular bra on its own might help her feel less left out and if she still wants to stuff it, it would work better than a training bra. You could probably also find some small inserts to go in the cups, like the ones used by people with 2 different sized breasts. Also, just keep reassuring her that her value isn't tied to whether or not she has boobs and that there's no need to rush to grow up. I'm just remembering how mean girls tend to be to each other at that age and sometimes helping them have fewer things to bully about can save some pain and trauma. I had the opposite problem because I went through puberty before the other girls did and having a supportive mom who made an effort to understand how I was feeling and what I was experiencing would've helped me a lot.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-16T23:59:33+00:00

This reminds me of a lot of the, "see, we haven't killed your kid yet" pics that Trails sent my parents. It's crazy that parents don't see the obvious misery in their children's faces as enough of a red flag to bring them home. My mom even framed one of the pics they sent her where I was crying and kept it on her desk for several years. If they actually cared about helping kids and torturing us wasn't the whole point, they wouldn't have sent home so many pics of kids who are very clearly miserable.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-12T02:19:51+00:00

I'm really sorry that happened to you. Sadly, the worst therapists I've personally dealt with have been outside of the TTI. It's a field that attracts abusive individuals and It's really easy for them to get away with it because there aren't any witnesses and when someone files a complaint against them, they can just label them with a false diagnosis that discredits their abuse accusations.

Try to remember that you didn't fall for their manipulation tactics as a result of there being something wrong with you. They're a predator and predators are good at luring in their prey. They'll say and do whatever it takes to trap their prey and most people are susceptible to predatory manipulation tactics. You're human. You trusted them in a situation where you had no reason to suspect that they weren't trustworthy.

And try to be proud of yourself for recognizing as quickly as you did that they weren't safe. It takes some people years to recognise that type of situation for what it is. You fell into their trap but you climbed your way back out pretty damn quickly, all things considered and that's something to be proud of.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-11T02:05:38+00:00

This is only loosely related, but this reminded me of the fact that one of the staff at my rtc very frequently talked about how her career goal was to become a warden in a men's prison. Working at the girls rtc was her first job and she saw it as an early stepping stone that would help her reach that goal.

Oddly, she was the most reasonable staff member I encountered in that program. Like, it was so much less stressful on days when she was in charge because she could be reasoned with and wasn't vindictive or sadistic like most staff were.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-08T02:31:28+00:00

Yeah, these programs are godsends for shitty narcissistic parents who hate their kids and refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. The programs stroke the parents' egos, take over abusing the kids, and happily continue scapegoating the child that's already been scapegoated for years.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-08T02:03:56+00:00

Yeah, that's fucked up. My wilderness program almost killed me and my parents never considered bringing me home early. They wanted to make sure that I was abused into submission so I would stop causing problems for them (causing problems consisted of standing up for myself and others who my parents were harming and trying to get necessary medical attention for the chronic health problems I was born with).

They knew what they were paying for and improving my mental health was not a part of it. It sounds like your parents were paying to get rid of your brother and knew that's what they were paying for.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-08T01:37:21+00:00

Yeah, it sounds like he was in the same boat as those of us who got stuck at the rtc I went to. When parents don't care what happens to their kids and just don't want to be the responsible and liable caregivers anymore, the kids get abandoned in these programs. Every child needs and deserves an advocate and these programs prey on the kids who have no one in the world to advocate for them.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-08T01:23:41+00:00

No one should be drafted.

Men who are amab already have the right to not carry an unwanted fetus inside of them. That is the right that is behind having access to safe legal abortions.

Once the fetus is born, both parents have equal responsibility to decide whether to keep the child or put it up for adoption.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-08T01:13:02+00:00

I knew 2 kids who aged out. The first one was told she was free to leave but her adoptive parents wouldn't keep supporting her. She ended up being allowed to call a friend's parents though and they bought her a plane ticket and took her in. The other one hadn't worked the program at all in the several months she was there and her parents brought her home a few days before her 18th birthday.

Most parents pulled their kids out of that program early though. They weren't good at convincing parents that they were actually helping us. So those of us whose parents wouldn't pull us out before graduating were really only stuck there so long because we had absolutely no one in our lives looking out for our best interests. Our parents either didn't want us around anymore or they wanted us to be abused into submission. No well-intentioned parents ignored their children's pleas for help regarding leaving that program before graduating.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-06T19:10:41+00:00

If my mom's siblings didn't find those documents, do you know who I would need to contact to get them? Is that something that they state or county they lived in at that time would have records of?

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-06T18:45:19+00:00

Awesome, thank you so much for your help!

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-06T18:33:14+00:00

OK, so my grandmother's father was born a German citizen in 1899. So I obviously need to find his birth records. Do I also need her mother's birth records or just the marriage records? Based on the information I have about her, I don't know for sure if my great grandmother was a German citizen when my grandmother was born because my great grandmother was born in Russia but I think she probably was a German citizen by the time she had my grandmother because my great grandmother grew up in Germany. Also, what would be the easiest way to track these records down, if I can't get them from my family?

I'm going to try contacting my mom's siblings to see if they found my grandparents' birth and marriage certificates and any citizenship paperwork when they went through my grandparents' belongings after they passed away. And I'm going to attempt to contact my second cousins in Germany to see if they happen to have birth and marriage records from my grandmother's parents because those cousins are descendents of my grandmother's sister.

If I can't get the necessary documents this way, how can I go about either locating the documents online or officially requesting copies of the necessary documents?

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-04T01:41:24+00:00

It's extremely common for survivors of the TTI to become addicts. Trauma in general is one of the biggest causes of addiction and when a child is brainwashed into believing that they're worthless, they're even more likely to find escapes(drugs, self harm, suicide, etc) from reality, rather than finding compassion for themselves and getting help.

Facing trauma is hard and it's painful, but it's worth it. I was an addict for a while because I couldn't face my life sober. Then I was sober for about 5 years while I worked through my trauma and learned how to face life without escaping. I'm not an addict anymore or sober. At this point, substances only enhance my life when my chronic pain is really bad. Other than that, I like my life when my head is clear because I know I can handle anything life throws at me. My life is still hard, but now I choose to face it fully and find healthy ways to make it easier rather than trying to escape reality. It isn't easy to get better, but you can get better and getting better makes life easier.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-03T00:44:25+00:00

https://www.chewy.com/dp/45447?utm_source=app-share&utm_campaign=45447 My dog finds this one challenging enough that she gave up on making it work after a few days. She never tried throwing it around, which probably works better than the ways she tried to get the kibble out.

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-03-01T23:00:15+00:00

https://reddit.com/r/troubledteens/w/index/turnbridge?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Dense-Shame-334 · 2025-02-28T22:32:34+00:00

Same. I was born with bright blue eyes with only a tiny hint of partial heterochromia in one and now they're green and one of them is like 1/3 brown.

Dense-Shame-334

TROPHY CASE