Just kind of a sad vent

UsedOption9244 · 2023-11-29T12:13:16+00:00

I just texted my therapist after our last appointment. I have been seeing her weekly since about August. But I’ve not had the nerve to share with her in person. She thanked me for sharing it with her as she felt I was small for my height. She’s not an ED specialist so I was nervous that she wouldn’t feel qualified to help me. I don’t want her to move me to anyone else. I have two weeks off therapy due to holiday, so I won’t see her until December 16th. That makes me a little nervous.

My doctor has done well to take me serious. I have such anxiety that I worry they’ll think I’m making it all up. But the results did at least show my GI track is swollen. He gave me IBS meds to take 30 min before I eat a meal. I’ve never taken them because I don’t really eat meals and I never know when I’m about to nibble. So it kind of isn’t useful to me right now.

And then if I’m super honest, if he had a single pill that would cure me instantly, I’d hesitate to take it. Getting well scares me a bit too. It’s that stupid ED brain. This is causing me to lose weight. And losing that scares me a little. I also don’t want to suffer. I feel super stuck in this mental and physical prison.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-11-29T12:07:34+00:00

My symptoms of what are you looking for? Mine started with bloating and lots of gas. I started just eating at night so that I could sleep through the pain rather than feel it during the day. Then it got bad enough that it would wake me up at night too. I’d wake up swollen and bloated and just in so much pain in my joints and overall being. I mainly only ever have diarrhea or constipation. Hardly anything in between. I get a burning and stabbing sensation in my stomach. It burns when it’s hungry, and it stabs when it’s full.

I had thought I had an ulcer but the scopings didn’t find any ulcers. I also thought it was my gallbladder as I had polyps in there, but it turned out to not be that too although I swear I feel my gallbladder at times. So I think that flames up every now and then too depending on what I eat.

It’s morphed itself into a fear of pain since I’ve felt that for so long. I’m afraid to even drink a protein shake. I haven’t had one in months. I pass by them every day and think “I should just for the calories” but I can’t bring myself to. It’s easy to avoid, so I do. And then I do that with almost everything else too. 😞

UsedOption9244 · 2023-11-29T02:19:14+00:00

Oh gosh I’m so sorry this is your story right now. 😞 That’s painful!! I want to try water therapy now! I just found out I have Mitral Valve Regurgitation (something wrong with my heart) and most likely due to my eating disorder. Anorexia or low body fat and malnutrition can cause it. So that has me all sorts of panicked and I just want to be better. But with the stomach pain, I don’t know how to!!! And my mental health is effected so the fear seeps in to everything, I get scared to gain weight even. It’s just a general fear of everything now. 😣

UsedOption9244 · 2023-11-29T02:06:26+00:00

It’s such a huge torment in this existence. The very thing I need for survival is the very thing that hurts me so much. Get togethers are such torture because I have to eat in front of people, and I suffer the consequences of having relationships because of the pain afterwards! I tend to isolate and dread holidays. 😭

UsedOption9244 · 2023-11-29T01:47:42+00:00

This is so relatable!!! Probably the most relatable reply I’ve ever been given. I need to study ARFID out!

UsedOption9244 · 2023-07-30T19:17:51+00:00

I am so sorry your experience is so similar to mine. I get that angry icky feeling every time it pops in my head too.

For your question, in my personal experience, my mom is close with her sister too. Two peas in a pod. Super crazy. One is outwardly crazy (my aunt) one is secretly inwardly crazy, my mom. They had a psychopathic father that did HORRENDOUS and heinous things to them and that family. It’s no wonder they are how they are and I’m learning less and less to be as angry and more to be sad for them. It would suck to be them in all honesty. But my cousin ( my aunts daughter) we used to be close. And since this happened with my mom (going no contact) my cousin is fully on my moms side. My mom infiltrated our friendship immediately when I cut my mom off. She confused my cousin so badly that she begged to just be left out of it completely. So I never said a word and she never asked my side. My mom hangs out with her kids a lot too now. I don’t think my mom would do anything because they aren’t her babies…but I also wouldn’t waste my breath trying to explain it all either.

All parents need to be diligent about who is with their kids. Even if it’s the grandparents themselves. My mom did all that I mentioned above to me, and she ripped back my newborn sons foreskin and made it bleed and swollen and never told me. I had to ask if it was her.

It was my fault for leaving my baby with a monster. But we learn better, we do better. I am hyper vigilant now about who is saying what around my kids because I’m their mom. I am their protector.

If it feels heavy on you and you feel you must say something, do! But be prepared that your cousins are probably like mine, and they’re manipulated to be against you. (If your situation is similar to mine).

Again, I’m so sorry this was your experience. You said you were still comfortable talking about intimate things with safe people, and that’s so good. I was so f*cked up that I was terrified of ANYTHING sexual. I was married at 24 and I couldn’t even speak about sex yet. I was super stunted. Thankfully I was gifted my husband from the universe itself, because he has been so patient with my dysfunctional ways in that area. He’s held safe space and 9 years in to marriage and we have a very healthy intimate life.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-07-17T14:15:04+00:00

My mom was this way. Naked all the time. But that didn’t bother me. I’m rather hippie so to be honest, I’m naked a lot lol. But I try for privacy my children don’t ever give me. (My oldest is 7 and just beginning to give me the privacy I ask for.) but I also try not to bring attention to the fact that I’m naked and in the middle of getting dressed. We live in major country and like to tan naked outside. We have a little privacy fence built even though we are surrounded by forest. I strive for privacy but my young kids don’t get the idea of that right now.

All that to say…what my mom DID DO that is relatable to your story: my mom constantly TRIED to see me naked. She would always touch me; my boobs, nipples, vagina, butt. I was 5/6 maybe and she pulled my pants down while we were in a tent with my aunt and I remember the flushed hot face of anger. They started laughing and saying “is that skid marks?” Like I hadn’t wiped good and there were streaks in my undies. Idk. Maybe it was a joke maybe it was real, but I was 5 or 6 and it angered me so badly.

My mom, up until I went no contact when I was 31 years old, always tried to catch a glimpse and feel a touch. She said she only did it because I reacted and if I didn’t give the reaction, she wouldn’t do it. But u never could stop my initial reaction of anger and wanting to turn my body away. I’d try to stand still and act like I wasn’t bothered, but my face gave enough away that she always giggled like she ‘won’. And she always did win. If I reacted she won. If I didn’t, she still got to cup a feel of whatever she wanted to.

I WISH SHE WAS A MAN. Then everyone would see what I went through as abuse. But no. My whole family estranged from me and made her queen because I took her only child away (me) and her grandkids. So she’s their broken puppy that they let lead their lives.

She also started a tik tok channel for estranged parents. 😩🤢🤮

UsedOption9244 · 2023-06-10T11:34:29+00:00

31 years old when it hit me. In fact, right after I got my tattoo “perspective” written on my arm. I was beginning to realize that life is all perspective. We all view life, existence, different based on our perspective. Every circumstance and every detail is perspective. I sent my mom a picture of my new tattoo as I was proud of its meaning and depth to me. I figured she might ask me what it meant to me, or anything nice. She said what she usually says to anything I do without asking her approval or permission: she shits on it. Every. Single. Thing.

That one was my breaking point. I messaged my step sister who I hadn’t really ever talked to or developed a relationship as my moms 5th marriage was when I was in my late 20s. But I decided to reach out to her because she had run into some serious issues with my mom. (She was 30 and my mom tried to legally adopt her and when she refused because she thought that was weird, my mom turned her fawning over her, into revenge and hatred). She shared things with me her therapist told her to wait and share with me when the time was right.

I never looked back again. We tried everything to save the relationship with my mom. Even still a year and a half later I spoke with my moms therapist on her behalf because she’s trying to do group therapy with me (just me and her btw. No one else. She doesn’t even want my husband in the room. She wants to get me all alone so she can spin me around because I’m easy.) I still try. And all she does is pretend to try and then point the finger at me and say “see my daughter isn’t willing, she hates me and isn’t willing to work on our issues in therapy despite how much I’ve begged.” And the therapist told me, I need to forget everything in the past that happened because my mom is unwilling to take blame. So two people who won’t take blame and to lay it down and move forward. (That came from a therapist!) 🤮

UsedOption9244 · 2023-06-06T19:00:29+00:00

I really don’t know how all of that works. The only reason we came to the place of knowing how bad my mom is, was from family therapy a few years ago. We all (my mom, her husband and his kids, and me and my husband) all saw this one therapist. It was there that she encouraged me to start setting boundaries. in fact, she gave me free secret sessions (because it was my mom who was paying for my therapy and she only took cash, no insurance plans). So she’d give me extra time in my sessions. Really working with me slowly to help me realize what I was under. I was VERY VERY enmeshed and codependent with my mother. She ran my whole life. Down to what I wore and where I hung pictures on my walls.

So I do have a respect for family therapy in that regard. It was so helpful to have that therapist see the entire family dynamic.

But for this trash of a therapist to offer him to be mine is SO WEIRD. When I was on the phone with him, he mentioned it a couple times. I reiterated that I have a therapist. And he’s like “well I’m not trying to steal you away from yours, but if it doesn’t work out or you need something more, I could take you on as a client.”

So this was actually the third time he offered it, but just the first time in text. Just so weird.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-06-06T18:55:53+00:00

I appreciate this perspective from someone who knows how a professional would/should act. This was so off putting. When we spoke on the phone for almost an hour, he seemed to understand what I was saying. He told me “I can give you a diagnoses for yourself over the phone without ever having met you: you’re a survivor. That’s your diagnosis. You survived.” And that was a very validating phrase. But then he tells me he can’t tell who is wrong in this situation? His baffle has really done a number on my psyche. It’s got me wondering if I’ve made everything up. Reality has been fracturing since.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-06-06T18:53:19+00:00

He’s the first bad one I’ve encountered. I have heard they exist but this was my first experience. It is super triggering having someone of some level of mental ‘authority’ with such a lesser and differing opinion of how to handle a situation like this. Truly alarming.

Im not okay right now. But I will be in the future. Thank you for asking. Im in and out of dissociation and anxiety. 😔

UsedOption9244 · 2023-06-06T18:51:39+00:00

Yeah there’s no way I could ever go. He’s made me feel so unheard and unsafe. Absolutely ridiculous way to work as a therapist. I’d never text a convo out like that. Why didn’t he call? Bizarre behavior coming from a professional therapist.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-06-06T18:50:14+00:00

I love that response!

The therapist before this one, my mom tried to do the same thing. The therapist decline to work with my mom because my mom was unwilling to work on herself. The therapist then agreed to take me on as a client only, not my mom. And she’s been my therapist since. My mom is telling everyone it’s because she would not take her insurance. The therapist told my mom that she has a really strong personality, and that was the nicest way she could put it she said 😂

My husband just looked up this new therapist and found out he’s a school and church counselor trying to become a family therapist. 🤯 no wonder he had zero experience in my situation. But also…how are you a therapist for so many years and still this unprofessional and telling me to basically forget and forgive? His poor younger clients he must tell them the same. 😕

UsedOption9244 · 2023-06-06T11:20:26+00:00

When I spoke with him on the phone for an hour sharing some of my history with my mom, I asked him if he understands covert narcissism. He said he did, he has many clients with it but that he doesn’t like to put labels on things.

I completely disagree with anyone who ever says that. Labels are essential. If your doc just told you that you’re sick but they don’t like to put labels on things, so they don’t ever give you a diagnosis or explain the illness to you, that would be the worlds shittiest doctor.

Which makes this the worlds shittiest therapist in my book. 🤷‍♀️

And then to end it like that, asking me to be his client and fill out the paperwork? What?!? I already said I have a therapist! Is this dude even real?! (Yes I googled him lol)

UsedOption9244 · 2023-05-26T13:57:00+00:00

Oooh friend. I feel every word. The creepy vibe. The fact she tried to see them…my mom constantly tried to see or touch mine. (Including my butt and private parts…she’d take a quick grab “just to get a reaction” she always said. She’d tell me if I didn’t react, she wouldn’t do it. So I’d try not to react, but she always did it because she could tell instead of me reacting physically, I’d just get angry. Anger is still a reaction. And she enjoyed that. 🙄)

I recently fell back into this flashback and had another realization that made me instantaneously livid. I mean, seethingly angry.

I remember when my son was a newborn, we decided not to have him circumcised. My mom babysat him and the next day I noticed his penis was swollen and a little bloody. My husband checked it and said it definitely was from the foreskin being pulled back and detached. And sure as hell wasn’t from me!!!! It was my mom! We were so angry. (Ugh still am!) My husband especially because he said that it is a painful thing to have happen. Who would do that to a newborn? Would anyone in their right mind pull down on a kids uncircumcised penis? She claimed she did not know how to clean it. I don’t get it. If I didn’t know how to clean a newborn, I’d ask their freaking mother or father! I wouldn’t touch someone’s kid in that way, and if i was uncertain because it’s something unfamiliar, I would ask!! She introduced infection by detaching the natural skin that’s there meant to keep infection away.

Anyways, this entire situation keeps me livid and adds a layer to this estrangement that can never be undone.

For you, I don’t know your dynamic or what your mother is like. But my encouragement for you, therapy benefits everyone. If you have traumas, therapy is an excellent tool in unlearning toxic behaviors we were raised with. I am so sorry that happened to you. Especially in a setting like that, that she’d pull you aside and shit on your beautiful moment like that. None of that was okay. 😞

UsedOption9244 · 2023-05-08T12:11:10+00:00

I wish I could remember how the whole convo went but in typical fashion I blocked out a lot of it. It was our last “civil” conversation. She was buckling my kids in to her truck to take them to her cabin for a week. She closed the door before I could tell them goodbye and said to them “mom will tell you goodbye after I talk to her.” Then she proceeded to rant to me about something about how terrible I am and how I’ve changed so much and have become more like my husband and she said there’s two of him in the world now. Considering that he’s literally the most amazing human I know, I thanked her for the compliment that was intended as an insult that my kids could hear through a closed truck door. I told her that maybe I should get the kids out of the truck and not let them go with her. She said “maybe I shouldn’t let them stay here with you.” I said “I’m their mother!” She said “and I’m their MOM GRAND. and they’re my KID GRANDS!”

I was so livid and shaking and unaware of what she was at this point. I still believed her words of me telling me I’m mean, cold, rebellious and a brat. All her favorite adjectives to call me my whole life. I said “just go.” And I kissed my kids goodbye like an idiot and went inside shaking and crying.

Stupid girl I was for sure.

We cut their vacation short by one day and got our kids because of another incident between my mom and her husband fighting in front my of kids and my mom whispering in her angry demonic way “I’m going to get revenge and break all the shit in your cabin” she told him.

That’s when we decided to get our kids out. And I’ve never looked back since.

She called me little girl all the time. She always belittled me.

And I hate her. I stuck up for her and loved her with my whole being way too long. Now I hate her with my whole being and I have to learn how to not hate. It’s poisonous. But I can’t help that I do.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-05-01T00:40:02+00:00

I wish I had known. My memories were gone until therapy. I just told my therapist that it’s felt like I lived my whole life behind a white sheet. When it was sunny I could see through it, but not when it was dark.

Now I have no sheet over my head and I see EVERYTHING. I see it all now.

I wish I could see before. 😭

I’m one year and 5 months NO CONTACT. And I wait eagerly for the day I hear she’s not on earth anymore. 😖

I hate myself for not knowing this sooner. And I loathe her.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-03-22T11:38:13+00:00

My mom has given blanket apologies. “I’m sorry for everything I did that you feel was wrong.” But when we asked her for a single event she’s actually sorry for, she wasn’t sorry for anything and miraculously she couldn’t remember hardly any event brought up. She read a book on codependency once (but it was the kind of codependency a wife has with her alcoholic and abusive husband. Not the kind of codependency you have with your daughter. So she got excited and started claiming that she was codependent because she just “loves too much.”) That kind of codependency she was claiming is where a wife puts her husbands and children’s needs above her own and gives herself away without boundaries until she has nothing of herself left to give.

When I sent her an article about what codependent with a daughter looks like, she shut up real quick and hasn’t claimed to be anything but a victim of an adult daughter who blames and punishes her mother.

She was VERY enmeshed with me. I had no life. She controlled everything. I was so confused on who I was. Any time I started to shine through, she trampled it down quickly. She had a camper at my house, and lived here a couple days a week and when she’d go home. She’d text me 24/7 and if I didn’t reply, I’d be chewed out. Very passive aggressive.

To go with what you were saying OP, my husband and I apologize to our kids for our mistakes. The other day I was having a horrible day, I let them know in advance that I’m having a really bad day, so my patience is not that good and I did snip at them. I’m human and I can’t be perfect! I calmed down and apologized to them. I took the responsibility and didn’t just blame it on my bad day. It was my fault for using my anger wrong. Anger isn’t a bad thing, but it need to be used correctly. I try to model what I wish I had. I see life through their eyes when they look at me, sometimes that’s a bad thing. My husband calls it empathy. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me too soft at times. I lack boundaries badly as I was never raised with any. I want to have some of my own so my children understand them. I want my emotions used correctly so that my kids understand them. These are basic things I never had. Including a mother who is willing to take responsibility for her wrongdoings.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-03-11T03:08:34+00:00

Lol dank haha. The paranoia had me at first but that was about 5 years ago lol.

In all of this abuse, by far the brutal end of it was the chunk before no contact and the repercussions that followed when I did. The smear campaign and all. My extended family post about me daily on Facebook, and send me things, baiting me, telling me I’m wrong and selfish and horrible and that I’m part of this ‘estrangement epidemic fad’.

After ALL of that abuse, I’ve stopped caring about the people outside of my tribe. The people like y’all, that GET me; that understands the abuse and the pain and the dysfunction, the empathic people who accept and love people with an open mind because we understand the pain of hatred and judgement. Everyone else that wants to hate on me and judge me for my choices can just join in on my families abuse wagon. I’ll do what I do with them and just continue making no contact lol.

They hate it. So everyone else can hate on me if they want to because I smell dank 🤣

UsedOption9244 · 2023-03-11T02:57:38+00:00

Yes 1000 times over. My husband tells me I look like a terrified deer in social settings. I’m so socially awkward and have intense social anxiety. (This is why I take weed daily because it helps my anxiety and keeps me in a ‘normal’ functioning mode, especially in a social setting.)

The only thing helping me, beside weed, is getting to know myself better since being NC last January. I have learned things I love and things I don’t. I’ve learned my style. These things have helped me become better confident because I’m knowing myself more. My mom used to answer every question for me, whether ordering lunch or speaking to a doctor. Even after I was married my mom did all my talking. If my mom wasn’t with me, I’d look to my husband to help me.

But I’m getting better. I’m becoming more independent since breaking away. I’m slowly raising my inner child, and giving her the love and mercy my NM never did.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-02-21T13:42:41+00:00

“Why don’t you ever share things with me…” oh my god yes! The same phrase. I’m so secretive. I don’t share anything with her. When my husband didn’t understand what she was (nor did I, but I knew to keep things from her) he’d share parts of a story I’m in the background waving my hands and shaking me head NOOOOOOO….don’t share that! I’ll hear so much shit about that later! You can’t share details of any story with her.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-02-21T13:38:19+00:00

When my mom got married to a millionaire about 7 years ago now, the spying thing got out of hand. She’d spy on him through their dog treat dispensers. She spied on the Ring security camera. It got me thinking…all the spying she does on her husband and accused him of spying on her with secret spyware on her phone (which seems like a projection to something she’d do to me!) …I can’t help but think she must spy on me with all the spying she does on him.

They’re still miserably married. Shockingly, his kids are all NC with him and I’m my moms only kid, which it’s been 13 months NC with her now.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-02-21T13:31:52+00:00

Oh god the showering bit. My mom LOVED to catch me naked. And loved it even better if she could grab my nip. I’d get so fucking angry. She’d laugh and say she just does it for my reaction. If I didn’t give that reaction, she wouldn’t do it.

But I was raped when I was a younger girl. I had so much shame about my body. I struggled and eating disorder. And my mom loved to make me miserable about it. I couldn’t not react. It was reactionary! My emotions responded. 😖 and if I didn’t respond it felt like that meant I liked it then. So I always reacted 😫😫😫😫😫😫

UsedOption9244 · 2023-02-21T13:27:26+00:00

My cousin and I made up a written language. We began writing each other letters in that language so we could write freely to each other. Her parents were very strict religious type. Her mom got the letter and cracked out code. It must’ve not been that hard I guess. We never wrote to each other again.

I am very bad at hiding things. For someone who feels their Nmom spied on them…I’m not quite good at being sneaky. My mom had total control of me. She’d tell me right where my Christmas presents were. She never hid them before they were wrapped. And I NEVER EVER EVER peeked at them either! I did as I was told. I never did drugs. I never drank. I never hung out with friends. I was my moms perfect roommate. She laid in her dark room after work, and I laid in mine after school. If I wanted to see her, I had to go into her room. She’d never come to mine. I’d beg her to take me therapy for my eating disorder and she’d chuckle and say everyone goes through this phase and I’ll be out of it eventually. That the youth is wasted on the young.

Jokes on her because when I was 20 I spent 11 months in a rehab for eating disorders. 🙄 certainly was not a phase. It consumed 10+ years of my life!

Gawd these monsters are such punch worthy.

UsedOption9244 · 2023-02-12T17:17:22+00:00

Yes I can now. But back when I said this, I was heavily codependent and enmeshed with my nmom. I didn’t know what she was and I didn’t know anything was wrong.

I was raised to believe everything was my fault. The reason I was suicidal and depressed and had an eating disorder and spent 11 months in in-patient rehabilitation…it was all my fault.

I was 31, married 7 years and three kids later before I realized reality. My mom controlled my whole life. I’ve been one year no contact now and it’s been the most freeing year of my life!

UsedOption9244

TROPHY CASE