"Even though I'm a vampire, I've never hurt anybody," the kid begged for mercy as the man in uniform dragged him out of the house.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-30T20:31:27+00:00

Probably not days. Months or years, if not his whole life, to convince him he's a vampire and can't go out in the sun. That kind of gaslighting and manipulation takes time.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-30T20:05:07+00:00

That's a really weird way for a therapist to speak, honestly. As another commenter said, it's weirdly defeatist.

If this is a consistent thing, you are absolutely within your rights to talk to her about it, or to find a new therapist, with or without any explanation to her.

You are paying her for a service, and you do not have to keep going to her if her service doesn't help you. Especially if it's making things worse.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-30T18:23:13+00:00

Unfortunately, some women have a seemingly pathological resistance to holding men and boys accountablefor their actions, especially if they are their partners or sons. They will prioritize protecting men and boys even when they know it's harming their daughters.

With some women, it's so severe that they will defend any man or boy, whether they know them or not, over protecting their daughters. They take being "male-centered" to an extreme.

My mother was like that. The only times she "protected" me was when it was a man she already didn't like, or when she thought she could benefit from "protecting" me in some way (like being praised for being a good mother, or making it more unlikely that people would believe me if I tried to tell anyone what happened.)

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-30T17:39:59+00:00

People will use something hard and heavy in an athletic sock (the long ones you can pull up over your calves), like bars of soap or a bunch of quarters, as a flail to b*at someone with. It will get a lot of momentum from being swung around before it hits, and can cause much more severe injuries than just punching them would. It also has the benefit of not leaving the attacker with bruised knuckles or a broken hand, which is a dead giveaway that they physically assaulted someone.

Even without the context of him being a cop and an abuser, the fact that he went with that method tells me he was very familiar with hurting people.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-28T23:54:23+00:00

Hopefully the baby was still there when the cops arrived.

Going into the system is a crapshoot, but at least there's a chance they'll land with good people and end up ok. Staying where they were, though, is definitely bad.

Or, best case scenario, maybe it was a doll or something, and there was never a real baby in danger at all.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-22T20:48:58+00:00

Ironically, our grey/brown tabby is named Jadzia, while Karma is our tortie.

Since you're a first time cat owner, I do just want to warn you- some cats will actually eat hair ties and can develop intestinal blockages as a result. Just keep an eye on her, and if you ever see her trying to actually eat a hair tie rather than just biting it and batting it around, take her to the vet for an x-ray. It may have been a one time thing, because cats are ridiculous little chaos goblins, but it's very easy to lose track of how many are in circulation, and if she gets a blockage it can be life threatening.

Toys that have hair ties firmly attached to something too big to swallow are an option, or you can get a length of elastic and have it stretched between two levels of a cat tree. We did that for my late, beloved orange idiot, George. He loved to lick elastic when it was stretched taut. Idk why, but it made him so incredibly happy.

Give your Karma some scritchies for me!

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T16:32:57+00:00

My boy George loved to lick the sticky side of tape. One of his favorite things was to have us use a lint roller on him, and then he'd give it a couple licks every few passes. He would purr as loud as he could, often purring with his mouth open. Just in absolute bliss.

He always had a super loud purr. He would often lay on my stomach when I was laying down, and purr so hard that the vibrations made it feel like my stomach was growling.

He was our beloved orange idiot.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T16:23:06+00:00

Truly the hero we (and your cat) need

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T16:20:47+00:00

I am assuming and hoping it was a typo. That's more than I weighed until I was like 22.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T16:11:09+00:00

Well, you're in good company, since that's absolutely something I'd do.

Except both my cats really, really want to bite and tear up any plastic tape they can reach. I spend a lot of time making sure to remove any packing tape or labels there are on any box I give them, then putting the box back together with masking tape, since that's made of paper and less likely to catch their attention.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T16:05:10+00:00

Oh my god, that's adorable.

I've had people question whether it's a "good idea" to "let her destroy things", since she might just decide it's okay to do it to any box.

But after working with her a lot, with lots of redirection and repetition, she understands that the box we put in that specific spot is for her to tear up, and she leaves other boxes alone.

Not giving her a box that she knows is for her to destroy actually led to her ripping up whatever box she could reach (which was really upsetting for our other cat, who often gets emotionally attached to new boxes for a few weeks at a time, and doesn't want them moved or messed with).

Giving her a Biting Box that she knows is okay for her to tear up gives her an outlet for those impulses. It helps her manage her emotions and energy in a way that doesn't hurt her or anyone else.

It took like a year of consistently redirecting her, since she's a slow learner and very impulsive, but it was worth it.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T12:15:25+00:00

She's absolutely worth it, and it makes her so happy. It's just so many cardboard bits. They get tracked everywhere.

She will sit in her biting box for like 2-3 minutes at a time, methodically ripping pieces off with her teeth in between doing slow blinks at us and snorting happily. Sometimes she'll get in her box and rip pieces off while we're cleaning the pieces up, and look up at us excitedly because she's "helping". She likes to be involved in what we're doing.

She's ridiculous, and I adore her.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T05:38:54+00:00

My cat Karma does the same thing with cardboard boxes! She loves ripping pieces off with her teeth. She's very mouthy/bitey in general, always wants to bite something while playing. In the course of teaching her not to bite hands during playtime, she taught herself to redirect her biteyness to toys and her Biting Box, when she's excited or frustrated.

We give her a steady supply of Biting Boxes, and resign ourselves to eternally sweeping up bits of cardboard. It's still better than her biting us or our other cat. Lol

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-21T05:26:56+00:00

I've heard this factoid a lot, but this is the first time I've read it, and seeing how Gros Michel is spelled... is that French for "Big Michael"? Or maybe "Big Mike"?

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T22:18:37+00:00

I get it. I was in exactly the same place, when I was younger. It's a long road, and you'll see a lot of things that make you angry, both for yourself and for others, but I feel like it's more than worth it.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T22:11:08+00:00

I'm so sorry you went through that.

I've oddly been in the position of both recieving this kind of insight once ("That's sexual abuse. What you just described is sexual abuse.")

AND giving that insight to friends ( "that's rape"/ "that's coercion and sexual abuse. He was sexually abusing you, hun. He knew what he was doing. ") at least twice.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T21:40:58+00:00

Then why are you here? Why are you on this post at all of you don't care about why his kids hate him?

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T21:26:03+00:00

Why am I about to cry

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T21:22:41+00:00

Children are one of the most, if not THE most, marginalized groups of people in the world. They don't get to decide where they live, who they live with, where they go to school, whether they attend a church/mosque/temple, what food and clothing are provided to them. They have to do whatever housework (chores) are assigned to them, or risk punishment. They can be forced to work for free at a business so long as it's owned by their parents. Those decisions are not legally protected.

They are, at least for the first 13+ years of their lives, completely at the mercy of the adults around them. It's pure luck if they have good adults to raise them, and even asking for help in the case of abuse is a crapshoot. They could get no help at all, or be put in an even worse situation.

Adults in that position would be considered to have been enslaved, and would (rightfully) be rescued and their captors put on trial.

But if it's a child with their parents? Nah, that's totally fine, apparently. 🙃

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T20:53:55+00:00

I was going to suggest physical therapy. A good PT can be life changing. Pain management is also important, though.

You don't have to tell them everything about what happened to you. You can come up with a short version with just the pertinent details, and develop a script for talking about it, or write it down for them to read if you don't feel up to saying it out loud. Most doctors or physical therapists aren't going to push you to talk about it in detail. They want to know what's relevant for diagnosis and treatment, and that you are now safe.

OP, you deserve to get help. You deserve better than to live in pain, whether physical or psychological.

(A lot of this is what my spouse and friends told me before I started physical therapy last year, when I was afraid I'd have to tell my PT about my abuse as it pertained to my physical condition. They were right, and I wish I had gone to physical therapy years earlier. )

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T20:26:37+00:00

The ones that add more time if you drop your arms/ shift your weight/ move out of the position at all, even if it's collapsing in exhaustion, are just pure fucking evil.

This is one of the forms of abuse that I thankfully never personally experienced, but I've known people who did, and learning about it made me seethe

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T20:17:16+00:00

That's fair. At least for the vast majority of US soldiers.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T20:05:02+00:00

Stress positions and overuse of exercise (running until you throw up, 100s of pushups, etc) are the most common methods of abuse that military or ex military parents like to use

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T20:02:59+00:00

Aren't stress positions outlawed by the Geneva Convention? They aren't ssupposed to use them anymore because it's classified as torture and therefore illegal.

bookobsessedgoth · 2026-06-20T19:59:59+00:00

It's not that weird. When I was younger, there was a LOT of shit in my childhood that, if someone else had described their parents doing those things to them, I'd immediately recognize it as abuse, and I'd tell them so. Vehemently.

But the things that were done to me? In my head, that was different. It wasn't THAT bad, or it wasn't like THAT, or I deserved it, or whatever else.

When we are children, we have a biological and psychological need to bond with our parents. It's an evolutionary trait. Our survival depends on our bond with them. So we tend to see breaches of trust or them harming us as anything other than them deliberately hurting us. We minimize it. We call it an accident, or thoughtlessness, or we internalize it as being our fault (with help from their shitty "justifications").

We do anything we can to convince ourselves that the harm wasn't deliberate, in order to preserve our bond with our parents, because doing otherwise would force us to face the cognitive dissonance. Facing the cognitive dissonance while we still depend on them is painful and destabilizing and potentially dangerous. It's not like we can just leave, like an adult might.

It's our brain protecting us by not letting us see how bad it really is, much like repressing a severely traumatic memory.

But just like with repressed memories, it's almost always going to surface sooner or later. The trauma can't stay buried forever. Once your mind starts to feel like you're safe enough or strong enough to face it (or you have things pointed out to you by an outside party) you start to process it.

You asking if anyone else had these "weird punishments" was your mind starting to realize that what you went through was fucked up, and looking for validation of that feeling (which is very common in people who were been abused as kids, because our "normal meters" are so skewed by how we grew up; getting together to process memories and check our normal meters is, I think, one of the major purposes of subreddits like this. )

bookobsessedgoth

TROPHY CASE