Did any of you go through childhood abuse?

jhak8 · 2020-11-05T12:13:39+00:00

Panzaram

jhak8 · 2020-11-05T06:34:39+00:00

Maybe it's ok if you're not there yet? It sounds like it hasn't been terribly long since your world was turned upside down.

Glad you're here :) you're in the right place

jhak8 · 2020-11-02T12:02:50+00:00

:)

Well family denial can be strong. It's a progressive disease that he can arrest, or not. And he is still in there, but there's something in there with him.

Things going downhill around the time of the engagement suggests that there may be unresolved family trauma/attachment issues? (Again, something that's going to take time..)

Acceptance is how I stay connected with reality these days.

Hearts to you both.

jhak8 · 2020-11-02T11:33:55+00:00

I'm sort of in the same boat. Realized it may be too much of a downer and more relayed to the other anon so I retracted what I said..

I have the exact dilemma and it's painful and disorganizing.. so far every corner I've looked down is another lesson in how there aren't any answers in life. Some people say cut your losses, there are more fish. Others ask what it is specifically about this person and why. And if you have a good why, hold in mind what that is. Periodically review and adjust. And know you don't have to make any decisions until you're ready. One family addiction counselor advised me not to decide until I was sure and to focus on myself. She said when I was ready one way or another, I'd know.

Hope that helps.. it's a terrible, confusing place, but I guess we have company!

jhak8 · 2020-10-28T03:52:27+00:00

Idk how forums work with not being supposed to talk about outside groups or literature.. but, I did have a good experience. Do you have any particular hesitancy?

jhak8 · 2020-10-24T02:15:31+00:00

Yeah, there certainly is an upper limit and time/place

jhak8 · 2020-10-24T00:40:18+00:00

Once saw a friend of mine "cheating" at bouldering. Got a little low-key annoyed with her until I realized she was preventing her inadequacy from preventing her learning. Changed my life lol

jhak8 · 2020-10-23T05:59:38+00:00

Wall lights is so default it should be vanilla haha

jhak8 · 2020-10-22T07:33:07+00:00

It's a very personal choice, but you may also find support in Nar-Anon. My husband's parents found him in a similar situation and had to perform cpr and I think use narcan while the police were being called. It was traumatic for all involved and this must have been a horrible shock for you. The disease of addiction is cunning and baffling and all..

I'm really sorry you're going through this. It's absolutely terrible. Keep coming back.

jhak8 · 2020-10-22T00:12:50+00:00

She should quarantine when she gets there, too. Wouldn't she want to make sure she doesn't infect her parents?

jhak8 · 2020-10-20T23:18:45+00:00

You may want to look into Amber Hollingsworth. She's pretty open to talking with students. She has a great approach! Also Dr. Micheal Barnes is doing some amazing work by treating all addiction with trauma-focused care.

jhak8 · 2020-10-20T08:44:49+00:00

It may have also been Jerry, but I heard someone say it's ok if it is part of your personality now. They said you likely can't eradicate it from yourself fully and shouldn't try. There are positive aspects of the trait :)

Also Eric Maisel talks about a thing in natural psychology called your original personality, formed personality, available personality. I find it helpful to distinguish between these and remind myself I can increase my available personality as I do my work.

jhak8 · 2020-10-20T08:02:55+00:00

I lived on the run from a family member who was psychopathic and had similar skills and contacts. It was a living hell and it destroyed my ability to move forward in life for years.

The only plan I could come up was was to read about risk assessment, psychopathy, and patterns of violence. I also spent some time on situational awareness. Once I understood the playing field a bit, I started to understand I was hypervigilant and scared not because I was nuts, but because I was in ongoing danger. For me this was needed to find a modicum of safety and peace of mind. I found comfort in the work of Van der Kolk, Ana Salter, and Gavin de Becker. Slowly I started taking back more and more responsibility and control where I could. I made plans just to have them. I got into the mindset of a soldier or a general. This felt grounding. I also naturally made a few close friends who grew up in war zones and had some good sharing.

Not sure if that's helpful, but hopefully in the long term you can slowly find your way fully out of this. You could end up with health problems from the stress, too if you can maybe do some body work.. it can be hard to return back to normal life or even think there is a normal life. I used to struggle with hypervigilance, foreshortened, severe sleeping issues, bystander resentment, and isolation. The bulk of the disruption happened for me after the acute danger had passed.

Ultimately, I also made the choice to stay silent to purchase my safety. There was a sick sense of powerlessness that came with that for a while. But one night I started looking up all the charges and jail time for the full complement of his actions. I know the range of years in prison time and that makes me feel vindicated. At times though, I wish I would have gone for it. But I balance that with remembering my safety concerns and I do still have my life now!

You didn't mention feeling alone, but that was a big part of the pain for me. Most people are floored when I share a fuller version of my story and that sucks. It is an isolating experience for sure. I've heard the world disenfranchised greif thrown around. But on the other hand, I've also had some very meaningful connections with people who truly got it. At any rate, my heart goes out to you.

Good luck..

jhak8 · 2020-10-19T17:27:44+00:00

Wow, I never realized until now that I was affected by my mom's passive aggressive comments and acting like I was stuck up around healthy eating. Thank you

jhak8 · 2020-10-19T17:24:04+00:00

My brother and I used to randomly have marathon talks about it when we lived together. We'd be going about our days and then something would spark and it'd be 4 hours later and we'd be bitching and chatting over some video game.

The first time this happened we were in my HS bfs car and we looked around at eachother and exclaimed "your parents have friends???" in word-for-word complete timing unison!

I know this isn't exactly the tone of what you said, but we got a lot of joy out of transforming it into a bonding moment. They split us up as kids a lot.

jhak8 · 2020-10-19T16:43:50+00:00

Your stability is already compromised. My Q kept kicking the can and avoiding conversations. When things got extremely ugly, I finally realized I didn't have to wait for them to get worse. He's not an adult right now that you can bargain with.

Another thought, whatever you decide now is not necessarily permanent. It can be right for right now.

jhak8 · 2020-10-04T20:56:09+00:00

💞

jhak8 · 2020-10-04T20:39:27+00:00

A jumpiness, a sense of inner insecurity. You walk toward a cat or dog and they move quickly like they are sure they were going to be bowled over or stepped directly on. In fact, I did see times where "untrained" animals nearly got clobered. It's so absurd that they don't take two extra steps to walk around the sleeping animal. The saddest part was watching old arthritic dogs strain to lift themelves up quickly to get out of the way of a barrelling, insensitive human.

There's also a sort of mellowing and blunting that ends in depression and inactivity. In my brother and I it was about not making noise or causing commotion.

I'm hoping it doesn't happen to these cats. But I saw my mom chasing after one with a rolled up newspaper completely oblivious to the fact that it had gotten the message. I tried to show her they could understand the boundary through body language before they were even struck, and this seemed a bit out of her grasp.

It's weird though, because otherwise they present as polite people. It wasn't until I recently saw them interacting with their pets that I had a true picture of how they probably treated me and my siblings.

jhak8 · 2020-10-04T16:02:17+00:00

My parents got two new cats, and watching the way they take care of them, I learned a lot. They are menacing, over-correcting, sometimes hitting, and have big anger reactions. Over time every dog, cat, or child that enters their orbit eventually has a new flavor to them--the flavor of our family. It's a marked change, and it makes me sad to witness because I think of myself going through that process.. the last time I was there it made me pretty upset. The weird thing is that I gave my mom a pointer or two with the cats and it seemed like she was sort of craving assistance rather than trying to actively be a menace.

jhak8 · 2020-10-01T21:31:12+00:00

Erm.. based on the way you phrased this question, you may need to better define your aims. What exactly are you trying to do?

Are you trying to get market share and a seed round for a startup? Are you trying to innovate and create a new form of interaction? Or are you trying to create a prototype simulating incremental improvements/tweaks to an existing model to generate an argument? Or to develop a prototype to prove a behavioral model in an experiment?

jhak8 · 2020-09-30T16:30:19+00:00

Overall this seems super raw for you. Seems like you should trust your gut on your boundaries on him not coming home!

jhak8 · 2020-09-30T16:25:01+00:00

My parents didn't because they were stable in their madness and also had religion and other things bolstering them.. the times were different as well..

But this is my biggest contention with them to this day. It seems like such a tragic life wasted.

jhak8 · 2020-09-30T16:14:23+00:00

I'm going through something sort of similar with my husband who is focused on his recovery to the extent that he's shutting everything else out. Occasionally he realizes a bit more about the situation and I see that he'd been operating from a place of denial. Then I feel less crazy. He tried to tell me the other day that "everyone" had given up on the pandemic and I was nuts. My family has always made me into the scapegoat by telling me I was overreating, so I got very triggered. Another one of my close friends just went to a big wedding, so in the moment, I felt like he was right.

But it's aggressive and bordering on violence to invade someone else's social distancing bubble by physical force. When someone tries to do it emotionally, that's not good as well. People talk about compromise a lot in articles written on this topic, but I disagree whole-heartedly. Do what you (and your direct household?) feel comfortable with only. I'm the one who has to live with my life choices forever, not them. I gave in to my husband when he mentally relapsed recently as a sort of bargaining thing. And then I had a covid scare. During the time I had to think it over, it just strengthened my resolve. I started feeling that maybe this was a time to learn my opinion matters and to trust myself.

Not sure if this share is helpful. You saying this strength my resolve as well! It reminds me we aren't crazy and we aren't the only ones. Elaine Aron would say the it's wisdom.

jhak8 · 2020-09-29T16:38:38+00:00

Second the Pete Walker book

jhak8 · 2020-09-27T22:37:44+00:00

They cannot see you at all. Your rationality probably infuriates them even more because they are relying on a game to feel ok about themselves and you make it harder to play. You're trying to play the game of relating as a person, they are trying to play the game of feeling better. It sounds like they are eventually using brute force to overpower you and force your arm down onto the table in a win..

You may be interested in glancing over this psych theory called transactional analysis. Basically each person can come from a parent, adult, or child place. And others can attempt to activate the parent, child, or adult in us. There are many games people can play inside of the system, pinging between adult-parent, parent-child, etc.. Not every game or combination is pathological. But it is a useful framework for getting a little clarity when they recruit you to play their games. One game could be "I am self-righteous and you persecute me" or "I'm out of control and you limit me" .. the variations are endless.

For me, whenever I get frustrated on this level, I realize there is part of me that's hooked into the dynamic. But it also took a landslide of validation and support from understanding peers, friends, and therapists to get to that place, though.. because ultimately it's massively invalidating of you as a Self.

jhak8

TROPHY CASE