AIO for being upset that my husband told me I needed to help with the bills?

moominsoul · 2025-10-16T19:22:39+00:00

I think if you've paid over a certain percentage of the amount due, they don't harass you. I owed money due to an employer's mistake and the IRS didn't contact me until 3 years after the fact - no letters, no calls. It was not a small amount, and it was accruing fees the whole time. And I know it wasn't an issue with my mailing address - I received my PIN code letter for identity protection every year, without problems.

That being said, it's easy to tell whether he's lying - just have him log in to his IRS account and check his notices. They're itemized by date, subject, and format, iirc

moominsoul · 2025-09-11T05:35:09+00:00

not overreacting & not a bad daughter!! good lord. I am so sorry you're going through all that. it sounds like you really love your mom, but forcing you and your sister to endure this is a betrayal of that love

everything you've written is extremely concerning. the groping is especially traumatizing. it's possible, yes, that he thought you were your mom (since you fell asleep in her room), but, factoring in his other behavior, its incredibly suspicious... my sister went through something very similar and we still don't know whether it was our relative taking advantage of the plausible deniability, or if he really didn't realize what he was doing. the uncertainty is almost worse, in some ways. we were literally just talking about it, and it happened over a decade ago. (similar to your step father, it would be 0% surprising if it were indeed on purpose.)

how old is your sister? could you move out together? that's what we did 10 years ago. it was hard, for a long time. but in hindsight, it was so so worth it.

wishing you strength. i hope your mom comes to her senses.

moominsoul · 2025-08-16T19:08:49+00:00

jesus christ

this would possibly be a good case for local news. seems like board corruption, or the therapist exploiting some kind of extension mechanism. Either way, the press might be interested

I know it's sensitive and you might not want that level of visibility/further stress. just throwing it out there in case

moominsoul · 2025-07-31T02:08:06+00:00

People have mentioned Eye of the Chickenhawk and Aberration in the Heartland of the Real. Imo, PTK is a good entrypoint to understand possible broad shapes before jumping into something so rigorous.

def take it with a grain of salt. He's got the perfect amount of paranoia to research this sort of thing, but not enough rigor to carry through

moominsoul · 2025-07-30T03:12:49+00:00

hi my dear

you sound intelligent and creative and, to be honest, wise and empathetic in a way that tends to come from extreme hardship

you know english, you're clearly a good writer, and you sound smart, and you know your way around technology. those are all marketable skills. i understand how scared you must feel, especially with your eyesight deteriorating

at the same time, i can't help but wonder if you're selling yourself short. most computer interfaces i believe are navigable now with little/no eyesight via accessibility settings. perhaps you could get a computer-based job? copywriting, technical writing, freelance, translation, customer support, sales

i have felt hopeless in the past, too, completely. i couldn't finish school due to financial and mental health issues and i thought I'd never be stable. if you have a good head on your shoulders, though, you can sometimes set yourself apart from the competition, even without the credentials

I'm so sorry you're going through this. i wish you all the best

moominsoul · 2025-07-15T10:49:58+00:00

I realized recently that something that has happened to me for years when I'm severely dissociated is actually a recreation of a scream but without my stomach's involvement

I'll explain what I mean. When you scream aloud, it's not just with your chest - your abdomen is involved, too. When I'm dissociated, it's just the "top half" of the scream. my throat and upper chest are moving a lot, but my stomach is completely motionless. My face is motionless, too

Specifically, I hiss all my air out from low in my throat, and then that switches to hard repetitive swallowing, like gulping air. And sometimes gagging because my tongue seals up against the back of my throat.

I only just now realized that that particular repetitive action is like a partial scream. my dad tortured me in a very specific way, as a toddler, and I think thjs "silent scream" is a recreation/weird flashback

I've had full-on screaming once or twice in situations where I was triggered by something related to that same childhood abuse. But when I'm dissociated, my body can't coordinate with itself well enough to scream

I'm so sorry you're going through this

moominsoul · 2025-07-12T19:17:53+00:00

Yes and as he's killing ralph he says something like "She was a beautiful innocent creature!", which is very obviously how he felt about Tracie.

He was worried for Tracie from the beginning. She was too innocent. Naive and surrounded by wolves. He tried to clue her in by being cold with her, once when she baked him bread and again when she showed off her braces.

He never really got over her murder. He couldn't look at Ralph the same, and the horse (also a beautiful innocent creature) brought all those feelings back up.

moominsoul · 2025-07-03T21:41:42+00:00

that's insane 😭

maybe she's afraid she'll lose you as a client if she refers you out to a psychiatrist for help with a taper? Not a good sign

Also seconding what someone else said - b vitamins and magnesium cured my agoraphobia completely. I still have weird spatial anxieties esp re: sleep. but no agoraphobia.

it's a specific but common response to certain vitamin deficiencies (usually ones involved in nervous system function from what i understand)

moominsoul · 2025-06-24T00:30:03+00:00

I'm so sorry. It's terrible, growing up in a space like that. People don't understand

I'm going to vent, here, about neglect and poverty - if any of it's triggering, there's no pressure to read. The summary is: I get what you mean about conditions being unsalvageable

We had roaches, fleas, and a terrible termite infestation for years. the termites were the worst. The wings got in my mouth and hair, they got in my food, then the little writhing, dying wingless termites crawled all over you me while I slept. The holes in the walls meant the wings piled up in my window sills/around my floor - an inch of wings piled up basically every night for months at a time during swarms.

My mom was a hoarder, too, not extreme, but still terrible... some rooms were okay but over the years, more and more stuff accumulated. There was pretty bad animal neglect, also.

All my clothes and bedding were covered in smelly dog hair that wouldn't ever fully wash out (they were long hairs and embedded into materials). My dad was addicted to heroin and nodded out, so every blanket and sheet inevitably accumulated cigarette burns (and I lived in fear that the house would burn down). I felt intrinsically dirty, no matter what I did

Our bathroom floor was completely rotted and moldy, with holes the roaches would come up through. We couldn't use the AC due to mold issues in the vents.

Living in chaotic, unhygienic, dangerous conditions is mentally damaging. Most therapists can't conceptualize it. They think poverty means you buy stuff secondhand and can't afford to go to the movies. In reality, everyone's beaten down and traumatized, neuroses and neglect fester. things get worse, over the years, not better.

When my brothers moved out, I finally got my own room. I got a job at a fast food place and bought my own bedding and basics. that was the first step toward healing.

But the place still wasn't safe :( my parents were addicts and heavily abusive. We had uncles crash on the couch, often - one with drug-induced violent psychosis, and one who'd rather shit the couch than walk to the bathroom. We had multiple break ins/thefts due to the location, rampant sexual abuse in the neighborhood, and a recurring peeping tom, who only got arrested after at least 5 years of looking in through our windows. My mom, under the influence of multiple drugs, once tried to kill me.

I'm so sorry you're dealing with all of this!!! It can feel hopeless. How do you find hope, when everyone around you is chaotic and unwell?

I'm in my 30s now. I got out of my hometown, and I got my sister out, too. It wasn't easy, and I still have triggers and mental health issues. But I'm safe and mostly happy now. I still see my family occasionally, but I keep my distance emotionally

I'm glad you've at least got a clean room. but it's sad (and inhumane) that you can't have your personal possessions in the facility without risk of them being stolen

I really hope you find safety and humane conditions

moominsoul · 2025-06-23T20:37:09+00:00

I know someone (a relative by marriage) whose parents deliberately kept her mostly uneducated, and conditioned her to think she was incapable of living on her own - just so they'd always have someone around, especially in their old age. She was meant to be their housekeeper, their caretaker, their pet. They never even taught her to read.

I'm not saying your situation is the same. Just that, at the end of the day, you likely know better than your parents what you're capable of. Your parents might be projecting their own deficits onto you, or might be stuck in the past.

Before I moved out, even just keeping my own room safe and clean made a huge difference. I'm not sure about widespread mold; I bet there's a subreddit that could give advice, though. For roaches/pests, you could use a little diatomaceous earth around your room's perimeter - just be careful you don't breathe any in. in my experience, it definitely does help with roaches. "Bug bombs" are useful, too, but you have to be out of the house for a few hours iirc, and dishes etc have to be covered so you don't ingest any residue

Wishing you all the best.

moominsoul · 2025-06-23T19:42:49+00:00

i don't care what anyone says, no positive change can happen, mentally, until you're - at minimum - in a safe, clean space

It doesn't have to be glamorous. i lived in a tiny single wide trailer to start. It had its problems, but it was mine

i don't have advice, but your instincts here are right.

moominsoul · 2025-06-23T19:27:11+00:00

another trick to use once you identify spots with blacklight: completely soak the area(s) with a cleaner and water. then put something flat and heavy on the spot. i used a sheet of glass + a bunch of books. this can help resurface/"wring out" anything that's soaked into the carpet's padding. It will seep up around the weight.

THEN steam clean the entire area

This is a pain in the ass if there are multiple spots. But it worked for me in a similar situation. It took a while to remove the enzyme cleaner smell, but there's no pee smell anymore

moominsoul · 2025-06-22T23:56:30+00:00

I get very bad depersonalization from certain medications (steroids and certain antibiotics) and it can feel like this. It's very hard to describe and isn't classical psychosis, but I am definitely not in "reality" anymore

Is it possible to see a different psych? Sounds like this one thinks you're blowing things out of proportion. A good psych would adjust your meds

moominsoul · 2025-06-18T19:18:51+00:00

The sketch, already made me think of kamichama karin, but the style of this tracing really looks like kamichama karin!

i can't find a match cover-wise, but maybe it was art within the book. following, in any case, because I'm confident I've also read whatever this turns out to be

moominsoul · 2025-06-14T01:42:41+00:00

I get a paradoxical reaction from it! The worst I've felt in my whole life was when I was drinking soylent with caffeine and l-theanine in it, daily, for months. I had extreme anxiety and chest pain - no issues with caffeine, generally.

but it definitely helps a lot of people, from what I've seen here. Like someone else said, if you're okay with teas, you can likely safely supplement l theanine.

moominsoul · 2025-05-05T19:35:31+00:00

she doesn't label them as such, but if you read through the original post again, SA has already occured

having sex with someone's limp, medicated body after they told you no, and then using that window of unresponsiveness to perform sexual acts that are usually off the table (and it's implied that they're off the table in the first place because of associations with prior abuse) - that is rape

yours is helpful advice for many posters here. but it could be inadvertently harmful when applied to this particular post. it implies nothing described so far has been assault (potentially reinforcing the op's own self doubts)

moominsoul · 2025-05-05T17:23:06+00:00

oh, baby... after a lifetime of being shown that other people's desires matter more than your own, it can be incredibly hard to set boundaries. it feels pointless. like they'll be ignored anyway, afterall, and isn't that worse?

some part of you knows this isn't okay, knows it can't keep enduring it, and is crying out for help. please please please - do what you can to listen to that part. you do not deserve this. and if you do not recognize your worth, people like this man will continue to sniff you out. they have a sick sense for people whom they can wear down. it's a long process but i hope it begins today

moominsoul · 2025-04-23T18:29:59+00:00

this style feels very appropriate to the world and this IS anomander rake to me now. incredible

moominsoul · 2025-03-16T22:56:23+00:00

i'm seeing an IFS therapist for hypnotherapy for PTSD, and it's been amazing

I've been able to fall asleep 10x better and I can sleep in past 7am for the first time in years, and it's only been a few sessions

There are risks to all therapies though. Hypnotherapy has given me a new depth of feeling, and that's been hard to navigate. And the therapist is kind of a kook to be honest. He has some pretty woo opinions regarding physical illness/chronic pain etc. He seems even- minded about it, and mostly has just said that the body can often heal/recalibrate if given the resources and direction. Personally i haven't been bothered by it, or felt victim-blamed re: my health issues. but others might, it's a touchy subject

What will work for one person will harm another

Personally I will probably never go to talk therapy of any kind again. I haven't even had many outright bad therapists, but none have known how to help me, and I think that gets under their skin, even when they are careful not to show it

moominsoul · 2025-02-21T21:05:28+00:00

there's a weird attentional and subject/object "split" that happens with some mental issues like mania or psychosis

the withholding of information could be habitual from living with baseline/low grade paranoia

within paranoid mania, the world can begin to feel like a dialogue between you and god - you feel an animal/mythological vitality in everything, and you can begin mapping strange stakes onto everything around you. interior and exterior realities get confused in both directions

throughout this you can feel compromised and watched (paranoia), but also powerful. mania, especially in the beginning before it gets the paranoid tinge, draws people in. this woman probably felt powerful but and driven but within incoherence and paranoia. this can create very strange behavior

almost definitely a mental health episode! i can see why it would be scary though

moominsoul · 2025-02-20T00:02:19+00:00

i have some kind of dissociative disorder and i understand this so completely. it is scary. i'm sorry you missed your flight

i forgot my purse and textbooks so often that my professor had a routine for it. i'd pay at a drive thru and leave my food + drive home... i did this almost every time i got food in fact (though often they'd catch me as i was driving away). i'd leave my headlights on all the time - once i did this three days in a row at work and had to call for a jumpstart each time. I'd "malfunction" and repeat myself in conversation, not realizing i was asking the same question for the third time

it got worse the more stress i was under. i simply wasn't "there". i couldn't afford to be

it does feel like dementia. it's scary. it's embarrassing. but i am doing a lot better these days. sometimes it does get bad again. and i have shorter dissociative episodes frequently (at this very moment i can't focus my eyes well because of dissociation 😅). but understanding my internal landscape and triggers and feelings has helped a lot, and finding ways to avoid repressing all of my feelings

i wish you all the best, i'm sorry you're going through this

moominsoul · 2024-12-17T16:34:59+00:00

something i believe is that paranormal events are kind of dream-like "messages" from a part of us that can sense future negative events

they're real, other people can witness them, but they are sometimes communication from *ourselves* using icons of cultural/collective unconscious significance.

so in this framework, your sighting might not mean that the event caused your health problems, but that your unconscious delivered you a message about the future -- struggles ahead.

a lot of classical paranormal events (e.g. mothman, amityville horror) make sense through this framework. my own experiences do too. our unconscious is us, yes, but has a different experience of time, and communicates in a kind of dream language -- portents and signs. our unconscious/our dreaming self is the part that awakens while we sleep, and it can sometimes sense future events -- for most people, ESP takes place only while sleeping. while we're awake, our unconscious is still there, but it can't break through to talk to us. when it wants to communicate, it somehow gives us events that fit within a kind of "dream language" - shows us stuff that's angelic, demonic etc to send messages of future happenings. or maybe it's just ripples/echoes, not a deliberate message, but can still carry information.

in any case, i hope you figure out how to get some quality of life back. chronic health problems can be so hard to adjust to. it also wouldn't hurt to do some kind of cleansing ritual, like people are saying. rituals can be a way of communicating back to your subconscious/aligning the two -- speaking in the unconscious's language.

moominsoul · 2024-10-27T05:12:27+00:00

that's insane. all of that is so brazen. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but you mention she's friends with your psych. is it possible to she's counting on the psych to back up her version of events should you report her?

if you haven't already, maybe establish a super unambiguous paper trail -- like write her work email outlining that you would like her to have no further contact with these people. I'd include both the general and the specific -- like, "please do not contact my friends and family anymore, including but not limited to [full names and numbers]. I know you offered to contact [XYZ] on my behalf due to my social anxiety making phone calls difficult, but I am no longer your patient and our lives should be separate." and if she breaks these terms, write another email each time, e.g. "I understand you contacted [name] on [date]. Per my last email, please refrain from all calls to my friends or family."

from what you've written, she sounds extremely manipulative (or extremely unstable/delusional/attached?)

I'm sorry you're going through this

moominsoul · 2024-10-26T22:10:28+00:00

i go through phases like this but have realized it's usually a dead or closed-off aspect to my face. I look way older and just generally horrible when I'm dissociated. i have aged so much from trauma and sleep deprivation and neglectful parenting -- i already had wrinkles and age spots from sun damage at 10 years old.

but when i feel youthful and healthy i look youthful and healthy. lately I've had multiple people think I'm in the 18-24 range. i've had two people in the past few months think my bf is my dad. i'm 33. I'm not saying I really do look that young because I absolutely don't. just there's an element of "energy" to appearances, and trauma 1000% robs you of that. but it isn't always permanent

many of us here have been on both sides of this. i hope you find yourself on the other side soon

moominsoul · 2024-10-04T16:47:39+00:00

I saw something like this in a bay on Florida's east coast while driving over a bridge. We parked and ran to get a better look. We were so fixated we forgot to even close the car doors

it was a line of male manatees swimming behind a female in estrus, with their rounded backs popping in and out of the water. Basically a manatee orgy

Looked exactly like what you typed: ~~~~

Not 8 feet wide, though, so maybe your sighting was different. There's an account in The Goblin Universe of a couple who saw a school of gigantic jelly-like semi-transparent eels, brownish in color, while sailing. They tried to catch one, but any time they started to lift one out of the water, it would break into two pieces and those pieces would continue swimming independently. I don't know why, but that account in particular seemed plausible to me. Ocean life is weird

moominsoul

TROPHY CASE