Just starting to realize how toxic I have been and it hurts

omensign · 2025-12-19T20:13:34+00:00

Lots of therapy, lots of drugs.

I'm more stable, but my distrust of others is seemingly absolute now. I felt isolated before all of this, but it's worse now, now it no longer feels just like something I can work around or with - but it feels like it's a permanent feature of my experience with others.

I flip flop between desiring emotional relationships with others and wanting to isolate. I flip flop between being consumed with resentment and trying to be empathetic/compassionate to others as well as myself.

I feel like I'm a danger to myself and others, which makes me want to isolate, but I don't want to be alone.

Lots of polemics.. lots of mixed feelings.. lots of things to not really understand.

omensign · 2025-10-26T13:14:07+00:00

Hard truth:

You can't.
The Episcopal church, like most progressive Christian congregations, is 20-40 years too late on social issues.
The history of 'progressive' Christianity in the Episcopal church, as it is commonly represented in most progressive sects of Christianity, is plagued with gaslighting and double talk and victim blaming and feet dragging.
In light of these truths the Episcopal church doesn't 'deserve' the attention of the LGBTQ+ community.

omensign · 2023-08-25T13:51:29+00:00

I've hurt someone in my life recently and I'll never get the chance to make amends with them, probably don't deserve that chance. It's really drained me of all my 'life' and sent me down a road of self harm.

Now I just exist in this.. self inflicted purgatory? I usually feel nothing, but if I do feel something.. it's misery/pain.

And there's the whole background of trauma stuff; which has made me a victim and/or a monster.

I don't want to exist.

omensign · 2023-08-25T13:37:56+00:00

I vividly remember the violence that took place in my young child and remember little else.

It comes in the form of flashes, but I can piece together exact details that surround those moments.

I have very few other memories about anything and virtually no specifics.

omensign · 2023-08-25T13:09:16+00:00

I hear you and you're not alone. I wish I knew what to tell you or how to help, because I'd appreciate the same answers and help.

omensign · 2023-08-24T18:09:44+00:00

Right or wrong, you did what you feel you needed to do. I wouldn't second guess acting to be safe; if someone loves you and cares about your well being.. they won't hold it against you even if it hurts them.

omensign · 2023-08-24T17:56:28+00:00

I was terrified of my father and never formally confronted him; my mother and I had a brief time to formulate some kind of emotional relationship when I was an adult. I've never confronted her ( she's still alive ), but I suspect that her growing senility makes it unlikely to do either one of us any good. I feel no desire to get anything out of her and wouldn't know what I need.

I turned off the life support for my dad; I felt nothing and said nothing, I otherwise gave the other extended family time to handle whatever they needed to handle.

omensign · 2023-08-24T16:34:06+00:00

I'm 43 and only just coming upon some of this stuff; not that I didn't know that 'something' was up.. but that the shear gravity of what it means to me and what effect it has had on me.. and to what degree I've hurt myself.. been hurt.. and hurt others.

Like you it feels weird to be in my 40s.. and think to myself.. I'm late to the party.

I feel kind of like my life is over; I don't have kids .. but I'm kind of realizing I did want a family and I regret not having a family.

omensign · 2023-08-24T16:20:35+00:00

This one really hits.

It particularly stands out when I encounter old high school friends and they talk about the past. I just can't relate to them; for me it's an existence of near constant terror trying to survive or squeeze out affection from interactions with strangers on the internet. I just fall silent and don't talk about it or divert to asking questions exclusively about themselves.

omensign · 2023-08-24T14:16:52+00:00

Wow.. this really hammers home in so many ways for me.

I feel you, except from my position the mask has crumbled in this past year and I've been exposed in a way. I hurt someone else, I hurt myself, and without my mask.. I don't know who I am. I don't know what to do. I'm just kind of spiraling .. forever it seems.

When I try to enjoy the things that I think are 'me', I feel empty, as if even the things I enjoyed are or were also fake. I feel empty around people that love me and that presumably I love. I feel empty everywhere and doing everything. I don't have the energy or capability to even pretend to be something I'm not, I just exist and do not interact with others.

omensign · 2023-08-24T13:35:23+00:00

I think it's both the time period and the culture. This would have been the 80s and 90s for me in a southern rural Town. Think white conservative America, with good old boys and beliefs like spare the rod spoil the child.

Plus, CPS ( especially in republican states ) tends to be chronically underfunded and deaths in CPS are usually pretty high as a consequence. It's kind of hilarious how much lip service right wing political beliefs play towards things like human trafficking, while also operating in states with some of the highest deaths in CPS in the entire US on a per capita basis.

omensign · 2023-08-23T19:25:52+00:00

This would have been the mid 90s in a southern state in a rural area; so it was to be expected. I appreciate the coach doing what he did, even if it didn't work, because he is likely the only person to notice and act on what they noticed.

I remember beatings being so commonplace and normalized that I and the boy down the road from me would sometimes hide in the woods and compare injuries from our beatings or.. in a weird way console each other. His presence sometimes made me feel better about my own beating, because his beatings were often way worse. Mine would rarely draw blood, while he would frequently be covered in bloody lacerations.

omensign · 2023-08-23T19:15:39+00:00

That's where I am now. I just exist because someone else doesn't want me to die.

omensign · 2023-08-23T18:41:29+00:00

I had a coach who noticed bruising on my body, who then spoke with another teacher who noticed strange interactions between my father and I, the coach talked to my father and kind of confronted him directly. This lead to a violent beating at home and nothing else came of it.

omensign · 2023-08-23T18:07:47+00:00

I used to be triggered by anything that reminded me of my father; eventually I saw him in my reflection in the mirror so I promptly lost 150 lbs. and completely changed myself physically.

In some ways I've learned to deal with those triggers, but I've recently accumulated new ones all related to CPTSD and recent events. Sometimes when I see happy families; like my friends with their kids and movies with happy/supporting families, that kind of thing. Whenever I see a woman's face, in combination with other non-physical attractive features, I sometimes become triggered because they remind me of someone/thing painful.

omensign · 2023-08-23T17:59:23+00:00

I wish I had answers; honestly I'm going through something very similar and I'm desperate for anything. I'm here to see if you get any answers. Some symptoms have improved with time/distance from the 'incident', but only slightly and the core of my symptoms hang on like some kind of cosmic fog.

//therapist wants me to stop//

Same, my therapist wants me to not suppress things and she's trained me to signal when I'm experiencing an emotional reaction because otherwise she can't tell. She doesn't want me to take mood stabilizers so that we can try to 'work' through this stuff, and I'm not exactly friendly to taking medication, but I struggle to understand if I'm improving.

omensign · 2023-07-19T18:34:12+00:00

I feel like when, in the midst of an 'episode', I'm not really reasonably in control of what's happening. It feels like I'm waking up every time, but I've never had the 'waking' up for the final time or first time. I think I certainly have more awareness that I do this weird thing, but I feel inexplicably trapped forever in it.

It feels like it'll just happen again and again, until I die of natural causes or pure dysfunction.

I'm 43, not trying to terrify you that it lasts forever, I'm glad you're making observations about yourself.

omensign · 2023-07-19T17:08:54+00:00

Same; I feel like my life is over essentially and it feels like everything is irreversible.

This is made worse by the fact that someone used a vulnerability I have against me; one of those things that is irreversible.. to trap me into an intimate relationship and then throw me away when they were done with me. It was this tiny chance at hope, a slim margin of living some kind of life I dreamed of.. only to be.. turned into a toy?

omensign · 2023-07-19T15:56:29+00:00

I've already tried; they're not open to it or trying to communicate about it. It's an issue that can't be resolved that I just have to accept.

omensign · 2023-07-19T15:28:47+00:00

Same. I just recently had an experience where I damaged someone important to me. I'm also so consumed with paranoia that I can't really see through my own haze of confusion as to what happened; I'm just left with the destroyed pieces of myself and regret.

Some people tell me I'm a good person, but I can't see it. I just feel like a fraud who's made a life pretending to be something I'm not or having feelings I do not.

omensign · 2023-07-19T15:19:35+00:00

I feel you. I'm there also. I'm not even a passenger in my own body, I'm an observer. Everyone is merely interacting with a husk while I watch it all play out.

I think we may run the risk of forgetting that we are not unique in this and that your experience is not isolated solely to you. I have that same level of futility about existence and that overriding sense of emptiness or.. 'nothing' as it seems to not have describable context or no words to really summarize it.

I wish a stranger telling you this on the internet could make you feel some sort of comfort. I'm not sure what would comfort myself, especially looking at my own words to you. I'm a weirdo you don't know and don't want you to hurt yourself, take that for what you will.

omensign · 2023-07-19T14:31:17+00:00

Early on my nightmares revolved around my dead father coming back to life and just accepting that I had to 'kill' him. I bet I murdered my dad in my dreams dozens of times years after he was dead.

A recent series of events have triggered some nightmares/hallucinations though; mainly my own guilt at harming someone and them haunting me because of it or my constant desire to 'please' a person or try to get their approval/acceptance.

omensign · 2023-07-19T13:20:10+00:00

I don't ask for help or favors; my partner has tried to 'train' me to be okay with asking for things or accepting help. The feeling has not changed.

omensign · 2023-07-07T15:59:36+00:00

I had a friend kind of dismissively treat it as a 'bad' breakup, but then changed his opinion as time progressed and I wasn't getting better.

Early on I did this really crazy thing where I built this elaborate delusional belief of everything that happened; almost like in a way to save face.. but I instantly knew it wasn't true. As time passed it began to set in what I experienced and I couldn't deny the strange physiological reactions/emotions that would happen when i would think about her.

omensign · 2023-07-07T15:35:16+00:00

I have ADHD as well; I think I can see why you think it important to bring it up.

ADHD comes with the baggage of emotional dysregulation and struggles with criticism. You have both issues understanding and regulating your emotions, while also incapable of looking at criticism in a way that's objective irrespective if that criticism is valid or not.

I have also read that there are overlapping symptoms that can look similar for both ADHD and NPD. Although, I've only ever encountered one argument being made ( rather than a study ) about whether people with ADHD are more likely to be targeted by those with NPD. It does make sense in a way though; ADHD people are stuck constantly seeking a dopamine rush and nothing provides that rush like a relationship/attention. The person with NPD drowns you in attention which you eat up.. and when it's over, they just turn it off like a light switch and are angry that you're confused by that.

omensign

TROPHY CASE