I get wanting to help save someone from further abuse. But you cannot push people to heal that are not ready to heal. You can inadvertently cause a lot of harm. A victims denial and dismissal of their own abuse are defense mechanisms are what many of us need to just survive our current experience.

Real healing can only happen when the victim is safely away from their abusers. And abusers will use any means of abuse to keep their victims trapped. For a lot of us, standing up for ourselves can get the shit beat out of us. And outsiders have no way of knowing how the victim will be punished for defiance.

Admitting to our selves that our own families are purposely hurt us is one of the most painful things we can do. When I had to admit to myself that my mommy and daddy like to hurt me, it broke my heart and shattered my mind. I ended up hospitalized.

People in denial should to be met where they are with compassion. Validate the pain they openly share and let come to their own healing as they are ready and able. It would be amazing if we all could stand up together and say in one voice No More. But abusers have rig our social systems and economics to make that almost impossible. It is exactly why universal healthcare, a living wage, food and housing security are so difficult to achieve in the US. Abusers want to keep abusing.

I’m glad I could support you in my way. You are right, the loneliness of it eats away at the psyche. r/momforaminute and r/dadforaminute also good places to turn to for nurturing support. Keep posting and replying. In this sub we have all been through similar things. We get it. And it will help keep you upright while you push through. And every little bit of support helps. Hugz

I am praying for you. You are experiencing child abuse. You are being neglected and emotional abused . You are being violently abused and sexually assaulted and emotionally raped. You are being gaslit. You are purposely being provoked and punished for reacting. You are being scapegoated.

Your parents have failed you. Your parents have failed at the single most important job of being a parent, keeping your child safe from physical harm. That comes before food, shelter, clothing and education. Your parents are failures as parents and as people.

You have been standing up for yourself. And when ever you do they escalate the emotional and physical violence. A child turning to their parents for protection is exactly how a child is supposed to stand up for themselves. You have done the right things.

This is a them problem. It is not a you problem. You are not overreacting. They are addicted to the hormones their own bodies release when they see negative reactions. They are abusing everyone around them. You are just the easiest target.

Learn about gray rocking. It is about making yourself as boring as you can. It feels like you are in a no win situation because right now you are in a no win situation. I think the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents would be really useful to you. You maybe a child in years, but like all abused children, you are an adult in maturity. Your parents are expecting you to fill the role of your own parent so that they can continue to act like out of control preteens.

To help get you through the next four years, take every opportunity to be away from them. Do any after school activities you can. Go to a library if you can. Hang out with friends if you can. Hide in your room reading or studying. Hide yourself inner self from them. The more you share of yourself the more ammunition you give them to hurt you with.

Get a job as soon as you are able. Turning 18 without the money to leave will keep you trapped there. Save and hide all the money that you can so that you can leave at 18. Expect that they will both try to push you out of the door and do everything they can to keep you trapped. I made the mistake of sticking around because they promised to pay for college. They didn’t pay for college, but they were able to keep me financially trapped for 12 more years.

Be wary of anyone that tries to rescue you. Predators search for people that have suffered childhood abuse. Our desperation to get away from our abusive families makes us easy targets for other abusers.

I wish I had magic words that would make everything better for you. But, these are the best words that I have. I hope they help. Hugz & Hugz & Hugz

I did this and felt really bad about it until I learned on this sub that it was me validating me, my actions, emotions and experience. It is the internal critic that was created by decades of being told what I think, feel, like, don’t like and chose is wrong. The eternal critic throws up a criticism in the role of someone I know. Then the arguing is really me validating my choice or emotions. Since I can self criticize on many levels, I felt I needed to validate myself on many levels. I was trying to reassuring myself on each and every level.

We all develop an internal critic. It is there to try and make us safe. The same voice that tells us to not touch a hot stove is the same voice that sets up social scenarios where we might be hurt. A technique I learned here is to recognize when I’m doing it and thank the internal critic. Thank it for trying to keep me safe through preparation and repetition. It goes quite when I hear what my inner critic is afraid of, thank it and reassure it that I can handle it. The mantra, I get it I’m anxious. And that is Ok. I can handle that works well for me. I hope this helps. Hugz

Late 50’s and I have 6 good memories of my mother.

I went no contact 2 years ago and it was the best decision I have ever made. My marriage has stabilized. The chronic disease I have been battling for 30 years cleared up. All of my mental health issues are in remission. I can breathe. I can eat. I can sleep. Finally.

I don’t hate her exactly. And I don’t exactly love her either. She has a tragic backstory. I hate that she milked it for all that it was worth. I hate the family system she made. I hate that she made me the family, scapegoat.

But she is still my mother. She is dying today or tomorrow and I have broken no contact for the last month while she passes. I have really had to dig for anything good to say to her. I have had the chance to grieve the life and relationship I wanted, but couldn’t have. I was able to let go of the desperation to fix it. I have been able to abandon hope on my terms and in my own time. Without that her death would broken me. Now I am grieving for the mess she made of her own life and by extension mine.

Going no contact doesn’t have to be forever. It can be just for now. Give it a try and see how it works for you. Hugz

As a minor, you actually are suck for a while. But only for a while. There is an end date, the day you turn 18. And know this, getting away will improve your health dramatically. Your health issues are a result of the abuse. Once you are out and feel safe from them your body will start to heal.

Abusers go to great lengths to keep the abused dependent and confused. Start planning for your 18th birthday now. Get a hold of your important documents now. Save and hide any and all money you receive from now on. See if you can find remote gig work. It is a great way to do paid work while coping with health issues. It lets you distract yourself, gives you a feeling of self worth and gives you cash to leave when the opportunities to leave will come.

And there will be opportunities. An abuser can control a lot, but not everything. Get a go bag together so that you can take advantage of it as quickly as possible.

I highly recommend the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. It will give you insight on how to cope now and give you a head start on healing. Also the book The Body Keeps the Score will help you understand and start to navigate healing your body now.

I am so sorry you are trapped for now. Know it truly is just for now. I hope this helps. Hugz & Hugz & Hugz

I strongly caution you against telling your mother. You mother is much more than unsupportive, she has been actively sabotaging your mental health your whole life. Your mental health issues are symptoms of the abuse you have suffered. Your getting well is a direct challenge to her control and abuse. It gives her a huge opening to further abuse and isolate you.

By not addressing her own mental illness, she has driven everyone else out of her life. Your getting help will allow you to gain independence from her. She is beyond desperate to keep you around and has no problem with causing you harm to get her way. She cannot sabotage medical attention if she doesn’t know about it.

You called them out and they are punishing you for it.

This emotional abuse is what sends me into an episode. It is not just invalidating, it is an attack. It is a an intentional smear campaign. This person is a crazy maker and they know exactly what they are doing, why they are doing it and what impact it will have on you. This is a person that will use anybody’s anything against them to manipulate a situation in their favor. You are just the latest target.

This is an abusive person. I’ve found blunt honesty shuts it down by acknowledging, dismissing and apologizing to the listener for having to have to listen to it. I leave it alone until it is brought up, my response is delivered with a weary voice: Oh, yeah, I called so-and-so out. So-and-so is having a temper tantrum. I am sorry so-and-so dragged you into it.

Sometimes it is just left there. But usually the other person will start griping about so-and-so too. You would need to modify and personalize it to work for you. I hope you find the solution that works best for you. Hugz

So wow, your dad had a type, women that withholds/weaponizes attention and affection to to get their needs met without meeting anyone else’s needs. First with your mother and then with your stepmom.

Your father is emotionally selfish, immature and and bad at fathering. Your dad is also a people pleaser, he just has different strategies than you because of age, gender and economics. He has become both an abuser and enabler of abuse. Him choosing to abandon you makes his wife feel special and important. She validates herself by invalidating you. He has allowed you to become the scapegoat for both your mother and stepmother.

Your stepmother doesn’t hate you, but she is also selfish, immature and bad at mothering. She is just as needy as your mother, she just is in a place in her life where she doesn’t need you. And hope that she never does. Her treatment of you will become so much worse. Count yourself lucky that you are a secondary scapegoat for her. Can you even imagine having to do everything you do for your mother and having to do the same things for both your father and stepmother.

None of this is about you. You just got trapped by three people that are not very good people and worse parents. I hope this helps. Hugz

Yes, but actually my feelings do matter to them. Making me feel small makes them feel big. Making me feel insecure makes them feel secure. Being able to control my feelings makes them feel in control. Putting me in my place places them above. They want my reactions. They want my negative emotions. They want my attention and all of the benefits they get from me trying to win their love and approval.

My feelings are actually the most important thing in their lives. They put enormous amounts of time and emotion to getting and keeping my attention. There is no amount of self-harm they are not willing to do to themselves in the hopes of harming me. By controlling my emotions they can control my life and get 80% while giving 20%. And then I am supposed to be unendingly grateful for the 20%.

Your feelings do matter to them, just all of the ones that that no one ever wants to feel. It gives them a coping mechanism for their own pain and they also get so much more than they have to give. From their perspective it is a win-win. Why would they want to give that up.

They do know what they are doing is wrong, because they are the ones that taught you that treating a person this way is wrong.

Feeling a bit militant today. These people need to get over themselves. This is a them problem. It is not a you problem. Arg. And Hugz & Hugz & Hugz.

You are not the problem here. Your family is the problem here. Any time someone makes an excuse it because they Know they have screwed up. Everything you are describing is just rude, inconsiderate behavior, regardless of neurological differences.

I have coordinated two family reunions. At a family reunion, of course there needs to be extra communication and accommodation for everyone. Coordinating large groups of people is work. When you get 3 to 5 generations together, it just increases. Neurodivergence has no baring on it. Your bother turning off your alarm is just rude, petty and knowingly sabotaging your vacation. Yes, he knew exactly what he was doing. He cared enough to do it. Texting after they leave, who does that!?! Anyone leaving without you at a family reunion unless you have explicitly said you don’t want to do something, is horrifying. Leaving anyone out of any activities is pitiful.

That you cannot take them at their word is the problem. That you cannot trust them to follow through is the problem. That you have tried to explain and compromise over and over and over is the problem. Your family is just being rude, petty and entitled.

I was not going to allow them to do to a child of mine what they had done to me. They told me they would and I believed them. I saw them do it to my sister and her children. Every time I tried to leave they would hunt me down and drag me back or sabotage every attempt at independence.

Things my mother has said to me all before the age of 16 comes to mind:

You do not deserve, you are not entitled, you do not need

You ask too much, you need to much, you are too much

I don’t have time for you, I don’t have the patience for you, I won’t *** insert legal parental responsibility***

Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, get out of my sight

You are hypersensitive, you are just being dramatic, it’s always about you

Mothers are magic, mothers are perfect, mothers are never wrong

You should be seen and not heard, you don’t get a say

How you feel doesn’t matter, what you think doesn’t matter, I don’t care

The daughter looks scared and overwhelmed to me.

Hey, I’m sorry people are telling you what you heard was wrong because they don’t want to believe it could happen here. You were there and you heard what you heard. That is a scary as f***.

Oh I had exactly the same problem when I got married. I couldn’t find a good answer, because what I wanted most was my family to grow-up and get over themselves. To be happy for me and with me for once. To for one day to stop the constant demands and criticism and insults.

It was then that I had to be honest with myself, I had tried everything. I had done my share. It was never getting better, because they wanted it that way. They like winding me up and pushing me into a meltdown. I am the family scapegoat. That realization hurt.

I tried to elope. My mother crashed my elopement. I cannot make this shit up. She crashed my elopement. Who does that !?! She had still found a way to make my wedding all about her.

My one victory was to not have to deal with the rest of my awful family. I have no good answer for you. I just want you to know I get it. Hugz

Um… you aren’t running away, you are walking away from being disrespected in an unresolvable conflict. Every human on the planet becomes reactive when they aren’t listened to. Walking away is not only allowed, it is the most heathy and responsible response you can make. Just walk away is the best advice and action a nonviolent person can take.

You have been honest and respectful. You have been open and reasonable. You have been compassionate and fair. You have attempted to address the issues many, many times in many, many ways. You have done your share. You have done all that you can do. There is just no where to go from there.

When children have to be the mature ones in the relationship, the parents have failed. If a child has to scream at their parents to be heard, the parents have failed. When a child feels unsafe with their parents, the parents have truly failed. The only reason you feel embarrassed by walking away is because your parents have convinced you that you are the immature one so that they don’t have to grow the f*** up. They have put the responsibility to be the adult on you.

I think you might find Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents a really good read. I am so sorry you got stuck with parents that have the communication skills and emotional temperament of teenagers. Hugz & Hugz.

The middle and the left have been using the strategy of reason, compassion and tolerance since Nixon was elected using the racist Southern Strategy and conspiring to prolong Viet Nam. For 50 years it has been one long slow decent into Fascism. The right depends on the middle and left to being tolerant and cleaning up the mess the right has made. Until the left and the middle stop tolerating and hold the right fully accountable and make them clean-up their own damn messes, we all are screwed.

It was the middle and left people in my family tolerating the abuse that the right wing of my family that drove me away. If your family won’t stand up for you, you have nothing.

It is all from neglect. You were not a bad kid. You were a normal kid forced to find a way to survive the abuse and neglect.

What you remember about biting your parents, was you trying to get them to have empathy for you. To make them aware of your physical needs. And yes, cuddling is a physical need for human children. Being rejected and neglected was traumatizing each and every time. Over time you learned that there was nothing you could do to get your needs met. You learned that emotions were taboo, so you shut your awareness of your emotions down as a last resort to survive your parents. Shutting down your awareness of emotions is also known as disassociation.

You have emotions and feel them all of the time. When people say listen to your body they mean to notice how different parts of your body react to a situation. For example, feeling butterflies in your stomach is a physical expression of anxiety. The question is it a good anxiety: anticipation or excitement. Or a bad anxiety: concern or dread. Anger shows up in clenched hands, jaws and shoulders, it is bracing to fight or flee. Joy causes the heart to flutter. Happiness feels soft and warm and a little heavy, like being firmly wrapped in a blanket. That is why it is called the warm and fuzzy feeling.

I think you would find the book The Body Keeps the Score a good resource for helping you to understand how the body feels and holds the consequences of emotional abuse and trauma. You are a normal person forced to survive a below average family. I am so sorry you didn’t win the good family lottery either. I hope this helps. Hugz

Both ;)

Yes, you do deserve a better mother. You just got unlucky in the mother lottery.

All of the petty little criticism and negativity are dominance games and power plays. Making you unsafe and insecure makes her feel safe and secure. She sets her self up as the gatekeeper of all that is good and right and no one or nothing can live up to her standards. When her standards are actually met, she changes the standards. The thing she is complaining about is irrelevant. Her winning by judging is the point.

You are not required to treat a bad mother like a good mother. You are not required to pretend she is a good mother to other people. You are not required to to have a relationship with her at all. You actually have all the power in your relationship. And that is why she works so very hard to convince you otherwise.

I also highly recommend you check out r/raisedbynarcissists. You will find 1000’s of stories just like yours. I hope this helps. Hugz

By Jingo Carrot had evolved into a Hero with a perfect moral character. There really was no more room for character growth.

Right there with you baby.

When I am not dependent on them for anything they are well behaved. When I am even slightly dependent on them they turn right back to being abusive. I don’t mean financially dependent, I mean merely having them pick me up at the airport to make a visit they have demanded. I have to stay at a hotel and rent a car or they are awful again. It is all dominance games and power plays with them. And after explaining it to them over and over it never changes and they cannot understand why I don’t visit. Arg.

I spoke to my psychiatrist and we came up with a plan to judge it by my sleep. When sleeping gets bad I know it is a hypomania. I have two kinds of hypomanias, a fast burn an a slow burn. A fast burn is three or more nights with no sleep. A slow burn is less than 6 hours of sleep over two weeks. When either of these two conditions are met, I call my psychiatrist for a med adjustment.

If you are questioning if it is right to call your psychiatrist, it is time to call your psychiatrist. Together you can make the call now and make a a plan for the future. I hope this helps. Hugz