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I remember a news story that was highly controversial about a mom who let her <10 year old son ride the subway by himself. They had done the trip together multiple times, and the kid just loved the subway so he took it seriously and learned how to navigate everything. It was a great example of good parenting, giving your kid freedom, but also making sure they are well equipped to handle that freedom.
eSporks fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 19:12
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Absolutely, although I have read some wonderful books/memoirs by NYC kids who grew up roaming the city by mass transit. Yeah, as a London kid I'd regularly skive school to wander up and down Charing Cross Road or round museums. Might realistically have been a little too free-range; it's a bit hard to tell if I was safe or just lucky. And of course I grew up a goon, so it's not much of a recommendation.
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Jan 10, 2022 19:34
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Lieutenant Dan posted:Argh my mom is the same way. Apparently I was an extremely manipulative and evil/plotting baby/toddler/small child. Every time she says this I think about that King of the Hill clip where Jimmy Carter incredulously goes "He HATED a BABY?" in response to Cotton Hill saying he's always hated Hank, and feel a little bit better My dad and to a lesser extent my mom do that to my GF too. I wouldn't take it too personally, they're trying to drive a wedge between you so you remain their creature and no one else's, at least if your family is anything like mine.
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Jan 10, 2022 19:53
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I called her bluff on it and she said "well we COULD feed her but we'd have to eat lower quality meals." She's super loving mean about my gf and I have no goddamn idea why. I hope she rots in a ditch. 
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When I was a kid it was quite common to take the bus or ride our bikes to a location in the city. When I was 8-10 years old we used to run out of the house at 8am and not come back until sun down though often we would go back for lunch and a bit of supper at a friends or something. I think that a lot of younger people these days were robbed of that feeling of independence that we had as kids. It really started in the late 80's as fear of pedophiles and kidnappers increased so everyone watched their kids like a hawk. Then kids weren't allowed to be bored anymore so their days were filled with extra-curriculars or parent supervised things, not allowed to just chill and figure things out. Obviously that's not the experience of everyone but this insular attitude extends all the way up the generations as time goes on. This shows itself in how younger people tend to feel as though the world is designed and monitored around them to be either good or bad and that they are merely victims of circumstance or that the world is an attack upon them in the form of adversity.
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Jan 10, 2022 20:06
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Sanctum posted:When I was a kid we would play outside unsupervised and nothing bad ever happened to me. When I was about 8 I started being able to just leave and go ride my bike around the neighborhood. This was the late 90s. I never found any other kids or anyone that went to my school. I was the last 70s kid because everyone else was already either housebound or just not on the street for me to just find.
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Jan 10, 2022 20:09
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We had to go play outside so the adults could have hangovers in peace, especially of it was a huge houseparty and there were a bunch of strangers asleep on all the furniture and randomly on the floor.
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Jan 10, 2022 20:24
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The first time I was allowed to take a train somewhere by myself in a big city when I was like 13 I was almost immediately grifted out of a couple bucks by a panhandler. He saw me coming a mile away, sidled up to me with a sad story. I took out my wallet and gave him a buck. He grinned and asked me for another buck so I gave him another. Then he was like hey I see a five in there, can I have that too? I said no to that but I think I was already a better mark than he was expecting.
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Jan 10, 2022 21:19
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Absolutely, although I have read some wonderful books/memoirs by NYC kids who grew up roaming the city by mass transit. One time my mother made this huge production about buying these summer bus passes for my brother and I - we could go and ride them wherever we wanted, like to the library and whatnot. I couldn't even tell you what it was like, or how impossible the rural bus schedules in early 90s Sonoma County CA were, because my mother never got remotely close to letting us use them. She did buy them and we saw them, but she got really angry every time we asked about them, so we stopped bringing it up.  Actually now that I've had time to reflect on this, I think she did this a few years in a row. Its been a million years since then, and flat out  in asking anybody about it, but my mother buying something, never using it, and then getting the credit transferred to something else she didn't use would be extremely on-brand for her. I got a lot of mixed messaging about playing outside. We also moved around a lot - I've never lived in the same zip code longer than 4 years. The first place we lived was way out in the country so my parents didn't really care if we wandered off because it was just empty fields and retirees for miles and miles which was pretty boring. Later we moved into the extremely lovely part of town but we weren't allowed to play with the neighbor kids for a whole slew of reasons, in retrospect mostly because my parents are classist assholes. I also got a lot of mixed messages, punishment and confusion because my parents, my dad especially, had mythical Stand By Me-esque adventures with his childhood best friends whom he stayed friends with through adulthood, and he just  couldnt figure out what the gently caress was so wrong with my brother and I because all we wanted to do was stay inside and play video games It was actually a super hosed up scenario - my dad worked nights and my mom is paranoid, so what happened during almost every summer vacation is my mother would expect us to only play outside when dad was awake (and punish us if we were caught away. she could get pretty exotic in proving we were outside. In retrospect, she really just wanted to hide us away in the dark until she got home) I don't begrudge my dad needing to sleep but he's a two faced piece of poo poo because he would come home and tell us to shut the gently caress up and play video games quietly in our rooms while he slept on the couch until 2-3pm, then let us out for an hour or two, and then yell at us because we played Nintendo all day. Also I don't necessarily blame my mother for being super paranoid, but being in that always-wrong space every summer vacation was awful. The few times I attempted some of my dad's personality-disorder fantasies, like jump on a strange horse and try to ride it bareback or attempt to ride my bike the 20 miles into the city, I either got hurt and/or got in supreme trouble. TBH this specific negligent abuse sticks with me more than anything else they did - I genuinely struggle with disassociation. managing time, and finding proactive outlets  Also not enough  in the world for this - the extreme disassociation and being completely cut off from peers from ages seven through ten is when I heavily got into traditional nerd stuff - video games, computers, role playing games, all the fantasy books - which my redneck father DESPISES It took estranging my entire immediate family and friends to realize at 42 that maybe I liked that stuff in the past (maybe) but I don't actually care about any of that stuff at all. 
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Jan 10, 2022 21:33
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Our neighborhood had very few kids in it and we were just off a major road with no sidewalks, so I don't know what other people were doing, but I think the idea that everyone could have their own television or computer, and everyone in a household could/should be entertained by their own stuff at the same time, had a big impact. That came along in the . . . 1990s? I'm not sure. Things like specific children's channels, like Nickelodeon, didn't help either at getting kids out of the house. I don't really know though because, again, not a lot of kids around, and my family didn't have a television or computer or real video games until I was in my teens. But I can definitely imagine a shift from kicking the kids out of the house all day so you can smoke and gossip, Betty Draper style, and plunking the kids down in front of the television where they'll be hypnotized all day and you can keep an eye on them. I do wonder sometimes how much safer children are under constant supervision. Statistically they must be, since they're not out getting hit by cars and stuff, but how much? Tarkus posted:When I was a kid it was quite common to take the bus or ride our bikes to a location in the city. When I was 8-10 years old we used to run out of the house at 8am and not come back until sun down though often we would go back for lunch and a bit of supper at a friends or something. I think that a lot of younger people these days were robbed of that feeling of independence that we had as kids. It really started in the late 80's as fear of pedophiles and kidnappers increased so everyone watched their kids like a hawk. Then kids weren't allowed to be bored anymore so their days were filled with extra-curriculars or parent supervised things, not allowed to just chill and figure things out. Obviously that's not the experience of everyone but this insular attitude extends all the way up the generations as time goes on. This shows itself in how younger people tend to feel as though the world is designed and monitored around them to be either good or bad and that they are merely victims of circumstance or that the world is an attack upon them in the form of adversity.
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Jan 10, 2022 22:52
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i was generally housebound having to take care of my aunt, but on weekends or if my mom was around i could get outside with the neighbourhood kids and get up to all kinds of bullshit. wed go to the dollarama up at eglinton and dufferin and try to see who could steal the most preposterous or expensive poo poo, which on one occasion led to the dumbest in our group throwing mini sledgehammers at some poor schmuck making minimum wage that caught us and tried chasing us down. wed ride bikes and play hide and seek. found a giant stack of old ebony and jet mags behind the church on our street. there was a big ravine near where we lived and there were houses on both side of this path through it that were mansions, and wed climb up into their backyards and use their pools and break in to get drinks of water and poo poo. one thing that ended up getting some of the kids locked at home for a pretty long time involved another yard, that had a tree on their side of the fence but it had this weird old rope swing that was on the "public" side of the fence, and kids would swing it down the ravine thing, through the path perpendicular, and up the other side, it was massive, but the tire was pretty low to the ground. one kid forgot about this, put his feet through the tire and was hanging down of of it. ride down the side of the ravine was fine...until his face slammed into the path and all his teeth came out and his nose and orbital bone shattered. that tree got cut down the next day fun! formative experiences. let kids go out and shoplift and break into rich peoples property and throw glass bottles at each other and poo poo. otherwise you just end up with useless adult fans of disney that think steven universe is too confrontational of a tv show to watch.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:49
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Paper Lion posted:fun! formative experiences. let kids go out and shoplift and break into rich peoples property and throw glass bottles at each other and poo poo. otherwise you just end up with useless adult fans of disney that think steven universe is too confrontational of a tv show to watch. 
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Jan 11, 2022 00:33
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Yeah, my sister and the kids of my mom's friend and I got into a bunch of trouble because we weren't allowed inside. We did some garage break-ins, stole people's bags of empties out of their yards to cash them in and buy candy and pop, shoplifted a few times. I wasn't the instigator, I just tagged along. Eventually I did get busted shoplifting with one of the other kids and it scared me straight, I never did it again. The only consequence was being forced by a cop to call my family and confess, then given 4 hours of community service which was stocking shelves in the local Saan (small town Canadian discount department store). My sister kept at it to the point she was stealing cars in her later teens, we found out about that when she and a few other kids rolled the car they stole. No serious injuries gladly. But I definitely got in more trouble for pocketing a tube of lipstick than my sister got for confessing to stealing several cars just to go joyriding. I also got blamed for her thefts, because I was the older sibling and older siblings are a younger siblings primary influence, so it was clearly my fault for being a lousy sibling  didn't matter that I didn't do anything close to what she did, it was my own moral failing because I didn't influence her to be good.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:34
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Ghost Leviathan posted:They refuse to acknowledge children are people and not toys. I somehow missed this until empty sea quoted it. One time at family court, during one of the times I had to file a motion against my ex-wife, the judge responded to something she said about our daughter with, "she's your child, not your property." This daughter, now an adult, went through some business with her mother last year, and their relationship basically changed from codependent to estranged. It's been grotesquely fascinating watching it from the outside. I wish she didn't have to experience the pain it brought, but I don't suppose any such shift could be painless.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:14
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I'm not surprised that codependence can become estrangement when you realise how someone's made you dependent on them, and taken away so much in doing so. I just grew up in such bumfuck nowhere I was basically an enforced open-air shut-in anyway.
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Jan 11, 2022 07:05
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blunt for century posted:Similar to: "You telling me that my abusive behavior hurt you made me feel bad, so I'm the real victim and you should apologize to me." Blah. I'm real scared I do this thing to others. Not demanding attention or apologies but becoming so panicked that I can't actually deal with how I have actually hurt others. I've been trying to stop doing that, but it's something I find really hard.
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Jan 11, 2022 08:54
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I'm not surprised that codependence can become estrangement when you realise how someone's made you dependent on them, and taken away so much in doing so. I don't even want to think about how my life would have turned out if we hadn't moved to the city when I was 15. I grew up in a town of 3000, there were pretty much no jobs so pretty much everyone left after high school anyway. I don't know what I would have done. I wasn't raised to be independent or a go-getter or anything like that. Had a ton of what turned out to be medical and trauma-induced problems which made turning into an adult significantly harder. At least in the city I had the chance to run away and couch-surf with friends and my grandparents for a few months before my boyfriend found a place we could live together.
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Jan 11, 2022 09:28
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https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/s0pswm/caught_my_parents_giving_my_6mo_son_ivermectin/ Holy crap this is hosed. Spoiler for child abuse OP's narcissistic parents feed her infant ivermectin behind her back and nearly kill him, OP is pressing charges Tarezax fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 10:09
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Tarezax posted:https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/s0pswm/caught_my_parents_giving_my_6mo_son_ivermectin/ JESUS gently caress the mom who administered it was a retired nurse. That is murder. That is straight up murder. I can’t imagine someone dark enough to do that to an infant. I try to abstain from the belief that some people are straight broken but this is testing me.
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Jan 11, 2022 10:41
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I was a fairly free range kid at times, but as much as there’s some sadness in kids losing that, at least in Britain it turned out that the paedophile hysteria of the 90s was because sexual abuse was just loving everywhere in the 70s
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Jan 11, 2022 20:13
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Sometimes I'm bitter that my medical issues went completely ignored while growing up. Other times I'm extremely glad. This is one of those times.
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Jan 12, 2022 00:59
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My parents would essentially not allow me to leave the house unless they drove me to wherever I was going and they knew why I was going there. They wouldn't refuse to take me places or anything, but I just couldn't leave unless they knew where and why and they provided transportation. That continued until I moved out at 24, because I have a vision disability and can't drive myself. These days I like to just walk out the front door and get on the train and ride it around aimlessly, or take 10 mile urban hikes across the city for no real reason 
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 01:28
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Paper Lion posted:poor communication doesnt have to do with npd but i agree that boomers are very bad with it. my mom will do something similar, where for instance "the garbage can is starting to get a bit full" somehow translates to "i am directly asking you to take the garbage out right now" in her mind. despite decades of understanding this problem and me complaining about it to her since i was a small child, she refuses to take the hint and learn. we work together professionally and even in the office it is still an issue, not just with me but with other people too. This is my mom exactly. She's constantly dropping hints to imply that she wants you to do something, in this roundabout passive-aggressive way, and is just incapable of directly asking you to do anything. To be fair I think a lot of women just get socialized into this sort of behavior because they get taught that it's unseemly for girls to be direct or demanding. Though with my mother I also get the impression that some of her happier moments have been when people (my dad especially) anticipated her needs and surprised her by doing kind stuff before she could ask, and she's just constantly trying to recreate one of those situations. Even when, like, it would be a lot easier for everyone if she just asked my dad to take the garbage out or whatever.
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Jan 12, 2022 05:21
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lenoon posted:I was a fairly free range kid at times, but as much as there’s some sadness in kids losing that, at least in Britain it turned out that the paedophile hysteria of the 90s was because sexual abuse was just loving everywhere in the 70s Unfortunately with most of those moral panics it almost always turns out the call was coming from inside the house, and they're projecting the problem onto an Other. Blastedhellscape posted:This is my mom exactly. She's constantly dropping hints to imply that she wants you to do something, in this roundabout passive-aggressive way, and is just incapable of directly asking you to do anything. To be fair I think a lot of women just get socialized into this sort of behavior because they get taught that it's unseemly for girls to be direct or demanding. Something also very familiar about this. I do feel like a lot of relationship dysfunction comes from trying to recreate and invoke certain narratives and situations thinking they're obvious and intuitive, like the whole Drama Triangle that came up earlier. And they rarely realise that they're doing it. Does feel like indirect and passive-aggressive behaviour gets socialised into girls from a very early age, to the point where you get the high school age disasters where they will do anything to get a boy to notice them except just talk to them and ask them out. (Came up in the r/relationships thread recently)
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Jan 12, 2022 05:57
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I got a text from my aunt today - My father went in for surgery to remove a 2.5cm mass from his colon, and she implored me to get a screening colonoscopy. I've been completely no-contact with my father for over 3 years now and he's still finding a way to be a pain in my rear end  Un/Fortunately, I've already had one & scheduled more because of ulcerative colitis issues and my mother also having colon cancer  Honestly I've been on cloud nine all day. Ever since that bullshit with him and my brother telling everyone i'm mentally weak (see my post history) I've had a cloud of bullshit hanging over me, and TBH I wasn't sure if I was ever going to escape it. The last two years especially have been brutal, and its factually (although not fully) my dad's fault. I know I shouldn't feel this elated but I've never been more happy for a human suffering than when I found out Bin Laden was killed. I almost asked my aunt for the hospital address, so I could send a get-well-soon card to the tumor. I have no desire to connect, at all, but I have thought about sending gloating texts all day (I'm not going to). I also shouldn't post some poo poo like 'this is a reminder for the thread that if you work hard and persevere, you CAN achieve your dreams!' because he isn't technically dead yet, but here we are. I should probably send him a letter reminding him of my promise to urinate over however his remains are displayed at whatever excuse of a funeral his wife can put together. This isn't the end of that piece of poo poo, this isn't even the beginning of the end of that piece of poo poo CW: unless this surgery goes wrong  but with a little luck, this is the end of the beginning. and thats a big Thank You to this thread because I never would've lasted this long without all of you 
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Jan 13, 2022 22:41
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Vampire Panties posted:unless this surgery goes wrong I think it goes without saying than if/when that does happen, and it's something we all ITT will experience whenever our tormentors shuffle off this hellscape mortal coil they've decided to assault with their presence, the feeling of relief that your entire body and soul will experience will be comparable only to the sensation of finally being able to piss and poo poo in the comfort of your own home after an excrutiatingly long car journey
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Jan 13, 2022 22:56
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I had a dream once in my early 20s where I was apparently or possibly a vampire and my parents were vampire hunters, and the dream ended with my mom slaying me and then me having an out-of-body experience as I floated upward looking down at the scene and feeling an immense sense of relief of just like, weight off my shoulders, anxieties disappearing because they didn't matter anymore, the constant fleeing and hiding from them and looking over my shoulder no longer being a daily torment. (In retrospect knowing what I know now, it's most likely that in the dream I was just a human they suspected of being a vampire) I don't feel that all resentful toward my parents. What I feel is closer to bewilderment, like - what the hell was even going on and how did none of us realize how strange it all was? (Because they didn't really do the things they did out of malice or desire to control or whatever, they were just doing what their parents did and probably with undiagnosed mental illness(es), and I know they regretted it the times they did recognize it) And also kicking myself for not treating my own issues earlier when I was well capable of doing so. But I know I'm going to feel that sense of relief once they pass away and they're just no longer a thing I need to worry about, regardless of how I feel about them at the time. They've been subtly invasive my entire life (I'm recognizing more and more that it was driven by their paranoia, not suspicion of me specifically) and I feel okay knowing that I can relax and put my defenses down one day. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Jan 14, 2022 |
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Jan 13, 2022 23:33
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I just had a sudden flashback to highschool, for the entire four years my mom forced me to be friends with this lovely native american kid (generalized term for anonymity's sake) from a pretty messed up home. He was basically a proto-incel and is still to this day one of the grossest/worst people I've ever met. I wanted nothing to do with him but she would call his mom and ask if he wanted to come over, then go pick him up and drop him off in my room, all without my consent or permission. Her reasoning was (a) since he came from a broken home he didn't have anywhere to go on Thanksgiving and (b) "I always wanted to have an indian over for thanksgiving". I 100% cut off contact with him when he, permanently-unemployed-by-choice and at the ripe age of 32, stole money from his dying grandma to buy an iphone for a 16 year old girl from another country he was 'dating' in counterstrike, just for context on why I hated this guy so much. All so my mom could live out her racist pilgrim fantasies for 4 years  (Psych, she continued to invite him to every thanksgiving until I cut off contact with him ~16 years later) deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jan 15, 2022 |
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Jan 15, 2022 22:15
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My husband and I are celebrating 23 years together today! He got me out of that lovely abusive home and made me feel truly loved for the first time. Looking back it all happened so fast, we moved in after about 9 months of dating, which is ridiculous for a couple 17 year olds, but we were one of the rare cases where it was the proper decision. I'm so grateful for him. I don't even want to think about how I would have ended up otherwise.
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Jan 15, 2022 22:38
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Picnic Princess posted:My husband and I are celebrating 23 years together today! He got me out of that lovely abusive home and made me feel truly loved for the first time. Looking back it all happened so fast, we moved in after about 9 months of dating, which is ridiculous for a couple 17 year olds, but we were one of the rare cases where it was the proper decision. I'm so grateful for him. I don't even want to think about how I would have ended up otherwise. Congratulations. Both for 23 years together, (which is a long time and should be celebrated.), but also for your happiness and an easier road towards it.
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Jan 15, 2022 22:40
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Picnic Princess posted:My husband and I are celebrating 23 years together today! He got me out of that lovely abusive home and made me feel truly loved for the first time. Looking back it all happened so fast, we moved in after about 9 months of dating, which is ridiculous for a couple 17 year olds, but we were one of the rare cases where it was the proper decision. I'm so grateful for him. I don't even want to think about how I would have ended up otherwise. You did good.
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Jan 16, 2022 09:48
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Picnic Princess posted:My husband and I are celebrating 23 years together today! He got me out of that lovely abusive home and made me feel truly loved for the first time. Looking back it all happened so fast, we moved in after about 9 months of dating, which is ridiculous for a couple 17 year olds, but we were one of the rare cases where it was the proper decision. I'm so grateful for him. I don't even want to think about how I would have ended up otherwise. That's awesome!! Congrats to you both for building a life together 
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Jan 16, 2022 15:06
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I spoke to my therapist this week, and I’m seriously considering searching for another. She’s been great for two years—but I think she’s not right for me at this time in my life. She helped get me to where I am, but defending my parents by asking me to consider them and their feelings when they haven’t ever considered ours, well, I gotta draw the line there. She asked if I’d loved my dad well. She asked if I’d asked him how he felt about us asking him and my stepmother to wear masks if they wanted to closely interact with their grandchildren. And I do not give a gently caress how he feels about that. She should have been asking me if he had loved me well, how my wife and I feel about their decision not to wear masks (our only substantial ask for when around the kids). But it was all about what I could do to rebuild a bridge that my dad and stepmother lit and is still burning, how they were feeling, how hurt they must feel. My therapist is around their age with adult children and has similar views to them, which I don’t feel I should know about her, and in this session I did not at all feel like she was on my side. I feel like she was instead asking me to pour more into my dad when he isn’t and hasn’t been pouring into me. Edit: I had this post started days ago and never got to finish because kids, but coincidentally I got a long text from my dad a few minutes ago as I was finishing up this post and about to post it. I don’t know what the gently caress. life is killing me fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jan 16, 2022 |
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Jan 16, 2022 21:40
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Picnic Princess posted:My husband and I are celebrating 23 years together today! He got me out of that lovely abusive home and made me feel truly loved for the first time. Looking back it all happened so fast, we moved in after about 9 months of dating, which is ridiculous for a couple 17 year olds, but we were one of the rare cases where it was the proper decision. I'm so grateful for him. I don't even want to think about how I would have ended up otherwise. Every post you make about how you escaped your horrible family of origin and met your husband is a joy and a delight to me. I am SO loving happy for you that you got the hell out of horror land.
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Jan 16, 2022 21:43
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life is killing me posted:I spoke to my therapist this week, and I’m seriously considering searching for another. She’s been great for two years—but I think she’s not right for me at this time in my life. She helped get me to where I am, but defending my parents by asking me to consider them and their feelings when they haven’t ever considered ours, well, I gotta draw the line there. She asked if I’d loved my dad well. She asked if I’d asked him how he felt about us asking him and my stepmother to wear masks if they wanted to closely interact with their grandchildren. And I do not give a gently caress how he feels about that. She should have been asking me if he had loved me well, how my wife and I feel about their decision not to wear masks (our only substantial ask for when around the kids). But it was all about what I could do to rebuild a bridge that my dad and stepmother lit and is still burning, how they were feeling, how hurt they must feel. My therapist is around their age with adult children and has similar views to them, which I don’t feel I should know about her, and in this session I did not at all feel like she was on my side. I feel like she was instead asking me to pour more into my dad when he isn’t and hasn’t been pouring into me.  I hate when therapists do the opposite of what they're supposed to do
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Jan 16, 2022 21:49
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life is killing me posted:I spoke to my therapist this week, and I’m seriously considering searching for another. She’s been great for two years—but I think she’s not right for me at this time in my life. She helped get me to where I am, but defending my parents by asking me to consider them and their feelings when they haven’t ever considered ours, well, I gotta draw the line there. She asked if I’d loved my dad well. She asked if I’d asked him how he felt about us asking him and my stepmother to wear masks if they wanted to closely interact with their grandchildren. And I do not give a gently caress how he feels about that. She should have been asking me if he had loved me well, how my wife and I feel about their decision not to wear masks (our only substantial ask for when around the kids). But it was all about what I could do to rebuild a bridge that my dad and stepmother lit and is still burning, how they were feeling, how hurt they must feel. My therapist is around their age with adult children and has similar views to them, which I don’t feel I should know about her, and in this session I did not at all feel like she was on my side. I feel like she was instead asking me to pour more into my dad when he isn’t and hasn’t been pouring into me. Agreeing that this is definitely not the right way for a therapist to behave and I would be looking for a new one as well. It's that exact mindset that kept me buried in a hole for so long because it's all I got out of any authority figure or peer I opened up to about my parents. It was all about trying to help me build bridge to them instead of acknowledging the fact that they never built the bridge in the first place when that was their literal job and helping me realize it doesn't matter if there's no bridge because I don't have to cross the river. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jan 16, 2022 |
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Jan 16, 2022 21:52
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life is killing me posted:She asked if I’d asked him how he felt about us asking him and my stepmother to wear masks if they wanted to closely interact with their grandchildren. What the gently caress.
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Jan 17, 2022 01:20
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I've never had much luck with a therapist. I should try again. Maybe I can find one who understands terminal internet poisoning.
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Jan 17, 2022 02:10
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Beachcomber posted:Maybe I can find one who understands terminal internet poisoning. I have a great therapist but explaining internet brain worms is a tough one. "Well you see, 15 years ago there was this website that harassed a woman for having too many miscarriages..." ? "There's a section that helped me join the Navy, one that taught me how to cook and work out, and one that put footage of the twin towers falling to Yakety Sax" ???
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Jan 17, 2022 03:05
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life is killing me posted:She asked if I’d asked him how he felt about us asking him and my stepmother to wear masks if they wanted to closely interact with their grandchildren. And I do not give a gently caress how he feels about that. That's not something you need to care about. At all. In any way.
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Jan 17, 2022 03:35
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ohnobugs posted:That's not something you need to care about. At all. In any way. This is exactly how I feel about it. My dad’s text today was all about him and how he feels, and gently caress that. I’ll give a poo poo when he starts caring about how I feel, which has yet to truly happen. He didn’t go, “I truly want to know what I’ve done,” or, “I am sorry that we’ve treated you like you exist for our personal fulfillment while making you ignore your own for basically thirty-seven years,” he just wants to tell me what I should do, what all my faults are in his opinion, then that I should apologize to him personally for all of those faults even if they didn’t affect him whatsoever. Right now he can eat a dick. I can’t get caught in this cycle anymore. It never ends. We were here a little over a year ago and if we even come close to reconciling we will be here again over some other issue. I’m exhausted, he sucks the life force out of me, and it’s interesting that as I’ve begun to realize all of this, he’s ramped up as if he knows he’s losing his grip on me. Only when we got more assertive and uncompromising about our children’s health and it clashed with my dad’s worldview did he decide I was cut off until or unless I came back around and apologized for something I’d never done wrong. And for my therapist to ask me, “Have you made him feel loved?” And then my dad to text today, “I haven’t felt loved by you in a long time,” well, uhm, I have this to say: IT IS NOT MY loving JOB TO MAKE YOU FEEL LOVED, DAD. But it was your job to make me, your child, feel loved and secure. Instead I felt lonely and unconfident.
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Jan 17, 2022 03:51
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