#but i repeat to myself that it wasn't bad or traumatic and everyone else is exaggerating

[erraticroses]

.

[thefanboyhub]

I said I could make an essay about why Cleaning/Organizing is one of my strongest coping skills so I am going to because I can.

(Writing and explaining myself are my other coping skills 😔)

Uhhhh TW: Trauma ✨(?)

For starters one of the things I've been forced to do since a young age— mostly due to the whole gender standards but also because of lazy fucking adults in my life— is clean. I would clean anything and everything, all they had to do was ask and I had to follow. It wasn't really that bad until after foster care. One of my mom's boyfriends at the time was a lazy piece of shit, claimed to be disabled but he wasn't, he was just extremely lazy and obese (not fat shaming but he was very clearly the unhealthy kind of fat, y'know the kind that actually does kill you) plus he didn't want to work. He'd have me and my brother do the laundry, have me clean just about everything (all at 8 years old by the way) except vacuuming because I wasn't tall enough to do it right.

That's wasn't the bad though I honestly didn't mind it unless it was a massive mess and made me wanna kill myself with how gross it was. The part that really traumatized me is a two parter and involves my oh so lovely Gran (she can fucking die and I'd be leaping with joy).

First part is the fact that if I didn't do a chore (which of course as the only "girl" and because girls "do things better than boys" I had to do the dusting, cleaning the table, vacuuming, and the bathroom I shared with my brothers, plus mopping once a month, my laundry and help my Gran do everyone else's laundry, AND CLEAN NY ENTIRE ROOM.) right or her way, I would have to redo it. I would have to redo it until I did it right. If it looked like I didn't vacuum, I was forced to revaccum the entire house again. If I didn't clean the baseboards right she would make me move everything off the walls and clean it entirely. When we had stairs, if I didn't clean them right I would have to redo them again. On top of repeating these chores over and over again I also got basically all my privileges taken: Phone, TV, Art supplies, my books a few times, going outside, and other stuff I can't remember.

Which led to the second part of this. I would clean and organize my room for fun when I had stuff taken from me. What else was I gonna do? I couldn't just sit there and daydream or sleep, I would be yelled and and grounded longer for that. So I daydreamed while I cleaned and organized my room. Sometimes I'd reorganize our kitchen and stuff, anything to be busy and not get yelled at or get brownie points so I can have something back.

This slowly became a habit for me. Grounded? Time to rearrange my stuff. Stressed? Clean the bathroom. Trying not to cry because she's right there yelling at you for attitude again for the tenth time this morning? Time to deep clean my room. Anything negative would trigger my response to clean and organize. Even if it's already clean I would clean it. It even got to the point where I clean myself too. I developed germaphobia. I was almost diagnosed by this one therapist I was forced to see at one point with OCD because of the cleaning habits. Fun times.

But some other stuff that contributed to the whole cleaning coping skills would be that it gives me control, a blank start, and physical activity. Moving furniture around, cleaning the walls (oh yeah she made me clean a wall with a toothbrush once. Halfway up the wall she let me switch to a rag so eh.) on my hands a knees scrubbing the tile floor of the kitchen. It helps me get the aggression that my mom and I worked so hard to keep under a tight hold out of my system. It makes me feel as if I have a new start when I'm in a clean space, specifically if I cleaned it. On top of that I also feel on control. The act of cleaning is controlling the environment. I have control over what I clean and how.

Anyways. This was all started because of today. I lost a friend (they aren't dead they just don't want to be friends with me anymore). I struggle with social situations and for 7 years I only had one friend and she left about a year ago. I was 15 when I finally started to have more than one friend. I've basically lost everyone at this point minus one maybe two but even then they get along better so yeah. I suck at making friends, socializing, and all that stuff. Which also means when I lose a friend it causes me great distress and makes me freak the fuck out. I started cleaning my room at 9 pm and I only got done with it at 10:23 pm so yeah. Coping skills yuh.

[littlerunonsentences]

Growing up, I, as many children in the early 2000's, listened to "Because of You" by Kelly Clarkson. I knew all the words, yet somehow grew up thinking this was a breakup song. Until recently, I was driving home from work one day, and this song came on shuffle. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. This song had nothing to do about a breakup, and everything to do with a parent(s). Embarrassment flushed through me as I sat in traffic, sobbing, as I listened to this song on repeat. I used to enjoy belting this song, but ever since that day a pit in my stomach forms the moment I hear the opening piano. It's a weird time in my life to realize that this song is about the fear, and anxiety that a parent has created.

I will not make the same mistakes that you did

I like to think of this as the mantra of traumatized youth. We're all so determined to be different from our parents. While being molded by them. We are so positive that we will be nothing like them, while also having no one other than them to guide us. We all learn one day, that every fear, every bad quality, and insecurity, all leads back to them.

Because of you I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me Because of you I am afraid

Trust has been a topic that I have worked on a lot throughout my two or three years of therapy. Trust is the foundation of every relationship, not just romantic ones. That was something I didn't realize. I thought I trusted people, but I was only fooling myself. I trusted no one, including myself, and still kind of don't. But I'm working on it. I thought that I trusted people because I was seemingly unafraid of their actions. Unfazed by the risk involved with them hurting me. But the discovery was that I expected them to hurt me, so I remained expectant of their ultimate betrayal, which isn't trust at all. All of my relationships were built on the foundation that I believed that they were going to hurt and betray me, and eventually leave me. I thought I didn't live in fear of betrayal because I was not reactive to upsetting situations, but really I was consumed by the fear that I just didn't react. .. and it all leads back to the parental mold. Wanting to be so different from our parents, but ending up just like them.

My heart can't possibly break When it wasn't even whole to start with

I think the final lyric of the second chorus is so beautifully tragic. I have felt this way since I was 13. A feeling that I like to leave unacknowledged.

I watched you die (I watched you die) I heard you cry Every night in your sleep I was so young (and you're so young) You should have known better (I was too young for you) Than to lean on me You never thought of anyone else You just saw your pain (you never saw me) And now I cry In the middle of the night For the same damn thing

Kelly Clarkson melodically verbalizes the grief that I feel as an adult for my childhood self. I remember the sobs, I remember the fear, I remember the satisfaction of adults relying on a child. I am haunted by it over a decade later. Fighting it, learning from it, and fearing it all at the same time.

"Because of You" is beautifully written, and amazingly performed. I am grateful to feel seen. I hope we all learn to trust, and be better than our parents.

[queersturbate]

ryōhei arisu is autistic

usually, since im autistic myself, all I would have to say is dude trust me but ive gathered some evidence anyway

major alice in borderland spoilers

1. we can see him have meltdowns in episode 1 and 4. In episode one, the meltdown is brief and stopped pretty quickly, as everything is happening very fast. karube decides to put all the pressure on Arisu to save them. Karube is leaning over Arisu who has back himself up against a wall when he starts to feel overwhelmed, he gets up and thrashes to get out all the baddness~ (similar to stimming)

in episode four when he had just lost karube and chota in a very traumatic way he gets picked up by Usagi and when he wakes up and he works himself up into a very bad meltdown, he keeps repeating that he has to apologize to them and he's repeatedly banging his head on the ground. keep in mind that everyones meltdowns look different- autistic people with abusive family, like arisu, often have small, quick meltdowns so they won't get abused for having an intense meltdown (my meltdowns are 100% unnoticeable)

2. Arisu happy/focus stims in a lot of unnoticeable ways, i think he probably has learned to subdue his stims because of his family, he probably even has tried to stop stimming completely but it's almost impossible to do so. Here's one point where he happy stims (pushes his knees up and rocks, i stim like that so it was cool to see)

3. Arisu exclusively wears comfortable clothing, he wears plain (maybe with a little writing or a simple pattern) t-shirts most of the time he has a thin jacket over, he wears capris pants or shorts. at the end of the season he wears a button up shirt but it looks soft and with a nice texture. He never wears anything with a rough or uncomfortable texture- like jeans- and never wears anything constricting they're always loose fitting

4. his special interest is video games. this doesn't need much of an explanation I mean it's just what it is, he spends every chance he gets playing video games, like when he's walking and no one is answering him so he starts playing a game- he also gets excited when Usagi asks what an online game is- he wants to info dump and is about to but quickly stops as she looks uninterested

5. he also has a tough time in social situations and cannot always read social cues and doesn't know social norms- when he is with karube and chota- people he has known since he was a lot younger- he is much more relaxed and himself. When in a new group of people or around a new person he often goes temporarily nonverbal- shaking his no and nodding yes primarily. Like when he is with Hatter- he rarely responds to him only saying 2 very quick sentences while the rest of it is him staring and shaking his head (there are actually a lot of instances where he does this im not gonna name everyone of them)

and when he goes to talk to the two girls he is very blunt and doesn't read social cues- yelling out "i wasn't trying to hit on you!!" very loudly as they ran away from him- he can also be very blunt about a lot of things and it often gets him berated or the shit beat out of him. He means no harm with this bluntness, seeing nothing wrong with saying these things. Of course- if it's chota or karube, they dont mind his bluntness- like when Chota has a burned leg and they were theorizing the possibility of the universe they were in was VR. arisu says that VR cant make such a bad injury, chuckling to himself, seeing it as a joke he made. No one else laughed. Also a social norm that he doesn't seem to think about- when Usagi gave him her water bottle to drink he immediately offers it to the two strangers theyre with without asking her first (also an example of his hyper empathy which he shows a lot of throughout the season). he also has "odd" reactions to things in general. Compare his reactions to everyones reactions to everything in the season- you'll see what I mean

6. he can also go into hyperfocused mode (a side note: I believe he has a eidetic memory- as you can see in episode one where he is in hyperfocus mode and he remembers the evacuation map perfectly- which I know eidetic memories haven't been proven to be a thing per se but as they study it- it is commonly found in autistic people) which you can see during the games or when someone is telling him important information- for example episode one:

7. this one is short but it stuck out to me a lot- he is extremely touchy with karube and chota. he is always hugging them and reaching out to grab them, stuff like that but he looks extremely uncomfortable when someone else touches him and he doesn't touch anyone unless he absolutely needs to like life or death situations

in conclusion <3 arisu is autistic (and nonbinary) and you cant say he isn't because i literally gave you evidence and im autistic and nonbinary

[flameontheotherside]

Stopping victim mentality is HARD!

If you are serious about becoming spiritually mature on your journey, we have to make attempts to heal. No you don't need to be completely cleansed. It's just not possible but if you think it works, do you. Maybe it depends on how deep your wounds are.

I know I write a lot about my struggles and how this journey is tough at times. Parts of why I have this blog online is:

It won't get tossed if written in a notebook.

I want to openly bexpress myself.

Hope that I help someone go through the same thing.

To heal.

Healing is a repeating process.

It's a practice you gotta do every day or as often as your mental health allows. There's no race or need to clear yourself of all things "bad". I think we need some traumatic experiences to share with people. To show people you've been there and you know what it's like. Helping others is unconditional love.

Victim mentality that is deep coming from early childhood abuse is nuts. Idk if it's true for everyone though. Mine was just emotional abuse and some unintentional parental neglect. It's not an excuse that my mother was a single very young parent if three. She could have had an abortion or gave us up.

Now personally I wouldn't go the abortion route but I also never got myself pregnant either. I'm 33 and childless so....yeah. To be clear I don't care if anyone has abortions but it would have honestly been nice if she either aborted or gave us up if she wasn't mature enough to be a parent is all. Her actions are the very reason for a while I didn't want kids. In fact all three of us siblings still have no kids because of how oblivious our mother was.

Anyway so the abuse wasn't physical or whatever.

It was purely neglect and verbal abuse. I was born with special needs from the jump. I had to have several surgeries due to hernias. Then I had classic signs of autism but it went unnoticed because back then girls and women were not diagnosed. My mother was never around and when she was she locked herself in her room and didn't want to be bothered. Single mother under 25 with two jobs. She barely had any time so because of that we stayed at group homes. That's a whole other bag of chips.

Traumas starting at a young age and continues into adulthood? Yeah it's hard as fuck to not feel sorry for yourself. I was heavily bullied and generally treated like shit for a number of reasons and if you don't know, my TF is deceased and that's another whole bag of chips so it's a constant thing of...

My life sucks, my twin flame is dead wahh wahh wahh, why me, oh woe is me 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

I allow myself to feel, express myself and then do my best to let it go. Yeah it's hard. Erik tells me all the time that I gotta let myself really feel and cry about it. I don't like crying. My problem is I'll rant for a second and then focus on something else. Then tuck away my feelings until something happens even like my period or something not panning out I literally would cry all day (privately) and then heal by talking about it with Erik and\or Rick.

It's a repeat process and at first...

....I wasn't seeing results until I realized that I actually dont absolutely hate my mother anymore.

For example...

She was young and I'm sure scared. Yeah I'm harsh on young mothers because of my experiences but not as much. I was able to text my mom everything I felt about her. I even said some very hurtful things. Like really railed it into her because I couldn't hold how I felt in anymore. What triggered me was that she chose an abusive man over me and my siblings. Ironically I was in the very same exact situation! That's how we ended up homeless around the same time. More about that later. Insane!

The miracle was that while it made her cry, I'm very certain it allowed her to understand why I couldn't give a rats ass about her cancers, why I was always defiant, and why I couldn't go to her when I needed her. She in her way apologized. Now we have a relationship and when we both coincidencentally became homeless together I stayed with her at the shelter, ran errands for her (she can't walk from the cancer treatments now), call her on her birthday, call her on mothers day and even call her when I'm upset or just bored.

There was also a repetative past life dream I had that made me realize also that part of why my mother was so reluctant to care for me at times was because I was a slave driver in the south assumingly. She was my slave! When I saw the poor old women's eyes, I saw my mother. It was so powerful. I understood that she felt like a slave to me. I was demanding but it wasn't my fault though. It still got me to understand why things were. It was hard to stay angry with her. And yeah I told her about the dream.

So stopping the victimhood is a constant process.

The important thing is that you become consciously aware. Recognize you are in pain, try not to take it out on others, don't make yourself entitled, feel your feelings and release them. But you gotta keep at it and always aim to heal. Also...

*AHEM* ....😌

😆📢 No one owes you jack fuck-all because you had a tough life!

This is the gospel of truth. This also isn't to say your pain is invalid. It's to say that it's no one's job to heal you and believe me...no one wants that job, mmkay? YOU have to heal YOU. I've been there and done that and it just doesn't fucking work because people will then start hating you. You have to realize that God, the world, the people in it do not need to bend to your will just because you either refuse to be accountable or heal. I get that healing is hard. It's hard for everyone! Everyone has pain and it's a spectrum. Please don't get into the habit of saying...

Well my pain is worse than yours blah blah blah ...

Pain is pain no matter how you spin it. Does it hurt? Was it traumatic? Okay great welcome to the PTSD club now sit the fuck down and get serious about stopping the victimhood bullshit. It doesn't get you anywhere. It just makes you look like a self-obssessed entitled asshole. Recognizing you need to heal is the first step to it. You need to give yourself credit and keep moving forward.

😘💕 Most of all don't be so hard on yourself!

Side note: ...I know it's hard because I beat myself up all the time 🤣. Even for shit not my fault. Now that's just dumb isn't it?

[bonniemdiaz]

There are a lot of things I wish people understood about the trauma of narcissistic abuse.

First the person going through the abuse doesn't even know they are going through it til it's too late. Your now trapped in a nightmare. When trying to explain to people what was happening and expecting them to understand they don't. And I come off crazy with people looking at me like "your exaggerating, it wasn't that bad or you would've left sooner." But that's where everyone is wrong. Dead wrong.

A person being abused in a narcissistic, sociopathic and psychopathic relationship will actually do the complete opposite and cling to the abuser stronger than before.

In some small dark corner of their brain they will have a tiny voice whispering "this isn't right. Your in danger. They don't care about you. Run!" But then the majority of their mind is rationalizing abuse. It's called cognitive dissonance. The brain is so abused by this point and so lost and manipulated that it rationalizes ways to stay even though it hurts. Why? Because you feel bad. Or your afraid it'll anger your abuser. You'll even feel sorry for THEM because your brain rationalizes it and calls you thinking about abandoning the abuser wrong.

"That's wrong, I love him, he needs me, everyone else always turns on him, his own family did that to him, he doesn't really have real friends, don't be another person in his life that fails him." So you stay because it's in your nature to love and feel compassion for people in pain.

But it's a trick. The narcissist, the sociopath, the psychopath preys on that part of you. See they can't feel shit! They don't know pain because they'd have to know love and they don't know that either because their brains are incapable of understanding emotions. They are very much aware of what they are doing to you and that it's wrong but they don't care. Because of this they can't even actually love their own children.

To the outside world everyone believes he loved his kids. Will do anything for his kids. But that's a damn lie. It was just words with little to no action at all. See it's the idea of being a great dad to the outside world that he loved to show off because it would make it that much harder for people to believe me when he finally got thru with what he was doing to me.

For the sake of minding your own business. Or not getting involved. Or staying out of it. Or even just because he was your friend. I know people knew more about him than they were telling me. That he had cheated before in the past. Or that he was fucked up. Or he was on meds. Or whatever.... Nobody said a word about it for the sake of staying out of it. I get it. I do...but it was wrong...Now granted very few of you did say something and for that thank you. Believe me your words rang in my mind but it was several yrs too late. I was trapped by my abuser and he turned my own mind against me by then.

I suffered alot from his abuse. And even though I left, my traumatic bondage to him sucked me back in and I came home.

It's easy to leave a guy because they're not doing what they're suppose to. It's easy to leave a guy because he cheats all the time. It's easy to leave a guy because you ain't into it anymore. It's easy to leave a guy because he's a slob or he neglects you or he's this n that. Normal break up issues makes it very easy to leave. But dealing with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath.. or in my case a bit of all 3 because the symptoms are so close yet he had all the symptoms of each class... It's not fucking easy at all.

Trying to explain to some of y'all in a short "hey how ya doing" type question is going to make me look crazy because part of my fucking damage is words escape me. Thoughts disappear almost as quick as they come. Then social anxiety kicking in at max speed because then you respond with "oh you'll be ok. Or just try to focus on you and the kids, or just move on now it's over with don't dwell on it." Those statements are actually severely dismissive and actually even harmful to someone who is fresh out of that abuse. Like me right now.

Don't you think I would if I could??? My brain is trying to play catch up to 7 years of mental mind manipulation fuckery that it's running in overdrive hence the fucking anxiety and panic attacks. Please don't ask me how I'm doing if you really don't care to know because I'm not doing... I'm actually stuck in a fucking fog, a haze of WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED TO ME???

I try to step out of my apartment and hold a decent conversation with people... On the outside you might see a mumbling person who is a fraction of my former self. But on the inside I'm screaming and frantic and scared that someone is going to blame or shame or judge me. I'm socially awkward and have no idea how to pull myself out of it. I research and research and the ONLY thing that helps me calm myself is seeing all the research saying and repeating to me all this is normal for someone like me. That these are all signs of trauma Bonding, manipulation, PTSD, CPTSD, anxiety, Stockholm syndrome. All of it I'm going through is fucking normal.

I'm scared to talk to my friends and to be on fb because I feel like I'm being judged. And even though you may not be doing that. Even though you all do care to some sort of extent my mind is so crazed that I don't trust it anymore. That I need to protect what little is left of me. But even feeling like that is normal. And yes I know I need therapy. But see I'm dealing with all these different legal things and having to make moves to situate my kids and my family now because I'm also still a single mom. That I'm left with no time, and having to figure my trauma out by myself while maintaining a "normal" single parent life. Because hey.. I'm not the only one out there dealing w some shit and has kids. Right?

Contrary to what you might think surviving narcissism and surviving almost being killed in front of my kids isn't actually normal. To encounter narcissistic abuse and survive is actually the hardest thing to do because narcissism, sociopathic and psychopathic abuse are the worst and most dangerous forms of abuse anyone could encounter. And can even be deadly...and gets worse than that when you have children with them.