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eggshells all the way down (lemmy.ca)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/me_irl@lemmy.world
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[–] 16 points 8 months ago (8 children)

“I noticed my mom was upset, so I tried to cheer her up” can also mean "i have to cheer mom up because dad was mean to her".

"My siblings are upset, i have to cheer them up" - this is parentification.

I am still very empathic, sensing emotions and reading subtle cues really good - but my brain interprets a lot of stuff as threatening, because all of this sensing was mixed with unpredictability. If you always get the same response, you can learn to work with that - if the response is not predictable, you get fucked up like me.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    In my case it meant "if I can't cheer them up, they'll hit me". They both did it, but my stepdad was worse about the random punishments. Turns out he had undiagnosed schizophrenia, and I was getting hit because he was having hallucinations about me doing/saying something.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Damn that's hard, sorry you had to experience that. My mother was a teen who couldn't fend for herself when she got me and my father was a drunkard, never hitting anyone but always shouting physical threats around. In the last years I've grown the suspicion that he had the same issues as i have, with no therapy. (He died stumbling while drunk hitting his head alone in his messy apartment, so i can't ask him and i wouldn't if he lived anyways)

    AvPD is developed in the first few years of life (there is definitely a genetic component in play, but there is not much research on it, since we are not problematic for our surroundings and tend to not seek help because we don't want to inconvenience anyone - any researcher will have a pretty hard time finding enough of us), so i can only make an educated guess what happened back then, which probably was the same stuff i experienced later.

    I think i might have had a chance at a much better life if the first few years had been stable, just so that the core of my personality had enough time to form. I am missing the basic trust most people have that everything will turn out all right and that what people tell me in regard to my relationship with them is the truth. Like, people can tell me straight up they enjoy spending time with me and i don't believe them.

    I hope you have at least a bit of that basic trust going for you. If you have, hold onto it, it's something precious.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    I have AvPD, and I am sure there is a genetic link, but it's hard to separate it from my mother's issues and treatment of me. She had schizo-affective bipolar and was an alcoholic on top of that.

    I've found therapy to be a bit frustrating, because I am able to cope with my fears and recognize when I'm slipping into avoidance but still unable to form connections with people. I've been released from therapy but still don't have any friends or relationships because I still react to other people's unpredictable emotions with fawning and then cutting them out of my life lol

    It's a very lonely disorder

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    Therapy is very frustrating, i agree with you. Progress is soooo slow, and there seems to be this barrier i simply cannot break through. But at least it helped with some of my most self-destructive impulses like my addiction to fentanyl painkillers, which is the reason i keep going there,

    I am a bit of an outlier i think, because i have been in multiple relationships for the last 27 years (it's not that i had the courage to actually try for relationships, but it still happened, back then when i had a bit of social life in my early 20s), so i at least wasn't physically lonely (in the beginning), but emotionally i always withdrew after the "honeymoon" phase, trapping myself in a limbo where i lived with someone, but i couldn't do shit because i wasn't able to take the space for myself i would've needed to actually live, or even end the relationship out of fear of conflict.

    I am actually going to live on my own for the first time now (starting with april or may), and I think it will be for the better. I do fear the loneliness, but it will probably beat being stuck in perpetuity in a long dead relationship.

    It really is a lonely disorder, even when there are people.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    I had a string of relationships in my 20s as well, but I don't think any of them were healthy and I developed my own drinking habit to cope before realizing I didn't want that misery for myself.

    Dunno if you want any advice to consider, but I've lived alone for most of my 30s, and I have to say having a pet really helps. I have a cat and a dog, and the dog does provide more opportunities for conversations to happen just seeing the same people on the trails we walk every day. These are usually shallow conversations so it's easier to avoid feeling like I've upset anyone (it still happens lol "why did I say good morning that way??" but it's low stakes at least). But even having a plant to take care of helps with the loneliness, because you have this living thing that occupies the same space as you, and even if you can't leave the house today you can still share being alive and existing with this plant or creature.

    Anyway, I wish you all the luck with your move and your new future

    Edit: I just realized we've commented to each other before, I was on a different account though lol. I'm glad your move date is so close now :)

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    Yeah, mom was also a teen when she got pregnant, my bio dad isn't even listed on my birth certificate. She had a string of incredibly bad boyfriends and another baby before settling down with my stepdad, falling into the incredibly cult-y church he was in, and having one more baby. My youngest brother was always the favorite, because he's the only "legitimate" child out of us, and I was the oldest and only girl so a lot of parenting fell on me even when I was still in elementary school.

    I think I got lucky with having my great-grandmother help raise me before the cult. Quite a lot of my personality mirrors hers, but she was a teen during the Great Depression, so I inherited some weirdly relevant worldviews there. These were further reinforced with living in a state that didn't believe in social safety nets like adequate food assistance, so I got roped into helping mom with finding edible food in the grocery store garbage, because I was small enough to fit into the dumpsters.

    I don't know if it's PTSD, AvPD, or what, but I do have a hard time connecting with people who haven't been through similar trauma before. I find that too many people are insulated in a comfortable bubble and don't want to believe these things can happen, so I always feel like everybody thinks I'm a liar, and I just get so angry and stop talking to them.

    I've been with my partner for the past 16 years tho, because they've got similar trauma and they understand.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    I don't know if i can actually connect with people who have the same issues I have, although i know me and the other person would have to be locked in the same room so we can keep in touch - two people who don't call each other might get along, but it's not really a relationship isn't it lol

    I also have two younger siblings, but our mother slowly got her act together over the years, so i took the brunt of the instability at home - i might have acted as a stabilizing factor for my siblings too, at least i hope i did. I know they both do a lot better than I do.

    The culty stuff reads awful; weirdly enough i stumbled across this piece where lots of US troops got told by their superiors the war against Iran is so that Jesus can return (and they have the sick idea Trump is anointed) - this sounds very much like the same thing, or at least very adjacent.

    I have the luck to live in central Europe, with a useful social safety net - i was declared unfit for work after i had a nervous breakdown because i couldn't withstand the stress of regular work. it's actually the way i get a little apartment for me if all works out... 36m² isn't large, but enough for me and my 2 cats, and i can afford it with my little pension. I just wanted to write that i do not know what would have happened if i lived in the US, but that's not true: reality is that i would be a crazy homeless person or dead.

    It's good to read you have such a stable relationship and hope you are happy in it. Wish you all the best!

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Yeah, US politics has been hugely distressing for me, it's such a direct continuation of my childhood trauma sometimes, with added new threats to worry about.

    It also helps to recognize the areas of my life where I did get lucky breaks. My belief in the cult broke when I was 19, and I was so convinced my stepdad would literally murder me that I ran away from home and started couch surfing with strangers I met on the internet. I knew it might be human trafficking, I knew that these people could rape me and dump my body in a ditch, but between this rock and that hard place, there was a small glimmer of hope.

    I got lucky. They helped me establish my residency in a new state, going so far as to notarize an affidavit that I was living at their address, so I could get a state ID and start looking for work. I was able to find a job, and get a cheap dorm-style apartment with shared bathrooms and kitchen/commons, find love.

    Then the bottom fell out of the market in the '08 crash.

    I got so very lucky.

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