I (23M) had an abusive upbringing. In early childhood, my father beat me and told me I was weak when I cried out in pain and begged for mercy. Since then, I learned that I was unlovable because I expressed vulnerability and neediness instead of silently enduring the pain, and that others would expect me to be strong and take things "like a man."

As I grew up, I got better and better at hiding my pain. But because I so rarely experienced any kind of affection or positive attention, I never learned to hide pleasure.

I compared myself a lot to men in pornography. It seemed like nothing fazed them, even as women did things to them that could make me faint. These men had incredible endurance and could stay in control of themselves as they made manly grunts. I was a failure in comparison.

I do not make manly grunts. I sound like Mickey goddamn Mouse. I unlock 3 new octaves of vocal range and tremble and blush and hyperventilate like crazy. I'm so embarrassed about it. I see videos of men receiving oral and think "Holy shit, HOW is that guy still standing? He's not even shaking!?" And then I think there's no way in hell that women would put up with my effeminate whines if strong guys who can withstand a woman's attention with little more than a few grunts are everywhere.

I came up with all these sexist lies about women to reassure myself that there was no risk of being touched by them and I was in control. "Porn is just fiction and the actresses lie when they express pleasure or interest; in reality, women don't initiate or reciprocate touch in real life because they're sexually passive and men are the pursuers. Women don't want to touch men because they are wired to receive pleasure, not give it. Also, women have to constantly fear being stalked and harassed by men, so I am doing the right thing by staying as far away from them as possible. Besides, I'm too much of a sensitive crybaby to be attractive to women anyway. So I'm safe. Sure, I live in a touch-starved hellscape, but I'll never have to worry about a woman touching and exploring my body and having naughty thoughts about me, let alone acting on them."

But it's about time I drop the bullshit and be honest.

I'm terrified of being touched by women I'm attracted to because I fear that they would ruthlessly mock me when I inevitably lose my composure and melt into a flustered, needy, giggly, grateful puddle. After all, that's what happened the last time I was openly emotive, way back in childhood when I cried out for mercy. None of my generalizations about women are true, and my avoidance of women doesn't actually make the world better. I am not helping anyone or acting rationally by doing this; I am just avoiding the possibility of being seen when I'm an emotional mess.

I was hoping that no woman would ever sexually desire me because then I would never have to worry about being seen. There were a couple of incidents in school where someone groped me and ran off before I could see who they were, and I automatically assumed at the time that the perpetrator was a guy, because the possibility of them being a girl was far more dangerous to my psyche.

I have these pervasive fantasies that a woman would find my flustered collapse incredibly cute and sexy. Rather than chastising me, she would be really sweet and flirtatious and enjoy sensually melting me at my own pace so as not to overwhelm me. My fear tries to convince me that this outcome isn't possible. But every day, I gain just a little bit more hope that it actually is, and the fear and shame lose just a little bit more power.

I know that Lemmy isn't a substitute for professional help, which is why I have also been going to therapy, but I think it would help a lot if others could tell me what a partner's positive experience of my responses might look like or share how they dealt with similar insecurities and communicated about them with their partner.

What do you think?

I (23M, American) feel completely paralyzed from a career perspective because I have no idea what the hell to do. If I choose the wrong degree program, I have to pay back all the debt with nothing to show for it. Even if I get a job, there's no telling how long that will last. Everything keeps changing so fucking fast and it seems like any field I could go to college for could cease to be viable by the time I finish. On top of that, I have chronic health conditions to worry about that limit what I can even do.

(Edit: Basically I have POTS and a neck injury, so it’s hard to do physical labor and I suffer from dizziness, brain fog, and fatigue from being up for an hour or so. I don’t know my exact limits yet, since the severity of my condition varies by day and there appear to be ways to partially recover from the fatigue without having to lay down.)

I think stuff like urban planning and designing walkable environments would be cool, but I'm not sure if that's a viable path in 2027 and beyond. I also used to be interested in programming, but ever since AI and mass layoffs hit the scene, I've become disillusioned and stopped pursuing that path.

I used to feel like the world was stable and I could pick a career based on my passion and be fine. But ever since 2020, everything has felt increasingly more uncertain. The world seems to be losing its collective shit and that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon.

Is staking your sense of stability on your career the wrong way to think about this? Should I be trying to find close friends or some kind of supportive community that could act as a safety net? Or is everyone too hyperindividualist to look out for each other?

Hi! I (23M) am recovering from complex childhood developmental trauma. I've considered myself an outside observer to human society because I was unable to bond with or relate much to other people until this year.

I grew up in an environment with abusive parents where any kind of softness or vulnerability in men was considered "gay". Subsequently, I encountered a lot of male peers in school who had the same attitude. It seemed like the entire world had the same message: wanting to be vulnerable as a man represents a sexual perversion because it is a "feminine" trait. I was bullied for the bits of vulnerability that I showed, echoing my abusive parents punishing my vulnerability. This sent me into a suicidal spiral that I thankfully made it out of.

I had this inexplicable desire to be vulnerable that I couldn't suppress. It made me believe that I was somehow "gay" despite only being attracted to women, and that women who like men could never find me attractive because they were only attracted to "straight" masculinity -- invulnerable, competitive, and dominating -- consigning me to a permanent ontological friendzone. Ultimately, I decided to take the Faustian bargain of trading my sexual potential for the freedom to be soft, releasing me from the internal pressure to conform to patriarchy.

(To clarify, I was confused in a specific way where I thought "straight" = patriarchy and "gay" = anything that challenges patriarchy. I concluded that the latter was morally superior and adopted softness and progressive beliefs on purpose even though I falsely believed at the time that this would lead to my celibacy based on the right-wing echo chamber I grew up in.)

Through healing from my trauma and talking to friends years later, I'm starting to think that this belief was kinda bullshit? How can you avoid being vulnerable when merely existing in the presence of your partner opens you up to their potential judgement? How can you avoid being vulnerable when you ask someone out, knowing they can reject you? It's almost like I actually didn't want to be vulnerable despite thinking otherwise, and refusing to even appear in front of people actually made me the most invulnerable and therefore manliest man who ever manned, or something. Also, accepting my fate of being in the perma-friendzone led to me making a female friend who emphatically told me that I actually could find a girlfriend because I have this adorable charm and clumsiness that seems to make her instinctively want to baby me, which I always thought was the exact opposite of desirable. I'm slowly coming around to believing her after 6 years.

Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can't love women, only objectify them? Wouldn't this make society one giant trauma factory where men are traumatized into detached sociopathy and women are traumatized into servitude? So what the hell are conservatives doing in relationships? Are they all loveless relationships, or did all of the men cheat their gender role to develop romantic feelings? If men didn't cheat a little in the past decades where gender roles were the strongest, shouldn't we see a kind of generational trauma so severe that violent crime is rampant and secure attachment is very scarce?

I (23M) grew up in an extremely abusive household. My older brother learned to imitate the violence and lack of remorse my father modeled, while I hid in my room for most of my childhood and slowly deprogrammed until I learned to trust safe people and assert my needs and boundaries. Now that I know what safe people are like, I also know what they absolutely fucking aren't.

I think most people would consider my brother a psychopath. He beat his girlfriend's cat to death, brandished a knife at my father in a screaming fit of rage for insulting him, strangled a bird and displayed its corpse hanging in a tree, fantasizes about mass murdering "liberals," said without hesitation that he would kill me in a "civil war," spoke extensively about his desire to break women down and control them, drives recklessly and amasses unpaid speeding tickets, and, most importantly to this discussion, insists that he will have to "take care of me" and "force me to live with him" after my father dies, because I will supposedly be too incompetent to take care of myself. He also has an extremely fragile ego, and any perceived slight or defiance can trigger a violent rage that he admits causes him to lose control of himself (hence the cat's fate for "misbehaving").

Suffice it to say, I don't want to be kidnapped. None of the money or outside communication I have will do much good if he takes away my access to them. What can I realistically do if he makes me live in the middle of nowhere with no phone, no money, and no transportation? It may be a fate worse than death.

I've been in therapy for half a year and reached the point where I am no longer stuck in a perpetual freeze response and can assert my needs and boundaries. This caused subconscious shifts in my behavior that my narcissistic parents have reacted with hostility towards, calling me "crazy" or "aggressive" for asking to be treated with respect and standing my ground. My mother finally snapped and said she wouldn't do anything for me anymore... I was frightened at first, but my life barely changed once she withdrew her support, because I was doing most things by myself already without realizing. I don't feel so helpless and dependent anymore because now I know my family was bullshitting me the whole time, and now it's even more clear that my brother has predatory intentions when he paints me as incapable of taking care of myself.

I've been working on a flexible plan to make a clean break from this situation. I can run away tomorrow and my brother won't be able to find me. But there's one problem that prevents me from truly disappearing: he has access to my full name, date of birth, and social security number, if not because he knows it, then because my mother will readily tell him.

Getting a job and a place to live can leave a paper trail that links my name and SSN to my new location, allowing me to be found no matter where I live in the U.S., and emigrating out of the country isn't a realistic option. It's also worth noting that my brother travels a lot and regularly takes road trips spanning several states, so it's not like geographical distance will deter him.

Is self-defense going to have to be a part of the solution here? Or making it almost impossible for him to get away with whatever he might pull if I tell him no? I would really prefer a solution where I could just disappear off the map and live my life separately; I would hate for the situation to have to come to this.

It's worth noting that I have not explored legal avenues yet because I don't want my brother to be notified of any actions I take against him, which I fear will escalate the situation.

I expect that no matter what, I will have to make some difficult decisions here. I spend every day in constant anxiety so severe that I am afraid to get food or use the bathroom for fear of encountering my brother. But I have to face reality and accept that hiding in my room isn't going to protect me from him. I think staying and trying to seek stable employment or education under such extreme threat is an unworkable solution.

I plan on visiting my local library soon, where I will be able to make phone calls without anyone in my family hearing.

Any ideas? I think having a trusted contact to stay with might be a decent temporary solution that will help me get my bearings, but I'm going to have to deal with the discoverability issues eventually. I would also need some way to find people I can trust in a limited time window, which seems inherently risky. But does that really compare to the risk of doing nothing? Staying at any shelter that will allow me to stay might also be a temporary solution, but given the finite number of shelters, I run the risk of being discovered eventually.

I (23M) am becoming increasingly aware that my regular exposure to political content seems to be incompatible with my own mental well-being.

I was raised by two narcissistic parents, one of whom was violent. I have very few positive or loving memories. My trauma turned my brain into a 24/7 threat detector. I'm constantly thinking about everything and everyone that could kill me or take everything I have.

The Internet has taught me that the world is less awful than the hellish place I came from. But I've hit a wall where I can't get better because I am constantly being reminded by well-meaning people that everything in the U.S. is going to shit.

My trauma narrative eats this stuff up. It sees fascists on the streets, impending financial and ecological crises, the dangers of cars, widespread hyperindividualism, the decline of third spaces, and constant phone and social media use. Then it says, "Nobody can be trusted because capitalism makes everyone shallow and selfish. Going outside is dangerous because of cars and fascists. Most people don't want to socialize because they are too busy. There are no good places to meet anyone. Everyone who does socialize is just a fair-weather friend because support is outsourced to paid therapy and the eroding welfare system. I'll never be good enough for a partner because I can't build a stable life and dating apps are designed to not work. Any job I get won't last long because of the collapsing economy. Going to college is too financially risky. There is no stability. Nothing good ever lasts. My progress will be wiped out by systemic forces far beyond my control."

It seems like U.S. politics is about instability and collapse at this point, and because I have so few positive memories, it feels like life itself is about instability and collapse. Your money, your job, your social circle, your health, everything you've worked for -- all of it could just go up in smoke tomorrow. I can't take anything for granted or have any confidence in the future. I can't fully enjoy anything because I'm too busy thinking about how I'll cope with its inevitable loss.

Is this really what life is? Just watching every good thing disappear? Being born into a mostly-functioning society just to watch it fall apart? Knowing you'll have to weather every struggle alone because people only care about themselves? Being promised a stable life and career all throughout school only for the rug to be pulled at the last minute?

There has to be more to life than this.

Is staying on the Internet really worth it?

(Also yes I go to therapy, I'm working on myself but that shit is hard af sometimes)

By "spoil," I mean things like:

• Smothering him in kisses
• Stroking his hair
• Using a soft or warm tone of voice associated with "puppy talk" or "baby talk"
• Telling him he's cute, precious, or any number of cutesy and diminutive pet names
• Praising him for who he is, not just what he does
• Holding and reassuring him when he's scared or sad
• Being the big spoon when cuddling
• Cherishing his soft or vulnerable emotional expressions
• Initiating affection and sex
• Treating his emotional well-being as equally important to her own
• Being playfully affectionate -- overwhelming him with kisses, tickling him, squeezing him, etc

My ideal relationship is one where she spoils me about as much as I spoil her, and we support each other and make decisions together as a team.

So, what do you think? Are my desires some kind of strange Oedipal amalgamation that doesn't really exist in real relationships, or is believing so just another cognitive distortion from my upbringing?

I (23M) started therapy today, hooray!

Only problem is, my family is too goddamn spicy. Once I got into my brother's (25M) increasingly homicidal fantasies and animal killings, she stopped me before I mentioned the threats he made to kill people and told me that she is a mandated reporter and has an obligation to report certain situations to the authorities.

I think adding police to the equation will make everything worse and immediately paint a target on my back because I am the only one who would ever disclose the violence that happens under this roof. It might result in me being homeless if I have to flee for my life. I live in Ohio and it's the middle of winter, so not a great start.

I wanted to work with a therapist because I grew up in this place and it traumatized me so badly that I'm scared of leaving this dump (not to mention, I have disabilities now that make that difficult). How much will I have to tiptoe around here? Is merely being afraid that someone will use violence against me reportable? What about if they fantasize about murder and domestic terrorism? What about violent crimes that they committed in the past? Or specific threats in the present?

Is therapy just not the right fit for this kind of thing? Did I end up with a heavy duty "fuck you" problem and therapy is just for "I feel sad sometimes" problems? It feels like bullshit to have to self-censor so much just because things were harder for me. How is throwing cops at the problem supposed to help when there is no universal basic sustenance or housing for the victims to escape to?

What are your experiences with mandated reporting, and how do you avoid triggering it?

I'll (23M) try to summarize:

• Mom and Dad were authoritarian parents who never gave us comfort or affection. They were very impatient and demanding. Dad would physically and verbally abuse us. Mom would do nothing to intervene. Even when he threw a goddamn toddler across the living room.

• By the time I was born, my parents didn't appear to have any romantic or sexual chemistry. It was a constant hot-cold dynamic of fighting and silence.

• My parents had fragile egos; any criticism would lead to rage and punishment. Brother turned out the same way, but his anger would lead to violence.

• Since I was the youngest, I was bullied by Dad and Brother. I was shamed for being sensitive to the abuse and wanting comfort.

• Brother would easily become explosively enraged and take it out on his environment, screaming and breaking things. Mom and Dad made fun of his reactions and didn't care about his feelings.

• Dad was overtly hateful and would openly advocate for genocide for any country or group of people he didn't like.

• From a young age I became intensely sexually attracted to receiving nurture and affection. This created far fewer awkward moments than one might think, thanks to the environment I lived in, but it led to paralyzing insecurities later since it was a behavior my parents never exhibited and mainstream pornography didn't showcase it.

• I also became insecure about my empathy and desire to care for others because none of my family members modeled this behavior.

• The moment Brother discovered YouTube (probably 7-10 years old), he immediately looked up videos of characters being set on fire and melting in a grotesque fashion. When Dad allowed Brother to play a superhero game, he spent the entire time killing all of the civilian NPCs and laughing at their deaths instead of following the game's objective.

• Even without my low self-esteem, expressing myself authentically in school as a kid was risky because my bullies would relay anything I said and did back to Brother, creating a decentralized surveillance network.

• I believed that nobody would ever like me because I was sensitive and wanted care and was shamed for those things. I struggled with masculine gender roles and felt like I was unwanted by the world. I became suicidal and wanted other people to hurt me.

• I was scared of expressing my feelings and ideas because I thought this would be met with violence if I said or expressed anything that my family didn't like. I learned to be stone-faced and speak as little as possible unless I saw a strategy in doing otherwise. I pretended to listen to and care about my other family members so they wouldn't kill me. The surveillance wherever I went ensured that this authentic expression was impossible in-person.

• Around age 13, I retreated into solitude. I had a seemingly unexplainable impulse as a young teen to bypass my family's totalitarian control of information and self-expression by securing Internet access on other devices or bypassing parental controls. I befriended people in chat rooms and felt like it was safe to be me, though I still struggled with socializing immensely. I educated myself about everything I wasn't allowed to learn about and slowly learned how to talk to people. This outside contact is what made me feel less isolated and allowed me to learn about how pro-social humans think and act, though my sense of normalcy was still distorted by my immediate environment.

• Once I suspected I was being abused and made a futile attempt to call it out, my mother taught me to fear Child Protective Services and never tell anyone about the conditions at home or else CPS would put me into a worse place.

• We had a dog, but I had to witness Dad beating the poor thing every fucking day while Mom pretended nothing was happening.

• My parents insisted on me keeping the bedroom door unlocked even when they knew I might be jerking off. Once, my Dad forcibly unlocked my door while I was masturbating to see what porn I was watching, something he used as blackmail 7 years later.

• I had to reconstruct a vision of what love looked like through my vivid sexual fantasies and verify with online friends that they have similar feelings.

• Brother developed a worldview in which he is a god and his seminal fluid makes him powerful. He explicitly wants to "dominate" women and "destroy their egos" and he cites random reoccurring numbers and symbols as signs that he is the chosen one. He dreams of living in a mansion with dozens of wives and hundreds of kids. He says that relationships built on cooperation and compromise are too complicated and it's more practical to take absolute control.

• Brother, seeking an outlet for his rage, went on to torture and kill a bird and display its corpse in a tree and beat his ex-girlfriend's cat to death. He fantasizes about shooting up peaceful protests and believes that emotional men are the downfall of civilization. When Dad asked him if he would be willing to kill me, he said yes, thinking I couldn't hear. Most recently, Brother went into a destructive rage and threatened to kill Dad with his knife. I stayed holed up in my room and prepared to jump out of the bedroom window if I had to make a run for it.

• Mom pearl-clutches and threatens to withhold sustenance from me if I criticize her, but will allow Brother to scream at her and command her and won't even protest.

Earlier this week, I finally woke up and saw that all of my family members are batshit insane and incapable of change; there is zero logic to their behavior and all of my insecurities were me indirectly blaming myself for it. I took some short trips out into the real world and found out that pro-social and progressive people are everywhere. Much of my anxiety lifted and I could suddenly see examples of people loving and caring for people like me everywhere. I finally felt like people could love me and I felt genuinely happy FOR THE FIRST TIME because I realized the world is WAY less hellish than I thought at first and it's worth the effort to escape. I accepted so many things as normal because I was too scared to talk to anyone in the real world to challenge my beliefs.

Now, I'll have to risk my life to escape, but the chance for freedom beats the slow death of depression. Even if I am killed in my attempt to find freedom, I don't think anything is more painful than submission. I will die at the happiest point of my life.

Unfortunately, I'm very suspicious of men because of the whole violence and homicide thing. I want to know how common men like this are in the general population and what signs I should look out for. Although, since most murders are committed by those the victim knows, I have a feeling that the men who I have to worry the most about are the ones who live under the same roof.

So I'm curious how fucked this is. Worst 20% of households? 5%? 1%? Should I expect people with trauma like this to be walking around everywhere, or did I genuinely win the shit lottery?

I (23M) live in an abusive household (Ohio, USA) with narcissistic asshole parents, bad enough that I was insecure about the fact that I was seemingly the only one in the family who could experience love or empathy. I haven't been able to move out yet because I have disabilities and no job.

My older brother was a brooding quiet kid, so for a long time, I didn't know exactly how he was affected by his upbringing, except that he had anger issues. My parents always shrugged off my fear of him, accusing me of overreacting, even when he killed a bird with his bare hands and displayed its corpse in a tree in the backyard. Today, he's a strong 6'2" guy with military training and a gun.

My worst fears were confirmed when he displayed a pattern of escalating threats and violence over the past year or so. In October 2024, when he thought I wasn't around, he candidly told my dad that he would be willing to kill me if there were no consequences. Last February, he remorselessly beat his girlfriend's cat to death (she did not press charges), which my parents saw as petty drama. Last June, he gleefully described his fantasies of shooting up peaceful protests, which my parents shrugged off.

A few hours ago, I experienced the most terrifying moment of my life.

I was in my bedroom when an argument broke out between my brother and my parents about finances. When my brother didn't get the response he wanted and my dad started heckling him, he erupted in a way that I had never witnessed before.

"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!! MESS WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER, I'LL SLICE YOU UP!! DIE, BITCH, DIE!!" He screamed at the top of his lungs in a roaring voice he had never used before, repeatedly threatening to kill my dad. My heart was beating out of my chest as I prepared to dial 911 and leap out my bedroom window. I waited tensely for the sound of gunshots or my parents screaming. Since I was holed up in my room, I couldn't see if he was brandishing a weapon. "Okay, that's enough," my mom said in a casually disapproving tone that was psychotically unfitting for the severity of the situation. (My parents aren't exempt from his violence, as my father was struck in the head by him a few years prior.)

After a couple more minutes of horrifyingly unhinged screams and threats, my brother finally reverted back to "regular pissed off" mode and left to hang out in the woods, while my parents continued to go about their day as if nothing had happened.

So... I can't fucking believe I'm in this situation. For years my parents told me I was overreacting and paranoid, and I kind of believed them. I always thought that murder was a far-off threat that I would read about on the Internet but never be faced with myself. It's so hard to shake off this feeling of normalcy and relative stability, and part of me wants to just forget what happened like my parents do. Being uprooted from my home and having to suddenly figure everything out with physical limitations, chronic fatigue, no friends, no home, and no job, in the middle of a cold winter, feels dangerous in itself.

I don't know what to do. A lifetime of abuse has made me stupid. I feel like if I contact law enforcement, they won't keep my brother away for long enough for me to get my life in order and make a clean break. He's almost certain to know that I called the cops, so he will be able to target me after whatever light questioning or slap on the wrist they give him. Plus, my parents will likely try to sabotage my efforts to stay safe. If I contact the authorities or any kind of help resource and it gets back to my family, I will have placed a bright red target on my back and won't be able to undo it.

It is very hard to focus with the constant threat of violence looming over my shoulder. I failed my last semester of college because my brother suddenly became much more domineering and threatening, and I became too paranoid to even use the bathroom, let alone study.

I can't think straight. I need help, but I don't know how to get help in a way that protects me from retaliation.

For context, I (23M) live in the United States. In Ohio. A bit concerned about privacy because of the whole Nazi problem and the fact that I live in an abusive household.

I've been working on myself a lot recently and realized that I can't do this alone anymore (or rely on Internet strangers to talk about my issues). I feel like I finally have the strength to ask for help in the real world. I've just never done this before. What's it like? Is it warm and fuzzy, or cold and analytical? (Does it feel like someone is providing care and comfort, or is it more like an emotionally detached scientist meticulously studying you and scribbling down notes while mumbling "Hmm, I see, I see" while you yap at them?) Do you start to see results right away, or are things slow at first? How much stuff is recorded in a database that other systems can look up?

All of my (23M) immediate family members turned out to be narcissists, with two of the three being violent. I can't believe I didn't recognize sooner that they were ALL like this and were irredeemable -- no amount of patience or playing "armchair therapist" would help. I am just trying to make it off the ground, but I feel completely unsupported, anxious, and alone. I have lived under the constant threat of violence from a young age and the stress has poisoned me with chronic illness and moderate disability. It has taken me this long to see past the gaslighting, the cynical appeals to my empathy, and the charitable image I had of them that turned out to just be projection. I feel so dumb for not seeing it earlier.

It feels like I was meant to die young, like the very circumstances of my birth were inherently fatal. A covert narcissist married a violent criminal. The offspring were an even more violent criminal and a scapegoat. I am suddenly expected to succeed in an environment with zero (more like negative!) emotional support, where any attempt to assert an independent identity is violently suppressed, and where one misstep could trigger my brother's killer instinct or make me the next subject of his sadistic fantasies.

I have savings, but I don't know where to run to. It seems like both of my parents' family trees are filled with trauma. I'm thinking of going to an in-person college, but I might not be able to afford living there year-round. My employment prospects are quite limited due to my conditions. I live in the U.S. in one of the worst times in recent history to be disabled. I am looking to live in an affordable city with good public transit.

Before I became disabled at my previous job, coworkers thought I was sweet, funny, caring, and gentle. But regardless of my surface potential for making friends, I am programmed to fear everyone in case they are hiding narcissism, sadism, or psychopathy beneath the surface.

Obviously I know that nobody can predict what my specific fate will be, but I'd like to hear about stories of people from similar backgrounds who have actually survived and found happiness and avoided what felt like certain doom. I want to have hope that things will be okay, and maybe get some ideas on how I'll pull off this insane project.

I (23M) am a broke online college student living with my parents. I have an abusive brother (25M) who also lives under the same roof.

My brother is a narcissist. He believes that he is the most important person in the universe. Boundaries and respect do not matter to him. He will hijack every conversation into being either constant self-aggrandizing or personal attacks and force me to repeat it back to him. He is physically violent when provoked and he has killed multiple animals by beating them to death with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he seems to consider "no" to be a provocation. He searches through all my stuff without permission and I've had to start being careful about what things I leave lying around.

My parents do not care about this. My father doesn't because he's the OG narcissist who passed it down to my brother and actively cheers for my suffering, and my mother doesn't because she is the enabler who chose to stay married to my father and told me I had to suffer the abuse endlessly like she does.

I don't have any irl friends because I have medical conditions that make it difficult for me to be outside on my own for extended periods of time. I also can't drive because of that. It sucks. This isn't to say it's impossible for me to go out, but it's hard and kind of risky (my condition can cause me to faint).

I have constantly been told to give up on being treated like a human being, but I have begun to recognize that my family is feeding me false narratives of hopelessness to keep me complacent and submissive. I surely have power, but my internalization of their narratives is obscuring the ways to exercise it.

What would you do in such a situation, or if you have been in a similar situation, what did you do?

EDIT: I live in the U.S.