/feels/ - Advice & Venting

Join an ACA meeting.

>>106158
have you ever dated anyone? what are you like in relationships?

>>106164
Yes, i have only one ex boyfriend and i was really emotionally dependent to him at the point when he left me i fall into a deep depression and self harm.

I know this isn't the same as your family experience because it doesn't involve physical or sexual abuse but here it goes.
This is a day in my dysfunctional and emotionally abusive household.

My toddler niece is sick. Her grandma, my mom is her primary caretaker so she starts to experience an anxiety attack. She first starts to ruminate and backtrack her actions to find out the ground zero of her infection that involves both physical and superstitious reasons ranging from my niece stepping on dog shit, or purchasing a new potted plant that's cursed, to visiting the neighbor who cast an evil eye on her. Once that doesn't work, she starts to blame herself, ranging from not paying her attention for 10 minutes while she had to do something and my niece got sick by eating pieces of a burst balloon to giving too much choco.
My niece's mom, my sister, already has enough health problems herself, and she's already feeling bad that her baby is suffering, but my mom's anxiety attacks makes things even worse for her, and they get into an intense shitflinging competition of blaming each other and asking each other to just shut up, but they never will.
My dad would join the hysteria and start blaming them both for not introducing new food into my niece's diet, for not teaching her how to talk and how to explain what's wrong with her body, complain about the laundry to be done, whine about how it's late, and how my sister needs to exercise to have a healthy body.
Meanwhile my niece would be screaming to resist medicine or any food that's being fed to her because her throat is probably infected because of the sickness or just shouting something she's watching on TV.
All of this will usually happen in the middle of the night.

Recently, my niece got sick and she refused to eat or drink anything for maybe 6 hours and my mom went into a hysterical fit that we really need to take her to the hospital and get it immediately checked, in the middle of the night like maybe 2 AM in the morning, while it was raining. I stayed back home and had to wait for them to come back for like an hour. They had gone to the doctor and they told that this is normal and that we should wait for a day to hospitalize the baby. She had some milk after an hour.

I've had hundreds of sleepless nights because of all this. It's not outright abusive, but I'm barely able to function properly and do something to take care of my own problems because my mom drags in the whole family into her doom spiral. I side with my mom because I'm sympathetic to her emotions and she's quite old so I can imagine her cognitive functions have dipped down, but it's too much.

Here's the frustrating part though. She's right to be concerned about the fact that my niece didn't eat or drink anything, even water, for 8 hours. That's a sign of something wrong. So we can't even blame her for being paranoid… but her "conspiracy theories" to figure out the ground zero of infections is extremely tormenting.

>>106203
How do you plan on getting out of this mess?

>>106208
I have no idea, nona.

>>106212
May I suggest (again) >>106159 and also to make financial independence from them your main goal?
Family dysfunction is some sort of addiction. Escaping it is like a marathon: it requires a lot of efforts and preparation.

>>106168
Same same same - I get simultaneously dependent on them and extremely aggressive and keep challenging them to leave me until they finally do, at least when they start behaving in ways that make me anxious. I think the worst part is you can put in all this effort to move out, to move past your childhood, to even stop dwelling on resentment towards the people who messed it up but the consequences of it will still rear their heads in future relationships and in the end you'll be left emotionally destitute and alone

>>106203
are you desi? this sounds like a distinctively desi meltdown

>>106226
Damn, how did you find out?
I was about to reply that "financial independence" from family and ACA meetings aren't a thing here.

>>106227
I should start a brown girl thread about dating problems tbh but I can't tell if it'd go against the rules because it's race-related
>>106233
Honestly the whole ruminating about various superstitious causes of health problems just seems like a classic desi move. When I was a preteen I was mega constipated (like shitting blood tier) and my mom would force this weird salty ayurvedic stuf down my throat and I'd gag it up everywhere and this was all just seen as perfectly normal. Needless to say, it didn't cure my constipation at the time.

Also, while this stuff might not be outright abusive you should check out this book some other nona shilled on here once ('understanding the borderline mother'). There's one archetype called 'the hermit' which is exactly like this and tl;dr you're more likely to project anxieties all over the place in future romantic relationships because of this strange behaviour, even after you've moved out or away from it. I've blown up all of mine for this reason. So just be careful about that.

>>106235
I usually avoid participating in race-based threads because I end up leaking a lot of personal details without even knowing that I'm doing it. India is only a country by name but in reality each state is so culturally different from each other, and each city is different too. Even a simple question like "wheat or rice" can make a huge difference.
I'd have to change how I write to make sure the things I say don't bite me elsewhere, so I'm better off not saying anything in the first place.

>this was all just seen as perfectly normal
Yeah, I wonder if they gave that to make you vomit out any infections. I honestly think Ayurveda must be banned or at least officially considered as pseudoscience. One of my relative's kid was suffering from dengue, and his mom took him to an Ayurvedic clinic but his infection got worse and they had to do a liver transplant that ended up costing them 40 lakhs + a really painful struggle to search for a donor.

>you're more likely to project anxieties all over the place in future romantic relationships because of this strange behaviour
Omg literally me.

>>106239
Also, yep I'm planning to read that book for sure.

>>106224
I feel the same nona,i am really guilty and depressed because i ruined the relationship with my insecurity but what made me aggressive was my envy of his normal and calm life, sometimes it could be distressing to deal with me. I still love him and I hope that one day he will see that i have improved but it is bad to live in false hopes. What about you nona?

>>106248
I find the only way you can move on and actually maybe have a new start (I mean I haven't had a new start yet so this is me hopefully projecting) is by letting go of the false hopes. It becomes much easier, emotionally speaking, then. After my ex sent me a text outlining all the ways I was, as he put it, 'severely abusive' it was made abundantly clear to me that he really hated me and thought the breakup was almost entirely my fault, and because he was so articulate about it I think he's right, so it simultaneously stung and made me feel guilty, but it also got rid of any false hope which significantly reduced my anxiety about whether he'd come back. I'm no longer having pretend reconciliation conversations with him in my head all day and while I was getting daily reconciliation dreams before I haven't had any yet (fingers crossed).

I showed his text to some people and they were all super worried it was gonna make me hang myself because of how ruthless it was, but ironically I think it's a much kinder thing to do than to leave you with any thread to hang on to or the false belief that they love(d) you.
>>106239
I actually almost got doxxed by a troon in the terf thread because I mentioned details about an academic paper I published once and it was one of the creepiest experiences of my life. I had to beg the mods to clean up after my mess.

There's this guy I might have a sort of arranged marriage to (not like a full on village people 'meet him for the first time and get married' situation but more of a 'my parents met his on Shaadi and I'm afraid of dying alone' situation) and his mom broke out in hives after taking some ayurvedic shit for her menstrual issues. It's insane how unregulated that stuff is, but it's better than America's opioid crisis I guess.

>>106233
FYI, ACA meetings exist online.

>>106262
>it was one of the creepiest experiences of my life
That's creepy indeed. It's honestly scary how despite all this anonymity it's still not that hard to figure out details.
I mean, I didn't expect someone to get desi vibes from ranting about a superstitious mom, lol.
>hives
Ugh, sounds bad.

>>106273
Zoom meetings… t-too shy…

My family isn't abusive, but there has been a significant amount of neglect. I feel like I barely know them because I've never had a truly meaningful conversation with them. They are the reason I struggle to talk to other people today because I was simply never taught how to socialize.
What makes it worse is that it's not only my parents who are like this. I have two older siblings who are twins, and they share this weird bond that often leads them to prefer spending time with each other rather than with me. They have always done everything together, and as the youngest child, I have felt consistently dismissed throughout my entire life. While they are good people, and I envy their relationship, I can't blame them. However, I do wish they would spend some time with me.

>>106284
Neglect is a serious issue, nona.

>>106276
>Zoom meetings… t-too shy…
Oh well, it's fucked then.