This guy is advertising his services as a childhood PTSD counselor too tho so he has an angle. Like, some of the stuff he mentions later that are things like I have energy problems-- assuming that it stems from childhood seems weird to me though he has some fair points earlier. Tho I would say your family is tricky, to use his terminology.
the river rises
: yeah, also as other ppl pointed out previously he’s particularly focused on issues as related to parents when not all of the issues he goes over necessarily stem from parents specifically (which he actually does mention in this video)
also re: energy i feel like. i haven't seen the video yet (bc i am on a mountain) so i can't say there is no configuration that could just be entirely adulthood sources
also you are incorrect because I am pretty sure my family qualifies for blatant abuse rather than tricky. I just do not feel like it does so even typing this feels like blowing things out of proportion
it’s just that my brother and I getting our asses beat sometimes does not actually feel like it made a lasting impression on either of us vs other problems that occurred that probably would fall under tricky instead (like bathroom)
but that is also why I tend to seek out this kind of shit cuz I kinda need to see things laid out by someone else sometimes to reaffirm like. my perception of reality
cuz otherwise I get stuck in backwards logic loops in my head about how I’m like scapegoating things that happened to me to make them into excuses when they don’t actually have that kind of impact
i find it common in like, people who were abused (parents in particular in my experience, probably others too) to have a hard time judging what is and what isn't bad
i had to make a huge plurk listing out the horrible things that happened to me and then i bookmarked it for reference because i'd keep being like well it probably wasn't that bad...
trufax, the counselor i saw at uni unofficially diagnosed me with this (they couldn't officially diagnose due to not having the correct things to do that)
"my dad was abusive" even when you guys have heard me talk about my dad even like. more current things he's done. like threaten that he would buy a gun and keep it in our house without mom and i knowing about it.
he like. apologized to me last night (he didnt say sorry but he was like oh i didnt mean it like that which is close enough) for something stupid that happened that day and i was so fucking shocked i told mom about it and she was also shocked and happy about it
my family was definitely on the line just slightly to the side of obvious abuse... ON THIS TEST I get 16 y and 8 m, but some of them are definitely physical health issues I don't think are related to parental issues
so I thiiiink barring other unrelated health issues this feels p good to me but ofc taken with the grain of salt of other factors, which this guy does seem to generally do. I've watched quite a few of his videos and the fact that he's honest about where things get hazy I do like
... my thoughts are kind of broken and actually thinking about it now i dont feel great about talking about it here so nevermind i just wanted to say "i get it feeling hard"
but I think anything that just helps you get things like. quantified outside of your own meatspace is definitely helpful and I am. glad you are finding things that are helpful because you're a good bean and don't deserve to feel like so much of it is like. you.
hold🤝, throw🪨
: after a certain point I basically just tracked the nos and maybes and then subtracted those from what number question I was on to see how many yeses I’d gotten.
also even though I theoretically know that “Cleo’s childhood was definitely more legitimately traumatic than mine” is the impostor syndrome talking and not an objectively quantifiable statement.
yeah I didn't want to get to the emotional/gaslighting bits because ho boy, gas lighting and Learned Helplessness sure were things I had to learn to recognize
so I could check off like oh yeah I've been accused of being too aloof, and I get shut down/empty/whatever but I AM p overall emotionally controlled mmmmost of the time
and maybe less like, inclined to contest things and I had to put maybe on the ones about needing to be right because I do have a horrible fear of being perceived as stupid but I also don't think I have a hard time admitting being wrong in any other light or like, I don't care to argue for fun I'd rather just have my opinion,
but one of the things he mentioned as an emotional abuse thing is the uhhhh surrogate spouse/parenting thing which I definitely experienced and so I think THAT PARTICULAR TYPE OF ABUSE actually lowered my score
and also the video only covers half the questions in his full questionnaire so goodness knows which particular quirks the full version covers that the video did not
what’s kind of funny to me about the surrogate parent thing is that my mom had that problem with her mom and so part of our relationship is definitely colored by her kind of attempting to replicate that model with me so she could finally get to be taken care of
yeah for me I think it was a cocktail of like, dad shamed me for having any kind of noisy emotion but also for having no emotion, dad wanted me to leave him alone with the tv when I was small so I was largely alone with my brother while in the same house as dad,
so it's kind of... I think for me the fact that it started out with "go leave me alone and also don't embarrass me with emotions in public" and then LATER morphed into "my entire emotional wellbeing depends on you and I will literally die if you leave for the weekend but also I have to have full control of you and also don't embarrass me by telling anyone"
so I had already been shamed into keeping my emotions in check except when having sudden explosive breakdowns by the time I was put in the position of having to be the leader and only emotional adult in the home, so I coped with the latter stage a bit better
but I was definitely the kind of kid that like. anecdote when I was... 6 or 7?? my dad got us a puppy for christmas and then nearly a year later my parents decided to rehome her because my dad refused to train her and she was destroying my mom's things (he let her do it and then blamed mom for being upset), and my reaction to this was to act completely fine
ye I tried to be unsupportive and remove myself from the situation but that got self-harm threats from him and he threatened my grandma with legal action if she ever came and picked me up
[montage of my whole middle-high school dynamic with my mom wherein she increasingly tried to provoke me into showing emotion while I retaliate by shutting down even harder set to the Benny Hill theme]
also voiding your emotions in the like... not even necessarily actively suppressing but just not feeling anything in a serious crisis is a really common symptom of ADHD
like if there is no feasible solution (like when someone dies or w/e) a lot of people with ADHD just don't feel any of the surface emotions in the first place to suppress??
yeah probably you said "no" to the "I have difficulty tapping into anger or possibly have too much of it" while I hit "yes" bc [checks notes] anger is that thing you feel a minimum of five hours after the fact and then stew in uselessly for the next five years right?
I do have anger but I feel like I'm actually like, reasonable amounts of angry about things. sometimes I get heated briefly but then calm down p quick and I don't tend to hold onto anger and stew unless it's a v big like, entire relationship implosion level thing
or rather I do get depression ennui but events like vacations and stuff were generally rare but good for me as a kid cause dad was one of those people who is super charismatic to people outside the home and he didn't pull his shit around other people
so I really like them. I actually get super sad around christmas now because it was so huge for me as a kid and now it's just not. if I didn't spend christmas eve with my mom the same way we did growing up but in smaller scale I would probably implode
if you get the chance to try childhood issues therapy I do think it'd be good to help contextualize things in a more consumable way and have someone trained on how to break the imposter syndrome/self-blame thought cycles
vacations I can have fun with sometimes but in general events which are like "this must be planned to be done in the correct way to achieve the intended flavor of enjoyment" are sure a thing
any family get together for me has always been [countdown to an argument/meltdown after which i just go hide in my room and wait for mom to come in to lash out at me]
birthdays were better on me than most other holidays cuz I could at least play the "you have to be nice to me on my birthday" card but also my birthday is 1. exactly a week apart from my mom's birthday 2. around the same time as Mother's Day
I mean the real answer is that liiiike, these diagnostic tools aren't designed to be used without the context of an actual therapist and the advice of "hey if you have a lot of these maybe look into doing work in this area" is p. solid
like if he were like “this means you are DEFINITELY traumatized” then it would be a shit test but “this might be related to some of your problems” is solid
and i am tired because due to still being in the abusive household like 60% of my brainpower at the very least is dedicated to overanalyzing everything to make sure things are fine and parents arent going to blow up
oh, for sure, and that's feeding into it, but my parents neglect didn't make my neurotransmitters prune in such a way that they don't take in serotonin properly, on the flip side.
(Eat the candy)
: yeah I am personally in a gray area re: the anxiety where I like just have no idea if it’s like, because bad parenting, because bad peer experiences, because ADHD, or completely separate social anxiety that is just exacerbated by all of those things, or [SHRUG EMOJI] but def the depressanxieties can and are manifested by bad circumstances
23. Growing up, there was manipulation and or injustice.THIS IS SUCH A FUNNY WAY TO PHRASE IT TO ME>27 lol
i am perpetually tired and anxious because i was abused and developed that anxiety bc of it.