i'll never stay on top of these assignments
i stayed with him because my thinking was: this is the only option you have if you want to be in a relationship at all, so either a loser or be alone. and i chose a loser (and abusive alcoholic thief with NPD) instead of being alone because i thought i had something to prove to the world that i *could* be in a long-term relationship/live with someone/move up the relationship ladder and that i couldn't financially be comfortable in a living space by myself. which as it turns out i could pay new iphone and new state of the art gaming laptop and emergency surgery for someone else on top of paying for rent and bills and groceries simply by being good at budgeting. i thought i couldn't handle dealing with the world but i made all the phone calls did double the laundry double the cleaning fixed double the household problems all by myself anyway. i don't know why i thought i couldn't do it for myself but when forced to do it for another person i was like yeah fine i'll accept this burden even though i hate him for putting me in this position and want nothing to do with him. just appease appease appease and maybe he'll leave when he's done hurting me and i can pick up the pieces if theres anything left. like when my mother used to beat me bloody and leave me in the room when she got bored/tired. even when he was raping me i didn't care and i didn't even get mad until he threatened someone i actually loved. (guess what he doesn't want me either haha) i should have just called the cops and gotten a rape kit done the first time.
Journal Prompt #1
What was modeled for you about romantic love in your family system?
my parents didn't kiss hug or say i love you ever. suddenly she expected us to be affectionate at some point. maybe she saw it in a movie. i'm not even sure they were in love or whatever. they never went on a date and didn't have sex and slept in different bedrooms eventually. when i was very young i remembered finding their condoms so i'm not sure what happened. at some point he started buying flowers on special occasions but only after she passive aggressively confronted him for not doing it. she screamed at him a lot and didn't allow him to have friends outside the home but he stayed because of obligation i guess. even when they were separated for a bit after she ran off they didn't divorce because that just wasn't done. once married it's forever.
Journal Prompt #2
Related to prompt #1, how does your answer correlate to present issues you might have with romantic love? Look for patterns. As a reminder, you don't have to mirror the issue a parent has; you could have rebelled against that issue by adopting an opposite strategy, which might be dysfunctional as well.
i think i took more after my dad that even if its objectively a bad relationship to stay and take it because if you "love" someone you "have to" love/accept all of them and what they do to you. and if they take all your money and isolate you from your family and friends you have to stay and accept your fate because you chose it/deserve it by choosing this toxic person. because once you tell them "yeah i'm committed" you can't back out of it no matter what they do. otherwise it means you're a liar and a bad person.
i guess he never really questioned why he should be with someone in the first place instead of being single/it wasn't even socially an option back then. it was just what you did. these days people are questioning well WHY are we still shaping society into lil 2-pair units.
Journal Prompt #3
What does your inner child believe about love? Think of your triggers around love, whether that is fear of not knowing how to do it, trust issues, or feeling icky, and try to get your inner child to discuss it with you. These conversations between a healthy parent and a child were missing in childhood. Love is talked about in healthy families.
i think it confuses romantic love with intensity of feeling. (any feeling) like intense attachment or sadness or even rage. when you profess to love someone you're obligated to then preform for them/stay with them no matter what. it's more important to honor your word than to have boundaries around what sort of behavior you'll tolerate.
iirc the first notion of love i was taught was actually about how god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son blah blah blah so love was sort of a godly cosmic thing that was an abstraction to me not something that humans worried about. i don't remember when i was introduced to the concept of romantic love specifically. maybe indirectly through pop culture and media. if you asked me in maybe middle school or high school id would have said romantic love was gross and fake and performative. or maybe only a thing that exists in books and movies but certainly not felt by people in real life. i didn't think that much about it but i would have said my partner would have to be better/smarter/stronger than me in every way, i'd never be with someone lesser than me... but at that time i didn't consider that if someone was better than me they wouldn't look beneath them for a partner.
Journal Prompt #4
In some journal writing by your inner adult, what can you do differently around the issues you might have with love? Part of getting our inner adult in place is gradually separating from the inner child's beliefs, which are trauma-based or involve an internalized parent and operating from a different place. For example, suppose your inner child believes they can never do better romantically and take what they can get (perhaps that could be from an internalized parent - meaning the parent thought the same thing). How can your inner adult start to dismantle that belief Write about how a belief doesn't serve you and what can be done instead.
I think i still believe the same thing now as an adult that (romantic) love is something found in books and movies but not real life. The feelings described in books and TV just don't match anything i've ever witnessed or experienced in real life, they're a fantasy. Even when i was "in love" i wasn't. I never felt it - i felt an obligation to be so i said i was. Maybe i thought if i faked it long enough it would happen but it never did. Now looking back i'm not sure what it was i was trying to prove. i think i was just desperate to be picked/feel special/destined but that's a thing that happens in fantasy novels. i think there is some sort of innate human desire to feel picked/special/chosen one etc but i was blind to reality.
now i don't know if this belief "doesn't serve me" because there's no point in being in a romantic relationship? None of my romantic relationships have ever practically improved my life in any way and i don't see how another person could improve my life in any way now. Especially a male. I just don't feel the need to create more obligations to do things i don't even like doing? Even in regards to the one person i actually (i think) like i just can't imagine merging lives ever. If we're not compatible together i don't know why i would feel some sort of tie with him. I think i want there to be some sort of grand cosmic purpose, god working in mysterious ways, but i think that's another innate human thing to want that doesn't really exist. Maybe he's just in the periphery of my life and i get to watch him slowly drink himself to death while i pine over his lost potential.
Journal Prompt #1
How did you deal with your feelings growing up? Write out old strategies you still do, such as just powering through things without tending to one’s feelings. Many survivors parent themselves the way they were parented, which means avoiding their feelings, shaming themselves for having feelings, and or finding negative coping strategies.
Thanks to my 4th grade teacher i picked up journaling at an early age. We were just meant to record how are days went and we what we did every day but he also said if you have any feelings you can write them at any time not just during the daily journaling time. He also said to keep writing every day even if you didn't have anything to write about, even if you write "i don't have anything to write about today" over and over, the habit encourages stream of consciousness writing and eventually you find you did have something to write about after all. Eventually this become just not enough (or the stressors became too much) and i also learned to just tough it out. I used to have drawing but that was stolen from me and turned into something shameful and angry like some festering hole in my torso she would keep sticking her shit covered fingers in to keep it infected. i never recovered that so i guess she successfully killed whoever that person would have been up to be, my natural self. I remember also getting really intense about listening to music because i think the subculture gave me a sense of belonging that i wouldn't have gotten otherwise. to the point where i was secretive and elitist about it. i remember one time they demanded i play my CDs in the car and screamed for hours about "what kind of weird person doesn't share music, we're never buying anything for you again, etc etc." I remember she almost refused to buy me a CD because it had the word "Boy" in the name. I could sense one of her ragefits coming up in the store so i quickly placated her with a story about how it's named after a cartoon character and wasn't it oh so silly and such a silly band for silly ole me. That got her in a good mood and she liked me trying to appease her so she rewarded me with the CD. Overall looking back i just avoided confrontation and stayed quiet as possible and escaped into books and music and journaling and silent hobbies and fantasies. I used to have magical thinking and believed if i did X thing everyday (walk along the ledge instead of the sidewalk) i would "build" enough magical energy and then i'd get my Hogwarts letter and could finally escape them. Having feelings or expressing anything just meant i got hit and screamed at more so i kept my mouth shut and held it in and took abuse until she stopped beating me/eventually i moved out for college. And then i kept doing that but as an adult there is no college coming with mandatory dorm policies that forced me away from abusers. There's nobody.
Journal Prompt #2 How did your parents regulate their emotions? Did you perhaps pick up their strategies or even rebel against them? If you rebelled, are there any problems there?
She screamed at people and screamed at and hit me. I don't think she ever hit anyone else but i'm not sure. She also lied and manipulated people to get them on their side to feel good and having a feeling of winning or superiority. I think i rebelled against this later in life by going out of my way not to be like her but i went too far the other way and became a doormat. I thought i was being a patient empathetic compassionate loving angel but i was just being a spineless coward who couldn't stand up for myself or fight back to abusers. Meanwhile he held it all in and took the abuse until he couldn't stand it anymore and screamed back or screamed at me. He never bothered to fight at first because he knew he couldn't win, he only screamed when he couldn't suppress it anymore and just lost it. He also spent a lot of time escaping into computers and gardening. I think i take after that a lot and would have ended up just like that if i didn't get out/will still end up just like that unless i stay away from people for good.
Journal Prompt #3 How might your old ways of regulating your emotions keep you stuck? Our old strategies, such as powering through, are incredibly habitual, and we will default to these out of deep emotional habits.
i would have ended up just like my dad stuck in a miserable codependent relationship with an abuser. i could have kept waiting and waiting for him to eventually get bored of raping and screaming and slamming (and then eventually beating) and leave. eventually i wouldn't be able to hold it in anymore and explode. and then he would promise to change, get better, never do it again. and then he would go right back to it. all the while i'd be hoping he'd wake up and become a better person. the person he was pretending to be during the initial lovebombing stage.
Journal Prompt #1 How does depression manifest in your life? Write out your experience of it. Does it come in solid waves, such as a break-up fallout that lasts several years? Is it chronic and baseline that you might overlook for not having a contrasting emotional experience? Have you gotten feedback that you seem down but don’t connect with that on your insides? Be as specific as you can.
For me it's chronic and baseline with periods of severity. When i was still at home i actively wanted to kill myself but couldn't go through with it. Every time i felt the knife edge against my neck it was too sharp and it scared me and i never liked the sound of flesh being cut. After i got out i just drank a lot and made plans for suicide that i never went through with it. I don't think i really accepted that i was mentally ill until after college. I don't feel emotions when i'm supposed to like excitement or joy or sadness i'm just in a state of grieving and deadness all the time. When it's time to feel "good" emotions like at a party or something i don't feel anything so i'm masking most of the time around people. It used to be more severe but idk if it's just because i've gotten more natural at faking.
Journal Prompt #2 Do you struggle with joy and celebrations? This is a sign of compromised emotional experience related to the video childhood trauma symptoms. Do you feel shame in the inability not to feel good that you accomplished something such as a graduation or milestone? Do things feel meh, and they should be “whooooo hooooo”? Write out situations that come to mind.
I don't feel joy or "woohoo" as i "should" like a normal person but i don't struggle with it. I don't like celebrating birthdays or holidays. It feels contrived and unnecessary because nobody actually likes those traditions because they have to go fake a personality around their family. Every time i've reached a work or personal goal or some milestone i don't celebrate or feel joy and i'm not ashamed of it. It's just a thing i set out to do and then did do. What is there to celebrate for doing the bare minimum? I'm not a male who expects praise for just existing. I am a bit depressed that i'm not normal though- a normal person feels joy and accomplishment at mundane everyday things that everyone achieves such as graduation or getting a job or moving out or something. I guess when your scale of "things that are worth getting emotional about" was never misconfigured by abuse even ordinary things make you emotional.
Journal Prompt #3 Do you remember possibly being depressed growing up? If you felt sad and hopeless most days in that family, you were probably struggling with depression. Can you write about any potential signs, such as lack of interest in things or isolation in your school years?
I didn't know what it was at the time but it was definitely depression comorbid with anxiety and binge eating disorder. I don't think at the time mental health topics were widely talked about or really understood. I was extremely isolated because she wouldn't let me have friends and most days i remember feeling fear hatred or numbness and would spend hours searching for answers on the internet - but really i was looking for nuggets of dopamine via shocking content just so i could feel something.
Journal Prompt #4 In dialoging with your inner child, (please reference the reparenting the inner child webinar and worksheet); what does your inner child say about joy? Do they have specific ideas or stories about it? If you struggle with this, in the dialogue, can you validate that struggle with “of course, we struggle with feelings - look what happened to us.”
It wouldn't know what to think about joy. Joy was an unknown concept. She always wanted to me have a pleasant, happy, joyful, feminine appearance so any expression of joy was always fake. So maybe i associated it with being fake. The only time i felt "happy" chemicals were when i binged- maybe an unconscious attempted to seek out serotonin and dopamine. I remember reading scenes in novels where there was joy and celebrations and it felt far off like an abstract fantasy. I'm not sure what it would have been like if i wasn't depressed- it would have meant i didn't grow up in that family. Maybe i would have ended up like Elsa.
Journal Prompt #5 Write about situations, dynamics, and history of your family that potentially contribute to struggling with depression. Again, it’s helpful to externalize if you get stuck, like imagine any child going through what you experienced growing up.
History of mental illness on both sides, growing up in a 3rd world country, physical abuse, emotional abuse, medical abuse, emotional neglect, undiagnosed autism/neurodivergence, bullying at school, etc. No wonder i was a fucked up kid. Depression resources targeted towards adults are always focused on restoring the patient back to who they were before they got depressed - i never was anybody before i got depressed. There's nothing to restore back to, i didn't exist.