How do I Get Out of This Highly Toxic Household?

[Akhu999]

I'm leaving out a lot of specific details for the sake of anonymity, but I'm a nearly 40-year-old man who is part of a deeply dysfunctional family and can't think of any way out even after decades of trying.

My mother was a prostitute and a drug addict long before I was born, had all of her (several) children from different men, but then got on the straight and narrow before she had me (one of the reasons I've been her prized child). She got back in the church, was married, and had a stable family for the first time in her life. It was short-lived because my dad left her and she had to end of living with her sister who was another single mother with children around the same age. We all grew up together and the church also helped to take care of us. Then, my oldest brother ran away from home, and you can say that was the beginning of the end. My mom relapsed and went back into promiscuity and drug use and we were abandoned as children for a while, aside from whenever my aunt and the pastor's family could step in. You might be able to imagine what kinds of things happened with all of these children and teenagers running around with little adult supervision, which is a whole other story, but things I struggle with today are probably a direct result of things that happened back then...

 

In the midst of this, my mother got pregnant from one of the men who she still doesn't know to this day and came home with a newborn baby and then went back to the streets leaving children to help raise a baby, including myself who was very poor at it at 5 years old. My mother got clean not too long after that and we moved to a different state where she found another church home that helped to raise us and teach us the ways of God. Somewhere along the way, my mother relapsed again and got pregnant with another child, a girl who's our youngest sibling. Shortly after my sister was born, my mother decided to change her life for good and became an evangelist. In this transition, we went from having an inconsistent but laid-back (and at times, too laid back where she failed to teach us discipline when we needed it) mother to a religious zealot who was a very judgmental but absent parent. Most of the things we learned as far as family values came from our grandmother who raised us for the most part, but could only do so much... I was also my grandmother's prized grandchild. And as you might imagine, being the "hero" or the "good one" can not only cause narcissism to develop but can also put a tremendous burden on a child to be perfect and to be a people pleaser.

 

I was always the "quiet one" or the one who was more timid, but I also had a very deeply troubled side of me that I tried to keep hidden. Everywhere I went, people said I was "weird" or thought I was "retarded" because I didn't talk much. I now realize I fell into the category of "the lost child", one of the common but not so talked about or understood roles in dysfunctional families. I think I was 17 when one day in church, this "prophetess" called my family up in front of the church and told my mother that she needed to watch me because I was "sneaky", while wagging her finger in my direction and my older brother standing next to me profusely shaking his head, yes, in agreement. Needless to say, this has been a label that has followed me everywhere like a dark cloud of judgment and shame hovering over my head. With it carries negative connotations of "weak", cowardly, immature, irresponsible, unaccountable, dishonest, degenerate, evil, wicked, bad, snake-like, guilty, perverted... and everywhere I go, people have the same opinion of me, which has often caused me to feel more shame and guilt and the need to hide even more. This on top of a lot of rejection (even romantic), neglect, and abuse I experienced as a child has maybe contributed to me being "the most insecure" person that people have told me they have ever met.

 

I still feel like a 6-year-old child most of the time if not every moment of my existence, and my mother has often taken advantage of this and uses the bible and "prophetic words" to justify why I should stay under her and never leave home. And yet, I live with so much disrespect and emotional abuse. My younger brother who also lives here is very troubled and very immature; you could say he's a bully. I, as a troubled child, used to beat him up and verbally and emotionally abuse him when we were children and he, in turn, became an abuser, himself, even to our little sister and apparently our nephew. He even punched our grandmother in the stomach when he was younger and called her a b#%*. These things were dealt with years ago, and now he isn't physically abusive but he's emotionally abusive to everyone around him, including my mother and especially me. I've attempted to make things right with him and repair and build a relationship between us, but between my own inability to communicate with people who I don't trust (I don't trust anyone in my family) and the wall he has around himself, it's been impossible to foster any kind of healthy relationship with him. He was a very nice nice and at times shy kid who also had a but of a "mean" streak, so there's really no telling how much of this is nature and how much of it is nurture, but he's so closed off that he doesn't give us the chance to really know or understand him. He's even worse a communicating than I am.

 

He's in his 30s, now, and so am I, and all of this time we've lived in the same house, for the last decade or so, we've probably said no more than 100 words to each other. He's extremely hostile toward me: has read a very personal (romantic) letter of mine, taken it to my mother and let her read it and outed me as gay, has shown her other personal (sexual) things that I wrote to try to humiliate me, has spied on me, hacked into my computer (along with my mother who also hacked into my personal emails, has told her almost every moved I've made, has gotten up and walked out of a room when I started talking, has come into my room and thrown my mail on my desk so hard that it knocked things on the floor, laughed and snickered when I've gotten chastised or exposed, aggressively opened my door to catch me dancing or singing or anything that could be embarrassing to let me know he was spying on me, mumbles under his breath, sucks his teeth and rolls his eyes any time someone pays me a compliment or he sees me laughing or shown some signs of happiness, sighs loudly whenever he hears my bedroom door open, jerks his body, throws his head back, and stomps off whenever I go into the same room as him, goes into his bedroom and closes or slams his bedroom door whenever he sees me coming, and he always looks at me with his face frowned up with such hatred in his eyes for me. When he was an adolescent, he told me to "burn in Hell", and years later, when he found out I was gay, he has made sure to let me know in the most passive aggressive ways how much he hates the fact that I'm his brother and that I even exist. I have lived with this for YEARS. The rudeness and disrespect that my mother has put up with has also enabled this behavior. He's heard me and my sister talking and told both of us to "shut up", as ADULTS, and has told my mother to shut up after she asked him to simply bring in some groceries while he was playing a videogame after she's come home from a long day of work and buying groceries for HIM to eat. When my sister spoke up and defended her, he's physically fought her, and instead of my mother disciplining or checking him, she scolded my sister for speaking up.

 

This is the same daughter she's secretly verbally bullied for years and told her that if she knew she was going to be gay (my sister being bisexual) that she would've never had her. Yet, she lets my brother go around as a 30 something year-old man slamming doors in her house like a child and talking back to her disrespectfully while she just complains about it and asks him what she ever did to him instead of enforcing boundaries. She literally gives him an allowance and pep-talks him like he's 5 years old when he does something good. He walks around with a permanent attitude and emotionally terrorizes everyone in the house...one of the reasons both of my sisters stay away for the most part. My mother was told, when he was a child, that he was mentally challenged, but instead of getting him helped, she just "rebuked" it like the zealous Christian that she is and said it was a lie of the devil. One of my mother's favorite phrases is "the devil is a liar!", especially when you tell her about some flaw in her character. She becomes irate when my sister tells her she enables us, but she really has enabled all of her boys in some way and crippled all of us. My oldest brother is now serving a life sentence for murder, my brother under him now has a label that will follow him for the rest of his life, including dictating where he can live, I'm a near 40-year-old man who's never been in a relationship, never learned how to drive, never finished college, and has to "sneak" away any time I go out of town and dread the office meeting (that comes along with bible quoting, speaking in tongues, rebuking, guilting, shaming, berating and belittling all done in the name of God) I'm going to get when I get back home, and my the youngest boy has an eternal chip on his shoulder and no social life or social skills.

 

It took me a lot of "rebelling" and tons of counseling to finally realize that I live in an insane asylum and a cesspool of demonic activity, and yet, I'm still TRAPPED in it feeling like there's no way out. I've racked my brain for YEARS, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation and have not found any solution. I've even looked up homeless shelters but a shelter seems like a dramatic decision to make being that there's no domestic violence going on. However destructive and debilitating, all of the abuse is mental and emotional, so how do you even report or get tangible/physical assistance for such a thing? And part of me feels obligated and responsible for a lot of this and like I don't have a leg to stand on because of the things I've done. That's why I feel trapped; because I'm part of the very system that's done so much damage to me. And I know that my mother uses my guilt, low self-esteem, and timidity against me and is her way of controlling me, but I still feel powerless against it, and even though I know she can't do anything to me physically, and even though I can talk about all of this to friends and other people, I find it very hard expressing myself to her or my brother directly. I feel like a helpless child in this environment, which is why I want and need so desperately to GET OUT! I just don't know how. I can't even focus on my studying or anything that would help improve my life while I'm here, or even think clearly. It's like my brain is highjacked. I don't feel like I can do anything constructive while living here. I just need help getting out! I'm open to any advice or ideas you might have.

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by Akhu999

[XenoFish]

Are you currently employed?

[Duke Wellington]

When someone grows up in an abnormal family environment their view of normal relationships get skewered.

With NPD it starts in early childhood and is a developmental disorder where the kid has no identity. With no identity they seek outside sources of information to confirm to them who they are. This means that negative information, such as a person telling them they are weird, gets accepted as fact. This obviously causes them distress so they quickly learn they can only cope if all information they receive about themselves is wholly perfect. This is the narcissists dilemma, the source of their lifelong torture, and is the driver of their annoying behaviour.

Being the hero, being the good one, being weird from not talking, being retarded, being sneaky, weak, cowardly, immature, irresponsible, unaccountable, dishonest, degenerate, evil, wicked, bad, snake-like, guilty, perverted, the most insecure person, why are you deriving your sense of self, your identity from others? You need to realise that people have a negative side to their personalities and you are not being told who you are by them, you are being abused, and they are going for your identity because they can see its all over the sodding place.

Get a grip and grow up. You arent a child so why are you still in the childlike state where you project the role of mummy and daddy onto other people expecting them to tell you who you are. Grow a pair, become a fully independent adult, and stop listening to what other people tell you about yourself. You also need some exercises in normal relationships. Then with those who dont establish or maintain normal relationships with others, cut them off.

Final note - The Catholic church is riddled with abuse and the crazies.

[zep73]

Wow, your life sounds like a horror movie! Here's some suggestions to get you out of the house:

You mentioned you have friends. Is any of them likely to give you shelter? If so, you should move to his/her place immediately! You could offer to help around the house until you get a job.

If that is not an option, get a job ASAP. It will get you out of the house many hours a day, and give you the money to get your own (cheap) place to live.

If that isn't an option either, have you tried to contact a social worker at your municipality? Maybe they can help you get out of the house?

Edited July 19, 2021 by zep73

[+OverSword]

Get a job and move out.  You can do it.  After that the level of interaction with your toxic people is mostly up to you.

[Akhu999]

30 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Are you currently employed?

No. I'm on unemployment because of being laid of because of the pandemic. But it was a blessing in disguise because the job I was working at, although the money was very good, was a very toxic abusive environment. My coworkers literally ruined my reputation and violated boundaries like going in my personal belongings to find out information on me, lying, gossip, slander, mocking and heckling. It was just as toxic as my home environment. I don't even want to be in this city, but will temporarily settle for a place here as long as it's away from this house.

That was a long answer to your question, but not working right now gives me much needed time to work on other important things. The problem is tis depression, anxiety, and inability to focus. I have a therapist appointment this week, but I've already been through about 30 different therapists.

[XenoFish]

4 minutes ago, Akhu999 said:

No. I'm on unemployment because of being laid of because of the pandemic. But it was a blessing in disguise because the job I was working at, although the money was very good, was a very toxic abusive environment. My coworkers literally ruined my reputation and violated boundaries like going in my personal belongings to find out information on me, lying, gossip, slander, mocking and heckling. It was just as toxic as my home environment. I don't even want to be in this city, but will temporarily settle for a place here as long as it's away from this house.

That was a long answer to your question, but not working right now gives me much needed time to work on other important things. The problem is tis depression, anxiety, and inability to focus. I have a therapist appointment this week, but I've already been through about 30 different therapists.

 

34 minutes ago, OverSword said:

Get a job and move out.  You can do it.  After that the level of interaction with your toxic people is mostly up to you.

Do the above quote. 

[Akhu999]

40 minutes ago, zep73 said:

Wow, your life sounds like a horror movie! Here's some suggestions to get you out of the house:

You mentioned you have friends. Is any of them likely to give you shelter? If so, you should move to his/her place immediately! You could offer to help around the house until you get a job.

If that is not an option, get a job ASAP. It will get you out of the house many hours a day, and give you the money to get your own (cheap) place to live.

If that isn't an option either, have you tried to contact a social worker at your municipality? Maybe they can help you get out of the house?

I really only have one friend who I've had for a decade or so, but we've never even met. He lives a few states over, but we've had a lot of interaction; he even has a YouTube channel; some of his network that I helped him build. He knows a lot about my situation and has offered, for years, for me to come and live with him, but I just never felt right about moving that far away from home to a city where I didn't know anyone, had no family, etc... And I just felt too guilty and obligated to do that. Now that I've finally decided that I would do it, the option is no longer on the table because of so many other friends and bad tenants he's helped.

Many of the jobs I've worked on, I couldn't focus and would underperform because of my severe case of OCD that would never improve, my anxiety and my depression that made me very sluggish. I've been called "slow" all of my life and although I would often start out being the top performer on my jobs (because of my perfectionism and well mannered personality), I would very quickly decline to the worse employee with the most complaints and end up getting fired or quitting because of being overwhelmed. I have an opportunity during this time to get certified in different things by way of virtual school, but again, because of a severe case of anxiety and PTSD, I haven't been able to focus on it.

I've recently gotten the idea that I'd like to get a CDL license, as soon as possible, and start driving trucks so I can make good money and travel away from home at the same time. But realistically, I know I'm probably underestimating how challenging this is going to be being that I've never even driven a car before or taken so much as a driving test that most people take in Highschool. I'm very far behind in life in so many ways.

I've never heard of a "municipality".

[Grey Area]

Hi @Akhu999.  I can safely say ignore 95% of the advice given so far.  I am sorry to hear what you have endured for so long, clearly some members here not only lack any sort of knowledge around abuse and survivors of abuse but also lack the modicum of empathy required to engage in any form of meaningful way.

Firstly, to have got here and to be talking about your experiences is proof enough you are brave enough to face anything coming in the future.  And remember, when you are at your lowest, the only way is up.

These are probably not the best boards for you to be seeking help, as you have probably established from some of the responses.

So I will offer you this.  Firstly, you said in your original post that you weren’t suffering domestic violence.  You are 100% wrong on that.  You are suffering domestic abuse from multiple people and in multiple forms.  If you can admit that to yourself, you’ve just won a major battle.  Admitting that doesn’t make you weak, that is your armour, it is what will get you out, and you must get out.

As for actually getting out I can’t offer any advice, it sounds like you are in the states, I don’t have any knowledge of the sort of support out there for you, but try this site, it should be a bit more constructive than these boards for your situation.

https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/online-forums-and-chats
 

Best of luck to you.

 

[zep73]

3 minutes ago, Akhu999 said:

I've never heard of a "municipality".

It might be British English. It's the lowest and most local type of authority. Above that is County, and above county is State. They operate from the City Hall, and the Mayor is the boss.

[Akhu999]

1 hour ago, Cookie Monster said:

When someone grows up in an abnormal family environment their view of normal relationships get skewered.

With NPD it starts in early childhood and is a developmental disorder where the kid has no identity. With no identity they seek outside sources of information to confirm to them who they are. This means that negative information, such as a person telling them they are weird, gets accepted as fact. This obviously causes them distress so they quickly learn they can only cope if all information they receive about themselves is wholly perfect. This is the narcissists dilemma, the source of their lifelong torture, and is the driver of their annoying behaviour.

Being the hero, being the good one, being weird from not talking, being retarded, being sneaky, weak, cowardly, immature, irresponsible, unaccountable, dishonest, degenerate, evil, wicked, bad, snake-like, guilty, perverted, the most insecure person, why are you deriving your sense of self, your identity from others? You need to realise that people have a negative side to their personalities and you are not being told who you are by them, you are being abused, and they are going for your identity because they can see its all over the sodding place.

Get a grip and grow up. You arent a child so why are you still in the childlike state where you project the role of mummy and daddy onto other people expecting them to tell you who you are. Grow a pair, become a fully independent adult, and stop listening to what other people tell you about yourself. You also need some exercises in normal relationships. Then with those who dont establish or maintain normal relationships with others, cut them off.

Final note - The Catholic church is riddled with abuse and the crazies.

I do want to grow up and grow a pair; I've wanted to for many years. But, part of me really believes that I deserve this; that it's justified punishment for all of my wicked behavior in the past. It's not just in my head; I have a very real, tangible, and overwhelming guilt whenever I've thought of or attempted to leave. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I don't want to abandon my mother or my brother. I know I'm partly responsible for why my brother is the way he is. So, I feel obligated to be here and think what if my mother has been telling the truth when she's said God said that I'm meant to stay close to her. Several "prophets" have even said it over the years. I just don't know what to do. I'm miserable here but feel like it's my karma even though it's karma that I don't like.

[Grey Area]

33 minutes ago, Akhu999 said:

I do want to grow up and grow a pair; I've wanted to for many years. But, part of me really believes that I deserve this; that it's justified punishment for all of my wicked behavior in the past. It's not just in my head; I have a very real, tangible, and overwhelming guilt whenever I've thought of or attempted to leave. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I don't want to abandon my mother or my brother. I know I'm partly responsible for why my brother is the way he is. So, I feel obligated to be here and think what if my mother has been telling the truth when she's said God said that I'm meant to stay close to her. Several "prophets" have even said it over the years. I just don't know what to do. I'm miserable here but feel like it's my karma even though it's karma that I don't like.

Please don’t dwell on that response.  You have suffered this for years, telling you to grow a pair is clearly not going to be useful.

Go to the link I gave you, I believe there is a link to a site for male survivors, including gay/bi issues they have a forum and chat facilities, start talking to other people who have been in similar circumstances, people who have managed to escape their abuse.

Your Mom invoking god as a reason to stay close to you is a form of abuse known as coercive control, she is simply using God as a way to control you.

Do you really believe that prophets have intervened in your family affairs?  It’s just another form of control.  

Start speaking to other survivors, start researching forms of abuse.  You will start to see the patterns of behaviour fit together like a jigsaw, all aimed at taking the power from you and putting it into the abusers hands.

[+joc]

23 hours ago, Akhu999 said:

I'm leaving out a lot of specific details for the sake of anonymity, but I'm a nearly 40-year-old man who is part of a deeply dysfunctional family and can't think of any way out even after decades of trying.

My mother was a prostitute and a drug addict long before I was born, had all of her (several) children from different men, but then got on the straight and narrow before she had me (one of the reasons I've been her prized child). She got back in the church, was married, and had a stable family for the first time in her life. It was short-lived because my dad left her and she had to end of living with her sister who was another single mother with children around the same age. We all grew up together and the church also helped to take care of us. Then, my oldest brother ran away from home, and you can say that was the beginning of the end. My mom relapsed and went back into promiscuity and drug use and we were abandoned as children for a while, aside from whenever my aunt and the pastor's family could step in. You might be able to imagine what kinds of things happened with all of these children and teenagers running around with little adult supervision, which is a whole other story, but things I struggle with today are probably a direct result of things that happened back then...

 

In the midst of this, my mother got pregnant from one of the men who she still doesn't know to this day and came home with a newborn baby and then went back to the streets leaving children to help raise a baby, including myself who was very poor at it at 5 years old. My mother got clean not too long after that and we moved to a different state where she found another church home that helped to raise us and teach us the ways of God. Somewhere along the way, my mother relapsed again and got pregnant with another child, a girl who's our youngest sibling. Shortly after my sister was born, my mother decided to change her life for good and became an evangelist. In this transition, we went from having an inconsistent but laid-back (and at times, too laid back where she failed to teach us discipline when we needed it) mother to a religious zealot who was a very judgmental but absent parent. Most of the things we learned as far as family values came from our grandmother who raised us for the most part, but could only do so much... I was also my grandmother's prized grandchild. And as you might imagine, being the "hero" or the "good one" can not only cause narcissism to develop but can also put a tremendous burden on a child to be perfect and to be a people pleaser.

 

I was always the "quiet one" or the one who was more timid, but I also had a very deeply troubled side of me that I tried to keep hidden. Everywhere I went, people said I was "weird" or thought I was "retarded" because I didn't talk much. I now realize I fell into the category of "the lost child", one of the common but not so talked about or understood roles in dysfunctional families. I think I was 17 when one day in church, this "prophetess" called my family up in front of the church and told my mother that she needed to watch me because I was "sneaky", while wagging her finger in my direction and my older brother standing next to me profusely shaking his head, yes, in agreement. Needless to say, this has been a label that has followed me everywhere like a dark cloud of judgment and shame hovering over my head. With it carries negative connotations of "weak", cowardly, immature, irresponsible, unaccountable, dishonest, degenerate, evil, wicked, bad, snake-like, guilty, perverted... and everywhere I go, people have the same opinion of me, which has often caused me to feel more shame and guilt and the need to hide even more. This on top of a lot of rejection (even romantic), neglect, and abuse I experienced as a child has maybe contributed to me being "the most insecure" person that people have told me they have ever met.

 

I still feel like a 6-year-old child most of the time if not every moment of my existence, and my mother has often taken advantage of this and uses the bible and "prophetic words" to justify why I should stay under her and never leave home. And yet, I live with so much disrespect and emotional abuse. My younger brother who also lives here is very troubled and very immature; you could say he's a bully. I, as a troubled child, used to beat him up and verbally and emotionally abuse him when we were children and he, in turn, became an abuser, himself, even to our little sister and apparently our nephew. He even punched our grandmother in the stomach when he was younger and called her a b#%*. These things were dealt with years ago, and now he isn't physically abusive but he's emotionally abusive to everyone around him, including my mother and especially me. I've attempted to make things right with him and repair and build a relationship between us, but between my own inability to communicate with people who I don't trust (I don't trust anyone in my family) and the wall he has around himself, it's been impossible to foster any kind of healthy relationship with him. He was a very nice nice and at times shy kid who also had a but of a "mean" streak, so there's really no telling how much of this is nature and how much of it is nurture, but he's so closed off that he doesn't give us the chance to really know or understand him. He's even worse a communicating than I am.

 

He's in his 30s, now, and so am I, and all of this time we've lived in the same house, for the last decade or so, we've probably said no more than 100 words to each other. He's extremely hostile toward me: has read a very personal (romantic) letter of mine, taken it to my mother and let her read it and outed me as gay, has shown her other personal (sexual) things that I wrote to try to humiliate me, has spied on me, hacked into my computer (along with my mother who also hacked into my personal emails, has told her almost every moved I've made, has gotten up and walked out of a room when I started talking, has come into my room and thrown my mail on my desk so hard that it knocked things on the floor, laughed and snickered when I've gotten chastised or exposed, aggressively opened my door to catch me dancing or singing or anything that could be embarrassing to let me know he was spying on me, mumbles under his breath, sucks his teeth and rolls his eyes any time someone pays me a compliment or he sees me laughing or shown some signs of happiness, sighs loudly whenever he hears my bedroom door open, jerks his body, throws his head back, and stomps off whenever I go into the same room as him, goes into his bedroom and closes or slams his bedroom door whenever he sees me coming, and he always looks at me with his face frowned up with such hatred in his eyes for me. When he was an adolescent, he told me to "burn in Hell", and years later, when he found out I was gay, he has made sure to let me know in the most passive aggressive ways how much he hates the fact that I'm his brother and that I even exist. I have lived with this for YEARS. The rudeness and disrespect that my mother has put up with has also enabled this behavior. He's heard me and my sister talking and told both of us to "shut up", as ADULTS, and has told my mother to shut up after she asked him to simply bring in some groceries while he was playing a videogame after she's come home from a long day of work and buying groceries for HIM to eat. When my sister spoke up and defended her, he's physically fought her, and instead of my mother disciplining or checking him, she scolded my sister for speaking up.

 

This is the same daughter she's secretly verbally bullied for years and told her that if she knew she was going to be gay (my sister being bisexual) that she would've never had her. Yet, she lets my brother go around as a 30 something year-old man slamming doors in her house like a child and talking back to her disrespectfully while she just complains about it and asks him what she ever did to him instead of enforcing boundaries. She literally gives him an allowance and pep-talks him like he's 5 years old when he does something good. He walks around with a permanent attitude and emotionally terrorizes everyone in the house...one of the reasons both of my sisters stay away for the most part. My mother was told, when he was a child, that he was mentally challenged, but instead of getting him helped, she just "rebuked" it like the zealous Christian that she is and said it was a lie of the devil. One of my mother's favorite phrases is "the devil is a liar!", especially when you tell her about some flaw in her character. She becomes irate when my sister tells her she enables us, but she really has enabled all of her boys in some way and crippled all of us. My oldest brother is now serving a life sentence for murder, my brother under him now has a label that will follow him for the rest of his life, including dictating where he can live, I'm a near 40-year-old man who's never been in a relationship, never learned how to drive, never finished college, and has to "sneak" away any time I go out of town and dread the office meeting (that comes along with bible quoting, speaking in tongues, rebuking, guilting, shaming, berating and belittling all done in the name of God) I'm going to get when I get back home, and my the youngest boy has an eternal chip on his shoulder and no social life or social skills.

 

It took me a lot of "rebelling" and tons of counseling to finally realize that I live in an insane asylum and a cesspool of demonic activity, and yet, I'm still TRAPPED in it feeling like there's no way out. I've racked my brain for YEARS, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation and have not found any solution. I've even looked up homeless shelters but a shelter seems like a dramatic decision to make being that there's no domestic violence going on. However destructive and debilitating, all of the abuse is mental and emotional, so how do you even report or get tangible/physical assistance for such a thing? And part of me feels obligated and responsible for a lot of this and like I don't have a leg to stand on because of the things I've done. That's why I feel trapped; because I'm part of the very system that's done so much damage to me. And I know that my mother uses my guilt, low self-esteem, and timidity against me and is her way of controlling me, but I still feel powerless against it, and even though I know she can't do anything to me physically, and even though I can talk about all of this to friends and other people, I find it very hard expressing myself to her or my brother directly. I feel like a helpless child in this environment, which is why I want and need so desperately to GET OUT! I just don't know how. I can't even focus on my studying or anything that would help improve my life while I'm here, or even think clearly. It's like my brain is highjacked. I don't feel like I can do anything constructive while living here. I just need help getting out! I'm open to any advice or ideas you might have.

 

Too much information.

If you want out of the dysfunctional family...open the door and start walking.   ...and don't stop.

[docyabut2]

On 7/19/2021 at 2:33 PM, Akhu999 said:

I'm leaving out a lot of specific details for the sake of anonymity, but I'm a nearly 40-year-old man who is part of a deeply dysfunctional family and can't think of any way out even after decades of trying.

My mother was a prostitute and a drug addict long before I was born, had all of her (several) children from different men, but then got on the straight and narrow before she had me (one of the reasons I've been her prized child). She got back in the church, was married, and had a stable family for the first time in her life. It was short-lived because my dad left her and she had to end of living with her sister who was another single mother with children around the same age. We all grew up together and the church also helped to take care of us. Then, my oldest brother ran away from home, and you can say that was the beginning of the end. My mom relapsed and went back into promiscuity and drug use and we were abandoned as children for a while, aside from whenever my aunt and the pastor's family could step in. You might be able to imagine what kinds of things happened with all of these children and teenagers running around with little adult supervision, which is a whole other story, but things I struggle with today are probably a direct result of things that happened back then...

 

In the midst of this, my mother got pregnant from one of the men who she still doesn't know to this day and came home with a newborn baby and then went back to the streets leaving children to help raise a baby, including myself who was very poor at it at 5 years old. My mother got clean not too long after that and we moved to a different state where she found another church home that helped to raise us and teach us the ways of God. Somewhere along the way, my mother relapsed again and got pregnant with another child, a girl who's our youngest sibling. Shortly after my sister was born, my mother decided to change her life for good and became an evangelist. In this transition, we went from having an inconsistent but laid-back (and at times, too laid back where she failed to teach us discipline when we needed it) mother to a religious zealot who was a very judgmental but absent parent. Most of the things we learned as far as family values came from our grandmother who raised us for the most part, but could only do so much... I was also my grandmother's prized grandchild. And as you might imagine, being the "hero" or the "good one" can not only cause narcissism to develop but can also put a tremendous burden on a child to be perfect and to be a people pleaser.

 

I was always the "quiet one" or the one who was more timid, but I also had a very deeply troubled side of me that I tried to keep hidden. Everywhere I went, people said I was "weird" or thought I was "retarded" because I didn't talk much. I now realize I fell into the category of "the lost child", one of the common but not so talked about or understood roles in dysfunctional families. I think I was 17 when one day in church, this "prophetess" called my family up in front of the church and told my mother that she needed to watch me because I was "sneaky", while wagging her finger in my direction and my older brother standing next to me profusely shaking his head, yes, in agreement. Needless to say, this has been a label that has followed me everywhere like a dark cloud of judgment and shame hovering over my head. With it carries negative connotations of "weak", cowardly, immature, irresponsible, unaccountable, dishonest, degenerate, evil, wicked, bad, snake-like, guilty, perverted... and everywhere I go, people have the same opinion of me, which has often caused me to feel more shame and guilt and the need to hide even more. This on top of a lot of rejection (even romantic), neglect, and abuse I experienced as a child has maybe contributed to me being "the most insecure" person that people have told me they have ever met.

 

I still feel like a 6-year-old child most of the time if not every moment of my existence, and my mother has often taken advantage of this and uses the bible and "prophetic words" to justify why I should stay under her and never leave home. And yet, I live with so much disrespect and emotional abuse. My younger brother who also lives here is very troubled and very immature; you could say he's a bully. I, as a troubled child, used to beat him up and verbally and emotionally abuse him when we were children and he, in turn, became an abuser, himself, even to our little sister and apparently our nephew. He even punched our grandmother in the stomach when he was younger and called her a b#%*. These things were dealt with years ago, and now he isn't physically abusive but he's emotionally abusive to everyone around him, including my mother and especially me. I've attempted to make things right with him and repair and build a relationship between us, but between my own inability to communicate with people who I don't trust (I don't trust anyone in my family) and the wall he has around himself, it's been impossible to foster any kind of healthy relationship with him. He was a very nice nice and at times shy kid who also had a but of a "mean" streak, so there's really no telling how much of this is nature and how much of it is nurture, but he's so closed off that he doesn't give us the chance to really know or understand him. He's even worse a communicating than I am.

 

He's in his 30s, now, and so am I, and all of this time we've lived in the same house, for the last decade or so, we've probably said no more than 100 words to each other. He's extremely hostile toward me: has read a very personal (romantic) letter of mine, taken it to my mother and let her read it and outed me as gay, has shown her other personal (sexual) things that I wrote to try to humiliate me, has spied on me, hacked into my computer (along with my mother who also hacked into my personal emails, has told her almost every moved I've made, has gotten up and walked out of a room when I started talking, has come into my room and thrown my mail on my desk so hard that it knocked things on the floor, laughed and snickered when I've gotten chastised or exposed, aggressively opened my door to catch me dancing or singing or anything that could be embarrassing to let me know he was spying on me, mumbles under his breath, sucks his teeth and rolls his eyes any time someone pays me a compliment or he sees me laughing or shown some signs of happiness, sighs loudly whenever he hears my bedroom door open, jerks his body, throws his head back, and stomps off whenever I go into the same room as him, goes into his bedroom and closes or slams his bedroom door whenever he sees me coming, and he always looks at me with his face frowned up with such hatred in his eyes for me. When he was an adolescent, he told me to "burn in Hell", and years later, when he found out I was gay, he has made sure to let me know in the most passive aggressive ways how much he hates the fact that I'm his brother and that I even exist. I have lived with this for YEARS. The rudeness and disrespect that my mother has put up with has also enabled this behavior. He's heard me and my sister talking and told both of us to "shut up", as ADULTS, and has told my mother to shut up after she asked him to simply bring in some groceries while he was playing a videogame after she's come home from a long day of work and buying groceries for HIM to eat. When my sister spoke up and defended her, he's physically fought her, and instead of my mother disciplining or checking him, she scolded my sister for speaking up.

 

This is the same daughter she's secretly verbally bullied for years and told her that if she knew she was going to be gay (my sister being bisexual) that she would've never had her. Yet, she lets my brother go around as a 30 something year-old man slamming doors in her house like a child and talking back to her disrespectfully while she just complains about it and asks him what she ever did to him instead of enforcing boundaries. She literally gives him an allowance and pep-talks him like he's 5 years old when he does something good. He walks around with a permanent attitude and emotionally terrorizes everyone in the house...one of the reasons both of my sisters stay away for the most part. My mother was told, when he was a child, that he was mentally challenged, but instead of getting him helped, she just "rebuked" it like the zealous Christian that she is and said it was a lie of the devil. One of my mother's favorite phrases is "the devil is a liar!", especially when you tell her about some flaw in her character. She becomes irate when my sister tells her she enables us, but she really has enabled all of her boys in some way and crippled all of us. My oldest brother is now serving a life sentence for murder, my brother under him now has a label that will follow him for the rest of his life, including dictating where he can live, I'm a near 40-year-old man who's never been in a relationship, never learned how to drive, never finished college, and has to "sneak" away any time I go out of town and dread the office meeting (that comes along with bible quoting, speaking in tongues, rebuking, guilting, shaming, berating and belittling all done in the name of God) I'm going to get when I get back home, and my the youngest boy has an eternal chip on his shoulder and no social life or social skills.

 

It took me a lot of "rebelling" and tons of counseling to finally realize that I live in an insane asylum and a cesspool of demonic activity, and yet, I'm still TRAPPED in it feeling like there's no way out. I've racked my brain for YEARS, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation and have not found any solution. I've even looked up homeless shelters but a shelter seems like a dramatic decision to make being that there's no domestic violence going on. However destructive and debilitating, all of the abuse is mental and emotional, so how do you even report or get tangible/physical assistance for such a thing? And part of me feels obligated and responsible for a lot of this and like I don't have a leg to stand on because of the things I've done. That's why I feel trapped; because I'm part of the very system that's done so much damage to me. And I know that my mother uses my guilt, low self-esteem, and timidity against me and is her way of controlling me, but I still feel powerless against it, and even though I know she can't do anything to me physically, and even though I can talk about all of this to friends and other people, I find it very hard expressing myself to her or my brother directly. I feel like a helpless child in this environment, which is why I want and need so desperately to GET OUT! I just don't know how. I can't even focus on my studying or anything that would help improve my life while I'm here, or even think clearly. It's like my brain is highjacked. I don't feel like I can do anything constructive while living here. I just need help getting out! I'm open to any advice or ideas you might have.

 

you were always a special child, because of the drug war we are trying to fight  so never get into the drugs  president trump was trying to fight all the drugs  wars coming into our country that are killing our children  

Edited July 20, 2021 by docyabut2

[Ell]

Join a monastery or start a monastery yourself.

[+Hammerclaw]

You can leave any time you want to. Your problem is you don't really want to. 

[Akhu999]

On 7/20/2021 at 1:49 PM, joc said:

Too much information.

If you want out of the dysfunctional family...open the door and start walking.   ...and don't stop.

Yea. Wish it was that simple. If only everything was that simple.

[Akhu999]

7 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

You can leave any time you want to. Your problem is you don't really want to. 

This is not true! You can't read my mind or my soul and tell me what I want. Sorry. Wanting something and being able to do it are two different things.

[+Hammerclaw]

2 minutes ago, Akhu999 said:

This is not true! You can't read my mind or my soul and tell me what I want. Sorry. Wanting something and being able to do it are two different things.

No it isn't; you just don't want to do the work required to make it a reality. For you it will be very hard; there will be hardship and suffering, with no one to rely on but yourself. You'll be alone.

[+Razman]

On 7/19/2021 at 3:19 PM, Akhu999 said:

I do want to grow up and grow a pair; I've wanted to for many years. But, part of me really believes that I deserve this; that it's justified punishment for all of my wicked behavior in the past. It's not just in my head; I have a very real, tangible, and overwhelming guilt whenever I've thought of or attempted to leave. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I don't want to abandon my mother or my brother. I know I'm partly responsible for why my brother is the way he is. So, I feel obligated to be here and think what if my mother has been telling the truth when she's said God said that I'm meant to stay close to her. Several "prophets" have even said it over the years. I just don't know what to do. I'm miserable here but feel like it's my karma even though it's karma that I don't like.

Maybe its not punishment , maybe its part of your lesson in this life.

[+joc]

9 hours ago, Akhu999 said:

Yea. Wish it was that simple. If only everything was that simple.

Everything is that simple. We complicate things by rationalizing things. 

You are enslaved to the manipulation of others.  There is no Karma.  Only  bad decisions.  

Live for yourself, or live for your Mother.  The truth is...you need her as much as she needs you.  No forum can help you.  Find a counselor and start the process of helping your own self.

[TashaMarie]

On 7/19/2021 at 7:33 PM, Akhu999 said:

 

It took me a lot of "rebelling" and tons of counseling to finally realize that I live in an insane asylum and a cesspool of demonic activity, and yet, I'm still TRAPPED in it feeling like there's no way out. I've racked my brain for YEARS, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation and have not found any solution. I've even looked up homeless shelters but a shelter seems like a dramatic decision to make being that there's no domestic violence going on. However destructive and debilitating, all of the abuse is mental and emotional, so how do you even report or get tangible/physical assistance for such a thing? And part of me feels obligated and responsible for a lot of this and like I don't have a leg to stand on because of the things I've done. That's why I feel trapped; because I'm part of the very system that's done so much damage to me. And I know that my mother uses my guilt, low self-esteem, and timidity against me and is her way of controlling me, but I still feel powerless against it, and even though I know she can't do anything to me physically, and even though I can talk about all of this to friends and other people, I find it very hard expressing myself to her or my brother directly. I feel like a helpless child in this environment, which is why I want and need so desperately to GET OUT! I just don't know how. I can't even focus on my studying or anything that would help improve my life while I'm here, or even think clearly. It's like my brain is highjacked. I don't feel like I can do anything constructive while living here. I just need help getting out! I'm open to any advice or ideas you might have.

I am sorry I had to do a quick read through as the text is just to much for me and causing eye issues so may have missed a lot.  Are you still seeing the counsellor?  If so they would be the best people to help, I really do not think judging by a lot of the comments here you are actually going to find the answer or push you need here.  Also domestic abuse can be Physical, Sexual, Psychological or emotional, Financial or material plus some.

[spartan max2]

22 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

You can leave any time you want to. Your problem is you don't really want to. 

You have a horrible grasp on human psychology. 

[spartan max2]

1)Reach out to your one friend who is out of state and explain the situation. See if he will let you stay to help you get on your feet.

2) Make a plan. Save up money to a set amount. And move far away.

3) reach out to domestic abuse shelters.dont gas light yourself. You are in a toxic abusive situation.

4) take a chance and go to a homeless shelter.

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by spartan max2

[+Hammerclaw]

12 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

You have a horrible grasp on human psychology. 

And you're an expert?