Family and stigma

@Ruby26

I am so sorry that this has been your experience. Mental illness is hard enough without having to deal with people, who are supposed to be there for you, turning on you. Is there the possibility that you can educate them at all?

@Oaktree Thanks for your response. No, any attempt to educate is just used as "proof" that I must have faked the psychosis. Family therapy was refused because she feels the idea of it implies something wrong in the family and I'm the only thing they perceive as a family problem. I've tried to get carers support arranged and she found it off putting.

@Ruby26 hey Ruby26 i am having problems with one member of my family who is judging me without coming to me and asking me what is going on. i thought we were close but obviously not. i can live with that is her choice not mine some people are quick to judge without getting the full story of how mental illness takes a toll on someone. take the higher ground hunny and let them go but keep the door open if they choose to come back. xxx

Hi @Ruby26 sorry to hear you are going through all this, family can be the best and the worst thing in life hey? To answer your question, YES I have had family turn against me due to having and healing mental health issues, and disagreements by the way of how another person in the family, my brother should be treated due to his mental health status which includes psychosis which has been stablised by medication.

Myself I pushed the envelope trying to get recognition, support, closure and understanding of my own an the complex history of "the family". I have ended up disowned which is less than ideal yet, I personally could not stand the ongoing denial/conflict/lies/misunderstanding/judgement of "the family" which includes a lot of projection and denial from the mother and the entire family.

Ultimately it boils down to their opinions about THEMSELVES....my mother refuses to address her mental health/addiction and blames everyone around her to be the cause of her problems which is very difficult to deal with and I believe has contributed in a large part to my brother's ongoing trauma and early days of psychosis.

For me it took A LOT of research, counselling and finding alternative supports to deal with the entire situation as I could not stand the level of denial and the fact that "the family" has made a mockery of both my brother, and his mental health and also attacked and abused me due to discovering and suggesting that any part of it was due to their a) habits and treatment b) secrecy c) denial of reality.

Over 20 years I can come to see that all of them feel shame and/or guilt about the situation and I have come to figure that there is a large family secret that has been buried, I believe it is a strong background of interpersonal abuse which has affected every single family member in a small or large way but they believe "get over it and get on with it" which is not the case for my brother who was ultimately victimised on many heartbreaking levels.

It has caused me to break away from the family and find my own life that supports my values. If I had my time again I would do it in secret and maintain a functional, fake and friendly relationship with "the family" but, I have recognised that people who never, ever showed up in history also will never, ever show up in the future. They are stuck in a bubble, they don't resolve conflict, they don't learn and grow and change. I have had to learn all these skills in order to function in society and it's what my brother was not allowed to do to heal from his trauma and mental illness which comes from severe trauma and the state of denial from the family.

This is not to say the same is true for your family, I don't know your family but I would suggest that having a support that's 100% outside the family is a good place to start and, up to you whether you want to keep the strained relationships or to try to back off, or to run the relationships to the end of their due course. Having a counsellor and learning to hold your own problems inside can be a way to survive but it's very important to build a support network of other people with similar values and life experiences.

Mental illness in the family has changed the course of my life and it took a lot of self work to understand it and to move on with my own life. But, I can look back now and it still takes a lot of work, but I can shake my head and say "I am so grateful I broke away from people who fundamentally have no belief in human rights, human dignity and who deny modern society as if they were fundamentalist amish". And my experiments on the family prove their values are very close to fundamentalist religion which has its offshoots of misogyny, domestic abuse, "work til you die" attitude.

OK that's them and I am different to them, and my life REQUIRES ever since high school that I have to exist in modern society because they have created no space for me to exist, let alone thrive in a cultish type of mindset. After many years of grieving, shock, distress and loneliness I rebuilt my life to have most of what I need on most days. Some days are very hard and improving my own mental health has cost me tens of thousands of dollars, career, family etc but, I see it as MY LIFE and if I didn't fix it up I wouldn't be alive to tell the tale.

So no matter what be strong, don't take their hatred personally, try to see it as a symptom of their own defences, their own denial, their unwillingness to be educated or compassionate. All of that is very painful but if YOU have the values which are different, YOU have already evolved beyond their capacity to understand you, with or without mental health being involved. It's rejection and rigidity at the end of the day and YOU deserve dignity, friendships, supportive relationships. If you cant find that in family PLEASE LOOK FURTHER AWAY FROM FAMILY!! Peer support groups can be great, hobby and interest groups, and if you struggle with social stuff you might need to find charity or community supports. It's also really important to learn social skills, and to use them. Never let your mental health be an excuse to be rude or awful to people around you, it can be the hardest thing to cope with but I find that I have to try 80% harder 100% of the time to get results but after I turned my life around from rock bottom more than once, I am happy to give the effort so that I get a better quality of life simply from being a person who doesn't give up, doesn't take my problems out on others, doesn't take denialism and abuse as a way of life.

Last but not least it can be quite horrible and scary but....you are the author of your own life and there's a lot that you CAN control, you can't control psychosis and you can't control the reactions of others but you can control your choices and responses to the hand that life deals to you.

Recently I met a beautiful girl who suffers quite obvious mental illness and she has become a friend. She has been very open about her situation and her story, and I feel blessed to have met her. She requires a lot of support but she also has a lot of independence, she's so lovely - so strong - so open about her life and when she has lucidity she does some amazing creative and community work. She knows her "problems" and in her heart she wants to be accepted and a part of society like everyone else. I really like her and I don't see her "problems", I see the person inside and if I have no energy to give her, I just say I am sorry I can't be there for you today and she understands, and our relationship is built on both communicating about problems and talking about not-problems too. It is very important to distance yourself and avoid a negative self image and only see problems.

I also have another ex-friend who is in similar circumstances but she has let her problems overtake her, she is a user of time, a taker of resources, and quite a nasty person underneath a "nice" front which includes being a community worker. I dumped her as a friend once I saw the nastiness and entitlement, and I am happy to have replaced her with many people who ARENT nasty and selfish while living with complex situations.

So its really important to honour the goodness in you especially if you don't see it from family. It's really important to take responsibility for your own life, and it's twice as important to reach out and ask for assistance, advice and support as you navigate your way out of a difficult situation, come to peace with your diagnosis or circumstance and find your way in life. Dont let mental health challenges be an end to your happiness, let them be a beginning to your problem solving.

As all people have problems great and small but to be shunned, mocked and despised by people who see YOU as a problem. Take care and keep SANE forums updated with your progress. Last but not least and I dont know the facts but if your family are forcing you to take medication etc they are not trying to harm you but medication can be VERY important in stabilising some conditions, and they might be seeing the big picture which is not able to be seen by you especially if there is self harm or other behaviours involved. I dont know, only you know and I believe what you say but I just write from the perspective of answering your question with what I know. And based on some OTHER friends of mine when they ARE off their meds it's obvious and they do things that put themselves in relative danger so they need medication to stay safe, and it took my brother about 2 years to come to the conclusion that he is better off despite the side effects of medication.

Take care of yourself and hold your head high, you are a human with a heart and soul who does deserve to be treated with dignity, respect and compassion.

@Sugarshack thank you for your response.

I'm very sorry to hear about your family situation. You did a very courageous thing standing up against them, and they sound like the kind of people who are better off staying away from. I hope your brother is okay, I feel for him too. I think living in an uncomfortable truth is always better than a comfortable lie.

I do have a very supportive partner and I'm leaning more towards my partner's family than my own. I have a lot of trouble starting and maintaining friendships, but I do have a very supportive best friend too. I do wish I could find belonging in a small close group of people, but that has always ended badly.

Developing social skills has been a huge problem for me. I don't think I am ever awful to people. People often find my face and voice offensive, but I find those are too complicated to try and change. That combined with my honesty could be seen as rude by others, but I'm very uncomfortable with lying to people. I always try to treat people the way I want them to treat me, but it seems like other people have different things they want from relationships than I do and I have trouble working out what they want when they won't tell me. I think a lot of it has to do with me being autistic though. Sometimes I have to cancel plans with people due to mental illness, but other than that I don't think the psychosis has really impacted on my behaviour towards others. I just isolate when I'm too unwell to communicate properly.

I find it hard to trust mental health professionals and a lot of my issues are too much for friends and peer support spaces to be reasonably expected to handle. I'm constantly trying to problem solve in my journal and these last few months I feel exhausted and like I'm no longer getting anywhere with it.

In terms of anti-psychotic medication, there has been an ongoing problem of my family sabotaging me from taking my medication. I've had to fight them every step of the way to being allowed to take my anti-psychotic medication (when I was underage). The anti-psychotic medication is clearly what helps me the most, even though there have been a lot of side effect issues. They don't seem to mind me taking medications overall, as long as the medication is anything BUT the anti-psychotics that I actually need. The wonderful thing about adulthood is being able to get anti-psychotics without the drama of my family being involved. I'm really glad I can get medical and mental health support independent of them now, but I still feel very attached to them emotionally and it just hurts so much.

Hey there @Ruby26 I appreciate you sharing your story cause it sounds like you have had a fairly lonely journey dealing with all this business "by yourself" even though you are surrounded by family and people.

At risk of having a go at your family it sounds like they are right up the denial pathway and I wonder if you could ask around a bit and see if there was anyone in the elder generations who "had problems"?

This might give you the clue of DENIAL to see if there was someone similar up the family tee. Because I have identified the root cause of my own family problems including grandparents, aunties/uncles, parents and my brother is that the whole family has buried problems deep meaning no one has any social skills, mental health skills or interpersonal skills...all of them are dependent on family money and then having fairly isolated or powerful jobs that give them income and something to do.

But I am doing family systems therapy at present where I can understand my own problems by reflecting with a therapist about the patterns and habits of the family and the family stories that I know.

Why I say this to you: Over 20 years I have slowly estranged from my family due to the denial problems which keep them very limited and trapped in the past, trapped inside themselves, and these things make them quite difficult people whose lives have been set up for them but only if they play by the rules of their parents. I have had to, and wanted to survive in modern society. I have had to get the skills to do so, and I have been forced into situations where I have faced my limitations and also been forced to adapt, improvise and grow. The family just didnt want to or were unable to be people who could help me "get better" from chronic depression and suicidality, they wanted to blame me for my situation and call it a character weakness.

It was a gutting situation of being stuck between a rock and a hard place and I chose to leave them behind so that I could be happy and satisfied with MY LIFE. It has taken 10 years to become satisfied with MY LIFE but, I am mostly there now and I have wisdom and strength that I could never have imagined coming into my life. I feel A LOT of sadness that they dont understand me, but I have chosen to understand and heal that sadness, also.

The way I see it similar to you and I don't endorse playing games of no-contact and all that BS but I do endorse ruthlessly chasing whatever you need to live a satisfied life and to be able to see a future for yourself.

And theres a lot of people who take medication and live a full and interesting life. My brother took the easy path of not rocking the boat, submitting to the family BS and he is up to his neck in problems that get worse and worse over time, he has also become near vegetable and reclusive due to internal shame for not fitting in to society, which exacerbates all of his mental health problems.

So I hope that in your life you can see a way to grow yourself into the person you want to be, with or without psychosis and YouTube has some fairly good examples and strategies if you dig deep though the junk tv on there and find actual people talking about their lives and how they overcame hardship, and psychological strategies for understanding difficult families. The key is to stay away from the blame game and victim complex and to upskill yourself in anything you need to have for an independent life. including "listening to what family members say without reacting" and "improving emotional independence and resilience" because literally you will outgrow the bad attitudes of those people and be able to grasp onto a life that fits you. Like a pair of shoes, if you grow out of the people around you, get new shoes or walk around funny with your toes bent up.

Last but not least I hope what I write is not harsh or unsympathetic, that's not intended to be the case but I can read through what you say that you're fairly switched on and it's frustrating to have your reality denied by people. Ok if they deny your reality...make your reality shine so bright that you attract new and better people into it or at least arent hobbled by a "ill fitting shoes" aka people who kick you down when you've got enough kicking you down.

All the best feel free to write any updates and last but not least go easy on yourself as there's enough stigma about mental health out there...what about "variations of thought" "different ways of perceiving things" and "a brain that throws spanners in the works but, still works" as I reckon self loathing is one of the most painful situations that people get into and self acceptance is liberating, to know yourself and to back yourself as a person who has quality about them.

@Sugarshack thanks so much for your thoughtful response.

One of my own parents has a psychotic disorder and took medication for it for over 20 years. So, I feel like the family should have a decent understanding of psychosis and the importance of medication. Everyone has also been very secretive about this parent's mental illness, but it has been acknowledged a private but accurate family secret. I'm the only one who has been accused of "pretending" to have a psychotic disorder. It has been very hurtful the number of times I have been accused of faking this and trying to manipulate them to get attention. I've tried to hide symptoms from them, but I can't hide anything once it reaches a crisis point.

In terms of the extended family, on one side of the family my cousin's children are getting diagnosed with autism and it's pretty obvious there is undiagnosed autism in previous two generations too. The other side of the family have serious interpersonal issues. Everyone on this side of the family has either serious interpersonal issue in terms of self-entitlement, OR a serious issue with people pleasing and enabling the entitled ones.

I'm sorry about your family situation. You sound like a very courageous person to have stepped back from that situation. I feel like I've only been accepted by my family when I've 'played by their rules' too. It is a very toxic way to live life. If it was getting to the point where you felt suicidal, you had to put your life and wellbeing first. This kind of situation can destroy a person and I'm so glad you are here and free from their influence. I'm so sorry to hear what has happened with your brother too.

I feel a bit lost right now in terms of how to grow into being my own person. I thought I was on the right path, but then I had one toxic friendship after another, and I don't feel much belonging or safety in the real world anymore. I don't seem to be able to switch off reactions and the more I try to work on myself, the less resilient I seem to become. I feel like I've done everything I can, and nothing seems to stop me caring about what they think or help me to learn new skills.

I would like to re-wire my brain to be able to learn skills and have an identity of my own. I don't think I can accept myself until I'm sure that I'm the best version of myself. I'm just not sure how to get to that point.

I appreciate everything you've written, it is honest and empathetic. Thank you for taking so much time to share your thoughts with me.

Hey there @Ruby26 umm WHOA are we from the same family??? (jokes).....but....what you say is eerily familiar in every detail. No one has verified it but I suspect theres a "DARK SECRET" as in my mother's Grandfather was a PDF, I am certain that he got to her but, all of her life she has denied any problem with herself. They don't stop at one, and any time I mention ANYTHING about mental health or "the secrets of the past" to the extended family they freeze in their tracks, change the subject or just don't reply.

SO....like in your family that left my mother as a severely debilitated woman who was undiagnosed but spent every day of my life screaming at me and she is severely paranoid about society, as in we grew up with the curtains drawn shut every day etc. All of the family are robotic, they don't really enjoy anything, they seem to just do their jobs, run their businesses, hoard money, go on holidays, try to boast about their life in a false show that I find repulsive and I enjoy 'not receiving their boasting' as it's just sickening to constantly validate the showboat society who are older than me and do not, never have cared about my wellbeing on any level including severely abusive father, mental breakdown mother, it's all about what they did with their money but they haven't spent $2 on anything outside of material goods that try to make themselves look like ?magazine people or something.

I am sorry for your mother's condition and what I can see from reading your story is this:

They covered up and denied whatever broke your mother's mental health down.

You ended up similar, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree most time and as a young person my mother moulded me into her twin and I had a horrible life due to being HER PERSONALITY stuck in a child/young woman's body.

I reckon your family would be saying "Oh no not you again"...."Her mother was a such a troubled liar I can't believe that Ruby26 is the same"...."Why is she trying to get attention like her mother?" ...."Can't she just get over it?" all that utter bullshit which is the cause and effect of severe intergenerational trauma.

How to move on and out of that?

It has taken me DECADES of fighting and the #1 thing I had to learn and accept is that it was ultimately fighting against myself. The root cause of my mother's failure to thrive is her DEPENDENCY ON ABUSIVE MEN and that was something I had to unlearn as well, she had this fantasy that all I had to do was find a partner to pay for my existence and then I wouldn't be her problem anymore. (ugh..........no man wants to raise an adult child into his dream partner.......and where did she get the idea that adult men should raise children into perfect partners???)

A psychic told me once that the cause of her hatred of me is that she wanted to be a perfect partner to all men, and that since birth I had been an object in the way of her desire to be accepted by men. It makes perfect sense to me including her obsession with men and it explains the heartbreaking abandonment and rejection I have faced. Enough about me though....

For me the root cause of healing was recognising that if I had an empty bucket called my life inside, I needed to repair it and fill it up with functional things where there was little but pain and dysfunction.

I opened my mind to learning A LOT from everyone except my mother. If my instincts told me to do what she would do, I had to mentally overthrow those instincts to do what she would not do. I had to get social skills, life skills, I had to drop my ego and engage with charities and come to the bottom of the truth about my life - I had been told I had a perfect mother and was a horrible child, it is still taking 20+ years to accept that she was a horrible mother, I was a perfect child at birth, and she failed me on every single level except for not murdering me, and that I have a right to be angry/hurt about it but, NO ONE can fix it except me.

Anger and hurt are the emotions which drive any individual away from other people. It took a long time for me to stop being angry and hurt so that I would be accepted and trusted by others.

Friends: It's easy to find depressed/alcoholic/parasitic/other dependent people as friends and to sit around wasting a lot of time in a negative rut. But being distracted from the problem, doesn't fix it. To this day my friends exist for me to take a break from my own headspace through easygoing activities, mutual interests, superficial activities but I have learned the #1 way to make a person hate me is to depend on them for anything emotional, financial or material. That's seeking PARENTS when friends are just people who enjoy your company.

I get and have got a lot out of having a job, volunteering, doing things in society under my own stream. I am lucky I grew up before the internet so I know how to create in the real world, I don't know what I would do if I could only communicate or believe in things I saw on the internet as I have seen many young people live like that. I dont know how old you are but I encourage you to really work on developing real world social skills and hang out with old people, they LOVE company and most times are ignored and neglected and being around them can teach a lot of how to interact with other people.

Then, "don't be sad"....HA HA HA!!!! But, you have to learn what makes you sad, you have to grieve it, let it go and come to terms with reality so that you can be well adjusted, satisfied and/or happy from time to time. But literally being sad and angry and/or numb feels bad. So find what feels good, in the heart, not just distraction from internal pain but true happiness, and try to bring that into your life as often as possible while dealing with all the other stuff.

Decide or research or think about where you want to go. Do you want to move away from your family? Do you want to have your toxic relationships under control? Will you stay around them forever? Do you hope that one day they will change? Are you actually quite similar to them and accept wierd robotic relationships? I say this because I have developed a friendship with one Aunty, my mother's sister but it's not a true friendship, I would bet money she's autistic based on her behaviour and she plays the denial game too. I am fairly fake to her, I accept that she's only there when she wants/needs my company, I see her as the best developed flower off the crappy tree that is HER family, and I study her to learn more about what my mother is and could be.

Then, you need to fill the hours of your life with stuff. What stuff? I dont know, whatever it is that makes you contented/not-sad/moving forward/going places. Once upon a time I thought all "successful" people were happy. They aren't happy, most successful people spend a lot of time woking/being stressed/being responsible and they take happiness in small doses. My quest to be HAPPY was due to being a sad kid and my mum always saying, BE HAPPY. It was another one of her delusions, lies, denials of reality so in my life I am careful to avoid the fake high of HAPPINESS and to seek CONTENTMENT AND SATISFACTION.

Do you have toxic shame based on the family situation/mental health? Try to remove that from your life. I had a friend who was a very simple bloke, very obviously disabled and he was as happy as larry outside, and very adept with social skills, although he would confide some stresses to me sometimes. He taught me to always be nice and kind and decent around other people, which allows both of us a break from our internal mindscape. Our real life friendship is over due to moving on to different locations and he loves to drink, I don't drink at all but we chat on the phone from time to time and he taught me to not dump problems on other people, to just be there for them and with them despite any stress going on. I love that man he is so well adjusted to his life although he still gets cruelly mocked sometimes due to his disability status.

Anyway I have to move on with the day but I encourage you to fight for yourself and LEARN like in primary school how to fit in with the outside world. I see it as relatively simple after many years of struggle - inside world/mothers family/known habits are narcissistic, self serving tricks and habits which don't work unless I am trying to get money off my rich parents (the family culture).

My mother has never given me a cent, she wastes all her money on food and smokes. So, I had to learn how to be humble and earn my money in society, be "normal" and able to hold down a job, even if I get sacked constantly. I have broken the cycle of domestic violence and self abuse, she's trapped in the mirror of her narcissistic/autistic father's abuse of her and she will never grow up, never evolve, never change. She has a handful of druggie friends who believe her victimhood and, that's her life.

I had the same life when I was 20-25 and it resulted in suicidality, for me evolution and growth was the only way forward to step out of the shadows of my mothers horror movie of a life that she had and gave to me, and my brothers....if you have siblings what are they like compared to you? One brother of mine is broken, the other is a monster like his mother and father. I talk to the broken one hes my best friend, I don't talk to Monster 2.0 I await the day to hear he's gone to gaol and I will celebrate that he's been caught and punished for a litany of antisocial behaviours that are applauded by our mother.

Last but not least I have come to terms with the full story, it echoes around my head as a horror movie but, I think I escaped the horror movie and I know 3 people who are helping the villain as the movie plays on repeat. Those 3 people are my immediate family, they have money but they have absolutely nothing else and I do not want their lives. My life is very hard but at least it's not evil, nor taking money from evil, nor dishonestly manipulating money from evil.

My life has turned around from being a product of evil, a selfish fairly useless person into a life I used to dream of when I was young. Healthy food, healthy mind, fairly healthy body all things considered, honest relationships, trusted and respected by amazing people whom I trust and respect also. I am far from perfect but I take responsibility for anything I need to and I constantly try to overcome my own weaknesses. I advocate FOR children's rights, mental health rights, gender equality/respect between all genders and this helps me prove in my mind I am not the same as my horrible family.

Re above I don't get ANGRY and complain about injustice, its more helpful to be STRONG and positively recommend change. Call out abuse, help people such as writing quality messages to you and others on SANE, look after my local environment, etc. The victim complex is the most disempowering thing you can let into your life, that everything is someone elses' fault and you are an innocent baby in a world thats ripped you off. IF the world has ripped you off, fix it up then be a better person that makes things fair, right, true and strong.

A very small example of that related to family was recently I had to broadcast some family news. I wrote in my text message to all of them...

"(Birthday) is coming up for (Person A) on (date). Please be sure to phone, text, send a card, write a letter. Remember that (person A) has a toxic outlook on life but if you just ignore their toxicity and talk about normal things they too will talk about normal things with you, if you lead the conversation. Dont forget, their toxicity is due to unnaddressed trauma and that if (Person B) had advocated for healing the trauma instead of (denial behaviour), this person would have a different life. Please do not discriminate nor shun (Person A) due to the ignorance and denial of (Person B) whom has never addressed their own trauma although we hope that one day (Person B) may see the benefit of change and take responsiblity for their life. This day is not about (Person B), please celebrate this day for (Person A) whom is a person who like any other deserves respect and happiness on their birthday. With love from (Myself).

That message allowed me to advocate for Person A while highlighting that Person B will try to ruin the day and also underline that Person B needs to face their issues. I will never win but, at least I am not helping Person B with their toxic victim complex that includes bullying Person A.

Anyway I must go. Stand up for yourself fairly, grow yourself like training a dog, and make a strong decision if you follow in the footsteps of the Family you will end up like them, or you have to break the cycle in order to not be like them.

And when nostalgic thoughts or hopes of being loved by them I just replay every single horrible thing they did to me over my life. Voila I snap out of it and think, phew, I could have been dead and at least I'm not dead, they never loved me and they never will so stop yearning for something that doesn't exist. Then, I can have a reality check and keep doing what I need to do for my own life.

All the best take care and stay in control of YOURSELF.

@Sugarshack thank you for your response.

It sounds like you had a very difficult family situation. I was also put under a lot of pressure to date abusive wealthy men because I was too much of a burden on the family otherwise. The type of men who want to turn an adult child into their dream partner have a very dangerous definition of what a 'dream partner' is. Your mother risked your safety by doing this to you and I'm glad you are away from her influence.

I also thought my parents were perfect all throughout childhood and teen years. I was overloaded by shame by being so horrible when they were so perfect. Yet at the same time, it is like I knew there was something wrong with how they treated me, because I went to a lot of trouble to hide their behaviour from teachers and mental health professionals. It was like I knew the truth without knowing I knew.

I don't know how to stop being angry and hurt. I know how to supress those emotions but not how to truly heal.

I do want friendships which involve mutual emotional support. I try to be careful not to depend on anyone too much, but I tend to obsess over people very easily.

I have had a really hard time finding work and volunteer work. I am working very part time right now and I have done a lot of volunteer work in the past. The only volunteer work that is willing to give me a go tends to have a lot of physical demands, and I have invisible mobility issues that make the expectations impossible. It seems all unpaid work expects either physical fitness or a different set of social skills to what I have. I think working and volunteer work would really help my mental health, but I have very limited opportunities for those until I get better. I have a theory that my mobility issues have been caused by developmental trauma, so I think they could get better if my mental health got better.

I don't think my family will ever change. I had hopes for one family member who I used to be really close to, but I find she keeps pushing me to break boundaries with my parents. I'm very sad about losing the relationship with her, but I think I need the same boundaries with her as my parents, because she just keeps pushing and refuses to acknowledge why I would ever need boundaries with them. The plan is to be low contact with most of my family (some have been no contact for a while too). Every family member over the age of 8 is toxic for me, so I'll baby sit the little ones and I'm there for their big moments. All the adults I keep at a friendly distance, just occasional contact without sharing anything personal about myself. I'm hoping I'll always have some contact, as I think that is better for everyone. I feel I'm always having to be on the lookout for manipulative behaviour and creating more distance after every incident. Distance does seem to keep things respectful, but it has been so much work maintaining boundaries with them. They don't make it easy. I hate being fake, but I've accepted that this is the only way I can have them in my life without things being toxic.

Oh. 'be happy', was code in my family for "be toxic in the exact same way as we are'. I strive to be real rather than "happy". Being real provides a more selective but also genuine type of happiness.

I have had a lot of toxic shame, but I feel like I am moving through that now.