Nutrigirl26

I just wanted everyone to know that I have reached that moment where you look at all your hard work and finally find yourself feeling that it was all worth it instead of having to tell yourself it WILL be all worth it eventually. I was on the bus and I just started thinking about my family and how I have, for the most part, dealt with them, and how excited I am to start my new family with the most amazing man on this entire planet! We've been together for 5 years and we are completely committed, and have such a great, loving, honest, compassionate, and nurturing relationship. He is actually the one that introduced me to FDR. And let me tell you, we were going down such a dangerous path because we let our parents and our pasts speak through us and dictate our actions and irrational behavior. And don't get me wrong, it was really tough going there for a while. But we both confronted our pasts, no matter how painful and uncomfortable and we talked, and still do. We have taken so many steps to rid our lives of people who aren't virtuous and moral. That includes family, friends, and basically everyone. We pretty much only have each other. We will continue to work everyday to make our lives together, and our future children's lives, better. I know better is pretty vague, but if we have such a great relationship right now, and strive to "better" ourselves everyday, by the time our children get here, I'm going to be a wonderful mother, and he will be a wonderful father. I couldn't think of a better father, husband, or friend than him. Anyways, I know this was really mushy and all that, but I just had to express how happy I am right now and how excited I am for the future.

Yes! Thank you! That is exactly what it feels like. It pulls at the deepest parts of me it seems when someone argues against something I believe or argues for something I believe not to be true. Actually, I think it bothers me more when I know I'm right about something, but the other person thinks they are right too. I'm sure that bothers everyone though. But more to the point, yes. I feel like everything I am is being threatened and I have to fight back with every ounce of me in order to make it through. I wonder how common that feeling is. I understand what you are trying to say, I think, but I really don't see that as a possibility. I do believe that in the beginning I was offended by the generalizing nature of this conversation about women, but since those first few podcasts I listened to, I think my outlook on this entire conversation has changed drastically. I would not group myself with any of those women that you mentioned above. In fact, even looking back on myself in the previous years since childhood, I wouldn't pin myself as the type of women that Stef talks about. I hope that makes sense. Now, it does bother me that sometimes I get all tangled up in that category by people who don't know any better and I find myself trying to prove to strangers that I am one of the "good women" out there just like I am sure most of the men do too.

Thank you all for your responses. This has really helped. I have not finished RTR yet, but I am in the process of finishing up the last of the book. I have grown so much in the last years and I have worked really hard to self-reflect on all my actions and feelings. I guess the last big hurtle I have to jump over is going to be what Kevin mentioned above about how feelings and emotions cannot be manipulative. Now that I reflect more on most of my past arguments with my SO, I see that this is the biggest cause of bad communication on my part. I have to say that it is very difficult being raised with everyone telling you that anything and everything you feel and act on is justified because you are a woman and all of your actions and feelings are someone else's problem... then you have to try to fix years of programming to be irrational, you know? Not that I was ever one of those crazy girls. Honestly, I have always found it hard to become friends with other girls just because you have to sacrifice so much about yourself to "fit it". Anyways, thank you guys!

I would love some insight from an outsider (who may have personally dealt with this problem before too?) I am having trouble trusting myself and my feelings. For instance, when I listen to podcasts about how manipulative and money-grubbing women can be I find myself getting a little uncomfortable As if he were pointing me out and specifically telling me I'm a terrible human being. (I realize this is totally irrational, that's the problem) I find that I have had to talk myself down on a number of occasions by reminding myself that I am not like those women at all. I am in a wonderful, committed relationship with a good and virtuous man, and we have spent a long time together working to find reason and consistency in how we live our lives. My problem is that I am having a hard time dissociating rational feelings from irrational "crazy girl" emotions that could be manipulative on some level. I am really trying to set myself apart from all of the other women out there who manipulate their way to where they want. Has anyone else experienced this?

I agree with you that it is important to come to terms with my true feelings and not hide behind feelings I wish I had instead. I will keep at it! I appreciate all of your insight as well as all of your questions that helped me think about things in a different way than I had before. This really helped me explore myself in a way, you know? Anyways, thanks for chatting with me and all the best to you in the future.

I was responding to when you asked me to think about my feelings toward my mother. I could be reading this wrong, of course. On the other hand, I think I might be trying to avoid admitting I felt resentment for my brother when I was younger. I can say with certainty that when I got older around the time I was in high school I did not resent my brother. Once I figured out that it was me and him against our parents, all the anger I thought I felt for him was finally directed to the correct people. I find my inner child has a lot to say! haha But yes, I think I am learning to be more empathetic for my younger self and the situation I was put in.

Honestly, I can't remember how I felt back then about my mother doing that to me. I know now I just feel exasperated because I know how wrong it is, but back them I know I was really good at masking my true feelings even to myself, so I can't be sure if I felt angry or just annoyed. I would have to meditate on that myself for a while before coming to a conclusion. I really don't want to just pick an emotion you know? I would agree that I did not have the tools to deal with my emotions. And yes, I think describing it as my parents creating an environment that built an emotional wall between us is perfect. That's exactly what it feels like most of the time.

No I am saying that everyone in our house yelled all the time, so I picked up on it as a young kid and did the same thing to my brother that my parents were doing to me. That was how I felt I abused my power as the older sibling. Sorry, I know that was confusing. I remember being really frustrated at my mom more than anything when she would tell me that I need to take responsibility for my brother more than I was at him. I know I was really annoyed that he kept messing things up though. It wasn't that I was responsible for him that made me mad, it was that he knew, or at least I thought he knew, that I got in trouble when he did wrong and he wasn't trying at all to not get into trouble. If the roles had been reversed, I feel like I would have done everything in my power to stay out of trouble so he wouldn't get in trouble. Yeah I guess I have no real proof that he blames me. He's never told me he blames me or anything, I just assumed he did. I definitely think I would be able to ask him about all of this rejection that's been going on between us. In fact, I think that would be a great way to start the conversation. I am finding this conversation helpful. I have a few ideas of how to talk with him now.

I believe that truly nice women are attracted to the truly nice men. The women that are attracted to or date 20% of the men, I find them to be fairly close minded and mean because normally the 20% that they are dating have their good looks and money to get themselves in that category rather than their virtue. I find myself to be a pretty nice and honest person and I was mainly attracted to the guys who weren't arrogant or mean. I am currently in a relationship with a virtuous guy and I have never been happier. I believe this puts me in the supporting category!

I actually wasn't given many chores around the house. My childhood house was and still is a pig sty. Not hoarders or anything, just very unorganized and my parents never held cleanliness in high esteem. My mom would argue otherwise. I was held responsible for anything my brother did though. Like if he got into something around the house he shouldn't have, it was my fault for not watching him properly. Even just a year ago when I would go down to my house my mom would call me to make sure I made him something to eat as if he couldn't make it himself if he was hungry. I was blamed for a lot of the things he didn't do right and I think that may have been a big reason that I took on his abuse as my own in a sense. My mom emotionally dumping on me I think definitely made me feel like it was my responsibility, if not her's, to help him in his troubles. She would also tell me about everything bad that happened to him as well as her talking about her boss and my dad, etc. So I heard a lot about him getting picked on at school, or how my dad would treat him, or how teachers would be mean to him because he was shy. I think maybe it just broke my heart every time I heard all that stuff that I tried to fix the problems so I wouldn't have to hear about them all the time. I really do think he holds me accountable. With the amount of guilt I feel for how his childhood turned out, I can't imagine how he couldn't blame me for it. Maybe he doesn't, maybe I am just projecting here. If anything, I know he does blame me for not being there as kids. He looked up to me as the oldest and was always coming in my room begging me to play games with him or go to the park or the pool. Pretty much anything you could thing off that is mentally stimulating and fun as a kid, he constantly begged of me. Some times I would indulge him and I did have fun with him. Of course I was 4 years older than him, so by the time I started to phase out of wanting to play around all day, he was still peaking in the fun land of games and trampolines. I did feel bad when I told him I didn't want to play anything or to get out of my room. But it was like I couldn't help myself. As the years went by, he would still ask me to do things with him like play video games or watch movies or build forts, stuff like that. I remember getting so mad that I would roll my eyes and slam my bedroom door, or yell at him to go away and leave me alone. Every time I did something like that I felt like I was stabbing him in the heart, but I couldn't apologize or stop myself the next time. Granted, I grew up being yelled at so my natural response to any kind of emotion was to yell at whoever was provoking those emotions. A few years before I left the house for college, I eased up on him because I began to figure out the person I was really angry at and I felt such sympathy for him and how I treated him. Our relationship got better for a while and I tried to just make up for all the times I rejected him by being there for him. Now he's rejecting me because of his anger towards our parents, and I think that's why I am being a lot more understanding towards him than I would normally be with anyone else. When my parents got into fights, they didn't care if I was there or if my brother was there. Our vacations were absolutely terrible because they would choose to go on road trips... Yeah, not the best option for scream-o-holics. And I quickly learned that any time I wanted to be heard or respected, I had to scream or yell to get anyone's attention. It was extremely messed up. My mom would intentionally annoy me to the point where I would be screaming at the top of my lungs for her to stop whatever it was that she was doing or I'd have to physically push her out of my room. Not hard, but enough for her to leave. I wanted her to stop, not to hurt her. Basically there was a lot of yelling, all the time. My journey to self acceptance and has just begun I think. As cliche as that sounds it's totally true. Thank you for saying that, I have been trying extremely hard to get myself in the right mindset for future relationships. I haven't read Nathanial Branden's book yet, so thanks for giving me some insight that could help me.

It is absolutely possible I am taking the responsibility that I should be putting on my parents. I have tremendous amounts of guilt for my brother and the things that has happened to him as a kid. Unfortunately, I don't understand why I am feeling guilt and not another emotion that doesn't mean I am taking responsibility for his unhappiness. I am visiting my family again in about a week and I honestly feel conflicted about it. I know I want to see my mom, I know I don't want to see my dad, and I know I am nervous about seeing my brother. There are a lot of feelings that I am trying to sort out and I don't know if I will be able to sort them out for a long, long time. I think I should share that memory with him. I think that would show him that I trust him and feel I can talk to him about serious things.

Yes, I can definitely see how my apprehension to having such a deep and emotionally stimulating conversation with him might come from a place of fear of pushing him over the edge. Now that I think about it, I do feel like I am one or two steps away from having to make a pretty tough decision. Not to say that I would make the decision not to see him anymore set in stone because I realize he is young and at an extremely volatile point in his life right now and I understand the pain and anger he is feeling. And maybe I do have a slight tendency to want to be in control of this situation. Not because I actually want to control his, god knows he doesn't need another person trying to control him right now, but because I guess I am scared that he's too far gone and I want to try to make him see reason. ...Which I know I can't make him do anything, especially not if I want him to willingly be a part of my life, but I just feel so strongly about this and him that I know I am getting a bit intense with it. When we were kids, he was always picked on. By everyone. Teachers, his classmates, my friends and there are one or two instances where I watched someone physically pick on him and I was so scared I didn't do anything about it. And I know all siblings have been in situations where they had a chance to stick up for their younger or older sibling, but I didn't. And I know as a kid, I wasn't very physically able to get in the middle of him and some other bigger boy, so there wasn't much I could do, but I still think about one specific instance all the time. I mean seriously, like every time I think about where he is in his life right now, I remember standing there while he was getting hit by some other guy and it kills me. I assume that is why I have so much stock in this situation with him. I am sure you can tell, but I am just now piecing all these things together in my head. And now I feel marginally worse actually because I think a lot of it has to do with me maybe trying to "right my wrong" by overexerting myself and trying to fix his problems instead of just trying to be there for him to talk to and confide in. I guess me relinquishing control and merely being honest with him is the best way for me to get honesty from him as well.

I honestly believe my brother would listen, but act like he didn't care on the outside just to show that he's not hurting as much as he really is. Even knowing that he really does care about my feelings and his feelings on the subject, to see him act like he couldn't care less about what I would be talking to him about would hurt me so much maybe that's why I have avoided bringing it up in such an open way. Thank you so much for talking with me, I will try to get to the bottom of this as best I can.

I want to say thank all of you for everything that you've brought forward. I have actually been doing a lot to work through my childhood. I have been listening to Stef a few months shy of one year and since then I have been trying so hard mentally to process everything in the healthiest way possible. I would have touched on that but I didn't want to make the post too long. My dad is extremely emotionally, mentally and verbally abusive. He would do just loony things like when I disagreed with him one day when I was younger, he made me do hundreds of jumping jacks right where I stood in the kitchen while he sat down at the table and made himself a sandwich. Along with weird things like that, he would constantly assume that I was a bad kid. He always told me I was lying or I was hiding something from him. For example, every single year of school from elementary to my junior year of high school every day after school he would make me show him my homework for the day. When I told him we didn't have any homework that day, he'd accuse me of lying to him and would tell me to prove it to him that I didn't have any work that day. Of course, there was no way of me doing that short from calling the teacher myself, and of course... the school was closed for the day so that wasn't an option. He would put me in an impossible situation and of course I would be so frustrated and hurt and I would be crying and yelling at him "how can I prove I don't have any homework?!" and he would expect the teachers (for some reason) to send a paper home with the students telling the parents there wasn't any homework and he would always say "show me paper proof" or else I would have to stay in my room except to get dinner. And to give you an example of how he treated my mom: Back when they were in their early 20's, he signed up for the military and didn't even tell her he signed up until he was about to leave to be shipped to boot camp or whatever. He tells my mom how terrible of a mother she is and gets mad because he feels like it's me, mom, and Anthony against him. Anyways I think you get the picture. His way of doing things just never made much sense to me and I felt like I was being mind fucked constantly. I actually just recently (meaning a few months) told my dad that his influence in my life has left me nothing short of emotionally unstable and mentally traumatized. I told him that I really couldn't have a person like that in my life. Now, of course this didn't all come out as the most thoughtful and put-together speech in the world. Instead I pretty much blurted out everything I had been thinking and feeling for about a month. Of course he pretended not to understand where this was coming from and looked completely dumbfounded and showed virtually no emotion whatsoever until the end where he sort of admitted he was the reason my brother was in so much trouble. At the end of the very long conversation I told him I wouldn't have him in my life unless he took measurable advancements mentally and psychologically and even then I would have to weigh the options because I can never forget all the stuff he's done. Since then he has respected me wanting space and has not tried to contact me except once to ask if I was going to see Anthony. He has entered into therapy and the last time I went down there that day to see Anthony, he was there and I had a brief conversation with him and he was a lot better. He didn't sound demeaning, or condescending, and he didn't talk down to my mom or Anthony and not to me either. I know this doesn't change much I was just very surprised how much of a turn he took. He also started getting healthier. He has always been extremely overweight and has had a lot of medical problems which is another very important aspect of why it was so hard for me when I was a kid because I always had way too much empathy and sympathy for him because I was so afraid I would regret telling him how I felt being apart of his family for so long if he was going to die or something. He has gone from 450 lbs to just under 300! He doesn't use crutches anymore and he goes on walks every night, which I know doesn't sound like much, but I have never known him to do any kind of exercise. As for my mom and our relationship I am still on the fence about what to do in the long run. I spoke to her as well and when I told her how much it hurt me to basically become her mother and comfort her every time my dad pulled something she agreed with me and apologized and it felt genuine. I also told her how she should have been a better mother by taking care of her children and taking them away from destructive environments and that it isn't enough to just stand up for me and my brother in the moment when my dad does something she should have just removed us from the problem since we weren't able to do it ourselves. She started sobbing and I feel like there was a tiny part of her that was trying to manipulate me with her tears since she knows I am a very empathetic person and that it kills me when I see her upset. So I told her I didn't appreciate her acting a little more dramatic than the situation called for. Since then I have talked to her one other time and that time she was in a much better place mentally for the conversation. She said she really messed up and that she knew back when things began to get really bad with my dad that she had to make a choice but since she grew up without a dad for most of her life basically she knew how important a dad is to his children so she stayed. She also said the financial aspect was a big part of why she deliberately stayed with my dad despite how many times me and my brother told her to just leave him. She admitted she didn't do right by us and has been really trying to work on herself. She has given me the space I asked for and the few times when I have called her about Anthony she hasn't emotionally dumped on me like she used to which I really appreciate. I do really want her in my life and as I am going through this self learning period I am slowly figuring out that I do actually like her as a person. She has made some mistakes and I acknowledge those. I have a little more time by myself before I really decide what I want to do about her. There's some background on my parents. As for my brother, I have tried to restrain myself from telling him he's becoming like dad because he hates my dad the most in this world and I know he would completely shut down if I did and never talk to me again. Do you think that would be the best plan of action?

Let me start by saying that I am 21 and my brother is only 17 years old. He has been in and out of local police stations for the past two years and just got out of a juvenile detention center that practiced military style "teaching" as it was also a place where kids could finish high school courses if they dropped out of school prior to being thrown in there. It makes me sick every time I think about him being in there. My brother, Anthony, was always the shy quiet kid that would only say something when he felt he really needed to add something to the conversation. He was incredibly bright, he still is in my opinion, and funny as well which really made our childhoods a tiny bit more bearable. In my modest opinion, Anthony and I are very similar in that we have perfected the "humor to get out of uncomfortable situations" type thing that I know a lot of people also experience, so we have always had our humor to comfort us and find us a lot of friends. And for a long time us joking around with each other was the only thing we had and the only way that we could bond. We were never really "close" but we would try to find tiny moments to be comforted by each other. Feel free to ask any questions about that if you want. More to the point, a couple years ago he kind of lost it. He started failing all of his classes (not that I care much for public school), he began to act very much like our dad, he stopped caring about virtually everything, and he started smoking pot. Like constantly. The worst part about it for me was that I could see him slowly becoming my dad in the way he would just stare blankly at you when you tried to talk to him about serious things, the way he would just completely give up any sense of empathy, or the worst of all was the way he would talk down to, scream at, threaten and totally degrade my mother to the point where I was the only person she could actually talk to. And boy did she talk to me.... I mean for hours at a time sometimes she would just get on these rants about how dad is horrible or how Anthony is going down the "wrong path" or how her boss at work is incompetent and makes her life miserable. And I would be stuck there not being able to leave or tell her that I really don't have the emotional capacity to hold all of my crap let alone with all her crap. Anyway, off the tangent now please. So the whole pot smoking phase didn't alarm me as much as it did with my mom of course, because to her it was only about my brother breaking the law, but with me I knew why he was doing it and that was when I really tried to connect with him more so he could have someone to talk to. I know it was kind of late for me to do that, but I will admit this right up front, I was not the best sister to him. I never did anything bad to him, but I do feel like I should have been there more for him emotionally and physically. But you have to understand, everything in my brain was constantly telling me to find ways to get out of the house and away from the craziness by sleeping over at friend's houses or finding things to do at school or I even took church activities over my family. Yep that's right, we were raised Christian, imagine that. As if that didn't help my brother's insane childhood. He got into some pretty deep shit putting it mildly. He was constantly breaking parole and always going out getting stoned and coming home smelling like alcohol or wandering the streets with his friends. I got pretty worried about him when I began to notice it was escalating to the point where he was being picked up my cops or having to do summer school. Finally it came to him breaking into his high school with his friends and stealing food from the concession stands and smoking in the cafeteria. He was thrown into the detention center and I couldn't see him for close to 8 months... My brother. I wasn't allowed to see my own brother for 8 months. Now my parents were able to see him, but not me. He got out this past month and I was finally able to take off from work to go back down to my home town and see him. I brought games because games always made us happier and because he couldn't leave the house. He still had his ankle bracelet on so he was confined. And when I called him about one week prior, he sounded really excited to see me. He said, "I don't care what we do, I just want to hang with you. We could just stare at the stars for all I care, just as long as you come down". I remember that because it made me feel so happy and hopeful about forming an actual sibling relationship with him at some point down the road. So I get all excited driving down there because my mom just called me and told me Anthony keeps asking about when I was coming down. Of course when she told me he'd been up since like 6 am(that's what time his officers woke him up every day, so he just naturally wakes up that early and I didn't think about that) and has been waiting for me to get there for so long it made me feel like I failed him yet again and wasn't a good sister to him. It was around noon when my mom called and if I had thought about him waking up so early, I would have gotten there by like 9 or so. So the second I open the door he is sitting on the couch and I say hi and smile and all that and he gave me a slight grin of sorts; nothing that says he was truly happy to see me. I was a little hurt by his lack of enthusiasm but I figured he was a little upset by how late I got there. So I walked over to him and sat down on the couch next to him and tried to talk to him but he couldn't take his eyes away from his phone long enough to give me an actual greeting. He continued with this cold and indifferent sentiment virtually the entire time I was there. I asked him if he wanted to play a game with me and he said no. So I asked him if he wanted to go outside and he said no. He turned down every single one of my ideas. Finally when I asked him if he had any ideas, he sounded really annoyed and told me that there's nothing to do in the house. He sounded depressed. I was pretty understandable about his emotional state. What he was doing and how he was treating me was extremely hurtful since that's exactly the way my dad used to treat me, like he'd rather just not have me there or something. So I asked my mom if she wanted to play, hoping that if Anthony saw us playing and having a good time, he'd loosen up a bit and come join us. And there was a moment when he leaned off the couch to get a better look and his expression lightened so I asked him if he'd like to join since the game is better played with three people instead of two but he immediately leaned back in his seat and said no. Then my mom caught the disappointment on my face and asked him why I even came down if he wasn't going to interact with me. And that I came down just to see and spend time with him. Then his reply was "I don't know why she came down, she should just go home I guess." It pretty much killed me. I cried all the way home and had a very emotional conversation with my boyfriend about it as well. I was hoping for some advice on how to handle this complex "relationship", if you can call it that. I am going down to my house again in a week and I honestly don't know if I should just keep plugging away at improving our relationship or if I should just let it be for now. If anyone has a similar situation that could help me figure things out it would be most helpful. Thank you for reading all of this. It is very personal and I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me.