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I was almost homeless and the trauma it caused

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This is a long story, but, here we go. During the summer last year, my mom told me I could see a friend after a long time of not seen by people and being stuck in the house during the lock down. It may not have been a good idea health-wise, but my mental health was getting worse and worse due to being stuck in the house and not interacting with people. She said I had to mow the grass that day, and later in the day when I was about to start, the battery for the mower needed charged. It would have taken it a while to charge, and I told her I might not get it done before he comes over, and she said “well I guess he’s not coming over then”. I got super mad and threw the weed wacker I was carrying onto the ground and started yelling at her. I know it sounds extreme, but you have to understand how I felt in the moment. It had been SO long since I had seen any of my friends or just anyone in general other than my mom in person, and it was starting to take a tole on my mental health. The fact that she just said “no” made me freak out and made me feel like I would have to wait even longer to ever see anyone again. She then decided to kick me out and I had to live with my dad for a while.

One day my dad told me that he was letting my mom visit me and, at the time, I didn’t want to talk to her. I told him how I felt, and he said I need to see her anyway. He got defensive of her, and said that my mom was nothing but good to me and that I was in the wrong. I then tried to say something to him, but he interrupted and said, ironically, “don’t interrupt me” I interrupted him and said I didn’t do that, and he was like “there see you just did it again” and it pissed me off so much I banged my fist in his wall and banged on one of his doors. He then told me to get out and I quickly grabbed my phone and charger and he grabbed me and tried to force me out of his house. He then left me to wander the streets. My phone was at 1% and I was having trouble getting reception, so I couldn’t even call my grandparents for help.

I was wandering the street for hours. I was crying, my feet ached, and was wondering what was next for my life, as well as where I was going to sleep that night. I seriously thought that I would be homeless for the rest of my life. I thought it was over. But somehow my parents found me (I still don’t know how that happened) and they took me to a halfway house-type place (I don’t know what they’re actually called) Nowadays I’m living with my mom again, but the trauma still haunts me. I know I may have technically never been homeless, but the fact that I seriously thought I would be is still giving me shivers to this day.

I also have OCD, and I’m trying to not acknowledge this incident as much as possible. If I ever mention it I consider the day I mentioned it a day I can’t acknowledge in the future. My brain is telling me to do this. I also can’t look at people when talking to them because a part of their hair might have grown on a day I can’t acknowledge and that would be connected to my trauma. I literally just want my life to be normal again and not have to think about this so much.

I just want to know, if any of you have dealt with something like this. How did you learn to accept that this happened to you, if you ever did? I seriously just need people to tell me they’ve been there before and that it’ll be okay. That would honestly be so comforting and I wouldn’t feel alone. And I know it sounds like I have anger issues, but I just feel like both my parents have mistreated me a lot in the past and I always felt like I had little power over what they did to me. That’s all, thanks for reading if you did.
 
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I just want to know, if any of you have dealt with something like this. How did you learn to accept that this happened to you, if you ever did? I seriously just need people to tell me they’ve been there before and that it’ll be okay. That would honestly be so comforting and I wouldn’t feel alone. And I know it sounds like I have anger issues, but I just feel like both my parents have mistreated me a lot in the past and I always felt like I had little power over what they did to me. That’s all, thanks for reading if you did.

To be honest, this isn’t reading like PTSD, to me.

It IS however, durn near identical to many many many of my ex boyfriend’s (and his friends) experiences, when his OCD gets exacerbated by stress+emotion. It’s like the day/event gets sort of “locked” in place… creating a black hole type of situation, massive gravity storm, or whirlpool… of symptoms, and worsening symptoms, and avoidance, and ritual.

Some of his OCD tricks really helped me out with my PTSD + ADHD stuff, but sadly most of my PTSD tricks usually just made his OCD worse.

Do you have a therapist that you work with your OCD with?

I understand the innate difficulty of doing so, if any mention of that day sucks this day into it… but my ex had amaaaaaazing results once he started working wih a pro, with both big CapT Traumas (Rape, Murder, Assault), and the incrediably painful events his OCD made “worse” than what sounds objectively worse (just the bare mention / flicker of thought about his getting kicked out of home as a teenager for not cutting his hair could send him into weeks of suicidal psychosis, before he started working with a therapist). Within just a few months, that was brought down to 3 days of inconsolable crying. And within a year he’d just snort and cock an eyebrow and move on. He said the link wasn’t entirely gone, but he could “flick it”and stop the dominos from ticking over.

His personal descriptions of the process was that it was like a black hole, that changed to swimming against the current, that changed to attempting to stop the dominos (from the movie Robots, that starts out small and grows into a tidal wave) after they’d already started, to being able to just use one finger to “flick” the cord leading to the first row of dominos.
 
First of all, I just want to say that I am sorry for the extremely dismissive behavior in both of your parents. This type of abuse is so subtle that you will question on whether or not it actually is abuse. The way she acted as you explained is "she asked you to mow that day" which does NOT entail an ultimatum "mow before your friend comes over or they can't visit you at all". That is low key gaslighting aka mental abuse. And then when you described yourself exploding sounded an awful lot like emotional dysregulation. (I recommend thecrappychildhoodfairy's YouTube channel on dysregulation for info) And emotional dysregulation is something happens from what I've researched in dysfunctional homes. This is the type of emotional abuse I experienced, among other types, all throughout my childhood.

My parents never validated how I felt, nor they comfort me. They would leave me emotionally abandoned in tiny situations such as yours, left o drown in my over or under reaction to things AND then blame me for they I reacted, never owning up to how they pushed the right buttons to get a particular response from me. This programmed my brain a specific way. I have a long history of mental illness and family trauma so I am susceptible to PTSD. These subtle mind manipulating ways was how I was raised. It made me OCD, gave me anxiety, depression as my body was programmed to be hypervigollant and on alert ALL OF THE TIME. The expression I use is "walking on eggshells.

If this has been a current theme throughout your life, it may be time to evaluate some key points in trauma therapy - Complex PTSD, internal family systems, pathological narcissism or at least narcissistic tendencies in your internal family system. I also see a similarity with you that makes me think that you may not have a full understanding of the way in which you are being subtly bused. It was important for me to find psycho educational videos and articles from licensed therapists and survivors about their experiences to give me actual words and language to understand and describe verbally that what was going through was actually abuse. Abuse comes from many different angles, the people you know or love and from yourself. It's important to examine relationships with someone who can tell you what a mentally healthy way of going through a situation is and comparing to your reality to kind of gain a bigger perspective. These have all been helpful tools for me. If you are interested in more YouTube recommendations, I have a handful that I'd love to share if you're interested. Good luck to ya.
 
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