Other Interpersonal relationships completely broken.

[Weemie]

When I was a teenager (14) I was diagnosed with inhibited RAD (now just RAD in the DSM-5). I was trafficked into armed violence and sex slavery at 8 until I was almost 13. I operated firearms and hurt people but my RAD was caused in infancy as my mother had post-partum depression until I was 6-7 and would routinely smother me every time I cried and kept me locked in a room with my own excrement, didn't clean me or feed me or take care of me, routinely starved me, and I had severe bronchitis and medical neglect due to her bombing the apartment with RAID.

Our relationship is much better now and I have forgiven her for these things, as she got over her PPD and was not violent or abusive toward me at all since I was a little kid, and she has taken responsibility and apologized for her past behavior. But it does no good to deny the reality that RAD is caused by mistreatment in infancy and that was the origin.

The gang involvement almost certainly did not help and resulted in a significant brain injury as well. My impulse control is shit and I have an explosive temper, but my TBI occurred in the back of my brain, though it's possible I have more than one TBI and multiple concussions. The temper could just be me, or it could be a result of shock (I was present during/carried out firebombings and explosions, I've been hit in the head many, many times, I don't even remember how many times I lost consciousness.)

I have severe ADHD and impulse control issues, and my therapist has confirmed that at least at one point I met the diagnostic criteria for ASPD (this is common in RAD kids, usually they end up meeting the dx crit for a cluster B personality disorder at some point) as I have a history of criminality (theft, assault, stalking, hacking) and affective empathy challenges. I would watch people die with zero care, and I didn't understand why other people cared about things.

When I first came up here someone choked to death in front of me and I performed CPR on them until the nurses and fire dept got there (which was like 2 minutes since it was in the hospital). I also responded to someone ODing at the ferry terminal where I also responded for much longer until the EMS came with narcan. But I didn't give a shit either way. The 2nd guy Patrick I knew by name. Didn't even faze me at all, I was digging the vomit out of his mouth with my fingers.

I broke a dude's finger on the bus, didn't care. He was harassing me and following me around. I shouldn't have physically harmed him and I can understand that, but emotionally, I don't give a shit and still don't. I was also in a bar fight with four guys. This is starting to change and I'm starting to have more of an awareness of what being a human being really "means" and why people deserve compassion and why the ways that I harmed others was so egregiously wrong and how much I really hurt them and what it means to die. So while I am making progress on one hand, on the other I'm still getting into shit.

Most babies don't develop RAD, it's something like less than 1% of the most severely neglected kids will develop it, but my family is riddled with personality disorders and mental illness (BPD, NPD, schizophrenia, and there was a point of incest [as in, a child of incest, which I presume caused genetic anomalies] as well.) So I got the dumb ass luck, and even though it's a disorder of childhood, as an adult I essentially am completely stagnant without any human connections and I don't see any possibility of this getting any better.

I can't imagine that these issues haven't persisted into adulthood and affected my ability to form human connections and with all that has happened to me, I often struggle to believe I am worth the title of "human" at all.

I'm 31 years old and I've been in 1 relationship which did not work because I had no ability to be affectionate in any capacity and would routinely go weeks without speaking to him. I was not abusive but I was extremely distant and would become uncomfortable every time he expressed emotions to me. I have struggled with being abusive in the past, if anyone made noise or clinked dishes or stepped too heavily I would lose it and yell at them. The few times I have voluntarily had sex it was within kink spaces and I refused to allow anyone to touch me. I didn't even remove my clothes.

I have ZERO IRL friends. I barely leave my room. I can't hold a job.

I am feel broken beyond repair. I have no capacity to be intimate in any way, emotionally or sexually, and I probably never will. I don't even know why I'm posting this. I have started to recover some emotional function since 30, due to psilocybin and DXM therapy, but it is nowhere near approaching normal. I never cried until I was 30. For the most part I feel flat and empty, interspersed by periods of absolute insanity and crying like an infant, literal wailing. I'm fractured into probably thousands of pieces on the inside.

When my mom dies I will be homeless since I have no capacity to help myself in any way and I can't get a job. I've tried hard to work over and over again and I just can't stick with it because every time I speak to a customer (I was not able to graduate high school due to my TBI and learning disabilities so the only jobs I am qualified for are menial labor which I can't do because of my chronic physical disabilities or customer service/call center) I want to kill them and then kill myself. I would make mistakes constantly at work because I couldn't focus. I would have flashbacks in the corner in the bathroom or just fail to respond to anything like I was having a seizure, but I think it was just dissociation.

I'm trying so hard not to be a victim and with my medication regimen and therapy regimen I'm starting to be able to do chores and go outside and talk to my mom and have an actual connection with her, and enjoy TV shows and stuff, but is that all my life is going to be? What happens when she dies and I have literally no one because I am too broken and stupid to make friends and work and be an adult? My therapists say how functional I am and how rare and amazing it is that I'm capable of holding conversations and how self-aware I am but when my mom dies I will be just like every other kid like me, I will be on the street probably addicted to crack again.

I wish I wasn't so f*cked up. I'm sorry for going on and on and on about this. Just feeling sorry for myself today. Sometimes this all seems so insurmountable and so huge and I'm just one guy, and I don't think I have the resources or capacity to truly heal from this. I'm just not smart enough, I just don't have enough neurological capacity. I guess just wondering if anyone can relate. Because not only do I have PTSD and trauma but I have no capacity for human relationships and I have a history of hurting people. Do I even deserve human connections? Probably not. I don't know.

Anyway, I'm sorry, jeez. I should have probably just posted this in my diary, lmao.

 

[Movingforward10]

Everything you have written shows you have intelligence, empathy, sense of reflection, desire to be and find you, desire to grow, determination, strength, and so many other qualities that I hope you see.

Everything that you have been through, it's easy to see how relationships have their challenges.

Whether you're feeling sorry for yourself Or whether you're feeling the weight of all the wrongs that have happened to you, you're allowed to? It's ok to have these times. No need to apologise.

You are just one guy. But a pretty impressive one.

 

[arfie]

gentle empathy, weemie. as a 68 year old child sex trafficking survivor, i still feel hopelessly broken and don't ever expect to be fully repaired, but there is still plenty of joys to find in between the broken parts. hopelessly broken, yes. living hopelessly? ? ? i have choices on that part.

steadying support while you find your way through.

 

[Freida]

Everything you have written shows you have intelligence, empathy, sense of reflection, desire to be and find you, desire to grow, determination, strength, and so many other qualities that I hope you see.

this. So much this ^^^^^

yes, you are a bit of a dumpster fire right now. But instead of just letting the fire rage you are actively looking for a fire extinguisher to put it out. That is huge, huge, huge, especially considering all the crap that has happened to you since your first day here on earth. Most people couldn't survive half of what you did and still want to try to be a better person, and yet you keep showing up for yourself.

Just the fact that you are working as hard as you are shows that you can feel. Those feelings are just hidden away somewhere, like they are in so many of us. But they are there.

As for human connections.... well... uhmmmm I think we, here on the island, all count as human right?
So that means you are already practicing with humans who understand where you are coming from. Who you can try out different ways of interacting without very little risk. Yes, you may piss people off here and there but that's a GOOD thing. Because it lets you practice anger management AND conflict resolution. All the things you never had an opportunity to learn

I'm sorry for going on and on and on about this. Just feeling sorry for myself today.

Stop apologizing! Because one thing I've finally gotten thru my thick head is that pity parties and feeling sorry for ourselves is how we learn to feel!!!!! They are a necessary part of our growth. We have to learn to feel for ourselves before we can feel for others. Some of us just never learned that along the way.
One thing hubby told me a long time ago was that I waste more energy whining about whining than I do whining about the real life traumas I'm trying to get past

So lets make a deal. If I think you are stuck in a pity party I'll tell you, because I know its something you worry about. And if you see me stuck in that place you will do the same for me.

Whatcha think?

 

[coraxxx]

I’m sorry to read all this it’s immense. I do relate in certain aspects—the coldness, the not giving a f*ck. Bear with me, morally I do give a lot of f*cks because I abide, but it’s much more on the cognitive aspect than the "heartfelt" one, or at least most of the time. It’s been better now but it feels a bit like a lottery sometimes. I don’t struggle to study but I do struggle to work, most of the time because I’m not stable enough to do all the hours and remaining sane. I am very wary of snapping and it did previously happen. Now I do feel like I still am a menace even though it’s not quite been the case, and that it certainly isn’t anymore.

What do you want to do? Do you want to work on actionable stuff that would make you more or less able to look after yourself? Could driving yourself towards that and try to land a position where you can do something quiet and not too exposed to triggers be feasible for you? Like not necessarily with a full-on job right away but interposing with occasional volunteering and doing stuff bit by bit while you’re getting more grasp on human connections?

I don’t know you on a day-to-day, physical connective basis so it’s pretty difficult to gauge, but it might be the case that you feel like you’re much worse than you actually are. Maybe you feel like you’re gonna murder your team mates. I do have intrusions like that. Then I feel horrible and feel like I should throw myself under the bus. With all magnitudes taken in account, how to you assess how that look externally? If you don’t act on those, it still sucks for you but it’s not as if it made you be undeserving and not allowed to be in places. As long as you abide, even if in the past you’ve been into criminality, you abide. What happens inside your head is none of their business. But I understand the hard flashback and volatile nature of these feelings, especially when they are intruding into total emotional flatness, is very hard to manage. It feels like everything is court-circuiting and ready to catch fire. However, all that might happen but you just sitting still and quiet, which is okay even if not productive in the capitalistic sense.

To me you really do not seem like someone devoid of human connection and understanding. What you might not feel, you manage to think. Now it doesn’t make it any easier because it’s like our most precious guidance system, our feelings, are just f*cking broken. No antennas to make you sense what’s going on and foresee people’s reactions, it’s all on verbal and formal cues that people typically won’t give you. I have no communication problems in environments where high verbal and logical skills are needed, but f*cking hell do I struggle with people who aren’t so much into logic. They think I’m a calculating bitch who would strangle them in a corridor or something. Now I know can be very intimidating. (I also don’t blink and have been called a psychopath more than once for all the wrong reasons).

There might in fact be things that will be very different about you. It might be that you won’t be able to be that intimate with someone on any level—is that something you do want? Because it’s also okay not to want it. It doesn’t make you less human. It doesn’t make you not deserving care and respect. It does not make you not deserve human connection. All beings are entitled to connection.

Also, even not giving a f*ck, you still did save these people. To me it doesn’t look like it’s not giving a f*ck. Many people who like to gargle in their Big Emotions® and "pray" for the victims of the disasters they hope will never happen to them, they would just coward away, not move a single inch to help even when it would cost them nothing. And also all those that are pretty normal, but also do coward away. Having Feelings doesn’t make someone right or more deserving. So as it might be an effect of that emotional flatline that is so eerie for people and quite uncomfortable on the day to day, it still did save two people’s lives.

I do appreciate about you Weems that you took the strong decision not to cause harm. Given the severity of your PTSD and the rest, it’s not nothing. It is visible that you have decided to enforce it in the most courageous way, because fighting against the aftermath of decades of extreme violence isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a very different attitude than the one of many people I’ve seen around, and it is a very positive one. Human or not, it is huge. If it’s extraterrestrial, then I’d like more humans to get that.

One foot in front of the other and slowly, getting somewhere. Perhaps not "there" as a distant goal of being the idea of what should be human (something I’m not too sure what it could even mean to be honest), but just finding your way into some kind of comfort and decent safety. Then growing from there. You already did so much. In a few years you’re reconnecting with all the emotions you had to bury in some remote place of your brain. In a few years, you’re regaining function and although it might seem very basic or even laughable, considering from where you started it’s very huge. And it’s positive because it shows that yes, you do have the capacity, and yes, you’re f*cked up but you can reach something okay for you. It is at your reach.

It will not look like a picture perfect grotesque family with a damn golden retriever and green grass, but there is a Weemie way for you in this world and it certainly is one of the many, diverse, strange, enchanting human ways. <3

 

[Weemie]

and so many other qualities that I hope you see.

Not today. But thank you so much. You n everyone else here have shown me a great deal of kindness.

i still feel hopelessly broken and don't ever expect to be fully repaired, but there is still plenty of joys to find in between the broken parts. hopelessly broken, yes. living hopelessly? ? ? i have choices on that part.

I'm really sorry to hear you have endured this too. You make a good point ab living. Some days I feel like I can get there and see that I've made a lot of progress and attained a level of functionality that even though I'm not able to be independent is still abnormal. But then u know other times u get stuck in all the things u can't do.

Ppl say there's no such thing as hopeless but that's not true. When I was at RD I heard a psychiatrist say under his breath "this place is hopeless." He had just seen a child stab one of his workers. Bcuz that's what us kids were like. This like little kid just going psychotic.

(I just don't want to make a million posts so I'm just adding extra thinky thoughts here, not as a reply 2 u, but sorry u both have to read it....and....*ahem* sorry for... uh... being....sorry..... >___> lmao. )

Spoiler

I attacked one of my workers too. I didn't mean to. I was just in the shit. The last time I was in the ER a guard pushed me and I nearly beat him to death. I managed to stay perfectly still and not move. A lady pushed me outside and I had to stop myself from kneecapping her and breaking both her knees. I stopped but that impulse was very strong.

I went thru a program as a kid designed to deprogram u from that and I am in forensic therapy now and for the most part it has worked but I have a couple of assaults as an adult. So sometimes it's like should I just kms before I hurt someone again? And this is kinda stupid bcuz I'm like, I'm sad that I'm a dickhead when other ppl suffer bcuz of me so like, I get how frustrating that is to hear the self-pity and that stuff was so common on the people who hurt me too and so f*cking annoying.

Spoiler

You know those dudes who rape you and then cry about it, LMAO.

And how much do I even belong in spaces like this when I am a violent offender myself? Both Ts say that label does not fit me but it is difficult to see myself otherwise u know?

Most people couldn't survive half of what you did and still want to try to be a better person, and yet you keep showing up for yourself.

My capacity for destruction, which I don't want to be like that. And I don't think that it serves a point. Everything that I went thru as a kid? Was f*cking pointless. It was senseless and violent and brutal and disgusting and worthless. All the crack and meth and pills and death and rape and shootings and violence and fires and jail time. I avoided jail thankfully. But most of these mfs are in prison now.

If someone looks at me too long or watches me or laughs at me or whatever I get so destructive. And I don't want people to be afraid of me but the truth is that I can be scary. And I'm not trying to be a hard ass or a tough guy. But you know when u seen as many people die as I have and done as many things as I have. The meaning behind things is just lost. How many times can u see it happen before it just loses all meaning, and because death stopped having a meaning for me that thing that makes you human, when human life is lost and that is supposed to matter.

And in therapy the big thing is to avoid reinforcing those pathways for violence which is why u get all these assholes who brag about it and who relive it and fire those pathways again and again. So I try not to but the allure to be like yeah I beat the shit out of this guy, too, which is stupid. It's stupid. And like of course I obviously can't make human connections because normal human beings aren't like this. Normal people who are socialized correctly and who have a normal range of human emotions, don't act like that.

As for human connections.... well... uhmmmm I think we, here on the island, all count as human right?

Yall don't know how much I appreciate u fr. I know I'm not that great at expressing gratitude (that would be EmOtIoNs...) but having somewhere to put my shit and people show up and respond and stuff is incredibly kind. It's hard to see myself as anything but a monster some days but even still u guys talk to me and at least there is something there, because I spend a lot of time alone, and feeling disconnected. And as crazy as I am u still show up n that means more than I can express.

One thing hubby told me a long time ago was that I waste more energy whining about whining than I do whining about the real life traumas I'm trying to get past

Oh brother I feel u on this one. It just feels so to me, my own stuff, self-indulgent or like, because a lot of my trauma is literally because I've hurt people, how stupid that actually is if I were ever faced with one of my victims (T keeps saying I shouldn't really use this word but...I don't know, I don't know what else to call it? Co-victims I guess, but that ignores the hierarchy which is that they were completely powerless and they were being hurt and injured and I wasn't.) That they would be offended that I even claim I have PTSD.

If I think you are stuck in a pity party I'll tell you, because I know its something you worry about. And if you see me stuck in that place you will do the same for me.

We'll play whack-a-mole

I don’t know you on a day-to-day, physical connective basis so it’s pretty difficult to gauge, but it might be the case that you feel like you’re much worse than you actually are. Maybe you feel like you’re gonna murder your team mates.

God yes. Pretty f*ckin much this. The violence is still something that lives in me and I don't think it will ever really leave me. I mean not only am I so broken emotionally but there is that ANTI-social stuff too, literally antisocial, beyond the capacity for sociality. Like I'm a feral kid, that's what it all means, I was literally feral. To the point that they diagnosed me with Feral Person Disorder. And I still feel feral as an adult like I'm not able to be socialized.

So as it might be an effect of that emotional flatline that is so eerie for people and quite uncomfortable on the day to day, it still did save two people’s lives.

Oh don't give me too much credit!!! The lady who choked, died n the other guy, I honestly didn't know wtf I was doing. It was before I got my CPR certification so I was literally copying shit I had seen on TV and digging vomit out of his mouth. The paramedic I still remember her name, she listened to me though. The security guard was arguing with me it was a heart attack and I was like who f*cking cares! Call 911!!!! Bc I had told him to call 911 and get narcan bc I knew him and he was a user.

(I also don’t blink and have been called a psychopath more than once for all the wrong reasons).

Oh boy, the sociopath stare. I have this too. Snorf.

I do appreciate about you Weems that you took the strong decision not to cause harm. Given the severity of your PTSD and the rest, it’s not nothing.

I really want ppl to know that as messed up as I am I don't want to be like this. I don't want to harm people, even when sometimes I do want to hurt them, as evidenced above, I don't want to be a person who wants that or who leans into that. I was harmed by people who enjoyed suffering and violence and I don't want to be like them. They enjoyed making people afraid and cowering and mocking them. I don't want that.

What do you want to do? Do you want to work on actionable stuff that would make you more or less able to look after yourself? Could driving yourself towards that and try to land a position where you can do something quiet and not too exposed to triggers be feasible for you?

I'm honestly not sure and I know that does tip into self-pity because I'm just like wahhhh and not doing anything to help myself. I would love to be able to live independently and have some form of income just so that I know I'm not going to die in the streets or, more probably, give Roy a call and just sell myself into prostitution again. Because realistically that's what will happen when I get the call that I'm on my own.

 

[coraxxx]

I'm honestly not sure and I know that does tip into self-pity because I'm just like wahhhh and not doing anything to help myself. I would love to be able to live independently and have some form of income just so that I know I'm not going to die in the streets or, more probably, give Roy a call and just sell myself into prostitution again. Because realistically that's what will happen when I get the call that I'm on my own.

It’s more than okay to have some self-pity and you don’t have to help yourself every single little second. Feeling the feels, feeling embarrassed, sad, scared, that’s also part of the experience and it’s understandable that you feel that way. The shit is real. It’s not absurd or embarrassing to feel that way. It’s hard not to future trip especially when we know there is a real possibility of not going through if we don’t put the work on it. But you’re doing it and right now there is no reason that you get the call of being on your own, and probably until that happens you will be better equipped to face that issue.

And with you on the realistic considerations. I’m quite fed up hearing most advice about self sabotage, the kind of the one that states that basically we shouldn’t be listening to self-defeating voices and just brace ourselves and hope for the best. I am a functional optimist in the sense I do know that if I don’t put the work on the things I want to see happen, well it’s likely it won’t happen. And it’s not being perfectionist or obsessive to work my ass out and do my best in order to get things better and prevent things from being worse. It’s not self-sabotaging, it’s just plain stressful. But I also want to avoid future tripping and wasting the energy I don’t have, and sometimes the lines between being really triggered and future tripping or just reasonably worried are quite blurred. So... in that situation feeling sorry for myself, plainly and unapologically, that doesn’t seem so unreasonable to me. You are allowed to have that space too. There is nothing to be sorry about, it really sucks feeling that way and it’s all understandable.

I’m sad to hear that one of the persons couldn’t make it; however you tried. Someone else might not. Even you not knowing you tried. That was my point in my message because for me this show that at some level you do care.

 

[arfie]

Ppl say there's no such thing as hopeless but that's not true.

i believe in hopeless parts, but just parts. radical acceptance of the hopeless parts leaves me far more energy to focus on the hopeful parts.

 

[Weemie]

Really thank you all guys for responding, I appreciate it immensely.

 

[Renly]

I’m low on words (my brain is currently broken), but I just want you to know I see you and hear you and you DO belong here.

Baby steps.

Sounds like you’ve already come such a long way in your recovery. Sometimes I look too far down into the future and I get so scared and overwhelmed at how huge the goal is. It’s immobilizing. But I remind myself it’s really just one small bite size chunk at a time. Then things feel more manageable and realistic.

I am sorry about what happened to you. I am sorry about what you had to do to survive. I often struggle with the overwhelming feelings about “the people I had to become who I never wanted to be” in order to survive my own traumas. But, I am learning that there are no bad parts. My parts are beginning to change and grow.

Rooting for you. Holding hope for you while you are feeling hopeless. That’s a tough place to be.

 

[Weemie]

I often struggle with the overwhelming feelings about “the people I had to become who I never wanted to be” in order to survive my own traumas. But, I am learning that there are no bad parts. My parts are beginning to change and grow.

Thank u so much for ur comments. I definitely relate to this a lot. I have a lot of parts that I'm not very comfortable with that arose out of the horror and ether, but they're slowly becoming closer to me and more humanized as time passes.

One of them that I had internalized as very evil and twisted and bad (he did a lot of the dirty work) actually helped. Another one wanted a human name. I'm glad u were able to recognize that there are no bad parts of you! I struggle with that a lot.

 

[siniang]

I don't currently have the mental capacity for a proper response, but I wanted to leave a couple thoughts here, still.

Do *you* want those things?
Or do you want those things because society tells you should want those things?

And there might not be just one answer to that, either.

I have zero of your traumas and not even anything remotely similar.
I still struggle a lot with interpersonal relationships.
I clash routinely with societal expectations and what is considered "normal".

There are sides of me, though, that I genuinely hate. That I genuinely wished weren't part of who I am.

Usually I'm comfortable enough in "being me" and not giving two sh*ts about what society thinks. Usually, I have my demons in control.
Every once in a while I find myself with thoughts quite similar to yours. That there must be something fundamentally broken with me *not* even to want this. How I really must be an awful person. And whether I should make an active effort to assimilate - or whether I even deserve to be part of that society because, at the end of the day, I'd just be playing a role, I wouldn't be genuine.

What I'm trying to say is: it's ok to be very very outside the norm of what society tells us every single day how things are supposed to be. Occasionally that merely means you haven't quite yet found "your people". But, my personal experience is, they exist. They may be rare. But you're not alone. In any of this.

And, yes, I do struggle with the inherent feeling of isolation that comes with remaining true to myself. A LOT.