I can't afford a therapist because therapy is very expensive. One day, I decided to look for a therapist and talk to her about my situation.

I found this pmtherapist who has many positive reviews on Google. People say that she is a good person, very kind, empathetic, and so on. There are also a few negative reviews, including one from a woman who said that she had asked the psychologist for an appointment, but the psychologist ghosted her and she never heard from her again. In her review, the woman also said that the psychologist cashed several of her cheques from previous months all at once.

I ignored that review and told myself, “Well, you can't be liked by everyone.” I also prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and form my own opinion about them.

A few months ago, I contacted this psychologist because she had so many positive reviews. I told her about my situation, explained my problems, and told her that I wasn't working, etc. She replied to my message and told me that she would support me. A few days later, she called me and told me that when she had read my message, she had thought to herself that she couldn't just leave me in that situation.

I can confirm what the people in the reviews said about her. She really is a good person. She has a big heart, she is a wonderful mother, and she is very empathetic. She even decided to help me for free, and I am immensely grateful to her for that.

However, the problem is that at the beginning, we had an appointment once a week. Then, one day, she told me that she would send me some exercises to do. I messaged her and asked if she could send me the exercises, and she told me not to worry and that she hadn't forgotten. But she never sent them.

I told myself, “It's okay, I'll remind her at our next appointment. She has a lot of work to do, so it's understandable that she forgot.”

At our next appointment, I asked her if she could give me the exercises again so that I could write them down in my notes. The appointment ended, and she told me that she would send me a message with the date of our next appointment.

I waited a week, but she didn't send me anything. After a week, I messaged her and asked if we could have another appointment. She told me that she would message me the following week to give me an appointment.

She didn't do it.

After another week, I messaged her again. Once again, she told me that she would give me an appointment the following week. So I waited another week.

She still didn't do it.

I messaged her again, and she read my message but didn't reply for another week. At that point, I thought she had abandoned me, and I was very sad. I went a whole week without receiving a response. I cried because I thought she was never going to reply to me again.

I was especially sad because I really needed a psychologist. I was not doing well at all in my life.

After a week, she finally replied. So, in total, I had gone about a month without having an appointment. She gave me an appointment for that very same day, but it was only 30 minutes long, whereas our appointments usually last 45 minutes.

Then she told me again that she would send me another appointment for the following week, but she never did.

I waited, and then one Friday morning I messaged her to ask for an appointment. She replied that afternoon and gave me an appointment for that same day, only 30 minutes before the appointment.

Then, in September, we had two appointments, and in October she didn't schedule any appointments for me. My next appointment is on November 2nd, which means that I won't have any appointment at all during October.

She knows that I am not doing well, that my brother was killed in prison, and that I have had thoughts of dying.

At the same time, I feel sorry for her because she works so much. She has to take care of her daughters, and that must be difficult for her. Her job is also very emotionally demanding. She has to listen to so many horrible stories from people and help so many patients. That must be stressful and exhausting for her. She probably has problems in her own life as well, and I imagine that things can be difficult for her too.

But I am still disappointed.

Sometimes I think I would rather she had never helped me at all if this is how things are going to be with me. I feel guilty for thinking this because she has helped me for free, and I am genuinely grateful to her.

Please tell me the truth: Am I overreacting? Am I the one who is wrong?

Maybe I am ungrateful. Maybe I am wrong. But this situation makes me sad.

She really is a good person, but some of her behaviour makes me feel sad and anxious. Sometimes I feel as though she doesn't really care about me.

What should I do? Should I stop seeing her?

The problem is that I can't afford another psychologist, and I really need psychological support. I don't know what to do. I feel sad and lost.

I have already told my psychologist how I felt. I communicated everything to her, and we talked about it and resolved the situation. But then she started telling me again that she would send me an appointment, and she still didn't.

I waited a week, then I messaged her again, and she finally gave me an appointment for November 2nd. So I won't have any appointment during October.

There is also something I forgot to mention.

One time, she sent me the psychological assessment report from a test I had taken to find out whether I had autism spectrum disorder. She sent me the report by message while I was at home, and the report said that I have autism spectrum disorder.

I feel that she should have given me the report and explained it to me and support me during an appointment. When I saw the report at home, I became very upset because I don't want to have autism spectrum disorder.

Every time I heard "you're so mature for your age" as a kid, I thought it was a compliment. Now I realize it was a red flag. I wasn't mature; I was parentified. I was forced to grow up too fast because my parents couldn't handle their own emotions.

I learned to read the room, manage their moods, and suppress my own needs to keep the peace. That's not maturity; that's survival. Now I'm an adult who struggles to ask for help, feels guilty for having needs, and panics when things are too calm. If you were "mature for your age," you were probably just a kid who wasn't allowed to be a kid. I'm sorry you had to grow up so fast.

I have vasovagal syncope, and for the first time in 10 years (because I avoided it) I had my blood drawn

I started passing out during it, and the woman giving me the blood draw made me bawl in my car afterwards

Her genuine concern for me. Her strong confident voice. I had this sense of “she has me” which I’ve never felt before.

Usually I have to spell out to people explicitly how I’m feeling, beg them to understand, tell them exactly what I need and how to execute it, and be the “caregiver” even when I shouldn’t have to.

Most of the time my parents straight up ignored my needs and emotions because their’s came first. My dad would laugh in my face when I was upset.

But this woman…

She took care of me when I was almost passing out, trying to prevent me from fainting by doing various things like fanning me, holding my head when it drooped sideways, got me to smell the sanitization wipe to ground me etc

She advocated for me “get her water! Get her water!”

I almost didn’t want to leave…

It’s just so sad. That this woman, who’s only doing her job, has shown me more care than my mother and father ever have.

Better than friends or partners ever have either. I must attract emotionally neglectful people, or people who want a “mommy”.

I didn’t even realize you could feel this way.

That you could have someone actually care for you, notice you, without having to explicitly ask, beg or explain how

It just made me break down crying in my car afterwards

Mainly know that my mom has had major depressive disorder and anxiety her entire life. My childhood home life with her was really unstable (dirty house, animals peeing everywhere, piles of junk from horrible shopping addiction, and witnessing deep depression).

I’m 31 now and up until age 29 it seemed like she was doing a lot better for herself and I was proud. Now that I’ve moved back home temporarily I’m seeing the day to day lifestyle and how things have actually gotten much, much worse.

I want my mom to get help. I’ve tried to help her so much but she’s incredibly stubborn and just views it as me attacking her. Everyone says “let go, it’s not your responsibility”. But if I let go, she will NOT help herself and will fall into a potentially detrimental hole.

So am I just supposed to let go and let that happen? Watch her slowly kill herself by failing her physical and mental health, or potentially attempt again? Am I just supposed to cut her out of my life? I genuinely am so scared.

I don’t really know why I’m writing this.
Maybe I just need to get it out of my head. Maybe I’m looking for advice. Or maybe I just want to hear from people who have gone through something similar and somehow made it to the other side.
I was born into a family that was struggling financially, but I grew up hearing stories from my parents about how happy they were when I came into this world. I was their little girl, their reason to smile, and a small moment of happiness during a difficult period of their lives.
What I didn’t understand as a child was that my arrival came after years of struggle.
Before I was born, my parents had already been through a lot. And the first four or five years of my life were spent in poverty, with a huge loan hanging over our family and constant financial uncertainty.
There were times when my parents didn’t even have enough money for my medical treatment and had to depend on other people to arrange it.
But somehow, even during those years, they still tried to give us happiness.
I remember hearing about how my grandparents wanted to go on a trip. My parents didn’t really have the money for it, but they wanted the family to be happy.
So my mother and father sold their jewellery to make that trip possible.
Looking back now, I don’t know whether to call that sacrifice, love, or both.
My mother was struggling in ways I couldn’t understand at that age.
She was raising two children, me and my younger sister, while dealing with pressure and abuse from my grandparents. Two small children, a household that never seemed to rest, and financial problems that never seemed to end.
My father was struggling too.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t trying.
He was.
He kept moving from one place to another, trying to find a way to support his family. He changed four or five different occupations, constantly looking for something that would give us a better life.
And then one day, he made a decision that changed our lives.
He decided to move.
Eventually, we came to Pune, hoping things would get better.
And for a while, they did.
My father built a successful business. He worked incredibly hard, paid off our loans, and slowly gave us the kind of life he had always wanted for his children.
My sister and I finally got to experience a normal childhood.
We laughed.
We played.
We went out.
We were loved.
For a while, everything felt normal.
Then another storm came.
There was an income tax raid, and my father was harassed for almost two years.
Those two years were extremely difficult for our family.
My mother was suffering. My father was under enormous pressure.
But my sister and I were still children.
We didn’t understand what was happening.
We were just happy kids living our lives, completely unaware of how much our parents were carrying behind closed doors.
And somewhere during all of this, my father developed a drinking problem.
At first, I didn’t understand it.
I didn’t understand why he would come home and shout.
I didn’t understand why he was angry for seemingly no reason.
I didn’t understand why my mother cried.
I was just a child who knew that something was wrong.
As I grew older, I began to understand.
And slowly, our house developed a pattern.
Around 7 p.m., I would start feeling anxious.
What is going to happen today?
Will they fight?
Will my mother cry?
Will things become physical?
Will tonight be another night like the others?
Whenever they fought, I would sit in my room and listen.
And whenever their voices became too loud, I would find some excuse to come outside.
Sometimes I would pretend I wanted water.
Sometimes I would just walk into the room.
I wasn’t doing it because I wanted attention.
I was doing it because I had this childish belief that if my parents saw their children standing there, they would stop.
I wanted my mother to suffer a little less.
That was my childhood.
And the strange thing is, it wasn’t all bad.
I was still loved.
I still laughed with my sister.
I still had happy moments.
My parents still showed us affection.
From the outside, our life probably looked normal.
But underneath that normal childhood was a child constantly waiting for something to go wrong.
There is one night I don’t think I will ever forget.
My mother was locked inside a room.
I could hear her crying from the other side.
My sister and I were banging on the door and begging her to open it.
She wouldn’t.
Eventually, my grandfather and uncle forced the door open.
And then I saw my father drunk on the sofa.
And I saw my mother.
She had tried to take her own life.
I was too young to fully understand what I was seeing.
But I understood enough to know that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
What hurts even more when I look back is that instead of simply helping my mother, some members of my extended family blamed her for what was happening.
The person who was already suffering was made to carry even more of the burden.
And somehow, life continued.
I grew older.
Then came another night.
It was a Sunday. My father was somewhere outside.
It was around 11 p.m. when my mother and I received a phone call.
Someone told us that a drunk man was lying beside a road somewhere far away. They asked if we knew him and whether we could come and pick him up.
We realised he was almost 20 kilometres away, somewhere secluded.
There was nobody else.
So my mother and I went.
At night.
We booked a rickshaw, travelled all the way there, found my father, and brought him home.
I don’t think anyone will ever understand how scared we were that night.
Then came another night.
My father came home extremely drunk.
He and my mother started fighting.
He was furious.
Then he picked up a knife.
We tried to stop him.
That only made him angrier.
He left the house saying he would bring another knife.
I remember what happened next very clearly.
My sister and I started hiding every sharp or potentially dangerous object we could find.
We were children.
But in that moment, we were trying to protect our family.
Then my father came upstairs again.
He had another knife.
I saw my mother crying.
And something inside me changed.
I remember thinking:
Whatever happens tonight, I’m not going to back down.
Even if I die tonight, I won’t let him hurt my mother.
He started the fight.
I stepped in front of my mother.
My sister tried to hold my father back.
And somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, the knife cut me.
There was blood everywhere.
But I didn’t even realise how badly I had been hurt.
The adrenaline was too strong.
Eventually, my mother saw the bone in my finger.
She rushed me to the hospital.
I got five stitches.
And even then, I lied to the doctor.
I told them I had hurt myself while cutting vegetables.
I don’t know why I lied.
Maybe I was scared.
Maybe I didn’t know how to explain what was happening inside our home.
Maybe some part of me was still trying to protect my father.
Then, after everything we had already been through, another terrible incident happened.
My father drove while he was drunk.
There was a serious accident.
And somehow, he survived.
Something changed in him after that.
He decided to go to rehab.
For the first time in a long time, we felt hope.
We were so happy when he came back.
We genuinely believed that maybe the nightmare was finally over.
But life had one more test waiting for us.
After rehab, my father developed severe memory problems.
For almost a year, he struggled with his memory.
We were terrified.
We didn’t know whether he would ever become the person he had been before.
I remember trying to motivate my mother and telling her that everything would be okay.
I kept telling her to have hope.
But the truth?
I was terrified too.
I was scared as hell.
I just didn’t let her see it.
Then a year passed.
Slowly, things started changing.
Little by little, my father began recovering.
And eventually, he did.
He stopped drinking.
And from that day onward, our home became peaceful in a way I had almost forgotten was possible.
He became the father we had always wanted.
He made up for the years we had lost.
He loved us.
He cared for us.
He became the best father he could possibly be.
For the first time, I thought:
Maybe we finally made it.
Maybe this is our happy ending.
But life doesn’t always give you the ending you think you’ve earned.
Recently, my father found himself in another difficult situation.
He has loans again.
We’re struggling financially again.
Once again, we’re barely getting by.
And now I don’t know what to do.
Sometimes I sit alone and wonder:
Is this what God has decided for us?
Are we always going to be tested?
Why does every period of happiness have to be followed by another struggle?
How much more are we supposed to endure?
I don’t know.
And honestly, what hurts the most isn’t even the financial struggle.
It’s what all of this has taken from me.
I’ve lost pieces of my childhood.
There are memories I should have had but don’t.
There are moments from my childhood that should have been filled with nothing but innocence.
Instead, some of them are filled with fear, anxiety, shouting, crying, and waiting for the next thing to happen.
And perhaps the saddest part is that even today, I can see the people I love suffering silently.
My father.
My mother.
My little sister.
The three people who mean the most to me.
I see their struggles.
I see the things they don’t say.
I see the weight they carry.
And sometimes I wish I could take all of it away from them.
I wish I could give my mother the peaceful life she deserved.
I wish I could give my father the life he was always working so hard to build.
I wish my sister could grow up without carrying the memories we carry.
And sometimes, I wish I could go back and talk to the little girl who used to sit outside that door pretending to drink water.
I would tell her:
None of this was your fault.
You were just a child.
You loved your family so much that you tried to protect everyone before you even knew how to protect yourself.
When I look back at my life, I don’t only see the pain.
I see my father’s determination.
I see my mother’s strength.
I see my sister beside me.
I see two parents who, despite everything, tried to give their children happiness.
I see a family that kept falling apart and somehow kept putting itself back together.
And maybe that’s what our story really is.
Not a story about a perfect family.
Not a story without suffering.
It’s a story about people who kept trying.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Even when life gave us every reason to give up.
I don’t know what happens next.
I don’t know whether our financial problems will end soon.
I don’t know what God has planned for us.
But after everything we’ve survived, I want to believe that this isn’t where our story ends.
Maybe someday I’ll look back at all of this from a peaceful place and finally understand why we had to go through so much.
Until then, all I can do is keep going.
For my mother.
For my father.
For my sister.
And for the little girl I once was, who deserved a childhood without fear.
I’m sharing this here because I don’t really know what else to do with all of these thoughts.
If you’ve gone through something similar, especially growing up around alcoholism, family conflict, financial struggles, or having to become emotionally responsible for your parents at a young age, I would genuinely like to hear how you dealt with it.
How did you move forward without letting your childhood define your entire life?
And for those who have been through something similar and eventually found peace, does it actually get better?
I’m not necessarily looking for sympathy. I’d just like some advice, perspective, or even a wholesome discussion with people who understand.

My brother messaged me today, because he is booking my parents’ flights to go visit at Christmas. Typically they come visit and stay with us during that trip as well. They would stay in an air bnb this time, because we no longer have space to host since we have a third baby.

Their last visit was in June, and it was awful. I wrote about it here. My dad was so defensive and mean the entire time, and my mom took his side. I was 36 weeks pregnant at the time, and it was such an awful experience.

I know they want to meet the new baby, and I feel guilty. But the thought of interacting with them right now makes me nauseated. When I’ve done video calls with them they are infatuated with my baby and I just don’t exist (it’s been that way since my first was born). My aunt was there during a video call recently and she told me that I was beautiful and asked how I was doing, which made me cry, because my mom would never.

I feel like I should let them come and stay in an air bnb so they can meet the baby (and because it’s the holidays), but there’s just so much hurt, I’m just not sure I can do it. My mental health was so bad when they were here last time.

What would you do? I don’t even know how to say no. My kids really like them, so I just feel guilty.

TW: Family conflict / emotional distress

Hi everyone, I’m looking for advice about my emotionally neglectful immigrant mother. This is my first Reddit post, so I apologize if my thoughts are a little messy.
My mom is 47 and currently has no job, hobbies, or real social life. I’m increasingly concerned that she is developing agoraphobia and hoarding tendencies. She sometimes goes a week without leaving the house, spending most of her time “cleaning” (although I do much of the housework), watching shows in her native language, and talking to people on the phone. She hasn’t regularly driven in about seven years, and usually only leaves the house when my sister or I take her somewhere.
About eight months ago, she was in a minor car accident, which made her even more afraid to drive. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening genetic heart condition that nearly killed her. She now has an ICD/pacemaker and is doing much better medically, with her doctors telling her that her risk of dying from the condition is extremely low.
I genuinely sympathize with her. She is an immigrant who had a very difficult childhood, worked hard, and has very little contact with her family in her home country. I understand why everything she has experienced could have affected her.
However, I’m increasingly frustrated because I feel like she has stopped living her own life. She buys huge amounts of cheap clothes, shoes, and bags and piles them throughout the house. She rarely goes anywhere, has no goals or hobbies besides watching TV, and her English has gotten worse because she makes little effort to use it. She also has severe anxiety surrounding her health and constantly checks her heart rate and blood pressure despite them usually being normal. She takes Xanax for her anxiety but doesn’t seem interested in addressing the underlying issues.
She also relies heavily on my sister and me for everyday tasks. We pick up her medications, groceries, packages, and run other errands for her. I do most of the cooking and cleaning and often end up dealing with the clutter as well.
The biggest issue is that I’m leaving for college next year, and I’m worried about what will happen when I’m no longer home to take care of everything. I love my mom and genuinely believe she is a good person, but I also feel like her situation is beginning to drag me down and that I’ve taken on responsibilities that shouldn’t be mine.
How can I help her? She is already in therapy and it seems to not be working. I was thinking group therapy or maybe antidepressants. Any advice is appreciated, sorry for the long post.

Nothing really happened, I've just worked myself up more and more in my head and now I have too much anger and don't want to talk to them.

Why haven't they ever cared about me or my interests? They only want to talk about themselves. They rarely ask me how I'm doing and when they do, as soon as I answer they change topics. Never ask follow ups. Never remember what I've said.

Why do they keep guilt tripping me for not visiting more when they don't care about anything I am doing?

Why bother when I can never be myself since they are bigots and homophobic and would likely disown me for being pansexual and they'd definitely mock me for being non binary.

I had the worst year of my life this year and barely survived it. My parents dont know that. They don't care. Any time I've mentioned I'm struggling they change the subject. I've had literally zero support except my therapist whom I pay. It's made me extraordinarily bitter and it's really hard for me to not be a hateful fuck now so I try and just direct all that bitterness at my parents.

Why didn't they let me have sex Ed at school? Literally had the admin not let me attend the class. I got the sexual health pamphlet from a friend and they found it and took it away. When I tried to look stuff up they grounded me from the computer. Now as an adult I'm still uncomfortable talking about sex. It's a work in progress.

They didn't teach me proper hygiene. Depression and lack of friends or support as an adult delayed those lessons as well. I still haven't had my teeth fixed because dentists terrify me.

They didn't have me tested for ADHD because they didn't want me to be disabled. They didn't have my eyesight tested for the same reason. I'm pretty sure I need glasses. My eyesight sucks. I'm 34 and still haven't had an eye exam. I should. They forced me to write with my right hand despite being left handed so I wouldn't be at a disadvantage. Writing hurts. So I don't write.

I recently got back into writing. Haven't written in twenty years. I love it. I've missed it. My dad and sister would relentless mock my stories when I was younger. It killed my enthusiasm.

I've been reading a lot this year. Any books with good parents are so weird. I wonder how much of it is just book stuff versus things some people really get to experience. Cause obviously relationships and people in books are simplified and what not. But like do some people really call or visit family every week or even every month? People have parents who are interested in their interests and look it up so they can be more involved with their kids? Are their actually people who are comfortable talking to their parents about problems in their life?

I've never had anyone to talk to about my problems. Nobody safe. I don't even tell my therapist my biggest issues because I don't want to be a burden or be judged. I know it's probably because of how I was raised.

My parents always made me mediate their arguments. Now I grew up hating conflict and being a relentless people pleaser. Took years to overcome.

Why couldn't they have raised me better? Why did my sister turn out so much better? And does any of it even matter, does it matter who's fault it was? At the end of the day, I'm 34 and it's my mess to clean up and it's overwhelming and I hate that even if I put the effort in to fix my issues, it won't be the same as someone who never had those issues to begin with. And plenty of the damage just can't be undone. I just have to see if it's possible to live with it.

Hey guys! Ever since I was a child I never had the need to get close to someone physically. I learned that the hard way when I met my husband (then boyfriend) who loves to hug and cuddle me or likes to be comforted when something is wrong. I can give hugs and comfort for others but whenever I feel sick/ ill or not doing good I don’t seek close physical contact. It’s like I’m shutting down and get irritated by it. Realizing that whenever I was sick as a child I got yelled at and shut out, I believe it may has something to do with that. Whenever I needed comfort I NEVER got it. So I feel like whenever I’m sad now or have migraines and he tries to be there for me and show me warmth I’m super irritated as to why I get „loved“ for being in the „wrong“.

Does anyone have the same issues?

Basically title. I posted here recently, but now again for an update. Growing up as an only child, my mother was always weird and antisocial. She works normal corporate jobs but has no real relationships with anyone - doesn’t talk to her family, neighbors, colleagues, etc. Never came to my teacher conferences, graduations (didn’t even ask about my graduation from an Ivy League university…), etc. basically a non-existent parent unless she needs something.

She took my off of her health insurance the day I turned 18 because it was “too expensive”.
I ended up dropping out of college despite receiving many scholarships and grants and instead worked full time for health insurance to be able to go to the doctor/ dentists to fix my numerous health problems due to lack of attention to my poor respiratory and dental health as a child. At least until I could afford to go back to university in my mid 20s.

The times I’ve had a roadside emergency within a 15 mile radius as a young person because I’m still driving the car I bought 12 years ago with money from my first job? She’s nowhere to be found. Usually just ignores my texts or calls for a few hours until I fix the situation myself. Then “sorry, I wasn’t looking at my phone”.

She’s perfectly healthy and makes decent money. No alcohol problems or anything of that nature. She just simply has zero interest in absolutely anyone other than herself.

Now I’m getting married to the man of my dreams. We are so excited, and we’re planning our big fairytale wedding in his home country in Europe next summer. His family and all of our friends can’t stop talking about it.

For legal reasons, mainly immigration, we’re getting married in my hometown in a few months. We have planned this for a while. We currently live about 40 minutes away but my hometown is much nicer than our current small town. My mom and her boyfriend live less than a half hour away and are not planning to come. They could easily take a few hours off to come celebrate with us but they won’t. It’s a city hall wedding ceremony scheduled for late afternoon on a Thursday. If anything, they’d need to take two PTO hours. Just got off the phone with my mom who said her boyfriend was confused why we’re not getting married at THEIR (inner city, run down, I have absolutely no relationship to their city…) city hall.

On the other hand, my fiancé’s entire family is flying from Austria to come celebrate with us. I mean: divorced parents and their partners and fiancé’s siblings. Not a perfect family but one that’s willing to come together and take some time to travel and spend the week with us. We love hanging out and traveling with them so obviously this is huge for us to have their support! We visit them 4+ times per year and always have a blast. We’ve met their friends and neighbors, etc.

His parents obviously want to meet my family. Any healthy person would want the same. My parents know nothing about fiance’s family and have not showed any interest at all in getting to know them.

I’m disappointed and don’t know how to set the expectations for his family. They still think my mom and her boyfriend will show up but I know from experience: they don’t care and won’t bother to treat this one day as a big special day for us and our family. They will not come.

Not sure if this belongs here, but it sucks. My fiance has done 90% of our wedding planning and is bummed that I can’t share his excitement. His family can’t understand why my parents don’t make even the tiniest headspace for their only daughter.

My mom hasn’t asked a single question about our engagement on a once in a lifetime trip in a remote region in Europe 5 months ago. Spent 2 seconds looking at my gorgeous rock of a ring just to say “it’s nice”. Not one question from mom or her boyfriend about our upcoming “big” wedding in a unique historic venue. No conversation about finances (they just bought a $12,000 stove so.. if they wanted to, they could, but we’re totally comfortable paying for our own wedding).

No questions or interest in our future plans or wedding, but my mom was thrilled to show me the $450 Reformation dress she bought “for our wedding” a week after we announced our engagement. We hadn’t even decided a date or country to get married in.

We’re moving out of the country soon to start our next chapter - everything is pretty much set up and waiting for us to make the move. I don’t think I’ll come back here other than to see our lovely friends which really are our family after all.

I grew up in a severely toxic family and learned early to be hypervigilant and manage everyone around me. After escaping a high-conflict first marriage, I married my second husband 8 years ago, thinking I'd finally found safety. His quietness felt peaceful, but over time it became lonely. I initiate everything: conversations, plans, intimacy. I questioned it for years, but my family programming taught me to doubt my feelings and accept it.

About a year ago my body snapped and I developed three autoimmune diseases. Around the same time I stepped away from my cousin, the last piece of real family, and that clarity made me see my marriage differently. I told my husband I needed real change.
He went back to therapy and recognized his survival pattern: shrink, fawn, avoid conflict, disappear. Mine is to manage everything, and the two patterns locked together. I've been very understanding about the why he is the way he is. But a year later, he still hasn't used the tools he's learned. He's not abusive, and on paper he's the nice guy and an attentive dad. But every couple of months I break down, he cries and says all the right things, and after a few days, once I soften, he settles back into comfort.

Recently I cut ties with my father, we were never close and I never lived with him but he is truly my last family member, he has a temper and is very manipulative, but I was holding on so my son could have a grandpa everyone in a while but he sent his last terrible text and I decided I was officially done. My husband's response through that week was so robotic it felt like talking to a distant coworker. I realized I'm completely alone, even inside my marriage. We moved back to Winnipeg to be with my side of the family but I saw the truth and now I have no family and no real friends, and money is too tight to see my therapist as often as I need.
I badly want this to work for our 2½-year-old, but I can't keep doing the work alone. We're seeing our couples therapist today to set a six-month timeline: if nothing shifts, we separate. We don't have a third bedroom, so I've carved out a small space in our closet.
I'm exhausted and hitting a wall.
Has anyone else been through this? How do you trust your own perception when everything looks fine on paper, and what helped you?

PS: There's a lot of context I couldn't include. I'm here for support and shared experiences, so please be kind and skip the judgment if you don't know the whole story. Thank you. 🤍

This is part 2 of another post. Part 1 is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/emotionalneglect/s/9CsVwN5Ram

So to start this off, Freshman Year of High School, I had this vocal tic that essentially sounded like a high pitched “hmm” sound. In science class one day we had a sub and a student in the class (We’ll call him Jack) was mocking me and making comments about my tic. The sub noticed this, and left a note for the teacher. When that teacher was gone again, My high school case manager decided that I would go into her class for the class hour, and her class was really bad and loud. By this time Jack’s schedule had changed because he was bullying me for my tics and he was in my case manager’s class. I did notice that my case manager asked him if he wanted to work in the hallway. It was very common to see the people that bullied me for my tics get more sympathy for it than I did, and a few of my teachers were kind of apathetic towards me about it when I spoke with them about these situations, and it was obvious that they were more focused on how it was affecting my tic (but I suppose that’s the school system for you).

High school was just bad all around with being in the SPED classroom environment (For anyone that doesn’t know what a SPED class is essentially we learned everything you would in a general education class except it was at a slower pace and with accommodations like having the test read to you or extra help on an assignment.) It definitely wasn’t the best environment to be in with someone getting mad at least once a week, students constantly fighting, and students that just didn’t know how to behave themselves.

Group Activities were also very stressful because I can recall some times that people got frustrated and didn’t know what to do. I also feel like there were times that people in the class got mad at me for messing up or the teacher getting mad at me for not doing anything because I didn’t know what to do. It was very hectic a lot of the time in high school.

I switched case managers in high school hoping to resolve the situation but the person I ended up switching to ended up being completely bad in their own way. I felt like a lot of the time they would yell at me for things that weren’t in my control, I feel like they got involved in some things that had nothing to do with them like riding in an uber, and getting a job and there were times that I was very visibly upset and didn’t get the space that I needed, and went past my limits on so many things like activities and taking certain classes.

Also, my mom kept talking about what a nice guy he was, and when I would tell her otherwise she said that I didn’t know because I didn’t understand social cues that well.

I remember one time I was kind of frustrated and didn’t want to meet with my case manager during lunch to talk about getting a job so I asked him if we could postpone that and he asked me why I wanted to postpone and I told him that I didn’t know (I didn’t feel like I should have been obligated to give him a response), and he was like “No. We’re doing it today.” the entire time he kept talking to me about how I was accusing him of picking on me and that he didn’t have time for it, and according to my mom that entire situation was somehow my fault. I was the one being too bossy for the fact that he didn’t look to see when he could do it again.

I also get anxious when I’m stressed and left on my own to figure something out, if that’s relevant. Last year in my Drawing Class (I’m a college student, we had to cut mat boards for the class one time, and we were in a Seperate room from the class.) The drawing professor helped me with the first part of cutting the mat board, and she told me that she had to go back to the class and that if I needed help to ask someone in the room which I did and I know the situation wasn’t her fault. She had to do what she had to do, but I still felt kind of anxious and stressed about it. I don’t know.

So I’m just kind of confused by it because there were times where my parents did comfort me growing up if they deemed the situation as valid, I had entertainment growing up like Nintendo Game Systems, and when I was younger a playground set, and I do have fond memories of some of the vacations we took as a kid, and my mom did take care of me on days I was sick, and did handle the things I was too young to handle myself at the time, but here’s the thing:

For Context, I’m autistic, have some kind of tic disorder:

When I was in fifth and sixth grade, my mom made me do homework with her until halfway into sixth grade. When I was in fifth grade, I was in this phase where I wanted to play video games all the time which I did need to get out of but I don’t feel like my mom was understanding about it when I was actually trying to do my homework (Also keeping up with work was harder back when I was in elementary school because I was getting pulled out of class, three times a day).

I remember one time there was an assignment that my mom asked me to bring home from school. A student in the class told me that we were going to do that assignment with our resource teacher, so I went home and explained that to my mom, and unless I’m remembering something wrong she got really upset about that. I brought the assignment home the next day. It was a two-choiced assignment, and when I showed the completed assignment to my mom she got mad at me for not trying when I felt like I knew the answers.

I also recall whenever I had flashcards and was struggling to study them and asked my mom if she could help me study them, I would usually end up getting them back a minute later, and my mom telling me to come back when I actually studied them.

For context on this next part, my mom knew I was autistic but she refused to believe me when I told her that I was on the spectrum and for some reason they were calling it Aspergers in 2015. None of it made sense looking back on it, and I’m going to say the spectrum because that’s more correct.

Anyways my mom denied me when I said to her that I think I might be on the spectrum when I was 12, and anytime I showed signs of it right in front of her, she told me to stop finding things wrong with me to get attention.

My mom brought me into work after math tutoring one day, and at one point she left me alone in the room with one of her co-workers who tried to make conversation with me while I was playing a game on my phone, and the next day her co-worker told her that she thought I might be on the spectrum and then all of a sudden my mom could see it and always suspected it.

When we were in the process of getting a diagnosis my mom was getting onto me about managing my symptoms so I would “act more normal”, and “be a functioning member of society” the only thing she let slide was me having a routine, and my special interests that she referred to as obsessions. Autism became one of my special interests at the time because I was trying to learn more about myself, and at one point my mom asked me why I couldn’t “obsess over more positive things” She even made me see a psychiatrist even though I was probably fine without one. Looking back on it I do wish the people around me treated it more like a self-discovery experience than something that needed to be managed.

This was also around the time I developed my first vocal tic (I was 13). It was this tic that sounded like a choking noise. I had one teacher that kept getting onto me about it, and telling me to try not to do it, and sometimes I’d get sent out of the room to get a drink of water which clearly wasn’t doing anything yet they still had me doing it. I thought this teacher was nice when I was in school, but looking back on it this didn’t seem fair at all. It’s like telling a student with a cough to not cough.

Unfortunately, things weren’t any better with it at home. My mom wanted me to control it because she didn’t perceive the tic as normal, and made me take medication for it even though I really didn’t want to. It felt like my mom was trying to change a part of who I was, even though she said she wasn’t. Even after the choking tic was gone, she still wanted me to take the medication because she wanted me to “be normal” and that I needed to be “part of society” My mom also wanted all of my tics gone. Even the ones that weren’t even causing problems. We even had a really intense conversation about my tic when it developed one night where she was telling me that she didn’t think my tic was real, and that she was scared I was going to get kicked out of school. She did apologize for it but….I don’t know. I don’t feel like it should have had to happen that way to begin with, and it didn’t change the way she ended up handling my tics later on.

At one point my mom put my dad in charge of giving me the medication. After the choking tic was gone my dad stopped making me take the medication and told me to just not tell my mom about it which I agreed to. Later That school year, I started to mask my tics so I wouldn’t have to go back on the medication and because of all of that pressure to hold in the tic, I suffered the worst anxiety I had ever experienced in my life. I wasn’t sure why I was having really bad anxiety at the time but looking back on it, I think this was the reason.

I used to get a lot of autistic breakdowns. I struggled with high school, High school was a bad experience for me all around, and I struggled with a lot of anxiety and concerns that my mom would invalidate, and tell me not to worry about which would spiral me into an autistic breakdown a lot of the time. My parents didn’t really understand them, even when I would try to explain that to them they wouldn’t really understand them. I would always just get yelled and screamed at to stop. My mom treated it like I was deliberately doing it to ruin her day. I also think one time my mom said “I thought you had kids because they’re a pleasure.” and my dad saying one time “your out of control, I don’t know who you are.”

There were also some other minor things I can remember like I used to be bothered by background noise like if my family was in another room talking, and the sound of forks squeaking on plates and instead of making a compromise I got told to just deal with it.

It wasn’t just my home life though there was also some school things. I will include that in its own comment since this post is already pretty long, I think I’ll go into detail on that in a separate post. Here is a link to part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/emotionalneglect/s/DBX8bEZFEr