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Is anyone else getting redirected periodically from this board to a site that tries to get...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: Kinda O/T

I don't know all the research, but I seem to recall hearing that in the forthcoming DSM-V...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: tigger

Trigger.............................................................................

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Shadowrose, I'm glad you're here and opening up to us because opening up is the biggest thing that stands between anyone and help. But because I've been around the board a long time and know the folks who have responded to you, I feel like I need to say something about the differences between their/our family situations and yours.

The thing about many of our families is... they were, or are, abusive. Many of us survived being physically hurt by our families, or being emotionally scarred by them in ways that cause as much pain or more than physical wounds. Our families are the ones who taught us "lessons" that have brought us great harm: things like "it's never OK to disagree with me, it's never OK to feel upset in any way, no one cares about you."

From what you shared here, your family's aggressiveness is in the form of asking questions about you. Depending on the questions, that's certainly frustrating, certainly unwelcome, but might not rise to the level of abuse. In other words, it sounds as though you have a strained family - but not an abusive one.

Those of us with abusive families have had to set boundaries against them. We've had to create physical distance for our own protection, we've felt the need to remove certain family members from our lives so their words of hatred will no longer assault us, we've created new families from those who truly support and care about us. And a lot of times, those relationships cannot - and SHOULD not - be resolved.

Maybe, since you still have some positive feelings for your family and feel hurt-and-angry-but-not-abused, you can work with them to create healthy boundaries, rather than having to act on your own and set boundaries against them. Would any of your family members be willing to accompany you to counseling, and would you be OK with them being there? If so, maybe a counselor can help you calmly talk through your hurt and angry feelings and ask for what you need from them, and help you hear what they're saying as well.

BUT. If any of your family members would fit in with a lot of our families... if anyone is calling you names, saying cruel things like "you won't amount to anything" or "I wish you were never born," inflicting bruises and other physical wounds on your body... they are NOT people you can set a healthy boundary with by working together. An abuser will not stop hitting or degrading you just because you take them to a counseling appointment and ask them to stop. An abuser will continue to abuse until you get out of there. If you're being abused and are uncomfortable sharing this, please seek the help that is out there to make good your escape and to begin healing the wounds to your spirit.View Thread

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: Return of the day (TRIGGER)

Not a failure. It just means that you have pain that you don't know how to cope with. ...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: Aging Parents

Trigger...............................................................................

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: Fran and DogDancing

Finally! I'm so glad you have something that works for you! Being in the line of work...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Finally! I'm so glad you have something that works for you!

Being in the line of work I'm in - social work, emphasis on working with people with developmental disabilities and/or traumatic brain injuries - I go through annual training on seizures: the basics of what they are, how to respond to them, the meds that control them etc etc. One of the things I learned from that training is that seizures, migraines, and some mental illnesses have a LOT in common.

For instance, many people who have seizures have an aura beforehand. So do many of us migraineurs - I get visual disturbances that look like the "snow" static on the TV channels you don't get.

More to the point - one of my college roommates had a seizure disorder and took (fill in name of anticonvulsant here) to prevent seizures. Then I had a client who had bipolar disorder and also took (same anticonvulsant here) for her symptoms.

I always wondered why some people get mental illnesses and others don't - why one person can go through incredible trauma and suffer from PTSD, and another can go through similar incredible trauma and remain mentally stable; why some people can deal with teasing and rejection while others are triggered into social phobia; why some of us have emotions so overwhelming that we literally can't survive feeling them, and others find emotional coping so easy that they can't comprehend what depression is. Maybe mental illness, or being susceptible to having a mental illness triggered by circumstances/environment, comes down to neurology rather than just "brain chemistry." Maybe it isn't always the raw amount of a chemical in the brain that is the answer, maybe it's how the neurons are physically built.

And maybe, if that's proven, if mental illnesses are proven to be the result of a PHYSICAL - not just chemical but PHYSICAL - cause that none of us could possibly have ever had control of, the stigma will finally start to go away. After all, people tend to be more understanding of things they can see and touch.View Thread

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: cutting help needed

I'm going to hesitantly post a disagreeing viewpoint. OTW, I hesitate to post this because...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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I'm going to hesitantly post a disagreeing viewpoint. OTW, I hesitate to post this because I know you're very raw and troubled at the moment and I don't want you to take my differing opinion personally.

Just to let you know where I'm coming from before I post this - I don't know your relationship with your daughter. I don't know if she's asked you to make calls for her, I don't know if you have guardianship over her, I don't know if she's asked you to arrange professional help for her or if she's only asked you for emotional support.

I'll tell you my own reaction, based on my own dysfunctional relationship with my mother - who enjoys nothing more than making sure she disagrees with every choice I have ever made. When I read "call the MD" and "possible ER visit" in that plan, I bristled. If I ever trusted my mom with the knowledge that I struggle with self-harm, and those were HER reaction... I would feel like she was treating me as a small child, or as a criminal. I would feel betrayed, and I would feel deprived of choice, and any trust I felt in her would be ruined.

Before you take this issue to HER doctor or anyone else who will be treating HER, it's my very strong opinion that you need to discuss that with your daughter and let HER be the one to decide who treats her. Your daughter is 21 years old, and she certainly sounds able to make a call to a doctor on her own. Let her, unless she says "Mom, call someone for me."

That goes about quintuple for the hospital, so I'm going to say it bluntly and probably come across rude. If your goal is to frighten your daughter into silence, then by all means, drag her to the ER against her wishes. If she has ASKED for a ride to the ER, or if she has said that she is planning to commit suicide (cutting as she describes and as we talk about on this board is NOT a suicide attempt), then the ER belongs in your plans. If not... for the sake of preserving your daughter's trust in you and validating her great courage in speaking up, please, please, please forget the hospital.

Let your daughter take the lead on what treatment your daughter receives. Resist the urge to swoop-in-and-fix-it, because the pain that drives people to harm themselves is not something that even a mommy can swoop-in-and-fix. It's something that takes time, patience, love, patience, love, patience, love, time, time, time, work, time, patience, love, love, patience, work and time to deal with. And it's not a "behavior" that you can just ban... it's the only way she knows how to cope with the hurt she is feeling inside.

Calls you make without your daughter's consent - more accurately without your daughter's asking! - should be calls about YOU. If you feel emotionally, mentally, physically unstable and in need of help after hearing this news - which you might - then the doctor to call would be YOURS, and the request to make would be "I'm feeling (this and explain), please help me deal with my feelings and help me learn to cope with what I know now about my daughter."

Your daughter has shown great courage. Telling someone "I harm myself to deal with my pain" is a terrifying and risky thing to do. Honor her courage and her decision to trust you by returning her trust. She made the decision to say something to you; allow her to make her treatment decisions and let her take the lead on where and when she gets help. Believe it or not, that will be the most helpful thing you do. She needs to know that her mom loves, respects, and empathizes with her MUCH more than she needs to know that her mom will Do Stuff.View Thread

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: Making the call *SA trig*

First appointment is a week from Monday. I'm actually looking forward to it, even though...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: Making the call *SA trig*

I've got a number to call, and I'll be calling it in the morning as it's now after...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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Reply: STOP. REGROUP.

I'm sorry for my part in creating the problem. I have enough homework to keep me busy...

Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before. -- The Doctor (as written by Steven Moffat)

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