K sweetie. Here’s the thing. You have been through absolute hell. I’m amazed you are still upright, but you are! Firstly give yourself a massive pat on the back for dealing with a lifetime of shit so far.

You are in survival mode. This helps you survive but does not bring happiness.

You have great insight into what has brought you here and you have the strength to change things. Start small and it will build, I promise you. Find ways to comfort yourself. I have baths twice a day, go to bed with a hot water bottle, cry, listen to music, draw pictures, sit in the quiet and think. Eat nice things, cheese on toast, cups of tea. As you go along you will find your own comforts. You may find comfort allows you to feel sadder at first but stick with it, you’ll get through that.

Then start to figure out what you can do to help yourself. Set one goal or challenge a day.  Stick to practical stuff go from there. You will have good days and bad days but keep with it. Churchill famously said, success comes from moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Sending love and hugs xx

Dear Emily:

You are 34 and  you are living with your family, a father who bullied you as a child and still, “angry, aggressive, insulting”, who “shared horrible detailed things about his sex life” with you, details that “still makes me feel sick to this day”, a  man who  pressured you to get into financial debt, had you pay for his holiday instead  of paying your debts, a man who blames you for anything that goes  wrong in his  life, “Everything he does wrong is my fault.. He has a conversation with someone and forgets what they said… it’s my  fault for not reminding him”. Your mother “just eats, watches TV and hangs around the garden all day… She  lives in a  fantasy world”.

The women in your family, you wrote, are “very good looking women (lots  of media types that look like models)”, and  your family compares you t them constantly, you wrote, leading to your “zero self esteem”.

When you were 14 you left your home and moved in with a 40 year old  man. Your parents knew this 40 year old man for “only a few days” and were okay with you living with him,  “They just waved me off”. This man was “a surrogate father figure for a couple of years in return for sex”, and it was “the closest thing to a normal and caring relationship I’ve ever  experienced as  he  was affectionate, never  insulted  or hit me.. and actually listened and gave me practical advice”.

When you were 17 this man told you that you had  to  go back home because someone he worked  with “discovered what was  happening”.

When you returned home, you noticed a 30 year old man  was visiting your 14 year old sister, having sex  with her nights and weekends “in the room next  to me”. And your parents “made no move to stop  it”.

You wrote: “Growing  up, women have bullied or ignored me and men have used me for sex or  just treated me badly. So I have zero trust towards other humans”. You wrote: “When I was younger I was attractive enough that I could at least  get  boyfriends  in order to have someone to hang out with.. Now all the men my age are taken and I have no interest in  one  night stands or affairs, so I’m so isolated”.

You wrote that you were severely bullied in junior school, that you managed to  get good grades and a degree, “but have never held down a job for long  enough to progress past minimum wage”, having “short term memory”, difficulty focusing and multi tasking. Your career is “a patchy mess of short lived jobs all over the  place”.

“Every time I’ve tried to escape my parents’ home,  I’ve had  to rely on a relationship with some man  in order to afford  a place to live”. You are terrified of driving because you’ve been “in multiple accidents”, and  you “can’t live by myself or with total  strangers… I don’t trust people not to hurt me”, and “I can’t afford to rent somewhere by myself”.

Currently, you live with your family who “constantly humiliates” you for being “the weirdo loser who is just getting old alone now”, unlike your sister who is “very attractive and  managed to find a husband”. They ask you for money that you don’t have,  because you are unemployed, pressuring you to get a job so that you will give them more money “for more holidays with their mates and get  a nicer car”, and they want you to move out because you are  not giving them money currently,  “despite me giving them close  to 20 k over the last few years that would  have been the  money for a deposit”.

Currently, you’re “in a constant state of panic, paranoia and/ or suicidal rage… I can’t focus on  more than one thing at a time… If I switch my focus to something else, every other area of my life falls apart. This past year, you “went crazy on a strict diet and exercise regime and  lost  my job as a result of being completely distracted… an extreme sense of fear  and confusion about everything… I can barely think straight”.

“On the odd occasion I do go downstairs and bump into anyone, they just demand to know whether I have a job yet and when I going to get my own house and leave. They invite people over all the time and will make these comments/questions in front of them to humiliate me even more”.

My thoughts at this point: your father/ parents value money more than anything else. It is their #1 value: “they keep complaining that their wealthy lifestyle isn’t good enough”. The 40 year old man who took you to his house where you lived 14-17 paid  for your expenses, food, clothes and such, which relieved your parents for paying for those  expenses. It is possible that the man made a financial arrangement with your parents and paid them for having you in his house.  It  is also possible that the 30 year old man that felt free to have sex with your 14 year old sister over nights and weekends had a similar financial arrangement with your parents.

When they see you, they see Money. If you don’t have any or  cannot generate money for them, they don’t want you.

Basically, your parents and whomever partners with them, living in this house or visiting, are a bunch of predators, and you are prey.

I understand the difficulties in your efforts to move out. Yet clearly, there is no  way you can live there sanely.

Sanity is the goal, I figure.  For having gone through this life, it is surprising that you can use proper grammar, and write in the organized way that you write. It is surprising that your strong intellect is still strong, although short term memory and difficulty focusing is a problem.

If there are any minor children living in this house, children protective services/ police should be involved!

I think that the best place  for you  would be a shelter for exploited women, women sexually and  otherwise exploited. Basically, your parents prostituted you and your sister when the two of you were children.

Seek a shelter to move to, gather some of your clothes and belongings and move to a women’s shelter where counselors are available to help you and other women who were victims of sexual exploitation by parents and strangers.

Move there and never visit or be in contact with that home-of-horror, unless you take the legal route later  on,  if you are capable, and if legally possible, to sue your parents for what they have done to you.

Move out ASAP and stay out of that place.  Once there, take it from there. I hope to read more from you.

anita

Dear Emily:

I am the last person who replied to you back on January 6, 2019. It is a pleasure to read your amazing and indeed useful update. It reads very genuine and inspiring. It’s been slow on the forums here but I wish that somehow, many members will read your original post and your update almost 3 years later.

I very much appreciate your dedication to your nephews and to your niece, being motivated and able, as you are, to guide them toward a better life than the one you experienced so far. I hope that they are currently protected from your abusive father, brother and any other family member who is likely to harm them.

You wrote at the end of your update: “For anyone reading this who has gone through the same thing, once you learned to have boundaries with people, did that ‘war mode’ feeling gradually fade over time? Did you learn how to attract and let people get close to you without getting hurt or constantly panicking?“-

-I went through some experiences that were quite similar to yours (I am willing to elaborate if you ask me to do so), and my answer is: my war-mode feeling, my anxiety and emotional instability, have improved a great deal. It has been a very, very slow healing process, and like you, I believe that it will never be complete.

What I found out through the process of healing is that if I expect it to happen fast, and get disappointed when I still feel unwell- the process of healing stops and time is wasted. When my expectations are realistic, and I no longer get surprised at how long it takes- the healing process continues unhindered, becoming easier and faster than otherwise.

anita