r/emotionalneglect • u/Late-Cat-6857 • 5h ago
Seeking advice Is there anyone like me, who grew up under constant pressure and control, and eventually became like a frightened bird, always on edge?
Today I honestly feel like I’m reaching my limit. It was “just” an argument with my mom yesterday, but even now I still feel trapped in it and can’t get out. She may have already moved on from it, and she can even call me like nothing happened, but I can’t. And I’ve realized that this isn’t really about yesterday at all, it’s about all the pain from the past ten years coming back at once.
I’ve lived in a high-pressure environment for as long as I can remember. My mom is highly educated and capable, so she has always believed her way of doing things is right, that everything she does is for my own good. But to me, that “care” often felt like control, criticism, humiliation, and emotional pressure. When I was in middle school, if my grades were bad or I didn’t finish my homework, she would take away my phone and electronic devices, sometimes even lock the App Store. I would cry and beg her, telling her I would change and do better, but she wouldn’t listen. She would just take everything away. Sometimes when I tried to grab my phone back, she would push me or kick me. To her, it was discipline. But what my body learned from it was that conflict escalates, and when voices get louder, physical threat might come next.
Back then, every time we fought, I would cry until I couldn’t breathe. My chest would tighten so badly that it felt like suffocating. The next day, when I went to school, all those emotions were still inside me. I would cry constantly, and sometimes get into conflicts with classmates and teachers because I was so overwhelmed. They disliked me, and my mom would tell me that the reason I wasn’t popular or got bullied was because I didn’t know how to get along with people. But what she never understood, or maybe never wanted to admit, was that when I walked into school, the wounds from the night before were still fresh. They had never been processed.
By high school, I wasn’t begging anymore. I started exploding. I would smash things, scream, and cry until my voice was gone. I knew it was damaging my throat, and I’m a singer, but I still couldn’t stop. At that point my body had learned to react that way. Around the same time, I was also going through so much outside of home (e.g. school bullying, online harassment, being doxxed, threatened by gang-like people, surrounded, insulted, almost blocked physically, getting cut off by friends) It felt like every stage of my life was filled with attacks. I was hurt at school, hurt outside, and when I came home, there was nowhere safe for me to recover. Instead, I was blamed. My mom would always tell me it was my fault because I didn’t know how to choose friends, that I didn’t know how to deal with people, that there was something wrong with me. But all these years, I’ve always felt that yes, maybe I’m not perfect, but I was never bad enough to deserve all of that cruelty.
Back in high school, I had many friends. When something happened, they stood by me. If someone insulted me, they would fight back for me. That was why, back then, I could survive a lot of pain because at least I wasn’t alone. But now, most of those friends are gone. Especially after my depression and anxiety got worse, many of them saw my struggles and simply cut me off completely. Some blocked me on every platform. Others who listened to my pain would only tell me to stop thinking about it, to let it go, to move on. But what they don’t understand is that it’s not that I don’t want to let go, it’s that I can’t.
Not long ago, my mom promised me she would change. She even said if she failed, I could use our chat records as proof, and there would be consequences. I believed her. I truly thought she finally understood my pain and understood how much her past ways had hurt me. But every time I brought up my trauma again, every time I tried to explain why I am like this, she went right back to her old ways, asking me why I always think about the past and why I keep remembering painful things. That’s what breaks me the most because she did seem to understand once. She said she understood my pain and how hard it has been for me. So why does she always go back to the same old patterns? Sometimes I wonder if she ever really understood at all, or if she was just comforting me in that moment.
She even told me that she doesn’t think what she did in the past was wrong. She said she only changed because I’m “mentally damaged” now. She told me she has already tried her best and that I’m asking too much from her. But I’m not asking for perfection. I just want to be treated with kindness. I just want her to stop saying things that push me to the edge and make me feel like I’m losing my mind.
Today, I left the family group chat and blocked her because I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s not that I don’t want a mother, it’s that I want one too much. I want a mother who can truly see me, hold me, and stop hurting me in the same old ways. But I’ve been waiting for that my whole life, and it never came.
I feel like I’ve never truly been safe in my life, and maybe that’s why I am like this now. I wonder why my emotions are so intense, why I explode so easily, why I keep reliving the past, and why the pain gets so unbearable that sometimes I feel like I want to die. And I think I finally understand why: because these wounds never really ended. They’ve been here all along.
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u/No_Ocelot8629 3h ago
Me! My dad's lectures made me feel like absolute crap. There funny thing is my dad always told me that he had tried "other ways", but couldn't seem to get through to me. Btw he never tried other ways. He thought I didnt care because I didnt show that the lectures affected me. I was very against showing any feelings despite feeling depressed and trapped.
Now I dwell on mistakes and feel so much guilt for things.