I’ll (23M) try to summarize:
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Mom and Dad were authoritarian parents who never gave us comfort or affection. They were very impatient and demanding. Dad would physically and verbally abuse us. Mom would do nothing to intervene. Even when he threw a goddamn toddler across the living room.
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By the time I was born, my parents didn’t appear to have any romantic or sexual chemistry. It was a constant hot-cold dynamic of fighting and silence.
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My parents had fragile egos; any criticism would lead to rage and punishment. Brother turned out the same way, but his anger would lead to violence.
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Since I was the youngest, I was bullied by Dad and Brother. I was shamed for being sensitive to the abuse and wanting comfort.
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Brother would easily become explosively enraged and take it out on his environment, screaming and breaking things. Mom and Dad made fun of his reactions and didn’t care about his feelings.
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Dad was overtly hateful and would openly advocate for genocide for any country or group of people he didn’t like.
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From a young age I became intensely sexually attracted to receiving nurture and affection. This created far fewer awkward moments than one might think, thanks to the environment I lived in, but it led to paralyzing insecurities later since it was a behavior my parents never exhibited and mainstream pornography didn’t showcase it.
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I also became insecure about my empathy and desire to care for others because none of my family members modeled this behavior.
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The moment Brother discovered YouTube (probably 7-10 years old), he immediately looked up videos of characters being set on fire and melting in a grotesque fashion. When Dad allowed Brother to play a superhero game, he spent the entire time killing all of the civilian NPCs and laughing at their deaths instead of following the game’s objective.
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Even without my low self-esteem, expressing myself authentically in school as a kid was risky because my bullies would relay anything I said and did back to Brother, creating a decentralized surveillance network.
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I believed that nobody would ever like me because I was sensitive and wanted care and was shamed for those things. I struggled with masculine gender roles and felt like I was unwanted by the world. I became suicidal and wanted other people to hurt me.
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I was scared of expressing my feelings and ideas because I thought this would be met with violence if I said or expressed anything that my family didn’t like. I learned to be stone-faced and speak as little as possible unless I saw a strategy in doing otherwise. I pretended to listen to and care about my other family members so they wouldn’t kill me. The surveillance wherever I went ensured that this authentic expression was impossible in-person.
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Around age 13, I retreated into solitude. I had a seemingly unexplainable impulse as a young teen to bypass my family’s totalitarian control of information and self-expression by securing Internet access on other devices or bypassing parental controls. I befriended people in chat rooms and felt like it was safe to be me, though I still struggled with socializing immensely. I educated myself about everything I wasn’t allowed to learn about and slowly learned how to talk to people. This outside contact is what allowed me to learn about how pro-social humans think and act, though my sense of normalcy was still distorted by my immediate environment.
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Once I suspected I was being abused and made a futile attempt to call it out, my mother taught me to fear Child Protective Services and never tell anyone about the conditions at home or else CPS would put me into a worse place.
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We had a dog, but I had to witness Dad beating the poor thing every fucking day while Mom pretended nothing was happening.
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My parents insisted on me keeping the bedroom door unlocked even when they knew I might be jerking off. Once, my Dad forcibly unlocked my door while I was masturbating to see what porn I was watching, something he used as blackmail 7 years later.
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I had to reconstruct a vision of what love looked like through my vivid sexual fantasies and verify with online friends that they have similar feelings.
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Brother developed a worldview in which he is a god and his seminal fluid makes him powerful. He explicitly wants to “dominate” women and “destroy their egos” and he cites random reoccurring numbers and symbols as signs that he is the chosen one. He dreams of living in a mansion with dozens of wives and hundreds of kids. He says that relationships built on cooperation and compromise are too complicated and it’s more practical to take absolute control.
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Brother, seeking an outlet for his rage, went on to torture and kill a bird and display its corpse in a tree and beat his ex-girlfriend’s cat to death. He fantasizes about shooting up peaceful protests and believes that emotional men are the downfall of civilization. When Dad asked him if he would be willing to kill me, he said yes, thinking I couldn’t hear. Most recently, Brother went into a destructive rage and threatened to kill Dad with his knife. I stayed holed up in my room and prepared to jump out of the bedroom window if I had to make a run for it.
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Mom pearl-clutches and threatens to withhold sustenance from me if I criticize her, but will allow Brother to scream at her and command her and won’t even protest.
Earlier this week, I finally woke up and saw that all of my family members are batshit insane and incapable of change; there is zero logic to their behavior and all of my insecurities were me indirectly blaming myself for it. I took some short trips out into the real world and found out that pro-social and progressive people are everywhere. Much of my anxiety lifted and I could suddenly see examples of people loving and caring for people like me everywhere. I finally felt like people could love me and I felt genuinely happy FOR THE FIRST TIME because I realized the world is WAY less hellish than I thought at first and it’s worth the effort to escape. I accepted so many things as normal because I was too scared to talk to anyone in the real world to challenge my beliefs.
Now, I’ll have to risk my life to escape, but the chance for freedom beats the slow death of depression. Even if I am killed in my attempt to find freedom, I don’t think anything is more painful than submission. I will die at the happiest point of my life.
Unfortunately, I’m very suspicious of men because of the whole violence and homicide thing. I want to know how common men like this are in the general population and what signs I should look out for. Although, since most murders are committed by those the victim knows, I have a feeling that the men who I have to worry the most about are the ones who live under the same roof.
So I’m curious how fucked this is. Worst 20% of households? 5%? 1%? Should I expect people with trauma like this to be walking around everywhere, or did I genuinely win the shit lottery?
Yeah dude, that’s not the worst first world childhood I’ve heard of, but it’s impressive how close it is. You’re in the worse 1% for sure based on my experience as someone with a downright sunny childhood compared to yours and a cptsd diagnosis from it
I… Jesus. I had a fucked up childhood, and I know more people who’ve had fucked up childhoods than most, and this one. Assuming it’s all true this one takes the goddam cake. I’d estimate my own situation is probably top 20%, yours is… Well. You made it to adulthood so it’s not the worst I’ve heard of.
While in general men (at least in America) tend to get some unsavory things drilled into them in their upbringing, violence being one of them, it’s not common for it to be this level. Being physical with your friends is normal. Violence to that degree is far less so, I’ve known, as far as I’m aware, no one who is up where your brother is. The most common issue I hear from most people with most men is like… Immaturity. Which, while not great, also is not even on the same plane as punching a cat to death.
One of the things that kept me stuck here for so long was the belief that most men were just as violent as my dad and brother were. I took men being physical as evidence that they would kill people who made them angry. Since Dad constantly threatened my life whenever I did something he didn’t like, I assumed that men outside would just kill me since there aren’t any family ties (which I thought was the only reason my dad spared me).
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whistles
Damn. I thought my childhood sucked, but you win. Sorry that happened to you. Many people shouldn’t be parents.
Good for you for persevering.
For your question…a very very low percentage. Almost anyone growing up in a household like that is gonna be damaged and either become a psycho like your brother, or end up the polar opposite like you.
I spent the majority of my life up to this point surrounded by military veterans/civilian employees with dark senses of humor.
This is pretty fucked up, even by those standards.
For a terrible joke: it has to be from the Hapsburg family to be Royally fucked up, everything else is just sparkling abuse
I read your first bullet point. Yes, your childhood was fucked. This is nowhere near the typical experience, even for folks with bad home lives.
Like .001%.
Escape as soon as possible. Cut all ties with these people
100% upbringing. Like 5% of households. Your childhood was the stuff of nightmares being raised by narcissistic people.
You need an internet hug.
Nah, there is probably also a strong genetic component.
Holy shit. Less than 1% of households. This is not normal for the vast vast majority of people.
Get out and get out fast. Get your personal documents together (birth certificate, passport) and leave.
Its going to be hard and scary at first, but the world outside your family home is far safer than the one inside it.
I think my parents keep my documents in a safe, which means they’ll have to know if I’m leaving. Maybe I can get the police to assist me in retrieving them?
Documents can be replaced. They get lost, stolen, or destroyed all the time. You can explain to a clerk that your documents were stolen - technically the truth since they’re withheld from you without your consent - and if they press the issue you can explain that your abusive parents won’t give you access to them and you cannot ask them for access.
Think about how you frame the information - don’t say “my parents have them and won’t let me access them” because that sounds potentially benign to a bored clerk just trying to get through the day and not really paying attention. Say, “they were stolen by my abusive parents who I no longer live with,” since that front-loads the problem and frames you as the victim, rather than as someone’s child. If you can have a friend with you when you go to get your documents that can help.
You haven’t said how old you are that I saw, so I’m assuming you’re still a teen, but even if you’re a young adult this can still matter.Okay, I see you said you’re an adult.In an ideal world it shouldn’t make a difference, but the way you present what is technically the same information really does matter in getting bureaucrats to help you properly. They are people, and they don’t just follow rigid rules, they will be swayed by their emotions and learning to navigate that is a big part of getting the system to work for you.
Also documents like that usually have serial numbers. That’s so if they are stolen, they can be registered as invalid, so the thief can’t use them to steal your identity. So whatever is in the safe can be made worthless if you get that done. Getting replacements should automatically invalidate the old ones but not every system works the same, so double-check that the old copies will be invalidated.
It depends a little bit on where you are but in general I wouldn’t trust the cops to be helpful, unless you somehow know for a fact that they will help and not just return you to your family. I hate to say that but they fundamentally exist to protect property and a lot of them accept society’s logic that children are the property of their parents, and if you’re striking out on your own it’s important for you to learn that cops aren’t your frends. People like your dad & brother become cops specifically because it gives them power over others.
It’s also likely your parents will simply lie and try to convince the cops that you should be back with them. Not to say they will be successful, but once you’re away from the home I would absolutely try to eliminate any contact you make after that. I don’t want to scare you too much, but also these people have a pattern. They usually know how to talk to cops, since they tend to talk the same language. Your parents likely keep the documents away from you in order to keep you controlled, so they will know that this is an opportunity for them to reel you back in. I wouldn’t give them the chance.
I would look up teen shelters, and if you can find a group of people who you believe have your interests at heart then you can ask them for help. All of this will be a lot easier if you can find allies. If you can find any mutual aid organisations near you - “food not bombs” is a common name to look for - they may know other orgs willing & able to help, or they may just have people who are willing themselves.
If this is true, this is very fucked up, definitely in the worst 1%. I’m sorry.
Sorry that happened to you OP. Get out as soon as you can. If you have to apply for the army or whatever to do that then do. That environment is dangerous. Get away from them and dont look back. Wishing you the best OP.
If you’re underaged, record this stuff and go to CPS. If you’re a young adult, find a local support group and make plans to leave without any notice.
Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I’m an adult, so at least I have more options.
I’m still deprogramming from all of this stuff. I have my first therapy appointment next week and I’m starting to realize that my situation might be particularly spicy. I kind of thought on some level that this totalitarian control is just the average conservative household and I just had to deal with it for a little longer. But now that my brother is getting angrier and making death threats against my own parents, I’m starting to think that my only option is to get the FUCK out of here.
You need to leave.
Preferably in the next three to five minutes. Grab your shit and go. Even homelessness is better than this.
Even homelessness is better than this.
I’m worried about freezing to death. Do you know of any decent cities in the U.S.? I have enough money to get a plane ticket to anywhere in the country.
Not from the US but Hawaii always looked like a nice place.
West coast is pretty ideal. Any major city will do, make sure you’re in an urban environment for support, comfort, and a healthy society.
Make sure they can’t find you.
Do you have any skills, education, or any means of finding work?
I learned to program on my own pretty decently and made a website that a few thousand people use in a niche gaming community. I basically built a free product that’s very useful to a specific set of people.
Unfortunately, my college plans got sidetracked because I developed a chronic illness and it’s been hard to go places and pay attention to lectures. I tried online college at home, but my brother’s violence made it impossible to focus. Without a source of income, trying to continue with college might be risky, since I may not find a way to repay all of the debt.
If I were you I’d focus almost entirely on getting almost any job and making friends somewhere.
- Whether we like it or not, in this world, money is our ticket to independence. Whatever you do or wherever you end up going, you’re going need some kind of regular income to survive.
- A job will take up some of your time and get you out of the house and away from these people. Friends will do the same.
- The cost of living is expensive, and having some kind of friends and roommates who you like and trust is an invaluable asset to living a stable and happy life right now. Even with a decent job it can be hard to afford to live on your own, so having a couple decent roommates makes things a lot easier. Some people (like myself) are lucky enough to have a great family as a support network, but you’re going to need to lean into friends. If you have some decent friends online who are interested in maybe being roommates, that might point you in a solid direction of where you can go next.
Hmm. I’d suggest adding some sort of tip jar to your website if you haven’t already. Luckily programming is a solid skill that you can monetize to help free yourself from your toxic environment. Perhaps you can do contract programming jobs on a site like fiverr (other commenters may have better suggestions on where you could find work for that)
I found this. https://www.togetherestranged.org/
Put together a Bug Out Bag. Even if you don’t think you can leave right now, just put it together.
Your brother and dad sound potentially like psychopaths and/or sociopaths.
It’s one thing to like violence in media, but once you start bringing violence into your life against animals and people, it is a massive red flag that this person is not alright and is potentially very dangerous.
I think it would be in your best interest to figure out a way to put as much distance as possible between your family and you. That might mean getting a job if you don’t have one already, making trustworthy and kind friends in your area who might be willing to be your roommate, putting physical distance between you and them by moving somewhere else, filling your free time with activities outside of the house, and so on.
(Also, if you can get any pets or animals to a safe place, then I highly recommend doing it as soon as you can.)
Mom and Dad were authoritarian parents who never gave us comfort or affection. They were very impatient and demanding. Dad would physically and verbally abuse us. Mom would do nothing to intervene. Even when he threw a goddamn toddler across the living room.
While this isn’t normal or right, it’s also sadly more common than it should be. So many kids are raised in bad or abusive situations and it’s fucking awful.
I’m sorry that you grew up in such rough circumstances, and I hope that you’re able to cope and find peace with it as you grow further into adulthood. You can’t really fix your past, but what you can do is work towards creating the future for yourself and for the people that you love that is significantly better than what you were given as a child.
From a young age I became intensely sexually attracted to receiving nurture and affection. This created far fewer awkward moments than one might think, thanks to the environment I lived in, but it led to paralyzing insecurities later since it was a behavior my parents never exhibited and mainstream pornography didn’t showcase it.
While you’re understandably being a little vague about this, it sounds like you’re saying you have a kink, right?
Well, kinks are by definition atypical, right? But as long as they only involve consenting adults engaging in reasonably safe activities, then there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong or unethical about them.
As someone in the kink space myself, I think that as long as what you’re into is consensual, ethical, responsible and legal, then just let your freak flag fly and embrace that side of yourself. (Of course, if your kink is ethically or legally problematic, it goes without saying that you ought to get professional help with that before hurting yourself and others.)
Kink can be just as core to a person’s sexuality as any other preference or orientation, in my view, so there’s very little point to fighting against it or letting it drag you down a spiral of shame and self-negativity. Instead, I think the vast majority of kinky people are much better off accepting and embracing their unique interests, meeting other people in that space (for fun, but also just to know that you aren’t alone), and enjoying yourself. It’s much easier said than done, of course, but it’s worth the emotional investment to try.
There’s a lot more to human sexuality than what “mainstream porn” offers, and I promise you that whatever niche thing you’re into, you can absolutely 100% find other people who share that interest.
I believed that nobody would ever like me because I was sensitive and wanted care and was shamed for those things. I struggled with masculine gender roles and felt like I was unwanted by the world. I became suicidal and wanted other people to hurt me.
I’m so sorry that you’ve been through all of this emotional turmoil.
Being a “man” isn’t about being tough, violent, angry, driving a big truck or being full of rage… It’s about being a good father, husband, boyfriend, son, uncle, mentor, teacher, protector, citizen, etc. You dad and your brother don’t know the first fucking thing about it, frankly.
You really need to put some distance between the bad people in your life and go out and meet some good people, because they do exist. You will absolutely find that there are kind, loving, caring, protective, empathetic, responsible, thoughtful, and just decent people out there.
Unfortunately, you have to put in some extra effort to find them while getting away from the assholes in your life, but you will find them I promise.
it sounds like you’re saying you have a kink, right?
Pretty much, but my kink is literally just being held and playfully overwhelmed with kisses. My brain would constantly tell me that I’d never be able to find a partner because the thing that turned me on was too childish and female-dominant. I started feeling better than I realized that I likely only felt so much shame about this because of my parents’ contempt for giving comfort and affection, coloring the act as taboo.
I feel like you won the shit lottery. There are varying degrees of fucked-upedness, and it varies by region/culture/economic status, but that list seems like you’ve experienced a disproportionately shitty upbringing.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, and I hope you’re able to surround yourself with more normal people.
JFC
I am a manly guy and no, none of this is normal, none of this is “manly”, and what you went through is just insane and I wish I could give you a hug, man…
Get out
Leave
Now
The more time you stay there, the more risk you’re running. You can’t save them, you can’t save their future victims, but you can save yourself. Save yourself.
You can’t choose your family, but you can find good friends who will care for you. Build a new life with them and slowly forget the hell you were brought up in.
