Stressed and losing my mind

[Alone]

I’m really struggling with words, if I give details of the latest incidents, I think they would be deleted. I’m feeling anxious at the moment, which isn’t helping me think clearly!

There was an incident last night, and I just can’t work out how it escalated as it did. The majority of the exchange was via text message, and no matter how many times I read it, I just can’t see it.

It’s all too familiar. When it was my mum treating me this way, I always felt this need to protect her. I always made excuses as to why I couldn’t do certain things to hide the situation. I felt like she needed looking after, and it just felt sort of normal. Not normal as in it being okay, but normal as in just how my life was. I wasn’t accepting of it, just that it didn’t feel so urgent, so desperate. I always felt that I would eventually be able to break through to her. As some of you know, she died recently and things were never resolved between us.

So now I live with the sibling who lived with us and I always considered him a scared bystander, staying quiet so that he wouldn’t be targeted next. But he has really turned on me. He is doing all the things she used to do to me. And it is destroying me! I find my thoughts constantly along the lines of “I can’t live like this”, “I won’t go through this again”. I don’t have the sense of loyalty and protection that I had for my mum, it’s more confusion and anxiety over how and why this is happening. Someone suggested once it could be learned behaviour. Perhaps it could be, but that doesn’t sit right with me. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but no matter what has been ‘learned’ or ‘seen’, as an adult, he should have his own mind and his own conscience, and know not to treat people that way! I think he lacks empathy and is incapable of putting himself in another’s shoes.

He throws my words back at me, I have called him abusive and labelled what he does as abuse to his face. He now calls me an abuser at every single opportunity. I feel in a constant state of stress, as most know, I have been working six days a week since before my mother died, and my doctor thinks I haven’t processed the loss at all. So I feel like I am constantly putting on an act of being okay, and feelings are never far below the surface, so when he starts something, I react. And I feel helpless, because I can’t actually do anything! And my internal insistence that I won’t live that way again brings it all bubbling up very quickly, and no matter how much I try to verbally defend myself, it just escalates!

Sometimes there are a few days with no incidents, mainly because I’m at work and our schedules mean we don’t see each other. And in that time, I always manage to convince myself that it’s all my own fault, that it’s me causing people to hate me somehow, that I’m doing something I don’t realise I am doing. So I do something nice, in the interests of peace, such as planning a surprise, or cleaning up his messes (he lives in dirt, I am not joking) or making a nice meal. But then it all comes out of nowhere again, and I’m left feeling like a fool for trying.

The panic attack I wrote about having at work (I wrote here a few weeks ago, I think) was after a customer was rude to me. It instantly put me in the place where I felt helpless, and like I can’t do anything to stand up for myself. I’m sick of it!

I can’t keep working so much, it is not helping the situation, and I am worried about finances, extremely worried as my family made me homeless before, I know there is no help if I can’t pay my way. But it is unhealthy to work so much, and the doctor was right that I am not dealing with anything, because I am constantly in work mode. I have written a request for time off one job, but of course that is being criticised by my family member. And when I ask why he thinks I’m making a mistake, I get no answer, just something rude. I literally have no one to talk to, to bounce ideas off. One by one, friends walk away from me. Now I am in the position where my heart can’t take any more loss, so at the first sign of anyone walking away, I leave first. For example, one unanswered text, and I never try again. So I could even be cutting off people who weren’t walking away in the first place. I don’t know. I just know that I cannot handle any more heartache, it’s been a couple of years of so much pain and loss.

I just can’t stop it all going around my mind, connecting the patterns that family keep doing this to me, and people keep walking away from me, so it’s me. It’s all me. I can’t handle it, and I don’t think I can handle being alone if I do reduce my working pattern. I don’t know how to find any sense in any of this, and I know that I need to reduce my work pattern and get into a healthier one where I can afford to manage financially without the overworking, but while so stressed, lost and feeling in turmoil, I just don’t feel able to start anything new.

I literally just feel so lost.

🙁 x

[lover of no contact]

Hi alone,

First of all well done for asking for help and not trying to battle this alone. Its good that you feel living with abusive behaviours and overworking is too much for you. There’s only so much we can handle. I find if I focus on the solution rather than the problem. The problem is not you. The problem in your life is your family member and too much work. I overworked too. Its healthy that you want to start living abuse free and to work less hours.

I would suggest ringing Women’s Aid for extra support and keep posting on here and reading the posts daily if you can to maintain your strength.

Its true you have been through horrific abuse at the hands of your family but you have survived. Hopefully soon you can find a way to break away from living with your abusive family member.

[Author]

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