Hi everyone. My name's Samantha. I think my world just flipped upside down a few days ago, so I'm looking for some guidance, suggestions and love to help me through this.
So for the longest time I've always had a stormy relationship with my parents/family. I noticed that I have very negative feelings towards them and my siblings. Emotions like resentment, anger, frustration, pain, guilt (to the max), bitterness, feeling like I'm never enough, the scape goat, black sheep, and feeling like I'm a bad person. And I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was wrong with our relationship. I knew there was something wrong but I couldn't explain it. I realized that a majority of my interaction with my family is 90% negative, and they usually instigate the negativity, not me. I explained this realization with my parents not to long ago and they completely deny that they say anything negative and that they're the most kind and caring parents ever. (it's not that they're bad parents, don't get me wrong, they usually have the best intentions for me )
So I questioned my version of reality basically and thought "oh okay I guess I'm just imagining all of these comments or hurts." ( cause I'm convinced that I'm crazy and that I blow things out of proportion) but even with that new perspective I noticed that I still felt angry and controlled by them. So I wrote down for a few days, what everyone said to me; the good the bad the neutral. And I was right! 90% of what people said to me in that household was negative, or using my emotions like guilt against me. Now I'm questioning the sanity of the household I was raised up in....that I'm not really the one that's insane, but it's everyone else that is. lol

My mom will play the pity-me and martyr all the time to get you to feel guilty and help her.
My dad will constantly threaten me with anger, and calling me names.
My sister and brother tend to gang up on me and back up my mom and dad in their manipulative behavior.

And I've noticed that I picked up on some of their tactics too and it makes me feel awful! I didn't even realize that I was subconsciously trying to manipulate people! simply because i think manipulation is evil and wrong and I thought that I'd never do it in my life!
but now that I'm more aware of myself.....I realize that I do the same stuff they do.

Our family dynamic is dysfunctional, my parents are completely oblivious to it and deny it. At least my sister is becoming more aware and seeing all of the chaos and contention that comes in our house constantly.

We can't trust each other, (with anything personal or it'll be used against us in the future).
We pick every chance we can to attack someone for not doing something they said they'd do.
We have an awful relationship, we can't even sit at the dinner table without making jabbing remarks, criticizing, saying holier-than-thou crap, judging, yelling, guilt-tripping. etc!!!!!

and THEY think I'M the one that's crazy just because I see this!

I didn't realize that my whole life was created around manipulation, and I am extremely resentful because I believe that a lot of the negative beliefs I have in myself my parents helped instill in me like; I'm a bad person, I'm a bad dog owner, I'm ugly, I'm fat (my parents are embarrassed about this in themselves and push it on us kids not to be fat) I'm not fun, I'm crazy, I'm a freak, I'm over-emotional. I had to go to years of therapy because I thought it was ME who had the issue, when it's really because of my parents!
I am actually starting to see that it's ME who's been more of the adult in this relationship than my parents have! I'm starting to realize that I'm NOT as crazy as my family thinks I am!!!

I always wondered why my friends thought I was quite normal, while my family thought I was freaking crazy and put me in therapy and made me feel like a monster for having negative emotions.
(and my friends are normal people without mental illness, and I do have mental illnesses.....but at this point in my life I've conquered much of my depression and anxiety so I appear and seem pretty normal).
They've even beaten me and completely deny that it happened and make ME feel guilty that I got THEM that angry to have them do that to me. (I deserved it).
They've also said things like "I only love you when you're NOT like this." (implying my mental illness moment i might be having, they do not love me fully they litterally want me out of the house when I'm having a breakdown, i'm crying, or having anxiety).

They've said:
"You're the ugly duckling in our family." (this has been told to me twice, once by my mom and once by my sister.)
My mother even admitted to me that she waits on people hand and foot so that people would do the same because they should be the ones doing that for her, because she deserves it. (so she does it so she can guilt trip people into doing stuff for her).
If i don't go help my mother I'm a bad and evil daughter because I'm selfish. (I'm usually in the middle of something when she has me come do something).
"you're a bad (dog) owner." (dad and brother say this).
"you don't care about your dogs!" (all family member use this against me. Of course I care about my dogs....I care about them more than they do. I feed them and walk them...the family shoved all responsibility of the dogs onto me because they became lazy)
"did you walk your dogs today? go walk them" (my brother uses this sentence to make me feel guilty that I didn't walk my dogs, he is younger than me, bossy and controlling. he uses a cool facade to make it look like if I disagree with him on anything that I'm the nutcase because his logic is so foolproof or crap like that).

"You pick up your crap or I'm throwing you out of the house!!! You do this or that or I'll throw you out! don't you dare do that!" (my dad uses scare tactics, he's even threatened to send me to jail several times, threatens to kick me out....and I do get kicked out of my house "momentarily"....I basically come back later when people calm down and I go hide in my room because they have the upper hand, because I was kicked out and I don't want to deal with their controlling crap. .you know....my dad could just use a normal voice....that would be nice.)

My dad grabbed the back of my neck and shoved my head down and threw me around and threw me out of the house, because I slammed my fist into the wall cause I was angry. I didn't make a dent, I was just fed up with all the garbage that was spewing out of his mouth about me not being a good kid and never listening to him and never doing what he asks! etc etc.
He literally looked like he wanted to kill me he was so angry.

"would you rather me say it this way (guilt tripping/whiney/pleady voice) or WOULD YOU RATHER I YELL AT YOU?!!" (mother yelled this to me when I called her out on whining to guilt trip me into doing something, then my brother joined her side and said that I was the one that was whining when i made doubly sure that I did not whine, and my mother said "yeah you're the one that whined, not me." which made my sense of reality flip leaving me confused).

"why aren't you more like your sister?"
"why don't you wear makeup?"
"You shouldn't be listening to this type of music (it's only for men)" (linkin park music)

These are only like less than one day's worth of crap I hear every day. (there's many other things too) but that's all that makes up our conversations, backbiting, criticising, yelling, blah blah blah.

I'm too emotional, or not emotional enough. I'm NEVER enough for my parents, no matter how much I clean, how much I achieve I NEVER am enough.

I seriously have no idea how to deal with controlling people and so the only way I dealt with it when I was a teenager was hit the people that were being stupid jerks to me, because that's the only way I knew how to retaliate. At the time all I knew is that they were messing with my mind and I just lashed out because I couldn't handle it anymore and wanted them to shut up.
I don't do that anymore (2 years), I do not hurt other people no matter how frustrated i am with them....but now I have all this pent up anger inside for my family and I'm starting to resent them deeply. I need to get rid of this quickly.



HELP! I don't know what to do. I've researched more about manipulation but when I read those articles it's more about people that are bad manipulators, people that don't really care about other people's feelings and they're sociopaths.
My family is not that crazy if that makes sense. We're pretty normal I think.....at least that's what they tell me lol

I'm a victim and a manipulator myself.
I need more information of not being a victim, and not being a guilt-tripper manipulator person. I hate that in myself, but I can't seem to stop it. It's a very bad habit I'm finally seeing that I have.

I'm trying to be more aware of it, is there any tools I can use to become more aware?

THANK YOU!!!!

I'm just so confused right now......my whole reality of my life just seemed to 360.
It's not me who's crazy, it's everyone else.
O___o
I don't know what to do anymore!
help! thanks!