There is ALWAYS hope, Tao! It may not feel like it but there's a spark in you yet! Otherwise, you wouldn't have posted or come on the site.

If your social development is arrested, then find something to do with children. Anything from volunteering to an actual paying job. Let the children lead you. Learn from them. Play children's games. When my therapist was teaching me feelings, she sent me to a child psychologist! Yes, a Child Psychologist and this girl gave me a sand box to play with and a box full of toys like houses, trees, cars, swing sets, etc., and with little people; women, men, kids and guess what I found?? A Tasmanian Devil! That's what I chose to be as Me! I played like a little boy plays with cars and acted out some feelings that were strange to me then I was asked to identify them. The play was just as theraputic as the identifying of emotions.

You have a chance to recapture your childhood and grow from it... or "grow up" socially. I still become a child when my grandkids are around. I totally forget that I'm 60 yrs old when I'm around them and for the first time in my life, I can play dolls with my granddaughter and cars with the boys. My logical mind comes into play when I see things getting out of hand or they try to do something dangerous. Heck! I'm still learning to be a child! My kids were and still are at times, more like playmates than offspring!

I'm no stranger to allienation and manipulation, Hun. My perpetrator, my grandmother, once told me as my mother did, that they wanted to keep me under glass on the mantelpiece!! Because they loved me and wanted to keep me safe?? Not hardly! Like I said, my grandmother was my perpetrator and my mother could have stopped her but she didn't because she didn't have the courage to confront her "saintly mother"!! I never had any friends growing up. I'd have them for a while until they got to know me and how selfish and willful I was! No social skills. Wasn't allowed to go to sleep overs or just go for the day. If someone, by some strange coincidence wanted me to go play at their house, NO WAY! They had to come to mine and then we'd be watched by my grandmother constantly! The kids were safer going home!! I wasn't allowed to date (I snuck out of the house), I wasn't allowed to go to school functions, and all the friends I might have made were judged as "*****s" by my mom, even the girls from church; because they wore makeup!

Consequently, I married the first guy that asked me. What I did was jump from the frying pan into the fire! If I thought I had been "protected" at home, it was worse with him! But that's another story.

There IS hope for you! I didn't realize what a crappy childhood I had until I went into therapy at 45 or so. Don't waste the years I did! Don't give up, don't stop! Even if you take very tiny steps, <font color=red>don't give up!</font color=red> You've got a lot to make up for! Don't let your parents mistakes become yours! Don't you perpetuate the harm they caused! Don't you believe their lies that you are worthless! You are a child of the King, therefore a princess! Embrace the Grace that you are gripped by and do what you know you need to do. Instead of hearing in your mind all the negative things your parents said/say to you, listen to the Inner Voice that says "Well done, good and faithful child!"

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<font color=blue>"Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt" --Shakespeare</font color=blue>