[ladytiger]

i hope this group is active as this is my first post. im 26, has a bf, and no kids as i am living at home because of no jobs. i am so not motivated to do anything because of the job situation and lack of support i have always had for a long time. the only support is my bf who has been there for me when my old friends disowned me because of my family life (very long story).

i started seeing a therapist a few weeks ago (have my appt this tues) about add/adhd and my family life. we r gonna talk more about my family issues to get to the underlying issues. my therapist has no idea i am still living at home as i am using my bf's address so family assistance/des won't come to my house that would be a cold war battle.

all my life, i never had anything positive going on. i never believed in goal settings thought it was full of crap thats what my parents thought too as they never taught us anything. beliefs in my family doesnt exist, my parents are hypocrites and walking contradictions. they are both narcs, sociopaths, professional liars, etc and the other above mental disorders out there.

ppl always ask me how come i dont have determination to do anything i said if u knew what kind of parents i had u would know why. honestly, i dont know what positive thinking, goal setting, determination, and motivation means because it was never taught to me and my parents dont even have it thats what we (4 of us) saw growing up. once in a while, i have any of those that i just mentioned and most of the time it is gone. when i do want to strive better, my parents feel it is stupid yet they are not the ones who are helping and when ppl do help i end up not wanting to be helped because my parents feel it is a waste of time and my mom said "black ppl have gone thru 400 yrs of slavery with no help so why would we need anyone to help us?"

yea, she still says that to this day. when ppl say you should do this or that or give me something positive, i thank them like it is a compliment. hell, i dont know any better and not sure what to think/feel/believe anymore these days. i told my therapist i can not feel i can do a good job on anything without some kind of guidance. real healing won't take place while i am at home living in a hostile environment and my bf gives me positive feedback i look at him blankly like huh? what does that mean? it will only take place having my own place. nothing in my head seems to click as my spirit was killed at 10 yrs old.

life was hard at age 10, a mini adult for a lack of parents i have. my parents never believed in helping a child out that its their job to do not the parents job to do never heard anything so stupid! my parents' lives are way more important than their own family. i know ppl say positive things to me i just dont believe what i hear and my therapist is gonna work on me about that later on.

i am a college graduate from 2 yrs ago and was attending a university after comm college but fell into financial probation and now i owe them money. i am so stressed its not even funny. i have zero money meaning i maxed out my old checking account 2 yrs ago during the fire incident we had in our old unit and have to rebuild my assets. i never/barely had any happy days in my life, who can be happy with no income? i want to do something but i have nothing and nobody else will help me. my parents refuse to help always saying the 40s-50s era was good living like it is today the dumbasses! nobody cares bout their time era the 21st century is not the 20th century.

i have looked in all avenues to improve my financial standpoint but nothing. i have no other skills to do my own business again i feel i have no hope in myself. i do have computer skills but need to improve them and i dont want to own my biz in computers. my old friends got tired of me being so depressed and negative all the time yet they knew thats the family atmosphere i came from!! ppl always ask me why dont u smile? i said how do u smile with no money? how do u smile when u r still living at home in a toxic environment? thats when they are thrown off when i say that but its true yet they don't have a real answer for me.

my parents made me feel like **** my whole life that i cant do anything these days. so what am i suppose to do? i dont have emotions when someone says you can do this or that blah blah put ur mind to it, yea my mind died long ago. i dont have motivation or something that will pull me out and if i had a better family, i wouldn't be the person i am today in this **** hole of a ****in family! when you have no real parents, how can you have hope to do anything? children always look to their parents for hope i couldn't do that growing up. all they do and still do is make bad decisions and dont care about it.

i have looked to other ppl who were a good inspiration but it still dont click i do not know why. i do pray to God about it but have not heard an answer.

any advice/suggestions?

[Perna]

You are 26 now, not 10. Your parents no longer count (if you are going to discount their experiences back "then" then you don't get to use back then as an excuse for what you are doing/not doing in your own life now, as an adult). They did their lousy job or did not do any job but you still have to learn these things and, if you think them necessary, I do not know why you are not working on learning them now. I'm glad you will be seeing a therapist. I would get any job I could, get a little money built back up, a way to get out of your parents' house you are unhappy in and then build from there.

[here today]

Somebody in another forum mentioned "schema therapy" for addressing (and maybe changing) long-term attitudes and behaviors we may have developed (and then cast in stone) when we were children. I looked it up and "Wow". Maybe that has something to offer? You could probably check it out, too, with your current therapist.

[ladytiger]

Originally Posted by Perna

You are 26 now, not 10. Your parents no longer count (if you are going to discount their experiences back "then" then you don't get to use back then as an excuse for what you are doing/not doing in your own life now, as an adult). They did their lousy job or did not do any job but you still have to learn these things and, if you think them necessary, I do not know why you are not working on learning them now. I'm glad you will be seeing a therapist. I would get any job I could, get a little money built back up, a way to get out of your parents' house you are unhappy in and then build from there.

i agree but the problem is why i feel this way is i still seek a set of parents and i know that sounds weird as i told my therapist that. my parents have no experience themselves, so what is there to learn from them? a bunch of lies, terrorizing people, manipulating, making people upset and laugh about it, make up stories, etc, is that what i am suppose to learn?

i told my therapist how i hated seeing some of my friends who have good families can grow and learn from them whereas i couldn't. so yea, my therapist is gonna work with me on that probably might have me break away from that idea of "finding parents." i remember a cousin of mine whom i do not know lost her (she has a brother too) parents at a young age they were killed in a train wreck probably their dad killed their mother.

she is a cpl yrs older than me and i remember when i was younger, she told me and my mom in an email how she is still looking for surrogate parents because of how she lost her parents and my grandma raised her and her brother after their parents' deaths. i did that for 4 yrs in high school meeting people offline hoping i can find the same thing but found the wrong kind of people.

on the job issue, applied to everywhere and still nothing. i do plan on calling some temp agencies to make an appt to see if they can help me.

[ladytiger]

Originally Posted by here today

Somebody in another forum mentioned "schema therapy" for addressing (and maybe changing) long-term attitudes and behaviors we may have developed (and then cast in stone) when we were children. I looked it up and "Wow". Maybe that has something to offer? You could probably check it out, too, with your current therapist.

i know my therapist said how she wants to work with me on giving me new skills but never said what kind of therapy we will use. i am not sure what they use since this is through the state. i know i have long term bad attitudes/behaviors that was never addressed by my parents when i was young and if they did address, i believe i wouldn't have these attitudes.

the problem is i got these attitudes from them! every bad attitude or negative thinking comes from my parents. its very hard for me to do anything because of these long term bad attitudes/behaviors that have programmed into me. i told my therapist i never learned any positive skills and i wanted to say how do u do that when u still live at home in an hostile environment?

so, i never heard of schema therapy but heard of cognitive therapy which sounds like id like to do. however, i will ask my therapist what kind of therapy methods are we gonna use? she does want to get all the family history from me out in the open the proceed with her knowledge/expertise about my parents.

[ladytiger]

UPDATE!

today, my bf and i went to the therapist this afternoon. it was an hour session and it was enjoyable. she asked me more questions about my family, people i have associated myself with, etc. i told her the screwed up advice i have gotten from people whether they been through my situation or not, but they seem to be a walking door mat to their families.

she said i wouldn't take account of what these people have to say and i told her i agree because it has gotten to the point where i have to be cautious on the kind of advice i get. if i hear an ounce of you embracing mistreatment and you just dust it under the carpet, there is no point in me talking to you or asking for advice because you have not resolved your issues but you got the nerve to give advice to someone who wants to break free from this prison.

she and my bf said i agree it's like asking a heroin addict how do i get off of drugs but the heroin is still shooting it up? u don't ask an heroin addict how to get off of drugs you ask someone who has been off of drugs for a long time who can help you get out of that hell hole.

now, the therapy she wants to do is coping skills like ground skills (sounds like environmental change). she said find something that will open up your para-sympathetic (nice side not activating the fight or flight mode) and allow kindness to come into you. she wants me to do that then work on self esteem later on and she will explain more in the next session next tuesday.

then we will also work on communication skills for me to communicate better to my bf. she asked me on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being worse and 1 better on things that i am feeling i said all 5s and i'd like to be at a 1 (sounds like EFT). she said with the ground skills you need to find what will work for you and if something don't work we can try other things.

i know what brings out my para-sympathetic side is animals. i love animals although i did mistreated my pets from the 90s all because my parents did and the environment my parents hate animals yet claim they love them. i do not want to mistreat an animal again. she said with trauma when u took the counseling class in college, the psych field was getting more info trauma as we didnt know much about it.

she said you did experience trauma/abuse in your life and other people may not think so but its all subjective and i felt relieved hearing that. other people who didn't go thru what i went thru have no business waving wands at me telling me my life was not traumatic while their lives were like leave it to beaver lifestyle! i told her about people that i said to them nobody decides what is traumatic for me as they have no business doing so she and my bf said i agree.

my bf is the only one who truly understands me while nobody else does not. id just thought i would give an update....