Dear Helcat,

“Your father conditioned you to cater to his needs with verbal abuse. Perhaps your “reward” sometimes was not being verbally abused? Not being praised, just not being attacked verbally. Some “reward”, huh?”

Yes, my reward was not being treated unworthy of praise and being myself.

“So you picked up this idea as a child that if you did everything perfectly then MAYBE there would be peace for you”

This sentence describes a very big chunk of my childhood because it came from two angles. My dad, I played soccer and in order to stay on the team he asked me every single night if I did my workout video, at 13 years old. I did get in very good shape and became one of the best players on the team… so I didn’t see it as wrong. The other angle was religion, my mom spoke alot of keeping my heart pure, no lies, and treating my siblings with kindness. I remember before sleeping at night I would say “tomorrow I will be perfect.” Kindness with one of my sisters was particularly hard because my dad pitted us against eachother, I worked out and did all the things my dad asked as “perfect” as I could, but my sister was rebellious and refused. He would speak badly of her, to me, so I began to not like her.

“The alternative that it is just chaos is too frightening.”

My dad labeled my mom and sister as “chaos.” He would tell me I was the level headed one, me and my youngest sister. Whereas my brother, sister in the middle and mom, were “too up and down emotionally.”

“always looking for mistakes as an excuse to unleash his abuse upon you. …. If he was in a bad mood he would find a reason to abuse you”

This weekend at his Palm Springs house I was VERY hypervigilant, like I was living at his home as a teenager. I picked up every crumb and replaced anything I used in larger amounts. I told my friends to be careful and we left the place spotless. But this is the mind trick: When I emailed him “thank you” and told him about the food I replaced and anything we used, he responded –

” I am so happy you had such a wonderful time. Makes me feel good about the investment I made into our family’s future! You were probably overly considerate of utilizing some of the goods in the house. I suppose we could have had a conversation about that, because I would have wanted you to feel more freedom to help yourself on basically everything (with perhaps the exception of the top shelf liquor😉).

Love you and feel so proud, blessed, fortunate to be able to offer that luxury to one of my favorite people in the world. Miss you! ❤️ ”

– I am not sure if he has changed since I lived with him or what, but I felt gaslit when I read this email, because if I would have left anything out of order I know he would have said things. But he is acting as if I am the hypervigilant one and he has never asked such a thing of me….

“Recognizing that it is not your responsibility to manage someone’s emotions and it is not your fault if they snap at you (unless you did something seriously wrong) is how to get past people pleasing. “

I am learning this now. It happened in Palm Springs, I asked my roommate for the half of the wifi bill and she snapped… she started listing all the bills of the month (ones that we didn’t have to pay yet) and $30 in groceries she spent on my birthday.. which I was handing her cash and she said “no its ok its your birthday I got it.” In this moment I was aggravated she was bringing this up at this moment, I tried to calm it down by saying “Do we need to pay those bills yet?” she said no, and I said “ok well let me know as they come in one at a time and I will send them to you.” She said ok. Then she dropped it, I have no idea why she just decided to dump all that on me in that moment but she didn’t bring it up again and I paid her yesterday for utilities like I have every month. It is strange for me when my past relationship, my dad, and now her all freak out on me about money randomly, it makes me feel like it is me, but I don’t think it is. I don’t owe my roommate anything, if anything I cover for her because I want to avoid her coming at me randomly, she owes me right now and I am not even gonna tell her because I don’t want her reaction, same with my dad. I don’t have this money relationship with anyone outside of those three, but three feels like a lot as I try to believe it is not my fault. I really hate money because of these things.

” Getting used to setting boundaries with unhealthy people is helpful too…it’s helpful to view people as equals. Your emotions matter as much as theirs do.”

This reminds me of my conversations with P, in Palm Springs. After the boundaries I set at the cafe before the trip, she said she felt embarrassed, she said she thinks so much about how she comes across and her best-friend telling her she was over-sharing hurt her feelings and she felt it was unfair. I told her there are many thoughts that occur in my head that I choose not to say in order to not pollute the environment. To which she responded; “my adhd makes me say everything.” I tried to have compassion for this adhd, but it is hard for me because it is not easy to stay centered and decide what thoughts not to engage in, but that is not an excuse to just emotionally dump on people. I think she still thinks it is unfair, she said multiple times “I guess I just have to walk on eggshells with you now.” I wanted to roll my eyes, and she said I lacked empathy. And I do lack empathy for her adhd that supposedly makes her talk over people and dump negativity, that is not what I think adhd is.. If I am in the wrong here I would like to know.

Long message, and I hope not too much?

Seaturtle