Dear Nichole:

August 2018 you shared that you moved from Chicago to Florida a few years back, having been in a 4.5 year relationship (3 years living together) with a man in Florida (he was and is 100% blind). In about July that year, you found out he was chatting with other women online, maybe met one in person.  You then were “very verbally abusive.. even physical” with him, and you gathered all your belongings  into your car and “left back home to Chicago”. Back in Chicago, you wrote about your sister in law who lives in Arizona with one of your two brothers, the older one: “I am so over taking her condescending attitude”.

November 2018: you shared that your mother recently passed away. You were living with your younger brother, his daughter (your niece) and your father in the tiny apartment where your mother used to live. You shared that both your parents were addicted to drugs, that your father was recently clean for the first time in your life, that you grew up poor, neglected, and that you suffered sexual abuse by your older brother (the one living in Arizona) from the time you were 5 to 13. You wrote that you didn’t want to live there, that you hate the Chicago winter, and that you still carry resentment for your mother who neglected you and your brothers while addicted to drugs, and when she sobered up, she still neglected you and your two brothers  when “she met a man and that became her life. I always felt that drugs came first than a man came first”, you wrote.

December 2018: you wrote that you go “up and down” with your emotions, “one day I am confident that I got it and the next few days I am down and out and then I have to start over”.

January 2019: you moved from that tiny apartment to your aunt’s house December 31 of 2018. You wrote that you feel “very lonely. All the things I was complaining about I miss.. I miss my brother and even my father”. You shared that you’ve been “functioning pretty well” in spite of feeling down and lonely. “I have learned to go on despite my feelings”. Again, you wrote how your moods fluctuate: “I was doing ok for a few days. Living life just fine, figuring things out and then BAM. Last couple of days filled with fear”.

You wrote that your aunt is driving you crazy, “She calls me in the morning on her way to work,  on her lunch, when she gets off work.. She is a little passive aggressive and controlling”. You had two nights when you felt great, “I had so much peace to just sit and think about all that has happened to me. I am still sad, and hurt, and anxious but am ambitious for the future”.

February 2019: you wrote about having a “Bad bad day”. “Sometimes I feel I may be bi polar or have something wrong with my fluctuations of mood.. the up and downs are draining”. You later wrote: “moving with my aunt was a terrible decision. I hate it now”. During that month you flew to Arizona with your younger brother to visit your older brother, his wife, four year old son (your nephew). At first it was good, but soon, it wasn’t: “This was the worst idea at the worst time”, you wrote. “I am so  disgusted by my younger brother.. and the way he has treated me this trip. He has been so passive aggressive and cruel to me”. You felt “dead and empty.. like I need to go to the ER with these chest pains and stress”.

Back in Chicago, you were “confused.. struggling with living with my aunt”. Your job was based in Florida and you were working from your aunt’s home, about to start a second job. Your plan was to qualify for a small mortgage for a condo in Florida.

March 2019: you were working two jobs, your Mind has been all over the place”, but at  one point you had a “decent couple of days.. feeling decent.. trying not to let things bother me and move forward”.

April 2019: you were working three jobs and saving. You were up to $7,500 in savings. You felt “up and down but am happy with myself because I have been strong and staying on track regardless. I have been so consistent. I am proud of myself… I have been working really hard. I have been trying my best to stay focused on me and my goals”.

May 2019: “Living with my aunt has been hitting the fan lately. She is so passive aggressive and manipulative”. You were thinking of moving out and you looked for a room to rent in a house with four women. It was going to cost you $250 more than you were paying your aunt, but “my peace is more important”, you wrote.

“I am confused… Everywhere I go I seem to be getting the same passive aggressive response. Could this be normal? I am sick of the passive aggression. I feel like the more happy I am the more someone wants to bring me down… I will be with 4 women and what if they start with the passive aggression”. You gave an examples of your aunt’s passive aggressive behavior: she “acted as if she care and then asks me if I lost my job.. I think she wants me to lose my job because she hates that I work from home. She bangs anything she can in the morning to make sure I am up as early as her”.

“I am so ready to get out!” of your aunt’s home, you wrote. Later you wrote: “my aunt.. continues with her aggression”. Later on another aunt of yours died. “The wake was literally a hell!” you wrote. In that wake your living aunt “smeared me to my entire family. I was chewed up and spit  back out”. In that meeting where you wrote that you were smeared , you told your older brother “that he is controlling and manipulating”, you told your younger brother that “he is in toxic relationship and abandoned me when I  needed him”,  you “lashed out.. then got up and said I couldn’t take it any more and left the house.. Didn’t attend burial”

Following that meeting, you wrote: “I feel like I cannot spend one more night here with my aunt!.. I need separation from these soul sucking creatures… my entire family has turned on me and wanted to bring me down”. During this month you left your second job and “spent tons on hotels” while still living with your aunt. Eventually, you rented a room for a month, got your stuff out of your aunt’s house and left.

June 2019: living in a rented room, you felt depressed, “empty and longing for my family”, and your insomnia started. “I miss.. my aunt’s place. I’m confined to a room.. I’m emotionally exhausted and sleep deprived.. I want family to save me but I don’t want to run back to them like I am wrong!”. Your older brother sent you a message: “I don’t know what it is that you are going through but I am here for you no matter what.. I want to do whatever it takes to work on our relationship”. Your younger brother’s message was: “just wanted to tell I love you and miss you. You still got family here for you”. You felt confused by these messages and found them “very invalidating to have them do this! I had my head on straight yesterday and now I am in doubt again!”.

You visited your two grandmothers, “to give them a chance”, “confronted one grandma”, she told you that she loves you and you found it “So invalidating. I am so lost at this point.. SO depressing”. “I do not know how to separate abuse from someone just being themselves”, you wrote later.

You wrote about your anxiety: “I have high anxiety with bouts of numbness… heart palpitations, throat tightening and a migraine with stomach pain and tension.. flashbacks”.

July 2019: you left that rented room, “here I am car full of belongings and food that will melt and oddly feeling ok about this situation”, back to “hotels and Airbnb”, looking for an apartment, “my money is dwindling”. You found an apartment that would be available to you on the first of August, you signed a lease there. Still insomniac, you went to a psychiatrist and got more sleeping pills, “still no sleep”.

September 2019: you were in your new apartment, “used up my savings on furnishing and all”, “emotions are still a roller coaster and my mind is still racing… confused about life”.

October 2019: you complained about “nightmares, anxiety attacks often and flashbacks sometimes all day long… since I left my aunt’s place I have been only surviving.. I spent over 8 thousands in 5 months surviving.. I have spent thousand of dollars and many, many hours in different kinds of therapy for it to only get worse? That is so upsetting!!!”

November 2019: You complained about “anxiety and attacks. I am currently numb.. and disconnected… am on 3 meds. Not sleeping and no contact with family”.

December 2019: You complained about “this ongoing constant anxiety”, feeling numb, disconnected from yourself, “like my brain keeps trying to figure out what just happened in the last 6 months”. You wrote: “I don’t feel the meds doing anything. My anxiety is at a max”.

My input today, Dec 5, 2019 (I will make it short, simple and direct): you had a very difficult childhood and so did your two brothers. As a result the three of you have greatly suffered. Your older brother sexually abused you for eight years, which greatly added to your suffering, eight years of sexual abuse that were swept under the carpet to this very day. As a result of the severe neglect and abuse that you suffered, you got to a place where you frequently feel abused anywhere, anytime by anyone. Even when you are not abused at all. You can’t tell the difference.

For example, when your aunt was making a rackets in the mornings, preparing to leave for work, it doesn’t mean that she was passive aggressive against you. I means she was in a hurry and was loud- it does not mean that she was not being loud on purpose so to wake you up.

When you were crying and she asked you if you lost your job, it doesn’t mean that she was trying to tell you that she wants you to not work from her home anymore. Maybe she really was concerned about you crying and she wondered if you were crying because you lost your job.

When your younger brother smiled during that meeting, the wake or after the wake, it doesn’t mean it was an “evil smirk”. It may very well be that he was very uncomfortable and it was one of those I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening kind of a smile.

And when one of your grandmother told you that she loves you, you thought that meant she invalidated you.

In other words, you see insincerity, evil, abuse and  passive-aggressiveness everywhere, and often it is not really there.

And then, because you feel abused and attacked by anyone, anywhere, anytime, you kind of.. defend yourself with anyone, anywhere, anytime.. but because you were not really attacked, your defense really is.. attack. In other words, what is really happening is you attacking people left and right.

You get confused a lot, not knowing what is happening.

You suffer from anxiety and extreme fluctuations of moods, although ever since you left your aunt, the dominant mood is anxiety, numbness and depression. You were getting better (having good moments or good days in between the anxiety and depression) March this year while living in your aunt’s home, and your best time (more good moments or days in between anxiety and depression) was April this year. From May on, it has been a downhill slope.

I suggested to  you many times to see a responsible psychiatrist and follow his or her instructions. But you have gone on and off of various drugs, not giving anything a chance to work. I think that you need to give a psychiatrist a chance so to stabilize your moods, and at one point attend cognitive behavioral therapy so to learn how to accurately evaluate people and situations,  so to determine where there is abuse and where there is none. And to control your own aggressive, lashing out behavior against other people.

This does not mean I am on your older brother’s side, the one who sexually abused you for eight years- he has a whole lot to answer to, he owes you a whole lot of restitution. I don’t mean that your aunt is a good woman, and I don’t mean that you felt abused by every person in your life (I assume you haven’t felt abused by your niece and nephew, for example). What I am saying is that you are lashing out at people when they are not disrespecting you or abusing you, and you otherwise misinterpret people’s words and gestures, seeing invalidation in what may be sincere concern and affection toward you.

anita