Senkinek Írt Levelek

First thing that made me realize how upside down my life was, was a friend, who had an abusive father, but good mother. And you see, because the mother was good, she realized when her kids were still small, that he’s abusive, that the kids would get hurt, and she moved the hell away from him and got a divorce. She was poor, she didn’t have many resources, and she had to work very hard to survive, and managed to get the abuser to pay alimony. My friend grew up surrounded by love and support, with high self-confidence, high social abilities, complete belief in their  worth and lacking nothing. And then one day the abusive father was angry at the mom, and tried to take it out on my friend, my friend got a call filled with insults and threats. It was scary and my friend got upset, I tried to comfort them but I really didn’t have good words to say. They later called their mom, and this is what the mother said:

“You are a perfect person, if anyone is talking to you like this, you can walk away.”

I remember just feeling complete awe hearing this, told from a mom, to a child. It even cheered me up. Those are the words we should have been getting from our parents. This is the correct attitude.

This other example is something that made me cry, and everyone else I’ve told this story. It’s from a woman on youtube, who has a farm, and it was her dream her whole life to have a farm, and she also has kids. This year, she entered a competition in growing tomatoes, she grew a special tomato plant, and the competition was about who manages to grow the most tomatoes, biggest tomato, and so on. She usually lets her kids play in the garden, but she explained to all of them that they’re not allowed to touch the special competition plant, or harvest the tomatoes.

However, her youngest son, aged maybe 5 or 6, took the biggest tomato off, before it even started ripening. She made a video explaining about what happened, and then she smiled and talked about how she cares about her farm, and her competition a lot, but not even close to how much she cares about her children feeling happy and safe in the garden. She said, even though she warned the kids to not touch the plant, it’s kind of hard to remember for a child which plant is what, and that in long term, competition doesn’t really matter as much as happiness of her children. She even mentioned how she makes mistakes in the garden too, and forgives herself right away, and her children deserve the same forgiveness. And then, her son, laughing, runs up to her, and realizes she’s making a video on tomato he tore off, and he says with a grin “I’m sorry” and she replies, with warmth and affection in her voice: “I forgive you, my darling.”

A close friend has a mother like this. When we are on a voice call and loud, she will say "I'm glad you two are having fun."

When they sent me a package, the mother remembered how once, i mentioned I needed to buy a pencil, and sent me a pack of mechanical pencils. In that conversation, I mentioned how the trip involved a train. It was not a trip for the pencil, I had to run a different errand and stopped for a pencil on the way. But she decided a train trip is too long, and they have more than enough pencils, so she sent me pencils.

When I said it might be simpler to take a video of hummingbirds than a photo, and it worked, she called me a smart cookie.

She is in my life, she is extant, and she loves her daughter.

Just... genuinely good people exist. It doesn't always feel like it.

And yes, we, children of terrible people, were robbed of this, terribly unjustly robbed.

But goodness exists.

don’t argue with or challenge the delusion—attempting to disprove someone’s delusions is not helpful at all and will result in that person not trusting you

assure the delusional person that they are safe; be open and honest at all times

encourage them to verbalize their feelings and offer protection to prevent injury to themselves or, possibly, others

start building a trusting relationship with them rather than acting on a desire to control their symptoms

do not confirm or feed into the delusion by asking questions about it when the person is not experiencing a psychotic episode

what it does not mean:

What helped me was questions like "what makes you think that?" asked completely earnestly. From there, one could start dismantling the delusions.

Dismantling looked something like "your friend could be not answering because they hate you secretly, or they might just be asleep or at work. Can we wait with drawing conclusions until after their wake up time?" Or "I don't think there's a walrus hunting you, it would have gotten a heat stroke in the temperature outside."

The problem with delusions isn't just that we believe the wrong thing. It's that we have a hard time parsing reality. We have all these feelings and sensations and thoughts, and we draw the wrong conclusions from them. It's a skill we lack. For me, it was because I was never taught how to correctly do that. For others, the sensations are wrong.

Please don't just discredit us, even if you know we are wrong. Delusions can be terrifying, and so is learning that you were wrong about how the world works all along. Telling the truth doesn't help.

I'm gonna go ahead and call that "Anxiety Abuse". Everyone with anxiety could do that to me, so I think it's fair for me to say people with anxiety are dangerous across the board. They all have the potential to abuse me because of the way they're hardwired, because of the way their brains worked. They're not the same as me. They're less than human. They're scary.

Now, my dad's been in therapy and on meds for anxiety for years, been working very, very hard at it since I can remember. He still has anxiety and shows symptoms sometimes, but he doesn't abuse me any more.

But, y'know what? He's still evil. Everyone with anxiety is still evil. They could hurt me, so it's only fair that I assume each and every one of them will hurt me, and treat them accordingly. If people with anxiety or people with friends with anxiety challenge me on this belief, it's because they are either also evil or are trapped in an abusive relationship. It's my job to inform everyone who knows anyone with anxiety of this so that they can get themselves to safety, so that everyone with anxiety can have no one in the world, so that they are alone, so that they have no support, because that makes me feel a little safer.

A narcissist may have been verbally and emotionally abusive towards you but that doesn't mean you were narcissistically abused, it just means you were verbally and emotionally abused. If you were partners with a narcissist that does not mean you were in a narcissistic relationship, you were in a romantic relationship.

It's beautifully written though.

I proceeded to tell her about a time when I was a kid and she was yelling, screaming, and throwing things, and I said “I love you” in that small timid kid voice and she said

“well I don’t love you right now”

-🍑