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[kaijyuu]

You seem to be ignoring the fact that if they're attempting suicide, there are obviously more things wrong with their life than just a relationship.

"Straw that broke the camel's back," and all that.

I used to think that way when I was younger and still do to some extent, but I have since seen way too many cases of emotional manipulation via suicide threat, especially in abusive relationships.  I wouldn't just assume that's the intent, but if you have good reason to believe that someone is doing this to be manipulative, then they should be treated as toxic.  The alternative is allowing the person to terrorize and dominate everyone around them with reckless abandon theater that will never end so long as it continues to be effective for them.

I don't disagree that such people exist (I've met at least one extremely emotionally manipulative person), but I'd still argue they aren't exactly mentally sound. They still need help, but with a different approach. Most prudently, separation from those they're abusing.


As for the current discussion that I mostly skimmed over, never blame people who commit suicide any more than you'd blame someone for dying from cancer. It is seriously no less disgusting to call a suicide victim a "coward" than it is to say that someone who died from cancer "didn't fight it hard enough."

Some people seem to think mental diseases are easier to control or deal with when it's probably the opposite. My father in law (a local preacher, who's dealt with many different people) can give you a very long rant about how people will treat someone visibly ill with sympathy, but those with internal problems are ignored and told to stop complaining.

[Max White]

Hey Vector, I really hope you don't go back to that. You have worth. Everybody here, without having to know things like your history or what you look like, or your real name or much detail at all has a lot of respect for you, because of how you think. You have value, not as something that is broken, but as a person, independent from any preconceived notions people have about you. Your reputation here is made by how you choose to present yourself, not from anything that is forced on you, and you are one of our most valued members.

I don't really amount to much more than text on a webpage with a lizard as a unique identifier, but I think you are a good person.

[SalmonGod]

I don't disagree that such people exist (I've met at least one extremely emotionally manipulative person), but I'd still argue they aren't exactly mentally sound. They still need help, but with a different approach. Most prudently, separation from those they're abusing.

Yeah... too much experience with emotional manipulation and psychologically abusive people has turned it into a major rage button issue for me.  I know they just have problems of a different kind, but my ability to be sympathetic and desire to help has been worn down over time.  My advice in such situations anymore is mostly complete intolerance towards the abusive behavior and escape.  This seems to be the advice I see from anyone who has seen it first hand.  It's just too easy for good intentions to be taken advantage of for continued manipulation.

Some people seem to think mental diseases are easier to control or deal with when it's probably the opposite. My father in law (a local preacher, who's dealt with many different people) can give you a very long rant about how people will treat someone visibly ill with sympathy, but those with internal problems are ignored and told to stop complaining.

Totally agree, and it's horrible.

[Pnx]

Man, I'm remembering the entire story is basically the story of my life, and hence pretty long. So I guess I'll just give the abbreviated version of the stuff that made me depressed.

Firstly there was the school stuff, my academic life has typically been a huge disaster, starting with being bullied like crazy when I lived in France, and continuing to me getting expelled from several elementary schools because I'd had such horrible experiences with school I simply didn't want to go anymore. Then in high school I was pretty purposefully held back because my mother felt she didn't want to overtax me, which I think was really the reverse of what I needed at the time.

The there was the issues with my mother... My mother is probably bipolar, she's definitely a big control freak, and she spent a lengthy period of my late teens being increasingly abusive. She would essentially find excuses to pick fights... A lot of it took the form of her setting me up to fail at something, then criticizing or punishing me for it. But failing that she would pretty reliably jump at any excuse to shout at me. There was essentially no good way to react to this stuff, if I'm silent, she would get angry because I don't say anything, if I say something, it would be the wrong thing to say. I couldn't ignore her, I couldn't look at her, if I stayed where I was she would tell me to go to my room, if I went to my room she would tell me I wasn't allowed to walk away from her... There was basically no way to win.
These episodes would typically go one of three ways. She would either just shout at me for a length of time then storm off and complain to my father. Or she would shove me, break things, disconnect the power, a variety of other stuff. The third only happened a handful of times, and that was when I fought back, I never hit her, but I did wrestle her out of the room a couple of times. She usually responded to this by calling the police, the police would come over and tell me that this behaviours was going to get me arrested and thrown in jail. I could possibly have made a point that actually she's the one attacking me, but frankly I've never been good at standing up and making that kind of argument to anyone, besides, up until that point nobody (at least, nobody I really believed) had ever really told me that this was unacceptable behaviour for a parents. It sounds nuts, but I genuinely believed this stuff was because I was a horrible person.

There was a whole thing where she got me on anger management for this stuff. And after the anger management therapist spend a few months trying to address the cause of my anger issues, she started to realise that maybe this was an issue of parental abuse. My mother flipped out, accused me of lying, and I never went back for therapy until much later. I was also put on a variety of different medications, one of which probably kicked off my depression in earnest, the side effects were pretty bad, it made me sleepy all the time and I started having fainting spells. I tried to get my mother to let me stop taking it, but she refused so I went behind her back and started flushing it... this went fine for a couple of weeks until she found out about it, at which point she literally tried to force the pills down my throat, and walked off shouting "You've been doing so much better these past few weeks!"

Needless to say I wound up very suicidal.

Then there was this whole issue involving a love interest and some friends... I'd honestly never had friends before, at least not ones I'd ever spoken with or hung out with outside of high school, but I found myself doing it in my final year. It was mostly these three people including this person I had a huge crush on. There's a really long, dumb, drama story here but the gist of it is that I wound up confessing my feelings, it led to an awkward situation, then I confessed to feeling suicidal and having plans to kill myself after graduation, which led to an even more awkward situation. I had actually spent quite a while trying to get these people to hang out with me more, and them being rather reluctant. Then after the suicidality confession they were suddenly very eager to have more to do with me.

This really didn't end well, I was trying to put some distance between myself and them, and yet the more I did that the more they tried to cling on, so I sort of wound up trying to scare them off by basically being a huge jerk and acting a bit like a psychopath... just a bit. It worked, and they wound up all deciding they didn't want anything to do with me again...

There's really a hell of a lot more to that, but it's honestly an essay's worth of drama I don't feel like going through again.

I wound up getting arrested when I asked my mother if I could see a psychiatrist, and she lectured me about how she wasn't going to let me tell lies, and I just pushed her over and shouted "I know" at the top of my voice, she went off and phoned the police and told them I had thrown her to the floor and beaten her, I remember hearing her describe the number of fictional blows I had hit her with... Anyway, police came in, pointed gun, arrested me, my mother's story began to change over time until she just told the truth of the matter. The judge agreed to let me go with misdemeanor disorderly conduct, and she only kept those charges because she wanted to make sure I was on probation and getting psychiatric help (she'd found out about me being suicidal)... So the end result of this argument about me wanting to take therapy, was me being arrested and forced to take therapy.

Then there was a lengthy few years where nothing really improved, took a wide variety of medications, tried to fix relations with my old friends, they've not exactly been receptive to the idea, and honestly, sometimes I'm really frigging pissed on account of some of the shenanigans they pulled (I've glossed over them, but they were there), other times I really can't blame them.

Things really started to improve when I stopped taking medication, and my mother started taking anti-depressants. I never actually realised how incredibly profound the effect of her behaviour was until it stopped, after that I started to come to terms with the abuse... and then something like six months down the line, here I am.


Right now I feel... fragile. I'm scared the situation I'm in is just one good push away from falling apart again. I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing, and I'm honestly not that optimistic about the future...

[Scelly9]

...Goddamn, man.


*Gigantic fucking cuddlehugs to you*

[SalmonGod]

It's amazing the effect that being around an psychotic/controlling person for an extended period can have on you.  When you finally get some real time away from them (something they don't want you to ever have for this very reason) it is seriously like drugs wearing off.  After a while the realization dawns on you that you haven't been thinking clearly for a long time, and slowly piecing together an understand of how your ability to properly think and feel has been sabotaged.  This is why they're called toxic.  They're not just unpleasant, they spread illness to everyone around them.

[smirk]

Just caught up on the last several pages. I need to stop drinking so much coffee before checking the lower boards; my heart-rate is through the roof and my eyes are leaking for some reason.

Vector, Pnx, I have all this raw, burning emotion and no adequate words with which to contain it. So I'm just gonna quote Max White for emphasis, because he caught it far better than I could:

I really hope you don't go back to that. You have worth. Everybody here, without having to know things like your history or what you look like, or your real name or much detail at all has a lot of respect for you, because of how you think. You have value, not as something that is broken, but as a person, independent from any preconceived notions people have about you. Your reputation here is made by how you choose to present yourself, not from anything that is forced on you, and you are one of our most valued members.

I don't really amount to much more than text on a webpage with a lizard as a unique identifier, but I think you are a good person.

*Hugs*

Catsup, I know you're trying to help, as you see it, and that's cool to a point. But you might want to give these two articles a read-through:
http://www.diycouturier.com/post/41923259437/to-the-person-who-wrote-21-habits-of-happy-people
http://www.diycouturier.com/post/47249603128/21-tips-to-keep-your-shit-together-when-youre
Neither of 'em are very long. You don't seem like a Cult of Happy person so far as I can tell, but you do seem to be using Rationality to the same effect. Hells, I used to be a Cult of Rationality person myself until I hit my own depression. More things in heaven and earth, and all that.

[Kadzar]

Hey Vector, I really hope you don't go back to that. You have worth. Everybody here, without having to know things like your history or what you look like, or your real name or much detail at all has a lot of respect for you, because of how you think. You have value, not as something that is broken, but as a person, independent from any preconceived notions people have about you. Your reputation here is made by how you choose to present yourself, not from anything that is forced on you, and you are one of our most valued members.

I don't really amount to much more than text on a webpage with a lizard as a unique identifier, but I think you are a good person.

This echoes my sentiment, except replace lizard with caster gun-wielding penguin.

[Dutchling]

Hey Vector, I really hope you don't go back to that. You have worth. Everybody here, without having to know things like your history or what you look like, or your real name or much detail at all has a lot of respect for you, because of how you think. You have value, not as something that is broken, but as a person, independent from any preconceived notions people have about you. Your reputation here is made by how you choose to present yourself, not from anything that is forced on you, and you are one of our most valued members.

I don't really amount to much more than text on a webpage with a lizard as a unique identifier, but I think you are a good person.

This echoes my sentiment, except replace lizard with caster gun-wielding penguin.

Add a Goblin Babysnatcher to the list. ;_;

[AlmightyOne]

You seem to be ignoring the fact that if they're attempting suicide, there are obviously more things wrong with their life than just a relationship.

"Straw that broke the camel's back," and all that.

I used to think that way when I was younger and still do to some extent, but I have since seen way too many cases of emotional manipulation via suicide threat, especially in abusive relationships.  I wouldn't just assume that's the intent, but if you have good reason to believe that someone is doing this to be manipulative, then they should be treated as toxic.  The alternative is allowing the person to terrorize and dominate everyone around them with reckless abandon theater that will never end so long as it continues to be effective for them.

I don't disagree that such people exist (I've met at least one extremely emotionally manipulative person), but I'd still argue they aren't exactly mentally sound. They still need help, but with a different approach. Most prudently, separation from those they're abusing.


As for the current discussion that I mostly skimmed over, never blame people who commit suicide any more than you'd blame someone for dying from cancer. It is seriously no less disgusting to call a suicide victim a "coward" than it is to say that someone who died from cancer "didn't fight it hard enough."

Some people seem to think mental diseases are easier to control or deal with when it's probably the opposite. My father in law (a local preacher, who's dealt with many different people) can give you a very long rant about how people will treat someone visibly ill with sympathy, but those with internal problems are ignored and told to stop complaining.

Wise words indeed, Though I don't contribute much to this topic, I must say I love to see how sometimes most of you here really tackle situations in a mature way and how you all advise each other despite being complete strangers most of the time. I just wanted to say, how helpful whatever most of you have posted is to anybody who even simply reads browses through all this.
Cheers to the Bay12 community!

[Ogdibus]

.

[Pnx]

"You've been doing so much better these past few weeks!"

This really creeps me out.  I only ever hear it when I'm pressured into situations that nearly or actually break me.  How can it be anything but backhanded, and an abdication of responsibility?

Edit: Just as a precaution, I didn't mean to make it look like your the one saying it.

I mentioned that particular event because it was sort of a breaking point for me, at which I just didn't feel like I could trust my mother at all...

[MaximumZero]

I'll put it this way: I never feel good revealing anything about myself to anyone.

Half the time I want to take a day and go through to delete every post I've ever made here, but that's also the part of me that thinks, with some paranoia, that no matter what I do I will never, ever be safe.  So I'm going to leave this, praying that someone will find it useful.

Hugs all around.

Would it make you feel better if I wrote up my crazy life depression story? It's not as egalitarian, but I think it gets points for having a unique setting.

Most of us have that, to some degree, if you look deep enough.

[Pnx]

The crazy life depression story, the lack of egalitarianism, or the "unique setting"?

[MaximumZero]

All three. Then again, I'm probably not the most impartial person to be talking about this. >______>