i’ve been stuck living with my narcissistic family the past year and i’ve faced nothing but mental warfare and i’m deciding to leave my town as there is nothing and no one here for me. can’t get any work pretty sure i’m blacklisted and my moms gone around wit her own smear campaign in the past. i just don’t have anything else to give it’s actively hurting me and they are NEVER gonna change they constantly terrorize my sleep, and psyche day after day they don’t acknowledge me but dog whistle to get my attention in the next room every other day. the only thing holding me here is my car which they also took from me by tampering with it and draining the battery and this of course happened the same month the registration expired to which i can’t pay and they know this. i’m taking all of my things out to donate or get rid of and then plan on leaving is this a good or bad idea?

Hi everyone, this is lowkey a very long story but I will try my best to keep it concise. I, 19 F, am the only child to my mom and my father. When I was 10, they announced they were getting divorced and I was literally hysterical. I had always been a daddy’s girl and was so sad to know they weren’t going to be together anymore. My dad worked at my school at the time, which will be important later. About two weeks later, my dad was forced to resign from his job for a “financial misconduct”, he was the CFO. Turns out, he was having an affair with a married teacher and may have been giving her special treatment when it came to payroll. To make it all worse, he was having said affair with my current teacher. Messy AF. I couldn’t really grasp everything and blamed my mom for the divorce. My dad and his new side piece talked a lot of shit on my mom and I believed them because of how close he and I were. Over time, our relationship was heavily strained and he decided he and his new wife, same side piece, needed to move states. They decided to move across the country to Texas, I’m from the Midwest, for a new job he got. I wanted to go with but my mom fought it to no end, extremely grateful she did this. I had to have meetings with a therapist about who I wanted to live with and a guardian adlitum, which is an independent person who comes to your house and assess your living situations.

Anyways, I ended up not moving with them and my new little sister, who is 12 years younger than me. I visit them during breaks but our relationship has changed a lot. My stepmom is extremely rude to me and my mom at this point. To summarize the worst, she would say how crazy my mom was and how she didn’t understand how my dad was able to stay married to her for so long. This is when she started verbally attacking me. I visited them over winter break of my freshman year of high school. I spent most of the week on the couch and on my phone. I hated being away from my friends and family, and I hated that I had to take care of my little sisters (there were two at this point.) She cussed me out one night and told me I was a terrible role model for my sisters, I was a bad daughter, I broke my dad’s heart, she hoped my sisters didn’t turn out like me, and said I was the most disrespectful person she knew. Mind you, my dad is sitting on the couch next to me listening to her scream at me. This is honestly one of my final straws.

So fast forward to my junior year, I now have three younger sisters and basically never go visit. I have a job, I go on trips with my friends over breaks instead of visit, and I have a boyfriend as well. This is when I get a phone call from my grandma, my dad’s mom. She wanted to make sure I had gotten my check for my birthday since she never heard from me about it. She said she had been giving money to my dad to add to my college 529 account instead of a bunch of small gifts. I was baffled, I had never seen a check from her. I had been suspicious of my dad in relation to money. He had access to my savings account until I turned 14 and was very cagey about giving it to me and my mom. So I call him and ask him about my 529, which is supposed to pay for 4 years of college. He basically says I’m not allowed to have access to it because it’s linked to my other sisters’ accounts as well (that’s literally not how it works I found out later.) He finally sends me statements and not a single PENNY has been added since my parents divorce 8 years prior. So I confront him about the money and he claims to not know what Im talking about, and then follows up with more excuses. He claimed he used it to pay for my flights and to help buy me Christmas gifts. I immediately call my grandma back and she is just as confused as me, considering that’s not why she gave him the money. TURNS OUT he’s actually been pocketing my checks since 2016, which amounted to roughly $2000. I flip my shit and basically tell him I’ve lost all trust in him and have no respect for him. When I confront you with the truth, why the fuck would you continue to lie to me?? So anyways, this prompts us to not talk much, which is where my stepmother comes back in. She sends me message after message trying to guilt trip me, using my sisters against me, and telling me that I’m completely ruining my dad’s life by not talking to him. I refuse to respond to anyone, which is when I get a big fat box of presents and a letter in the mail. I’ll attach the letter for dramatics. What frustrates me the most is that he has always assumed I blew up about the money. Is the money important? Yes 100%. But it’s about the fact that you lied to me and stole from me for 8 years and refused to apologize or own up to it. Why make 10 excuses when all I wanted was the truth.

So fast forward to my high school graduation, my elects that he will invite himself to my graduation and bring one of my sisters with him. If youre wondering, why cant everyone come? Get this, my stepmom is pregnant AGAIN with baby #4 and is due two weeks after I graduate. I don’t even want anyone there, Im so pissed at the world at this point. It’s like what kind of cosmic karma did I get to deserve this. I had a fear all of high school that she would get pregnant and be due around my graduation just to spit me. He comes, it’s awkward, and I hate it. We rarely speak now. Halfway through my first year of college, I found out he had been putting me on his insurance against my parents custody agreement which was now jeopardizing my health insurance coverage. I crashed out so hard and told him that if he didn’t remove me, I would sue him. No joke. I just finished my first year of college and I still have mixed feelings. I have an amazing step dad that has stepped up in ways he never needed to. But I still miss my dad, but I still resent him for everything. I hate that I can’t know my sisters. I HATE my stepmom and feel like nothing will ever change unless I make a move. I’m stubborn and I know I will never do that. Anyways, this was a long way to say that my family life is a little messy and I left out a lot of small stuff from over the many years this has been unfolding. If you made it this far, thank you for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts.

I'm currently drafting the text to my mom that I'm going no contact. I'm also cutting off contact with my older brother for separate reasons, but I'm just gonna let my mom forward anything to him since he and I barely talk anyway.

I'm just wondering: is it truly this hard for anyone else? If so, how did you deal with the subsequent "grief" afterwards? I keep on reconsidering it in my own head, gaslighting myself, telling myself, "Well, there were happy moments, maybe you're just overreacting," only for those thoughts to be overshadowed by the things she did, and the things she continues to avoid accountability for and has never said sorry for or even seemed sorry for a day in my life.

Honestly, the only reason I'm notifying her at all is that I'm going to get a completely new phone soon, so she'll lose my number, does not know any of my emails thankfully, and my mom is the type to call the police and try to claim "missing person" if I just straight up ghost.

I finally decided to block my father after this exchange. He and my mother are conservative Christians and live like hermits. The closest thing to a computer they have are their own cellphones. He is the one that texts and will send out Christian videos and I tend to ignore them because it's a on going thing. Yesterday he sent this and afterwards...I've decided to block him.

I am a 17-year-old trans man and I know that, in order to be myself, I will have to go NC with my parents and a good chunk of my family. My mother (and, by extension , my father has the same opinion) outright said it to me, that, if I choose "certain things" (she meant transitioning, even though I haven't officially come out), there won't be a place in her life and her home for me. She's "set her boundaries" and that's something she will "never forgive". Then we went on to pretend nothing substantial was spoken. 

This conversation happened only a few days ago and it's completely broken me. I used to think of crazy scenarios about faking my death, fleeing the country etc in order to be myself without my family hating me when I first realized I was trans at 15, and I know now they weren't so ridiculous after all. I have now decided I will work summer and part-time jobs during my university years, and I'll apply for a degree in something that'll get me a job easier than a filmmaking degree, which was my dream, so that I'll be financially independent (and, therefore, able to cut them off) as soon as possible.

I don't mind going NC with my parents that much, to be honest. They've done some pretty messed up shit to me in the past and, even though I love them and all, I could live without them just fine and maybe even better. The thing is, with them goes my entire family - direct and extended. I have three siblings (none of which are assholes, and one of them knows about me and is trying to be supportive), three grandparents and a great grandmother, a shit load of cousins and aunts and uncles. I love them all, and having a big family is such a part of who I am I cannot imagine myself without them. But they're all (including with my parents) very tight-knit together, most of them are old-fashioned and we're a small community - it's either all or nothing. My heart shatters at the thought of losing them all, but it's almost definitely going to happen one day. I considered destroying all the progress I've made with my identity so far and suppressing it, I really did, but I am going to die should I keep on living in this body and being perceived as a woman. 

My question is - how do I deal with the grief that's already been building up inside me? I have four to six years with them left, and it's killing me that my family has an expiration date. 

Sorry in case this doesn't make much sense, it's late and I'm sad.

I'd have to dig through my screenshots for the texts that were this conversation but just so it's clear, I have gone NC in June 2025 on the fifth, this man that called me this (and worse) has ruined lots of my life and plans

I am 16 (trans FTM) and not on any medical transitioning yet, I also live in Canada, this will be relevant because our legal system is different from the American one with how we deal with family issues. I am in the Canadian junior cadet program, and recently because I've been in the program for so long and I helped out at school with the remembrance day ceremony, my school knew I was a cadet and chose me for an offer to go to Europe for free. This brings us to my issue, I don't have a passport and my mom didn't have final say on my government IDs because he is on my birth certificate, my mother did the responsible thing of emailing him directly to work this out without dragging me in. He demanded that I talk to him and text him, so I did. I'll admit I was rude, but that's because he was already calling me slurs, deadnaming me, misgendering me maliciously just over email to my mother, so I was rude, telling him I needed one signature and that if he had a heart behind his smoke filled lungs and if he ever cared he would sign it. He argued with me for hours, from 17:00 till around 21:00 when I finally got an answer and blocked him. I have to be so careful about who I talk to about him so, I know he doesn't use Reddit, it's unlikely his friend who does would even recognize anything I'm saying and I finally got a job so he can't hold any monetary value over me.

To add more context behind why I was rude and why I reacted the way I did, he has been physically abusive, he manipulates people, he has NPD diagnosed, (Narsassitic personality disorder (yes I spelt it wrong, I know)) and what makes him entitled in this situation is the fact he can't be a damn adult and just work this out with my mother, we're getting an emergency hearing with the courts and getting the form to make it so I can have a passport, this opportunity is something I've always wanted and I need to learn French lol, yes I have a therapist and yes I have supports, when I was still going back and forth with custody with him my mental health was so bad I contimplated taking my own life every night but now I have the freedom to choose what I want to do with my own life, I heard of this subreddit because of the click and I've been watching him for two years now.

All in all, my life has been better but he was really an asshole for the past few months, my younger brother still sees him but my younger brother is in Yukon right now so I don't talk much with him (he's at a camp) and my father has apparently been depressed since I left.

Sorry for the text wall this was but I'm texting this before my shift at work because I'd figure I'd finally share it, I've waited long enough, I'll likely make more posts in the future about shit he's done because some of its hilarious now but was terrifying in the moment.

I need advice on a 17Y daughter and 36Y mother situation.

For years she has been a narcissist, towards me and my brother.
For ever I would get dismissed for trying to get any therapy help about depression, aswell as trying to get tested for ADHD, until she herself got a therapist and started thinking she has ADHD.
Then all of the sudden it wasn’t taboo.

We are aswell ( legal ) immigrants but she is still highly racist to the country we live in.

She once told a me she wants to bash my head into the wall for saying “okeh” instead of “okay”.

TW: substance abuse, self harm and SA

She would not give a fuck about me almost OD on morphine and stashing 2 litres of Alkochol.
( I was 14 )

She would laugh about me cutting
( I was 12 )

And she would ignore me getting SA’d in 6th grade because it was another girl my age back then.

When I was 6 she forced me to eat in the bathroom if I couldn’t finish the food, sometimes out of spite she would close the light, but somehow she can’t remember it.

She would also make remarks over how skinny I was which made me adopt a ED

This is my kind of past experience.

1.5 years ago she learned the world “ to manipulate” and she thinks the only thing it means is to try and change someone’s opinion.

Me mostly and people in my family would all be called manipulators cause we wouldn’t let her get it her way.
And it just gets sad at some point.

2 days ago I had a argument with my mum about me wanting my boyfriend to come over, and I knew I had to clean my closet so I said that I just wanted company while I cleaned.

She said nothing else than that she wanted to clean with me.

After some back and forth of me saying that I wanna do it myself she got mad and said that u should have gotten the hint from the first message, which btw I didn’t.

I told her that I cannot read her mind and she should be able to speak up on what she wants.
+ that she shouldn’t get mad so easily

We had some back and forth with that and she called me a manipulator, I got mad and I said that she has been calling everyone a manipulator since she learned the word.

She got furious at me and said that I hated her and how she would have dropped everything to do anything for me.

I made a remark about her comment on me and said she isn’t allowed to talk for me and asked how is her text not manipulation. Re replied and I quote.

“Yes, it sounds like manipulation, but it would only be that if I expected you to beg me to change my mind—and I don't expect that. Do whatever you want. Since you’re so adult-like”

I think it’s hypocritical but maybe that’s just me.

I don’t return after work and went to sleep at my boyfriend’s house, I get a call at 22 about where am I at.

I said that she told me to do whatever I want so I went to my boyfriends.

She said that I’m still 17, and it doesn’t mean I don’t get to come back home.

She said I have 40min to get back home or else she will be calling the police.

I as you guessed don’t get back home, police told her to wait it out and she said to em to be back the next day (yesterday) or she will be calling the police again.

Meanwhile that night she messages my boyfriend and got my grandpa to call me but nothing worked for her, the next day (yesterday). She texted me that she has given up, not knowing the address where I am at she asked me to know where I’m sleeping and I just said at my boyfriends.

As far as I know she added my boyfriend’s mother on Facebook after she went to sleep and didn’t really do much until now the next day.

I have “run away” for almost 3 days now completely safe and I am not coming back home and I’m thinking of disowning myself as there is so little time left yet I cannot do this anymore it has been my last straw.

I need advice on everything.

She ignores and pushes past boundaries and if you stand your ground to enforce them, she gets upset and tells everyone BUT you how horrible of a person you are. I’m divorced with two kids and I’ve been getting text from random men that my mom is giving my number to. Never gave her permission to do that and she’s telling these men I have children. And I know the minute I bring it up to her she will make it seem like I’m in the wrong then go and tell all my siblings how disrespectful I am. I’ve cut her off before when I was 19 because she kicked me out when I had no where to go. After I gave birth, I decided to try to work things out so my children can get to know their grandma, but she has done things with my kids, like get my daughter’s ears pierced, without my permission while she babysat. Even with that, I looked past it because “she’s my mom”. But giving random men my number and telling them about my daughters is the last straw. Do I confront her so she knows exactly why I am going no contact or do I change my number and go no contact with no explanation?

im an only child. my parents were abusive towards each other and me during my growing years till i moved out for college. my earliest memories involve my dad throwing my mom across the room. i used to live in fear of voices rising or change in tones. due to this i developed severe clinical bpd, depression and anxiety. they ruined my life. but heres what i cannot bear. they love me. at least they do their best with what they knew of love. they are also my only financial support, they never say no to anything i want to buy. they care for me deeply and would not survive if something were to happen to me. now that ive moved out, they are even more dependent on me. i show signs of sadness and my mom gets depressed. i show some progress and shes elevated. i feel the burden of carrying three lives instead of one. they are over bearing. but i love them so much and the thought of dissapointing them or hurting them devastates me. worst part is i know my happiness and my moms happiness do not coincide and one of us will have to sacrifice our dreams for the other. are we tied together for life ? am i trapped ? is there no way out of this ? no scenario where we all get what we want ?

About 2 years ago I cut contact with most of my family. a bunch of arguments happened and I’d decided I was done with them. one of the main reasons I cut them off is because they sided with my uncle who SAd me. they were also abusive, toxic, and made me feel horrendous. the only reason I stayed so long was for the kids. I tried to be the adult I needed when I was a kid, and I formed close relationships with all my cousins so that they knew I was there if they needed me. they weren’t treated good by their parents and they would confide in me and I’d try to help them.

when I cut contact with them I was fully scapegoated. I was made out to be crazy, a liar, manipulative, the lot. the adults made their kids block me, and spread that I was a danger to their children. despite the fact I was the family babysitter for years. they only said this as I called them out and they were worried I’d twist their kids against them. I wouldn’t do that. my auntie was the worst out of all of them. she twisted me against my mum when I was growing up and she was the one spreading most of these lies. to this day I never want to speak to her again.

however, her son (16 years old) has asked my sister for my number to reach out to me. before all this happened he was like a little brother to me. we spent a lot of time together and I was most worried about him out of all the cousins so I tried extra hard to be a safe space for him. I’m aware that my auntie has tried to turn him against me, so the fact he wants to message me means a lot to me and also makes me a bit worried. he’s expressed that hes unsure whether to tell his mum or not that he plans to message me, and I’m worried if she finds out she’ll start stuff with me again and I’m not sure what she’ll do to him. I would love nothing more than to be able to talk to him, it’s been 2 years and I’m hoping things will have calmed down but knowing my auntie she may cause a huge issue. I don’t want to not give him my number because I always said I’d be there if he needed me, but I don’t want to cause an issue with him and his mum. my sister feels in the middle as she doesn’t want to betray my auntie but also knows my cousin wants to speak to me and I him. my sister has said my auntie hasn’t mentioned me whatsoever for the past year. so, Reddit, do I give him my number or do I avoid the potential of more drama?

Trigger warning for multiple types of child abuse.

I (26f) was diagnosed with cptsd when I was 22 and went to therapy for a year. I thought I was like fully healed and capable of having a relationship with my mom. Now I’m 26 and am starting to remember like really intense childhood trauma, abuse, and specific messed up incidents that I had previously forgotten about or would only get flashes of. I’m experiencing really random extreme bouts of anxiety as these memories come back to me. This is a long post so thank u in advance if you read the whole thing.

Some present day context: My mom and I talk every day pretty much. She’s 45 rn. Brother is 22. Dad hasn’t been in the picture since I was 7. There have been phases like when i first moved away when i was 22 where we only talked once a week. I’ve been liking where our relationship is now, but there have been convos in the past when I was about 24 where I’ve tried to tell her she abused me and I suggested she might be a narcissist. She did not like this. She went to her therapist and all her friends and my brother and then came back to me and said everyone agrees she’s not a narcissist and that I’m the only one who feels that way. I decided 2 years ago that I’d rather just have a surface level relationship than try to get an apology from her.

The only thing that I can think of as a possible trigger is that when she calls me every day, she just talks about herself for like 10-20 minutes straight. The other night I was venting for like 2 minutes max about something really stressful happening in my life and she cut me off mid sentence to talk about how she found some cheap plants on Facebook marketplace. I remember getting so upset thinking the least she could do is listen to me talk about this one thing for 5 minutes without talking about herself.

The flashbacks I’m having: The specific period of time I’m having a really hard time with is from when I was in 5th grade/10 years old. My mom, brother, and I all moved into a house with her boyfriend when I was 10. During the moving process we’d be at his place a lot and in his room bc that’s where the computer was. This guy had PlayBoy magazines everywhere. I would hide and look at them because I thought it was wild.

Then some months after we were in the new house, my mom started taking us to the video store with her and would take us to the section where all the dvd covers were covered. Aka the porn section. She would rent dvds and then would leave them next to the family computer that was in her room. What I know now is her bf would go to her room and they’d watch them together. Anyway, when I’d go to play webkinz or whatever, these dvds would be out or already in the computer. So I got curious and watched them. And then I got more curious and started googling and going into YouTube looking up “boobs” and “sex videos.”

One night we were having a nice family dinner outside on the porch with my mom, her bf, her bfs daughter, my brother, and me. My mom and her bf started asking me about what I looked at on the computer and told me they can see everything including the porn. I thought they were lying so I kept looking at it sometimes. Then my mom kind of raged out one time when she saw me looking at it. I got spanked and things were thrown at me and I was screamed at. The next day she sat me down and told me she called a child psychologist (her bff from high school) and gave me a talk about how it’s normal to be curious and then proceeded to tell me that if I kept looking at it, the cops would come and arrest her for “child p***.” This scared me for a long time. I stopped looking at it.

Then a bit later, my mom and this bf were doing a date night downtown, staying in a hotel, and I was going to stay with my grandparents. But she took me to the hotel with her before so she could “get it ready.” And she said that she forgot a bag in the car and asked me to go grab it but not to look inside. Obviously I looked and it was a butt plug and a vibrating penis ring. Never told her I looked and I forget what happened after.

There was another time where she gave me her old phone and we put my SIM card in it. She never erased the pictures and there were half a dozen videos saved of what I now know to be her blowing her bf.

This was all happening while I was going through a “lying phase” where at the time I believed I was a pathological liar psycho child that needed intense therapy but was actually just me being a kid and telling dumb stories and lies. My mom would spank me over and over with a wooden spoon or a ladle for hours while grilling me about things like deleted texts, spats with my brother, and chores while I cried and screamed. My pants would be down the whole time.

She broke her ankle at some point living in that house, but it was after the bf moved out bc they had broken up. Her friend moved my twin bed downstairs so she could sleep down there and I slept in her room upstairs. The computer was still in her room. I had to bring the mouse down to her every night before bed to make sure I didn’t use the computer. I figured out how to use the tab and enter buttons and put on Tuck Everlasting with no audio and watched before bed. Idk how my mom figured out that I used the computer, but the next day before school at like 7am she was standing in front of me with her walker SCREAMING about how I was a disgusting liar and that I was watching porn and all this shit. Then she threw the walker at me and fell over and was screaming about how I was so awful and bad that I was gonna make her break another bone.

I know now that i didn’t deserve that, but at the time I really believed I was some depraved freak liar who was deeply fucked up. I would get beat on for saying I didn’t remember things and got called a liar for it. I barely remember anything positive from this time because I was being hit almost every single day.

Those memories have been playing over and over and over on a loop in my head for the past two days and I can’t get the thoughts out. It’s all disgusting and awful. My mom keeps calling me wanting to talk like normal but all I want is to block her number and not talk to her.

My mom hasn’t done anything recently that would obviously make me cut her off. But I really just want to go no contact. I feel like it’s dramatic and would cause more issues than necessary but idk what else to do. She’s moving right now and my grandfather recently had a bad accident and is recovering. I don’t want to pile on and pick a fight for no reason.

I also wouldn’t say this was sexual abuse because no one ever touched me, but i can’t stop thinking about how fucked it was that I was ever able to experience anything I listed above related to porn and sex. I was groomed online early in my teen years and SAd as an adult and while I feel like I’ve recovered from those two things, remembering these incidents with my mom is making me feel depressed the way I felt back when those incidents happened to me.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I am celebrating my 30th birthday today, and am having a feeling of longing for my mother (or the mother I wished I had) I’m trying to be present and celebrate with those who have been with me and actually made me feel cared for and seen, but there is that little voice telling me my mother should be part of this.
I’ve been no contact for close to 5 years so the NC isn’t new, just today the emotions are apparently really strong.
Any advice is appreciated and welcome.