BofA corporate headquarters would like a word with you.

Always welcome, my dear laughter-is-the-best-medicine friend. Sleep is also good medicine. Here’s hoping you and Mom are getting enough.

Needed a belly laugh. OP delivers! Thanks, 🖖 and congrats again on the neonate!

<3

You guys’ comments here are so wholesome.

We learned by rote, same with math. I still feel cheated I wasn’t taught common core math, after seeing a video on YT a few years back.

I like this very much. I agree and wish more people did.

Yes it is. Men and women can support each other holistically and as a whole. We just have to realize there are opportunists among us, and they are also unwell, more unwell than us. I’m not sure how to handle persistent, demonstrable undermining, but I’d gather after a couple or few instances, sadly, somehow segregating them if and until they seek serious professional therapy from experienced therapists trained in personality disorders with a proven track record of the behavior being curtailed over long periods of time. But I am not a therapist.

You are welcome, and thank you for telling me that. It looks like many of us here support you. Please come converse with us, when IRL support is lacking.

🫂

I see both sides. It takes enough men and women admitting there’s an experience that can be improved, and both have vested interests in not improving it. Sadly, behavioral issues are shamed, rather than understood. I’ve known people who were sent to jails, prisons, psych wards, and the family distanced and blamed. Even those who self-harm, even self-unalive are treated with embarrassment, anger, guilt and shame.

100% agreed. Bottling things up creates exploiters of those who would show emotions.

I was told that as a girl, so… People exploit feelings, and I get it. We need to work towards healing for those who exploit feelings, too

Yes. I’m one of the women other women resent-and usually the men who are suffering, too - because I do point it out. I’d love it if we can all come together and work towards healing our community. Or another one. You can’t force people to heal.

Yeah, because abusing abusers and unwell always works. That’s why bombing countries that have terrorists in them have eradicated terrorism (not saying the human being you replied to is a terrorist, went to an extreme example for illustrative purposes).

In all seriousness, that reply right there shows healing is needed.

Hi. I went through a lot of therapy, and currently am not and am stable. The healthiest I’ve been in ages. Please don’t be discouraged, you’re digging up emotional corpses, so it’s going to be painful and stinky. Feeling things that were painful originally will be super painful, but the only way out is through. Facing those feelings, untangling endless snarls takes a long time. It does feel worse and frustrating and horrific, for a time. With diligence, persistence and lots of self-compassion and unconditional love, it does get better, with decent therapy. After you get through the most horrific and scary parts, I encourage you to do shadow work. Due to financial and transportation issues, I was forced out of therapy before it was appropriate. I foundered for some months, then told “friends” stop coming over, stop bringing cigarettes, weed, alcohol, sweets, anything, if I wanted it, I’d ask. And I sat alone with myself and learned to see myself in every single person that harmed me, in some fashion or form, or how I could see me, if I thought this or it could come across in various ways than I’d meant certain things I did or said, after I dealt with and stopped justifying wrongs I did and said.

I’m so much more stable now. And I’m stuck on two different wounds, but one I think is largely irrelevant, because that parent and I have been nc for so so long, I seldom think of them anymore, and when I do, it’s with understanding to an extent, and compassion. The other one in still in contact with and an able to maintain compassion, as long as they’re not pick pick picking, when I can’t remove myself immediately. I’m working with nonreactivity, returning to compassion for self, immediately after removing myself, and returning to compassion, for them, after regaining my composure. I will say, ignoring attempted triggers outwardly, acknowledging inwardly and also acknowledging I can’t change them and how full of self-loathing and shame someone must be to have to project, hate and gaslight so many, for the greater part of a century must be so awful. Especially when it stems from being horrifically abused as a child and growing up and young adulting didn’t have psychotherapy available to regular people, and celebrities were shamed for it.

You can do this. I’ve got all confidence in your ability to not only handle it, but genuinely heal.

In my area, cis het women are largely dividable into groups that understand this and wish cis het men would (it maybe admit it if they secretly understand), and cis het women who understand this and grow hostile when other women point it out, endangering the largest vector of exploitation. And I get it, since most of the cis het men do it to women, when they can (red state). But an eye for an eye is really not making anything better for anyone, it’s just who can con who first and worst, for the longest time frame. It’s kind of like narc-ing the narc turns you into the narc. I wish everyone would just go work on personal healing and growth and encourage others it’s ok and desirable to do this, rather than making a competition of who can be the sickest. But that wouldn’t be profitable to the overlords, who stigmatize it, make it inaccessible, and exploit our illnesses, mental and physical.