Well I'm required to be a punching bag.

[Becks]

Your mom is a billion kinds of fucked up.

[XCashier]

Some people are just toxic and it's best to get them out of your life as soon as possible. I second everyone else who said, "move away".

[dragon_wings]

I'm with everyone else that suggest getting out ASAP.
My ex girlfriend was that way and I was just thankful my sister and her family lived in the same city and let me stay with them for 6 weeks until I could find a place of my own.
Good luck.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

-Never fight with your sister or parents. If someone insults you, you simply suck it up, no matter how much they keep walking around continuing to insult you. If someone hurls abuse at you, you are required to also suck it up because it IS your fault.

-If someone tells you to do something, you must do it straightaway. Even if it's "just a suggestion" you must do it straightaway. failure to do so means that you are lazy and stupid and cannot function in normal society.

-If you attempt to visit psychologists, you are lying unless I can hear for myself what is going on in those sessions so I know that you are not painting yourself as a saint and me as a completely horrible person. (by me, it means my mother)

FLYING FISH NO WONDER YOU NEED A SHRINK!
I am so, so, so sorry you live/were ever in contact with this abusive woman!
*cough*
er, why... no. No these aren't sane. None of them are.

EDIT: okay, the money one might have a grain of sanity. A grain. As in, it is their money... and have a right to know what's going on with it.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

Now I'm scared I'll end up doing the same thing to my own children in the future.

I was diagnosed with BPD some time ago by a psychologist who is part of an emergency mental health service. My doctor backs this diagnosis up.

ETA: One more thing. Whenever someone yells at me or is upset with me for ANY reason, I will either start crying or get the urge to cry. Or it will become anger. That is not normal.

1) NO. You will NOT do the same thing to your children. My mom didn't to me and my sister. My sister is a very, very different person from my mom, and yet mom was able to bridge the gap. I was no picnic either, being way too much like mom. She constantly had to correct herself for the first decade or so of our life, because her type of parental issues were insidious, rather than antagonistic like yours. I can get more info from her if you want. And, please remember, most abused people (like 2/3rd) do not perpetrate the cycle.
2)
3) there are shelters. Ask around. Don't tell anyone but a best friend forever.

[Seshat]

My parents were both abused.
My brother and I were .. semi-abused. As in, our parents tried very hard not to, but they didn't have professional help, and we've both ended up with 'issues'.

That said, we weren't abused badly, and on balance, we've turned out well. He's ended up almost totally fine, I've ended up ... not so. I'm the older one, they had learned more about coping with their own issues & handling a baby by the time he came along.

I strongly recommend getting help - which you've already decided to do. And I promise you, it can be done.

[SuperRTL]

I have to say, this is why I got married at 19. Looking back, I'd do it waaaaaaay differently but I'd still move my ass out. It wasn't until my mom and I were talking from 2 states away over the phone and I could hang up on her when she was out of line that we started working things out. Removing myself from the picture, she had to realize the problem was her, not me, since she started in on my brother and my dad. My brother bailed, too, and my dad put his foot down. Things are better. Not great but better.

Get out. Get out now. Live cheaply and by yourself if you have to. Do whatever it takes.

[Der Cute]

You aren't required to be anything but what you CHOOSE to be.

Your first responsibility is to find food, shelter and clothing for yourself. If it's in a safe place, great! You're covered at the moment but you're NOT safe. With your surroundings and current mental state - you need more..leeway, I want to say..than what you have. Your current surroundings of shelter food etc are not in anyway supportive of you.

So that needs to be fixed pronto.

You can see the emotional abuse. You can feel the abuse. You know that there is someone else in trouble/danger. But even if you want to prevent THEM from being abused, you CAN'T. You can't tell a rapist who to rape and who to not rape. (bit dramatic) but you get the point. My dad, used to take his anger out on Mom and us kids. But one day he was all wound up and only yelled at us kids a bit. We went to BK for some food, and he lashed out at the cashier. Dad was the abuser, there was no guarantee we'd get it (likely yes, guarantee no).
Point there is you can't stop someone else's behavior.

Go chat with the emergency services. Point out that your surroundings do not help you recover or deal properly with the issue at hand. Ask for help in finding a better, more stable place for you to be. It may not be immediate - but in the works. Once the bureaucratic wheels turn, start finding your own temp place to be. Get the fuck out of Dodge.

Slip a note to the sister and inform her of who to call for help. If your sis calls and has been physically harmed, call the cops and get the help.

You're self aware and learning more skills. You'll break the cycle in your branch of you - but your sister has to learn that if she wants to break the cycle. For now, get out of the bad environment.

Shoot, if you want to be a better person and better off in society, why live in that hell hole?

[Mishi]

Move out and cut as much contact with her as possible! Your mum sounds like mine. Things got better for a while after I moved out, but got much worse after I had kids. She tried all sorts of manipulative crap on me, but the last straw was her making my 4 year old daughter feel bad about herself. Moving out helped me, but that was a bit easier than the cutting contact... you see, she didn't want me anymore because I had the gall to accidentally fall pregnant at 17. I miscarried, but was still an embassassment. Wouldn't let me move out until I was married, said she'd get me declared mentally incompetant and have my then-boyfriend arrested for kidnapping. After much more mess and bullshit, and after asking advice from the rather brilliant members of CS, I look back and wonder why I didn't move out and cut contact sooner. She has taken it out on my Dad and my little sister, but my little sister is away at uni now so she's a bit safer. Dad is Dad, I want to help him but he won't leave. My brother is somewhat fine, he's the favourite but he's still a bit broken from all her crap.

You already know what your problems are, you know that you don't want your kids to have the same issues. You're not going to make the same mistakes, just keep trying your best. Talk with your boyfriend (if you haven't already) and figure out a therapy/mental health plan for if you move in together and/or have kids. The best book I have ever read about parenting: "The Secret to Happy Children" by Steve Biddulph. I loved it and it helps me to think about what I'm saying and how I'm saying it so that I don't act/sound/behave like my mother. Good luck , *big hugs* (if you don't mind) and it will get better. Might take a while, but there is hope.

[Seshat]

By the way:

All you NEED is a single room to live in, safe access to a bathroom and kitchen, a mattress to sleep on, some blankets, toiletries, clothes, and a small heater for warmth in winter. (In summer, you can haunt shopping centres for coolth.)

That said, I wouldn't really recommend share housing in your current state of mind. Not unless you could carefully choose who to share with.
(On the other hand, my beloved A is schizoaffective, crashed on our couch when she needed to escape a trouble situation - and has never moved out, because we three work well together as a family. Sometimes crashing on someone's couch turns out really well.)

Find the cheapest single or double-bedroom apartment you can that's in a safe area. (It doesn't have to be a pleasant area, just safe enough that you won't be scared to live there.)

Move there, without leaving a forwarding address your mother can get her hands on. If family members give it to her anyway, you can get the police to put a restraining order out - remember, your apartment will now be YOUR territory, and if she goes there without your permission, it's trespass.

Ask friends if they can give you any outdated crockery, cutlery, saucepans, towels, blankets, etc. See if someone has an old fridge or old mattress. If you're a member of a church, have a talk with one of the 'organiser' type members, or with the pastor, or whoever runs the charity shop.

Yes, it will be financially tough. You'll have to write a budget carefully, you may well need to ask someone to help you make up a budget. (Many churches offer this service, so do many banks. Lifeline or the Salvation Army can refer you to someone who will help you with this, too.)
Oh! DUH! Your therapist can almost certainly refer you to services both to help you with the budget, and to help you get enough basics to live with.

You may well have to sacrifice some of the things you enjoy doing, because they're just too expensive to do while you're also paying rent and covering all your own bills.

But the additional financial stress is likely to be a LOT less than the current stress you're getting from your mother!

And there's LOTS of people here who have lived in lean times, and can help you with that. (I've lived so lean that I look at 'thrift' tips on the 'net or in books and shake my head at how un-thrifty some of them are. Yet I'm still here!)

[Eireann]

Okay, some VERY important things here.

There's a lot you already realize about this parental abuse. This is good; you can see that this behavior is abnormal.

What you will eventually find out is, you've absorbed a lot more than you know. Things that seem "right" (for lack of a better word), simply because you've grown up believing them, are very wrong. It will take a lot of sifting through the past and the present to see which beliefs are healthy, and which are not. It's not purely black-and-white; there are various shades of unhealthy.

Another thing: In some families, one of the children will be abused while the others are not. It doesn't always happen that all of them are victims of abuse. Some are enablers. Some are the "perfect" children. This is a sick, twisted form of "justification" on the part of the abuser to somehow rationalize his/her behavior. They project all their insecurities on the victim, constantly spouting variations of "you made me do it".

Nobody is coming to save you. The decision is yours. Yes, it's scary. We all want someone to come riding up on a white horse and take us away from all our troubles. But it doesn't happen. If it did, victims would never return to their abusers. When you make the decision to be free of the abuse, that's when the tide will turn, and you'll find strength you never knew you had.

Your mother is full of it. I'm sorry to put it that way, but it's true. She has severe issues that she's never addressed, so she's internalized her problems and is projecting them on you. She'll never change; she'll never improve. She has to want to improve, and she refuses even to entertain the thought that what she's doing is wrong in any way.

And: YOU DON'T OWE YOUR RELATIVES ANYTHING SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU ARE RELATED TO THEM.

How many times have we all seen someone bitch constantly about a relative, then heave a martyred sigh and say, "Well, s/he is family." Bullshit! A shared gene pool does not mean you owe your mother, father, or sister more than anyone you'd meet on the street. You didn't ask to be born. Your parents chose to have you. It's their responsibility to raise you well. They haven't. I don't know why there's so much guilt over cutting a toxic family member out of your life. Anytime anyone turns toxic, or you finally realize that this person is toxic, cut them out of your life. It doesn't matter whether the person is a relative, old friend, casual acquaintance, or coworker. Keep them away from you.

Your life is your life. It's not your mother's, your father's, or your sister's. It's yours. You only get one. How are you going to spend it?

[Victory Sabre]

Therein lies the other problem: if I leave, she'll start using my sister as the punching bag as opposed to me. If my sister leaves, it'll be my dad. Neither of them deserve that.

Yes, it may be true that she'll do that, but, why do you "deserve" to be used as a punching bag?

I have to agree with everyone else that has posted - get out ASAP, for your own sake.

[ShadowBall]

Sounds like how my mother expects me to act toward her idiot out of fear that he will leave. Oh fucking noes! Do what he says immediately and without question or he will leave. Take his disrespect and insults with a grain of salt and don't talk back or he might leave. You do the opposite of what you're told and you are called an imbecile with an attitude problem or something like that. Nothing nothing nothing can ever be done without a screaming match.

And like you, moving out is really not an option since anyone I could stay with is too far away, has no room, lives with their own parents, or lives in an equally abusive home. I find that coping rather than escaping is more practical and realistic. I tried doing that with a hand written journal, but lo and behold, my mom found it and read it for several years before I found out, so I burned the journal and now I rant on an online one. My mom's not internet-savvy, so it's safer.

Also, having someone who will just listen to you rant - even if just a friend - is a great way to cope. But ehh, my mom suffered emotional abuse from her mother too. Grandma was always pitting her children against one another, and I think it messed my mother up. Mom never got help, so now her fucked-up-ness is turning me into an emotional wreck. I also don't pay rent or bills because Mom forces me to go to college and all my money has to go toward tuition or the shitloads of extra supplies they make us have every year. And hell, no one will hire my ass anyway when I need 2 months off out of the year for school. My having money hinges on whether or not my one client tosses me a project, or if I can sell shit on eBay and sneak it in the mail without my mother finding out and bitching that she doesn't want whatever it is being sold. Even if it's something of mine.

I've never asked to see a shrink because I have no money and my mother would just tell me I'm overreacting, especially if it would mean me possibly telling someone stories about her in which she DOESN'T look like a perfect mother. I hate to advise coping rather than escaping, but sometimes that's all you can do when escape is not affordable or realistic. Or it's all you can do until escape becomes affordable or realistic. (hugs)

[RootedPhoenix]

*hugs*

You're never supposed to be a punching bag. No matter who says that, they are still wrong.

Get help anywhere you can. Get out if it's at all possible. I just escaped from a terrible situation, and I know it's possible, but it won't be any shade of easy.

Only you know whether you can leave or can't, but don't rationalize things that really are harmful to you.

*gives truckload of chocolate and cookies*

[Seshat]

And like you, moving out is really not an option since anyone I could stay with is too far away, has no room, lives with their own parents, or lives in an equally abusive home.

I believe moving out is always an option. It just sometimes costs you things you may not want to lose.

For example:

I also don't pay rent or bills because Mom forces me to go to college and all my money has to go toward tuition or the shitloads of extra supplies they make us have every year. And hell, no one will hire my ass anyway when I need 2 months off out of the year for school.

What if you quit college? You wouldn't have the costs of tuition or the extra supplies, and you wouldn't have the 2-months of school.

Yes, there would be an awkward period when you had to manage housing away from your mother and didn't necessarily have a job yet, but emergency shelters and emergency housing do exist in most parts of the world.