Mastodawn

My therapist is warning me about potentially having to report my family to the authorities. How do I avoid being reported so the cops don't show up and make everything worse?

https://lemmy.world/post/42686947

My therapist is warning me about potentially having to report my family to the authorities. How do I avoid being reported so the cops don't show up and make everything worse? - Lemmy.World

I (23M) started therapy today, hooray! Only problem is, my family is too goddamn spicy. Once I got into my brother’s (25M) increasingly homicidal fantasies and animal killings, she stopped me before I mentioned the threats he made to kill people and told me that she is a mandated reporter and has an obligation to report certain situations to the authorities. I think adding police to the equation will make everything worse and immediately paint a target on my back because I am the only one who would ever disclose the violence that happens under this roof. It might result in me being homeless if I have to flee for my life. I live in Ohio and it’s the middle of winter, so not a great start. I wanted to work with a therapist because I grew up in this place and it traumatized me so badly that I’m scared of leaving this dump. How much will I have to tiptoe around here? Is merely being afraid that someone will use violence against me reportable? What about if they fantasize about murder and domestic terrorism? What about violent crimes that they committed in the past? Or specific threats in the present? Is therapy just not the right fit for this kind of thing? Did I end up with a heavy duty “fuck you” problem and therapy is just for “I feel sad sometimes” problems? It feels like bullshit to have to self-censor so much just because things were harder for me. How is throwing cops at the problem supposed to help when there is no universal basic sustenance or housing for the victims to escape to?

sprigatito_bread Jan 27

My brother grew up to become a homicidal freak. Are violent men common in the general population or was our childhood ROYALLY fucked?

https://lemmy.world/post/42263233

My brother grew up to become a homicidal freak. Are violent men common in the general population or was our childhood ROYALLY fucked? - Lemmy.World

I’ll (23M) try to summarize: - Mom and Dad were authoritarian parents who never gave us comfort or affection. They were very impatient and demanding. Dad would physically and verbally abuse us. Mom would do nothing to intervene. Even when he threw a goddamn toddler across the living room. - By the time I was born, my parents didn’t appear to have any romantic or sexual chemistry. It was a constant hot-cold dynamic of fighting and silence. - My parents had fragile egos; any criticism would lead to rage and punishment. Brother turned out the same way, but his anger would lead to violence. - Since I was the youngest, I was bullied by Dad and Brother. I was shamed for being sensitive to the abuse and wanting comfort. - Brother would easily become explosively enraged and take it out on his environment, screaming and breaking things. Mom and Dad made fun of his reactions and didn’t care about his feelings. - Dad was overtly hateful and would openly advocate for genocide for any country or group of people he didn’t like. - From a young age I became intensely sexually attracted to receiving nurture and affection. This created far fewer awkward moments than one might think, thanks to the environment I lived in, but it led to paralyzing insecurities later since it was a behavior my parents never exhibited and mainstream pornography didn’t showcase it. - I also became insecure about my empathy and desire to care for others because none of my family members modeled this behavior. - The moment Brother discovered YouTube (probably 7-10 years old), he immediately looked up videos of characters being set on fire and melting in a grotesque fashion. When Dad allowed Brother to play a superhero game, he spent the entire time killing all of the civilian NPCs and laughing at their deaths instead of following the game’s objective. - Even without my low self-esteem, expressing myself authentically in school as a kid was risky because my bullies would relay anything I said and did back to Brother, creating a decentralized surveillance network. - I believed that nobody would ever like me because I was sensitive and wanted care and was shamed for those things. I struggled with masculine gender roles and felt like I was unwanted by the world. I became suicidal and wanted other people to hurt me. - I was scared of expressing my feelings and ideas because I thought this would be met with violence if I said or expressed anything that my family didn’t like. I learned to be stone-faced and speak as little as possible unless I saw a strategy in doing otherwise. I pretended to listen to and care about my other family members so they wouldn’t kill me. The surveillance wherever I went ensured that this authentic expression was impossible in-person. - Around age 13, I retreated into solitude. I had a seemingly unexplainable impulse as a young teen to bypass my family’s totalitarian control of information and self-expression by securing Internet access on other devices or bypassing parental controls. I befriended people in chat rooms and felt like it was safe to be me, though I still struggled with socializing immensely. I educated myself about everything I wasn’t allowed to learn about and slowly learned how to talk to people. This outside contact is what allowed me to learn about how pro-social humans think and act, though my sense of normalcy was still distorted by my immediate environment. - Once I suspected I was being abused and made a futile attempt to call it out, my mother taught me to fear Child Protective Services and never tell anyone about the conditions at home or else CPS would put me into a worse place. - We had a dog, but I had to witness Dad beating the poor thing every fucking day while Mom pretended nothing was happening. - My parents insisted on me keeping the bedroom door unlocked even when they knew I might be jerking off. Once, my Dad forcibly unlocked my door while I was masturbating to see what porn I was watching, something he used as blackmail 7 years later. - I had to reconstruct a vision of what love looked like through my vivid sexual fantasies and verify with online friends that they have similar feelings. - Brother developed a worldview in which he is a god and his seminal fluid makes him powerful. He explicitly wants to “dominate” women and “destroy their egos” and he cites random reoccurring numbers and symbols as signs that he is the chosen one. He dreams of living in a mansion with dozens of wives and hundreds of kids. He says that relationships built on cooperation and compromise are too complicated and it’s more practical to take absolute control. - Brother, seeking an outlet for his rage, went on to torture and kill a bird and display its corpse in a tree and beat his ex-girlfriend’s cat to death. He fantasizes about shooting up peaceful protests and believes that emotional men are the downfall of civilization. When Dad asked him if he would be willing to kill me, he said yes, thinking I couldn’t hear. Most recently, Brother went into a destructive rage and threatened to kill Dad with his knife. I stayed holed up in my room and prepared to jump out of the bedroom window if I had to make a run for it. - Mom pearl-clutches and threatens to withhold sustenance from me if I criticize her, but will allow Brother to scream at her and command her and won’t even protest. Earlier this week, I finally woke up and saw that all of my family members are batshit insane and incapable of change; there is zero logic to their behavior and all of my insecurities were me indirectly blaming myself for it. I took some short trips out into the real world and found out that pro-social and progressive people are everywhere. Much of my anxiety lifted and I could suddenly see examples of people loving and caring for people like me everywhere. I finally felt like people could love me and I felt genuinely happy FOR THE FIRST TIME because I realized the world is WAY less hellish than I thought at first and it’s worth the effort to escape. I accepted so many things as normal because I was too scared to talk to anyone in the real world to challenge my beliefs. Now, I’ll have to risk my life to escape, but the chance for freedom beats the slow death of depression. Even if I am killed in my attempt to find freedom, I don’t think anything is more painful than submission. I will die at the happiest point of my life. Unfortunately, I’m very suspicious of men because of the whole violence and homicide thing. I want to know how common men like this are in the general population and what signs I should look out for. Although, since most murders are committed by those the victim knows, I have a feeling that the men who I have to worry the most about are the ones who live under the same roof. So I’m curious how fucked this is. Worst 20% of households? 5%? 1%? Should I expect people with trauma like this to be walking around everywhere, or did I genuinely win the shit lottery?

sprigatito_bread Jan 5

What should I do if my violent brother is threatening to kill my parents (who I financially depend on and live with) and they aren't taking it seriously?

https://lemmy.world/post/41165331

What should I do if my violent brother is threatening to kill my parents (who I financially depend on and live with) and they aren't taking it seriously? - Lemmy.World

I (23M) live in an abusive household (Ohio, USA) with narcissistic asshole parents, bad enough that I was insecure about the fact that I am the only one in the family who can experience love and empathy. I haven’t been able to move out yet because I have disabilities and no job. My brother was a brooding quiet kid, so for a long time, I didn’t know exactly how he was affected by his upbringing, except that he had anger issues. My parents always shrugged off my fear of him, accusing me of overreacting, even when he killed a bird with his bare hands and displayed its corpse in a tree in the backyard. Today, he’s a strong 6’2" guy with military training and a gun. My worst fears were confirmed when he displayed a pattern of escalating threats and violence over the past year or so. In October 2024, when he thought I wasn’t around, he candidly told my dad that he would be willing to kill me. Last February, he remorselessly beat his girlfriend’s cat to death, which my parents saw as petty drama. Last June, he gleefully described his fantasies of shooting up peaceful protests, which my parents shrugged off. A few hours ago, I experienced the most terrifying moment of my life. I was in my bedroom when an argument broke out between my brother and my parents about finances. When my brother didn’t get the response he wanted and my dad started heckling him, he erupted in a way that I had never witnessed before. “I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!! MESS WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER, I’LL SLICE YOU UP!! DIE, BITCH, DIE!!” He screamed at the top of his lungs in a roaring voice he had never used before, repeatedly threatening to kill my dad. My heart was beating out of my chest as I prepared to dial 911 and leap out my bedroom window. I waited tensely for the sound of gunshots or my parents screaming. Since I was holed up in my room, I couldn’t see if he was brandishing a weapon. “Okay, that’s enough,” my mom said in a casually disapproving tone of voice that was psychotically unfitting for the severity of the situation. (My parents aren’t exempt from his violence, as my father was struck in the head by him a few years prior.) After a couple more minutes of horrifyingly unhinged screams and threats, my brother finally reverted back to “regular pissed off” mode and left to hang out in the woods, while my parents continued to go about their day as if nothing had happened. So… I can’t fucking believe I’m in this situation. For years my parents told me I was overreacting and paranoid, and I kind of believed them. I always thought that murder was a far-off threat that I would read about on the Internet but never be faced with myself. It’s so hard to shake off this feeling of normalcy and relative stability, and part of me wants to just forget what happened like my parents do. Being uprooted from my home and having to suddenly figure everything out with physical limitations, chronic fatigue, no friends, no home, and no job, in the middle of a cold winter, feels dangerous in itself. I don’t know what to do. A lifetime of abuse has made me stupid. I feel like if I contact law enforcement, they won’t keep my brother away for long enough for me to get my life in order and make a clean break. He’s almost certain to know that I called the cops, so he will be able to target me after whatever light questioning or slap on the wrist they give him. Plus, my parents will likely try to sabotage my efforts to stay safe. If I contact the authorities or any kind of help resource and it gets back to my family, I will have placed a bright red target on my back and won’t be able to undo it. It is very hard to focus with the constant threat of violence looming over my shoulder. I failed my last semester of college because my brother suddenly became much more domineering and threatening, and I became too paranoid to even use the bathroom, let alone study. I can’t think straight. I need help, but I can’t get help in a way that inadvertently gets me killed later.

sprigatito_bread Dec 17

I want to attend therapy for the first time! What are some things I should know before signing up?

https://lemmy.world/post/40300672

I want to attend therapy for the first time! What are some things I should know before signing up? - Lemmy.World

For context, I (23M) live in the United States. In Ohio. A bit concerned about privacy because of the whole Nazi problem and the fact that I live in an abusive household. I’ve been working on myself a lot recently and realized that I can’t do this alone anymore (or rely on Internet strangers to talk about my issues). I feel like I finally have the strength to ask for help in the real world. I’ve just never done this before. What’s it like? Is it warm and fuzzy, or cold and analytical? Do you start to see results right away, or are things slow at first? How much stuff is recorded in a database that other systems can look up?

sprigatito_bread Dec 12

Does anyone else have a sexuality based on loving connection and people who look friendly and ordinary instead of "sexy"?

https://lemmy.world/post/40095236

Does anyone else have a sexuality based on loving connection and people who look friendly and ordinary instead of "sexy"? - Lemmy.World

Things that I (23M, heterosexual) find really hot that I feel like most others don’t: - People who look friendly, cuddly, and ordinary (the average woman my age is way hotter than most celebrities) - The feeling of being kept safe and comforted by someone and doing the same for them in return - Sexual desirability based on trust, familiarity, and fondness of the overall person - Imperfection and compromise - Realistic (“small”) anatomy - Physical quirks or conventionally unattractive features that instantly become cute and hot because they symbolize mutual trust and vulnerability - Wholesome romantic lovemaking - Sexual sensitivity to pure affection; being covered in kisses and snuggles by a partner is hot - Chubbiness, for the soft cuddles - Being a guy who’s soft-spoken, blushy, emotionally expressive, very sensitive to his partner’s affection, and vocal in a high-pitched manner during sex - Male genitalia represents trust and vulnerability, not power - Both partners are stronger than each other in complementary ways that allow each to feel safe and protected when the other is leading - The giver during sex is gentle and caring, while the receiver is incredibly receptive and grateful; sex isn’t lusty or aggressive - Strength is used to create a safe space and melt someone’s defenses to facilitate unguarded closeness - Roughly equal degrees of emotional vulnerability and expressiveness between partners - Sensual connection over vigorousness and performance - Oral sex > intercourse Things that I feel like most others seem to find really hot that I don’t: - Male (or sometimes female) dominance - Male genitalia represents power - Strong focus on specific individual body parts - Having sex with someone you just met and don’t plan to have a relationship with - Exaggerated anatomy that only a small percentage of people actually have - Strength is used to dominate or overpower - One partner (often male) is regarded as stronger and is less emotionally vulnerable or expressive than the other - Intercourse or penetration as the main focus - Sexual desirability based on physical appearance and sexual performance I felt like I was going crazy living in a society where it seemed like the cultural conception of sex was this weird thing that it felt almost everyone resonated with except for me. So I’m interested to see if other people can relate to my alternative perspective. (Note: I’m aware of demisexuality, but I don’t think it applies to me because I experience sexual attraction immediately as long as the other person appears kind and trustworthy)

sprigatito_bread Nov 30

Does anyone have any hopeful success stories of surviving abusive parents and finding happiness later in life?

https://lemmy.world/post/39527929

Does anyone have any hopeful success stories of surviving abusive parents and finding happiness later in life? - Lemmy.World

All of my (23M) immediate family members turned out to be narcissists, with two of the three being violent. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize sooner that they were ALL like this and were irredeemable – no amount of patience or playing “armchair therapist” would help. I am just trying to make it off the ground, but I feel completely unsupported, anxious, and alone. I have lived under the constant threat of violence from a young age and the stress has poisoned me with chronic illness and moderate disability. It has taken me this long to see past the gaslighting, the cynical appeals to my empathy, and the charitable image I had of them that turned out to just be projection. I feel so dumb for not seeing it earlier. It feels like I was meant to die young, like the very circumstances of my birth were inherently fatal. A covert narcissist married a violent criminal. The offspring were an even more violent criminal and a scapegoat. I am suddenly expected to succeed in an environment with zero emotional support, where any attempt to assert an independent identity is violently suppressed, and where I could accidentally trigger my brother’s killer instinct or become the next subject of his sadistic fantasies. I have savings, but I don’t know where to run to. It seems like both of my parents’ family trees are filled with trauma. I’m thinking of going to an in-person college, but I might not be able to afford living there year-round. My employment prospects are quite limited due to my conditions. I live in the U.S. in one of the worst times in recent history to be disabled. I am looking to live in an affordable city with good public transit. Before I became disabled at my previous job, coworkers thought I was sweet, funny, caring, and gentle. But regardless of my surface potential for making friends, I am programmed to fear everyone in case they are hiding narcissism, sadism, or psychopathy beneath the surface. Obviously I know that nobody can predict what my specific fate will be, but I’d like to hear about stories of people from similar backgrounds who have actually survived and found happiness and avoided what felt like certain doom. I want to have hope that things will be okay, and maybe get some ideas on how I’ll pull off this insane project.

sprigatito_bread Nov 22

How can you protect yourself from an abusive and violent sibling when you are financially dependent on your enabling parents?

https://lemmy.world/post/39150986

How can you protect yourself from an abusive and violent sibling when you are financially dependent on your enabling parents? - Lemmy.World

I (23M) am a broke online college student living with my parents. I have an abusive brother (25M) who also lives under the same roof. My brother is a narcissist. He believes that he is the most important person in the universe. Boundaries and respect do not matter to him. He will hijack every conversation into being either constant self-aggrandizing or personal attacks. He is physically violent when provoked and he has killed multiple animals by beating them to death with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he seems to consider “no” to be a provocation. He searches through all my stuff without permission and I’ve had to start being careful about what things I leave lying around. My parents do not care about this. My father doesn’t because he’s the OG narcissist who passed it down to my brother and actively cheers for my suffering, and my mother doesn’t because she is the enabler who chose to stay married to my father and told me I had to suffer the abuse endlessly like she does. I don’t have any irl friends because I have medical conditions that make it difficult for me to be outside on my own for extended periods of time. I also can’t drive because of that. It sucks. This isn’t to say it’s impossible for me to go out, but it’s hard and kind of risky (my condition can cause me to faint). I have constantly been told to give up on being treated like a human being, but I have begun to recognize that my family is feeding me false narratives of hopelessness to keep me complacent and submissive. I surely have power, but my internalization of their narratives is obscuring the ways to exercise it. What would you do in such a situation, or if you have been in a similar situation, what did you do?

sprigatito_bread Nov 15

Is it common for family members to spy on each other's sexual behavior to find evidence of "degeneracy"? Or did I grow up in hell?

https://lemmy.world/post/38828538

Is it common for family members to spy on each other's sexual behavior to find evidence of "degeneracy"? Or did I grow up in hell? - Lemmy.World

When I (23M) was growing up, my parents hated whenever I locked my door for privacy. Like most adolescent boys, I had a libido and things that I liked to look at when I was taking care of that. When I was 15, my dad would lean against my door every day to listen in. One day, he heard I was in the middle of it, and as quickly as possible, he picked the lock of my door and caught a glimpse of me watching some pretty crude and wacky rule 34 that was sorta ambiguously gendered. He immediately closed the door and retreated to his room. When I cleaned up and asked why he “knocked,” he said “nothing” with an unsettling smile. 7 years later, when I came out as passionately heterosexual because I finally figured out what my type was, he became very angry and told me I was REALLY a [f-slur], and he could prove it by revealing what he caught me watching all those years ago. I actually thought he would be glad to know how I turned out, but it seems that he, a conservative, was angry that I wasn’t queer. Recently, my older brother got into my journal with all of my private thoughts. The first thing he read was the dozens of pages of sexual fantasies I wrote down for my sole enjoyment and reference. When I confronted him, he justified his intrusion into my most intimate thoughts with “God told me to do it.” He nitpicked my fantasies and told me that my openness to choosing my gender and sexual expression instead of forcing myself into the cishet box would inexplicably turn me into a pedophile. It seems that 5,000+ unfiltered words exhaustively proving my heterosexuality for strong mature women wasn’t satisfactory. I’m curious if others have have experienced this dynamic of family members violating someone to “test” their sexuality and look for evidence of deviance, or if this is a complete “WTF” situation that isn’t even a thing among most conservative households.

sprigatito_bread Sep 29

Are heterosexual relationships even worth it if you're just going to be railroaded into gender roles?

https://lemmy.world/post/36638211

Are heterosexual relationships even worth it if you're just going to be railroaded into gender roles? - Lemmy.World

I (22M, straight) have never tried dating women due to gender roles. There is nothing that turns me off more than an unequal partnership where I’m pigeonholed into being some stoic protector who never cries, never needs comfort, doesn’t like “girly” things, and always leads affection and intimacy. You know what I like? When a woman is strong, confident, playful, and comforting, but is also down-to-earth and vulnerable. Someone I could take turns caring for and being cared for by, pursuing and being pursued by her. I don’t want some stupid power dynamic; I want us to be like best friends, equals with matching vibes who care for and comfort one another. And for us to have lots of fun together: foam sword fights in the living room, baking cakes together despite neither of us knowing what we’re doing, having goofy staring contests… whimsical and silly stuff like that. There is absolutely no room for gender roles in my life because I want us to feel like buddies, not the infallible chivalrous knight and the small vulnerable one. I see the opposite genders as complements that equally embody both strength and vulnerability. Hell, there’s not even any room in my life for this serious adult facade everyone seems to put on. Having adult responsibilities doesn’t mean I also have to act all serious and sophisticated. No, I’m going to be silly because we have only a finite amount of time on this earth and I’m going to use it to make people laugh and smile. The Internet has made me disillusioned with the idea of a relationship because gender roles are constantly reinforced. “If you show your emotions to a woman she’ll use them against you later” or “If you cry in front of a girl she’ll break up with you” or “Guys who are too feminine give me the ick”. Often some variation of “If you want a girlfriend, you have to maintain the image of a strong stoic hero, and the moment that illusion is shattered, you’re fucked.” That’s why, as soon as I realized what my attractions were, I immediately wrote off the possibility of ever fulfilling them because they didn’t fit a patriarchal world, and I saw the idea of trying to force myself into that world as torture. I had somehow “fallen out” of gender roles and was attracted to equality instead of hierarchy. I didn’t want to be “manly,” I wanted to be adorable, playful, caring, and sweet, and I was attracted to those exact qualities in women. Once I developed chronic health conditions and physical limitations, the idea of me being strong and infallible became even more unattainable. I’m interested in hearing others’ experiences in navigating this. I really want to believe that equal straight relationships can be found, but I am surrounded by an information ecosystem that mostly points to their nonexistence, tainted by universal gender expectations. Honestly, the fact that there isn’t an “incel” subculture full of progressive men who gave up because their personality wasn’t patriarchal enough makes me wonder if most guys with this issue: (1) don’t have the self-awareness to post about it, (2) enter relationships where they spend their entire lifetime in hell suppressing their personality, or (3) actually did find partners who loved them for their authentic selves, despite popular narratives.

sprigatito_bread Sep 14, 2025

How do people who can't have or don't want penetrative sex find compatible partners?

https://lemmy.world/post/35902160

How do people who can't have or don't want penetrative sex find compatible partners? - Lemmy.World

I (22M, heterosexual) am interested in a sensual and affectionate form of intimacy involving purely oral stimulation. My desire is entirely centered on kissing and being kissed as a way to exchange love and pleasure (with oral sex being an extension of kissing). It is so hot to me that it is genuinely all I want, and penetrative forms of sex do not interest me. (Due to medical issues, they also might not work super well at this point.) I have never had a sexual partner because I was raised with a traditional model of intimacy in which an active male partner penetrates a passive female partner. Since my desires did not fit this framework, I never tried to even date anyone, believing that the type of intimacy I wanted - one in which both partners took turns giving and receiving oral pleasure - was impossible. At least, not without having to participate in an activity that didn’t arouse me. I am not nearly as ignorant as I was back then, but I would like to know if there is a general dating strategy to efficiently narrow things down to women who aren’t interested in or don’t require penetrative sex. Does anyone know of someone in a similar situation who found a compatible partner regardless? If so, how did they do it?