Nowhere to go

One minute you're 27 and just trying to pull your shit together, the next you're 14 and crying in the shower. Wishing everything would just stop. When I was 13 I got involved with a boy online. He was a few years older than me. He also got involved with several of my friends. Stand up bloke for sure. One of the usual markers of a toxic dynamic, he was expressing suicidality. Now, at 13 years old this actually wasn't an unfamiliar thing for me. Several of my friends had been self harming for years, some had gone further, and I had experienced my first suicidal thought when I was 11. So, this boy clearly had some issues and was not a mentally stable person, however, I don't think he was truly suicidal. I think he craved attention, he was probably lonely. But so was I. And as I am coming to understand, the only time I truly feel worth shit, is when I can be something for someone else. We were a match made in Hell. I don't feel like elaborating on that relationship any further, it's not worth the time. And honestly, it's not the relationship that caused me the most suffering from these years. And it's certainly not why 14 is the age I dissociate to when everything comes crashing down around me. That would be thanks to my sister. She was, I don't know, disastrously insecure. And she took that out on everyone and everything around her. She's not dead, in case you're curious about the past tense. She just won't ever be part of my life again. I don't know when her issues with me started, but when I turned 13 and gained a much larger friend group than she had ever had (full of paedophiles mind you, not a friend group any one should have idealised), she developed some kind of fixation I wouldn't begin to know how to describe. I introduced her to my friend group. My fucking mistake. She thought one of the guys we hung out with was the most attractive boy she'd seen, and I asked if she wanted to come meet him. I owe him an apology for that in all honesty. This was around the end of 2011. For the next few months she used grooming tactics on all of the friends around my age. Oh, and on me. But for most of them, they got the presents, the compliments, the quality time, without the exploitation. The screaming, the silent treatment, the privacy invasions, the guilt tripping, the violent explosions she expressed when she didn't get her way. When I made a joke she didn't like. When I wanted to spend time with someone else. This was my daily life. Walking on eggshells around this minefield for 5 years. She knew about the boy online. Knew that he was involved with multiple girls, me and one other he particularly favoured. She threatened to report him, I still have the messages. I begged her not to, not even for me, but for the other girl. She was going through Hell, had been for years, and seemed to just keep getting worse. I was scared of what would happen if she lost him. Remember, I'm 14 years old at this point in time, and I'm doing my best to navigate being deeply infatuated with a boy I'd never met, and my closest friends being in and out of hospital regularly for self-harm and suicide attempts. I didn't know what the right thing to do was, but as victims often do, I felt like I would be betraying him if I didn't try to stop her. And it worked, for a few weeks. Then one of my friends told her about something sexual in nature that had happened between me and him, and she told our mum. This sounds like the actions of a concerned sister, right? You'd think so initially. But she never told my mum about the other girl. And then she told her, and all of my other friends, that I was playing the victim. That I had chosen to report him. Mm. It took me years to figure out how all of these lies happened and put the pieces together. Her and my friends - who I don't hold to the same standard as they were 12, 13, 14 years old - whereas she was 17 at this point - had so much bullshit to say about me that it warped my memory of the whole time period. It wasn't until years later I examined all the pieces of information I still had access to that I realised just how much had been lied about. I reread several message logs, looked at friends' tumblr posts from the time period, pieced together the events bit by bit. Then I spoke to some friends I'd stayed in touch with. "I remember when she was force feeding you ice-cream" What the fuck? I didn't even know what she meant. "What?" My voice was shaky and a feeling I couldn't quite put into words came into me. She had been trying to make me fat. What the fuck? At this time, while I was grounded, for my own safety. A nickname developed for me, 'Cakey'. I didn't know where it came from, I had been a little chubby, sure, I liked sweets, but to any extent that it warranted a nickname? I didn't get it. She bought me sweets, ice-cream, comfort food, while I spent most of this time in bed, sad, lonely. She had been doing this for months. But when I was grounded, I didn't know what was going on in the friend group. I didn't have access to the internet any more. She was telling them all she was going to make me fat. She always had issues with her own body. But what the fuck? What kind of weird fucking shit is this? And the best part is that she would use bringing me sweets as a way to spend time with me, or to guilt me if I didn't. When she finally cracked years later because everyone was finally starting to see through her bullshit, she even wrote, 'She bought you sweets, even when she couldn't buy them for herself' as one of the wonderful things she did for me. Because I was just so horrible for asking her to stop treating me, my mum, my brother, and our home, like shit. I also found out that she had a photo album on Facebook that had been hidden from me. It was all unflattering photos and videos of me. And she gave out my social media passwords. Went through my text messages, with my friends. Anything to humiliate me, it seemed. I found most of this out when I was around 22. I hadn't spoken to her in 4 years. Apart from once or twice I tried to contact her. To apologise. Because even now I can admit that I wasn't always the world's best sister. I was a kid. She was a tyrant. My mum wasn't around a lot to see it. I thought this is what sisters were like. This isn't what sisters are like. Once when I was 16 or 17, so she was 19/20, she brought me some food and asked to hang out with me. I told her she could but my boyfriend was going to call - sadly the same boy from earlier as the infatuation transcended not talking to him for 2 years and at 16 no one could stop me. When he called I said, "You can fuck off now" in a light-hearted tone. She started screaming at me and threw the bowl from her food at the wall behind my head, smashing it. This isn't what sisters are like. Let's skip ahead to the cut off point. My brother had moved home, it had been just me and her for years. My mum was never around. Me and him developed a close relationship, we never had before and it was really nice. We had a lot of common interests, at the time we both particularly loved The Walking Dead. She did not. He looked after me, and I him, as we were both suffering with chronic fatigue, and definitely some mental health struggles. She hated this. But instead of, you know, coming in and saying "Do you think we could watch something we all enjoy? I'd like to spend time with you guys too," She would say "This again? It's terrible. The acting and the writing are awful." Instead of, "If you guys are too tired to cook, why don't I make us all something and we could eat together?" It was, "Pizza again?" In that judgemental tone we've all had from a grandparent or random old lady our parents know. She left dishes everywhere, it was my job to unstack and load the dishwasher, she would always leave her dishes even when it was empty. Or she would put them in without rinsing them at all. When the dishwasher broke it was us and our 'melted pizza cheese', even though we had been using the pizza boxes as plates. Yeah, neither of us were in a particularly good place. Nothing was ever her responsibility. She bullied our mum. She stole things she had given me whenever she decided I no longer deserved them. She made everyone feel like they couldn't breathe around her because if they did it was in effort to torture her. She called my severe OCD 'germaphobia', and yelled at me when my compulsions bothered her. God forbid anyone get upset when she was in the bath for 5 hours at a time though. She wanted to control me. And when my brother came home he gave me the genuine support that I needed, without the consequences if I didn't live up to some unspoken expectations in return. I told her I didn't respect her, because she didn't treat anyone of anything with a grain of respect. I told her I felt that she needed to be assessed by a psychiatrist, because the way she treated people wasn't normal. I wanted to give her an excuse. She thinks this was some kind of belittlement. It wasn't meant to be. It was the only reason for her behaviour I could think of that might make her not just a horrible person. We spoke to my mum about the situation, a lot. She didn't help much. She wouldn't kick her out of the family home, and she was 21 now, so she couldn't exactly be grounded or have the TV taken away. So we came to the conclusion she shouldn't have the private bedroom. Me and her had shared a bedroom for years, until she pressured my mum into letting her have her room, because she was rarely home. Mum had been thinking about giving the room to me. I wasn't an asshole. I didn't send her huge manipulative messages about how awful she was. I didn't scream at everyone. I did my chores. So I was to get the room now. Mum didn't want to speak to her about it, she said swap them around while she's at college. I told her I didn't think that was a good idea. It wasn't up to me. So we swapped the rooms around. She came home. "Did mum say you could do this?" "Yes." I said to my other siblings, "I don't feel like I've been heard". She heard "I don't feel like she's hurt." Then she left. She began texting everyone about how she had paid for the linoleum flooring and it had to be taken up as I had, accidentally, ripped the floor in her other room and it 'made her feel sick'. I apologised immediately when this happened, and it had been my bedroom at the time. We did what she wanted anyway, my siblings offered to pay for me to get new flooring. Then we saw the black mould. Covering the floor around the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom. Under the bathtub looked like the upside down from Stranger Things. I had been really sick for a few weeks at this point, coughing nonstop. So, we assumed this was likely the cause. The entire bathroom floor was rotting away. We made a plan to stay with my oldest sister, turned off the water at the house, and texted her to tell her what had happened, sending photos for proof. She didn't respond. We didn't know where she was, and she couldn't get into the house. We were worried she was going to be found in a ditch. I often worried about her killing herself, because her behaviour was so erratic, I would listen at the bathroom door to hear her move to know she hadn't drowned herself. She wouldn't answer if I asked her to let me know she was okay. I also asked my brother to hide the pills from the medicine cupboard once when I wasn't home because I was scared for her. So we went out looking for her. Nothing. Our oldest sister called the police. Turned out, my mum knew where she was, we were all furious that she hadn't told us or the police, as she knew they'd been involved. And she gave her a key to the house when she returned. She locked herself in. Wrote all over the bedroom walls, not in a manic disorganised way, as she even corrected her own exaggeration in one of the sentences. The statements were accusatory, we were all so horrible and she had been treated unfairly by all of us her entire life. I think she was scared shitless that I was finally standing up for myself. I think she hated that people were actually seeing her. The police had to threaten to break down the door before she let them in. They found a pile of pills in her room, along with crumbled up biscuits, a carton of milk, and my brother knife. It was a nice cooking knife with a wooden handle that she had been asked not to use as she would leave it in the basin and the handle was getting damaged. The police said they couldn't take her to a psychiatrist because she hadn't harmed herself or anyone else, and wasn't expressing that she would, but called for an emergency assessment. The only person she would go with was our sisters partner. He was frustrated but took her because everyone was seriously concerned. Furious, upset, but still concerned for her wellbeing and safety. She was just a bit anxious, the psychiatrist said. She wanted to apologise to us all when she got back. My brother and I weren't ready to speak to her. I didn't hear from her for 8 years. Until last summer. The first time she came back to visit our family home for years. She didn't even visit when our mum was diagnosed with cancer. I walked in one day to her sitting in the kitchen, didn't realise who it was at first, accidentally made eye contact. "Hi," she said. As if it was fucking normal. I was polite. I don't cause issues. I know more about the shit she did to me than she has any awareness of. She's convinced herself it was us. We had been psychologically abusing her, intimidating her for "weeks". She put me through Hell for years. My reaction to her abuse of me, was not fucking abuse. She thinks I act nice to make myself feel better about the past. I do it so that she doesn't take it out on our mum. She thinks no one noticed her last summer, screaming at her on a regular basis. We fucking did. And I heard you screaming down the phone at your boyfriend too. You are an abuser. She's on tiktok now. Lying about all of this. I've barely said a word about her publicly over the past 9 years. As if the past year wasn't hard enough on me, trying my best to navigate caring for two traumatised kids, developing chronic hives, looking after two unwell parents at different periods, having several mental breakdowns, having my OCD destroy my relationship, losing several close friends, all whilst dealing with severe pain and fatigue, dissociation, flat out fucking exhaustion. I don't care any more. I'm done with her bullshit. She might never see this. But I hope she does. I want her to know that I know exactly who she fucking is. This isn't what sisters are like.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs has been meme-d across the internet recently. It's not one of psychology's best models of human needs, IMO, but probably one of the most well known. I studied models like this last year through The Open University (great uni for those like me with chronic disabilities). The basic structure of Maslow's model suggests that human beings first must satisfy their biological needs - hunger, safety, etc - at least to a reasonable degree, you know, to stay alive. Once reasonably accounted for you may nourish the more complex needs of a developing person: social needs - to be loved and cared for, esteem needs - achievement and respect from self and others, and finally, self-actualisation needs. I think a lot of people who have their basic needs met probably get stuck at love and belonging. Why do I think that? Well, I'm not a researcher, yet, hence the 'I think '. Now, this isn't serious psychological research, obviously, but with a little help from a friend with a sizeable platform, shoutout to Jovan Bradley , I was able to collect some very basic data from his Instagram following. We asked, via his instagram story, 'Do you feel that you experience a true sense of 'love and belongingness' or do you feel this is a real area of struggle?' 2073 people responded to this poll, 59% chose ‘massive struggle’ and the other 41% felt ‘truly loved’. Honestly this was closer than I thought the outcome would be, but that’s a reflection of my own experience I suppose. Why do people struggle to form meaningful relationships? A sense of belonging? I propose that this issue actually originates with a lack of introspection. And maybe, Maslow had these needs organised in the wrong order. It has been established that the rigid structure Maslow originally proposed was a setback to the model. It's unlikely that there is any specific order to which needs can be met, however, we obviously need to meet our biological needs first. I would propose that esteem needs probably work in a constant flow with needs of love and belonging. Because, in order to belong somewhere, you need to know where you belong. And in order to know where you belong, don't you need to know who you are? For someone with a lack of self-esteem and self-respect, they may accept 'love' and 'belongingness' from people who in fact don't love or respect them at all. It seems like ' basic common sense ', honestly that phrase has become so misused today, but really, it does seem clear that in order to develop true love and belonging, we need some level of self-esteem to even recognise this. This brings me to Carl Rogers' work in person-centred counselling . I loved learning about Rogers' work. Rogers' developed a set of 6 necessary conditions for 'therapeutic growth'. The most interesting, I find, are that of 'congruence' - the need for the therapist to be in touch with their authenticity and reflect this in their communication with their client - 'unconditional positive regard' - the therapist is to accept the client without criticism and judgement - and 'empathy' - this is straight forward. Now, these conditions are meant to be applied to the relationship between a client and therapist, but let's take our knowledge of human development and take a wild guess; If these are the conditions a therapist needs to embody in order for a client to grow, for their 'actualising tendency' to thrive, then if we apply these conditions to a parent-child relationship... Well, it seems obvious. The actualising tendency refers to one's 'innate tendency to move toward growth, maturity, and positive change' . So why aren't people embodying this actualising tendency? Or are they? I certainly try to keep growing and moving towards my 'organismic self' . My most aligned, authentic state of being. But, to do that, don't I have to have some idea of what I'm moving towards? This is where we circle back, I realise I've taken you down a windy road - somewhat like the road to self-actualisation, if you're anything like me, you'll enjoy symbolism in the most simple things. Anyway, introspection! Yes! We're back on track, so, most people probably don't grow up with perfectly congruent, non-judgemental and always empathetic parents - thus we do not grow up with a true experience of love and belonging. And yes, I would argue that the core conditions Rogers' proposed for a therapeutic relationship are in fact those of true, unconditional love. Which I think few people experience in life, as we are, myself included, subject to being incongruent, judgemental little fucks. Excuse the profanities. So, why do we struggle with this feedback loop: love - esteem? Because we are incongruent, judgemental little fucks. To others, to ourselves, to our kids. What can we do about it? Introspect. Truly, that's what therapy and counselling is all about. Creating a safe space for introspection. Looking into yourself, and figuring out what the fuck is going on in there. How often can you honestly say you know why you're doing what you're doing? What you want out of what you're doing? What led you to what you're doing? What you feel about what you're doing? And, even more importantly, how often to do you care to ask? We can likely, hopefully, all agree that the world is in dire need of more empathy. I mean, come on, we live in a capitalist hellscape that thinks communism is evil. Seriously? People actually see a problem with society working as a collective to make sure everyone's basic needs are met and to dispel monopolies. If you're reading this as someone who was just here for the personal psychology, you may be a little taken aback by the notion of communism being a good thing, but seriously, look in to what communism actually is. I recommend checking out Jovan for that, maybe even debate him if you think I'm disastrously wrong. But this really is an issue, people don't want people to be able to be their organismic selves. People don't want you to have access to food, clean water, housing, education, medical care. And why the fuck not? An astounding lack of basic, human empathy. I could talk about this forever. Why do people lack empathy, Katy? As if I'm the expert, please. Remember with every word you read of mine, I really am just some idiot on the internet who loves psychology and has a lot to say about the human condition and the state of society. But, with that in mind, I do have a theoretical answer. A lack of theory of mind; 'understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions and perspectives that are different from one's own' . We see this, for example, as a fundamental issue in people's understanding and acceptance of transgender identities, which I have a lot to say about so keep an eye out for that post. A cisgender man would never experience himself as a woman, and therefore may struggle to empathise with a transgender woman's experience and possible desires for transition. So he views it as incorrect, delusion, even. He is a moron. Theory of mind is something that typically develops in the early years of childhood, so where are we getting stuck? You betcha, we're circling back again - those other core conditions, congruence and unconditional positive regard. First of all, how can we become congruent within ourselves, and therefore in our expression to others, if we lack the introspective skills to do so? Secondly, why would we want to be congruent in a society that shits all over anyone who is? Except of course, for those cis-het white men whose organismic self happens to be a Christian nationalist who truly embodies masculinity and emits leadership quality over all of us mere peasants below him. Fun fact: I don't think this is anyone's organismic self. Well, as stated Rogers' viewed this movement towards congruency as innate, the actualising tendency that exists within us all. So, does it matter - whether we want to be congruent or not? What happens if we don't move towards this actualisation of the organismic self? Take a look around. Now, as I come to the end of this vaguely academic ramble, you might be left with some questions. I'll list the questions I have and you can let me know via instagram if you thought of any more. What can we do to promote empathy in society today? How can we encourage the development of theory of mind? Why should we give people unconditional positive regard and empathy? Some people surely don't deserve this? These are great questions, and really fucking important questions today. Bet let's start a little closer to home. What can I do to show myself more empathy today? Are there experiences that I have or have had that I feel others show a lack of understanding for? What about vice-versa? Does anyone provide me with unconditional positive regard? Do I provide it for any one else? Do I provide it for myself? Again, if you have any more questions you've found yourself asking after reading this, please do let me know. I created this blog as a place to put all my thoughts about psychology, society and its' wellbeing. Any thoughts from those in society are beneficial to the expansion of my own perspective, and I truly hope to get some feedback here. Also, feel free to let me know how you found answering any of the above questions. You'll likely find me answering them continuously through my posts here .

Aaaaaaaaaaah. Fuck. I am 27 fucking years old. Where am I? How do you even answer that question? Sitting in my bedroom - which is technically a living room - in my mum's house. No, that's not the kind of 'where' we're talking about. So, where am I? Let's retrace our steps, shall we? I just had a breakdown. Well, about 6 weeks ago, I had a breakdown. A crisis? A stupid life ruining fucking garbage pile? I don't know. I've been prescribed quetiapine for somewhere around 2 years, and I came off of it. It was giving me really stressful dreams, like, every fucking night. I would wake up in a state of anxiety and dread. Pretty reasonable to try to find out what was causing it - and coming off the quetiapine seemed to work. I was only on 25mg. You wouldn't think that would make much of a difference, right? And honestly, it probably wouldn't. Not alone, at least. The past year has been rough. The past decade has been rougher. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, likely a result of having bacterial meningitis as a child, obsessive compulsive disorder, likely a result of having bacterial meningitis as a child, and autistic spectrum disorder. That one came free. So, I've been a little stressed I guess. Anyway, to make a long story short, this breakdown/crisis/garbage pile, it was bad. Several thought streams overlapping each other constantly makes it pretty hard to decipher what the intrusive thoughts are, and even harder to find your 'wise mind' as it's referred to in Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts . God, OCD is such a bitch. I didn't realise what was going on, and as a painfully self aware person, this caused some real issues. And it's safe to say I'm pretty pissed off about it. I was experiencing severe dissociative symptoms - largely depersonalisation. That's what happens during a surge of intrusive thoughts. You don't know where you are. You don't know what you think, what you want, what you're capable of. You think you've lost control. This is the trick, OCD's master plan. IF you believe this, that you have, or are going to, lose control, OCD is winning. The only thing you really ever have control over, is you. OCD can't take that away from you. Don't believe it. I did. And it fucked me. I don't really want to get into the nitty gritty of it, as anyone with OCD knows, that's pretty hard to open up about. But, let's get the key points in place: Ended a 7 year relationship (a good one) Flew to America (planned and executed in 5 days) Ended multiple online friendships (this one wasn't my choice, but a result of my actions nonetheless) So. Again. Where am I? On my bed. In my bed/living room. At my mum's house. Tired. Sad. Alone. Not entirely alone, it's not like I have no one. My mum and my brother are in the kitchen right now. My sister's kid lives here with us too. I have a really good friend who has been there for me a lot throughout this, even though I've not always been there for her. And this whole situation led me to rekindle a friendship I let fall through the cracks, and she's great too. I also still have some of my online friends, and they mean the world to me. I know where I am. I know how I got here. I hate it. But it is what it is, right? It's been a long time since I hit a new low, but this was definitely that. And the truth is, as Ram Dass put it, 'there is nowhere to go' . What the fuck does that mean? It means, the only place to go is in. You are your safest home. The love of my life might not be able to forgive me, or be here for me as much as I would like, people I considered my closest friends, like family, might not be able to forgive me, or understand me and my OCD head and dissociated actions - but I can forgive me. And, that doesn't feel all too comforting, to be honest. You think it would, when you read about self compassion and giving yourself grace and all that wellness crap. It sounds like freedom. Honestly though, it has just left me feeling really, really, lonely. Because what if I'm the only person whose ever able to understand myself, enough, to give that kind of grace? And that's why I think 'alone' feels like an apt answer to this question. Where am I? Don't worry, Ram Dass, I'm here now. But I'm here now, alone.