Yes š
I didnāt realize this was a thing other homeschoolers experienced lol.
I could express them silently or in ways they couldnāt see-
But it has been interesting trying to learn to express them around other people. I think Iām doing alright though it definitely gets easier.
Iām sorry youāre going through this though- one thing i did was write them down (and destroy the evidence) maybe you could try that?
The word, ādramaā is triggering for me because it was always used to commit reactive abuse. Narcissists will abuse you until you lose control and explode in anger, then they point at your reaction and argue that YOUāRE the āreal problemā and look how āabusiveā you are!!!!
Yeah I've been told so many times things like "You're not allowed to be sad/angry" or "You have no reason to be sad/angry", and if I am my mom will talk about how she feels a demonic presence within me and she'll start praying it out of me which makes me terrified because I start to think I'm actually possessed. Sometimes they're not even ok with me being happy and get angry at me for that too.
WOW jeez I am so sorry you go through that! That's awful. Definitely just a way to try to manipulate and control you. I assure you it's manipulation and you aren't actually possessed... just being treated like crap
Hey my dude, in case itās helpful, youāre not possessed. Itās just manipulation.
Your mom doesnāt have a better way to duck her perceived responsibility for your feelings of unhappiness so itās easiest for her to flip the issue back to you via something like possession. Donāt let it get to you.
"Fun" fact: once I was out of that environment, I stopped having my recurring nightmares about being tormented by demons who mocked me.
I'm not Christian anymore, but I know some people who still are, are perfectly lovely people, and look alarmed when I mention the "DEMONS!" obsession I grew up in. In my household, they were viewed like germs that clung to surfaces and needed to be disinfected through prayer.
Oh god yeah. How dare I have any expression besides joy! Even a neutral face while doing chores? Bad attitude apparently. I was doing manual labor at the age of like 14 moving heavy stuff and getting hurt for my dad and literally got yelled at cause I didn't have a smile while doing so. My anxiety attacks were also given time limits and they got mad when I asked to be sent away š¤£
They'll wonder why you don't call them in 10 years. Humans and all living creatures capable of showing emotion need to. Unless they'd like to give you emotional or mental disorders they gotta realize your a person and feeling the full range of emotions is healthy.
Ugh.
"Bad attitude"
*That* fucking catch-all.
Same with the being forced to do backbreaking manual labor, and then getting punished for not actually enjoying it.
Oh yeah. They didn't straight out say that my emotions were banned, but anything that didn't comply with what they wanted was "rebellion" or "a bad attitude". Even being happy was bad if I was happy in a way that annoyed them. So I learned to be as invisible as possible.
Ooh, I feel this. I mostly talk about my mom because she was the crazymaker of the family, but my dad enabled a lot of it and was notorious for calling anything he didn't like "rebellion" or "your bad attitude". Like dude, I enjoy reading books that don't connect to anything biblical or I want a few minutes to myself.
Yeah. That's called toxic postivity and that was a trademark of my upbringing. As a result, I am now basically unable to process my emotions and make any sort of progress with my mental issues. I'm in therapy right now because I've got like half a lifetime of emotions pressed down
I was told I can only be happy, and that a guy can never cry, eve unless I was in serious physical pain. I have cried myself to sleep more times than I can count, and my poor gf has had to deal with at least 2 random teary sessions. On of my biggest regrets is that I was unable to cry when my grandfather died. not at his deathbed, not at his funeral.
regardless of what our parents tell us, we still have these emotions, and suppressing them only makes it worse
My emotions were constantly shut down by my mom. Bringing up my depression and loneliness was often matched with things like āwhat do you want me to do about it?ā Or āI know, Iām a terrible mother and itās all my faultā and the like. Requests for therapy when I was anorexic as a teen was met with responses like āA therapist will just make you hate your mother and theyāll blame me for all your problemsā. Instead she took it upon herself to shame me out of my eating disorder by calling me ugly and skinny and telling me that no man would ever love me like that.
Talking to dad about problems was essentially pointless because when he was happy heād make jokes and when he was angry (his only two emotions) youād get screamed at.
One of my brothers was my confidant and I was his, but we were both depressed and basically suicidal. (He was allowed to go to therapy though, lol) so it wasnāt the best.
Anyway, Iām almost 32 and you couldnāt pay me any amount of money to relive my childhood.
yeah there wasn't a ton of emotional support especially and then you end up with a suicidal 11 year old. Always cry in private and never expect to be comforted. The only appropriate thing to do is to pretend to be okay when you feel like you're dying inside to keep the status quo or risk being disappointed, shunned, and invalidated.
I have a huge fear of any ānegativeā situations because of how all-encompassing and confusing my parentsā control was. I watch tiktoks about parenting and ānormalā houses and can point out a dozen things I wouldāve immediately been punished for. Crying? Spanked for being a brat. Laughing? Spanked for being wild. Sitting quietly trying not to be perceived? Spanked for being lazy.
One thing homeschoolers never experience is an indifferent, friendly teacher who offers correction and guidance in a low-pressure, respectful way, with reasonable and reversible consequences. At home I was always one mistake away from massive, vindictive punishment.
>Sitting quietly trying not to be perceived? Spanked for being lazy
That reminds me of when I was maybe 10 and my mom was into hyper-productivity and being productive (meaning doing something for her) every waking second and saying stuff like "No, you don't need to play, you need to work! You work as a kid and you play as an adult!" (I'm about to turn 27 and still waiting for adult life to be worth it) Once she suggested making a crochet video since I was good at it so when she was on the phone with our dad, I thought that would be an appropriate time to start so I started getting that set up in another room and she got off the phone and called me back to the room she was in and said "What were you doing in there?" "Starting on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "No, I was working on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "No, I was working on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "No, I was working on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "Okay, I was doing nothing" "Great. Drop your pants" and spanked me. Fortunately there were only a few times where I felt set up like that.
Yes, since I was 3 or 4, negative emotions like sad or angry were very much not allowed. For a while when I was 9-10, we had to be actively happy 24/7, basically like [this commercial](https://youtu.be/GTcP4YqIeGM), and even neutral was officially not allowed but that was impossible to enforce. Once I felt upset for weeks because my mom made me dump half of my box of valuables in the trash for not doing the dishes fast enough (she said something about Satan being in my heart and that's why I couldn't just let it go) and I think one of my home movies getting taken because I wasn't supposed to be watching stuff I made because it was considered prideful (what else was I supposed to watch? VeggieTales?) and I was in another room talking to myself in a low voice and she heard me say "I'll live" and called me to where she was and demanded to know what I said and when I told her, she was incredulous and ranted for several hours about how ungrateful I was because there are people missing body parts and who went through all kinds of other bad stuff and I have the perfect life so I don't have a right to be sad. I wasn't hardened yet so she made me cry and then spanked me for not being able to open my eyes wider because they were squinty from crying. So yes, basically the way everything bad got "solved" in my family was "You ungrateful brat! You're in trouble until you say you're okay because homeschooled kids can't have problems!" I learned very quickly that if I ever talked about anything that bothered me, my mom would alternate between laughing/ridicule and yelling for 4-6 hours so I learned to "deny, deny, deny". Since they fortunately haven't invented brain scanners yet, I knew she couldn't get me in trouble unless I admitted to having negative feelings so I'd lie my butt off every time she noticed that I wasn't okay and asked about it. Once when I was 12, we were in the car and one of my siblings said they discovered that you can stop and count to calm down if you're angry and our mom was talking to our dad and stopped and turned to us and made a big deal about how that wasn't allowed and how we were only allowed to just not be angry.
That commercial reminds me of this sick Netflix movie where a couple was required to raise this space alien. It was the most depressing movie and I never want to see it again.
Yeah, I wasnāt allowed to get frustrated or irritated or grumpy. Even if I just kept to myself, my parents wanted me to always be out in the family common area, in a good mood so as not to ruin anyoneās day š
We were beaten and screamed at for a lot of emotions but I actually get a kick out of how some negative emotions did get out to the public. In many Christmas card photos, especially one I remember in particular, we had these horrible expressions on our faces. My aunt said my parents should have been embarrassed to send those Christmas cards out to so many people. Also my aunt said every time she went to our house she could tell it was very strict and boring, but she didnāt know we were abused until I reached the safety of young adulthood and earned a good living. We sat and talked for many hours at a time at my apartment where I lived alone, and I told her many horrible examples of emotional and physical abuse. I canāt describe the euphoria of having the freedom to finally tell people without negative consequences and knowing that āstrong Christianā people opposed abuse and that the literal hell of a childhood I experienced wasnāt some necessity to avoid burning in hell for eternity.
Yeah. I'm naturally happy but I don't feel anger anymore. Not sure if it's just because I lost so much or what?
But these emotions are important for us to feel. Just because a parent might forbid us from showing it doesn't mean we don't feel it. We need to process these emotions healthfully, and masking them doesn't do that.
kinda. even before i was homeschooled my mom would get pissed when i cry and get even more upset with me so i just bottle it up and pretend everything is alright when im around her. it's extremely emotionally taxing. doesn't help that i have autism and cuz of it i often have a neutral expression or rbf. im allowed to not smile like ffs give me a reason to smile then lol
It was highly discouraged. I didn't cry in front of ANYONE except for when my dogs died until I broke free of my family at 23-24. I went through a period where I would cry super easily at small things. Like all the emotions pent up just wanted to come out. I had to learn how to emotionally regulate myself instead of just stuffing it down.
Yes š I didnāt realize this was a thing other homeschoolers experienced lol. I could express them silently or in ways they couldnāt see- But it has been interesting trying to learn to express them around other people. I think Iām doing alright though it definitely gets easier. Iām sorry youāre going through this though- one thing i did was write them down (and destroy the evidence) maybe you could try that?
"Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS" Do I know anything about emotional regulation, or emotional availability, as an adult? lol no
So cruel. My mother always liked "Be angry but sin not" to demonstrate that emotions were not the bad guy just poor behavior.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Literally this! The word ungrateful sends shivers down my spine.
The word, ādramaā is triggering for me because it was always used to commit reactive abuse. Narcissists will abuse you until you lose control and explode in anger, then they point at your reaction and argue that YOUāRE the āreal problemā and look how āabusiveā you are!!!!
Yeah I've been told so many times things like "You're not allowed to be sad/angry" or "You have no reason to be sad/angry", and if I am my mom will talk about how she feels a demonic presence within me and she'll start praying it out of me which makes me terrified because I start to think I'm actually possessed. Sometimes they're not even ok with me being happy and get angry at me for that too.
WOW jeez I am so sorry you go through that! That's awful. Definitely just a way to try to manipulate and control you. I assure you it's manipulation and you aren't actually possessed... just being treated like crap
Hey my dude, in case itās helpful, youāre not possessed. Itās just manipulation. Your mom doesnāt have a better way to duck her perceived responsibility for your feelings of unhappiness so itās easiest for her to flip the issue back to you via something like possession. Donāt let it get to you.
"Fun" fact: once I was out of that environment, I stopped having my recurring nightmares about being tormented by demons who mocked me. I'm not Christian anymore, but I know some people who still are, are perfectly lovely people, and look alarmed when I mention the "DEMONS!" obsession I grew up in. In my household, they were viewed like germs that clung to surfaces and needed to be disinfected through prayer.
Sounds familiar
You poor kid! That sounds just whack!
Oh god yeah. How dare I have any expression besides joy! Even a neutral face while doing chores? Bad attitude apparently. I was doing manual labor at the age of like 14 moving heavy stuff and getting hurt for my dad and literally got yelled at cause I didn't have a smile while doing so. My anxiety attacks were also given time limits and they got mad when I asked to be sent away š¤£ They'll wonder why you don't call them in 10 years. Humans and all living creatures capable of showing emotion need to. Unless they'd like to give you emotional or mental disorders they gotta realize your a person and feeling the full range of emotions is healthy.
Ugh. "Bad attitude" *That* fucking catch-all. Same with the being forced to do backbreaking manual labor, and then getting punished for not actually enjoying it.
Oh yeah. They didn't straight out say that my emotions were banned, but anything that didn't comply with what they wanted was "rebellion" or "a bad attitude". Even being happy was bad if I was happy in a way that annoyed them. So I learned to be as invisible as possible.
Ooh, I feel this. I mostly talk about my mom because she was the crazymaker of the family, but my dad enabled a lot of it and was notorious for calling anything he didn't like "rebellion" or "your bad attitude". Like dude, I enjoy reading books that don't connect to anything biblical or I want a few minutes to myself.
Yeah. That's called toxic postivity and that was a trademark of my upbringing. As a result, I am now basically unable to process my emotions and make any sort of progress with my mental issues. I'm in therapy right now because I've got like half a lifetime of emotions pressed down
Yes, same here. Textbook emotional neglect. The childhood emotional neglect (CEN) subreddit might be helpful.
I was told I can only be happy, and that a guy can never cry, eve unless I was in serious physical pain. I have cried myself to sleep more times than I can count, and my poor gf has had to deal with at least 2 random teary sessions. On of my biggest regrets is that I was unable to cry when my grandfather died. not at his deathbed, not at his funeral. regardless of what our parents tell us, we still have these emotions, and suppressing them only makes it worse
My emotions were constantly shut down by my mom. Bringing up my depression and loneliness was often matched with things like āwhat do you want me to do about it?ā Or āI know, Iām a terrible mother and itās all my faultā and the like. Requests for therapy when I was anorexic as a teen was met with responses like āA therapist will just make you hate your mother and theyāll blame me for all your problemsā. Instead she took it upon herself to shame me out of my eating disorder by calling me ugly and skinny and telling me that no man would ever love me like that. Talking to dad about problems was essentially pointless because when he was happy heād make jokes and when he was angry (his only two emotions) youād get screamed at. One of my brothers was my confidant and I was his, but we were both depressed and basically suicidal. (He was allowed to go to therapy though, lol) so it wasnāt the best. Anyway, Iām almost 32 and you couldnāt pay me any amount of money to relive my childhood.
Yep; it wasn't enough to obey you had to obey right away and weren't allowed to show any discontent with the order.
And donāt, under any circumstances, ask clarifying questions or negotiate.
yeah there wasn't a ton of emotional support especially and then you end up with a suicidal 11 year old. Always cry in private and never expect to be comforted. The only appropriate thing to do is to pretend to be okay when you feel like you're dying inside to keep the status quo or risk being disappointed, shunned, and invalidated.
Are you me? I had the same experience. I'm sorry you had to live like that. I hope you're out of that situation.
I have a huge fear of any ānegativeā situations because of how all-encompassing and confusing my parentsā control was. I watch tiktoks about parenting and ānormalā houses and can point out a dozen things I wouldāve immediately been punished for. Crying? Spanked for being a brat. Laughing? Spanked for being wild. Sitting quietly trying not to be perceived? Spanked for being lazy. One thing homeschoolers never experience is an indifferent, friendly teacher who offers correction and guidance in a low-pressure, respectful way, with reasonable and reversible consequences. At home I was always one mistake away from massive, vindictive punishment.
>Sitting quietly trying not to be perceived? Spanked for being lazy That reminds me of when I was maybe 10 and my mom was into hyper-productivity and being productive (meaning doing something for her) every waking second and saying stuff like "No, you don't need to play, you need to work! You work as a kid and you play as an adult!" (I'm about to turn 27 and still waiting for adult life to be worth it) Once she suggested making a crochet video since I was good at it so when she was on the phone with our dad, I thought that would be an appropriate time to start so I started getting that set up in another room and she got off the phone and called me back to the room she was in and said "What were you doing in there?" "Starting on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "No, I was working on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "No, I was working on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "No, I was working on the crochet video you said I should make" "So you were doing nothing?" "Okay, I was doing nothing" "Great. Drop your pants" and spanked me. Fortunately there were only a few times where I felt set up like that.
Yes, since I was 3 or 4, negative emotions like sad or angry were very much not allowed. For a while when I was 9-10, we had to be actively happy 24/7, basically like [this commercial](https://youtu.be/GTcP4YqIeGM), and even neutral was officially not allowed but that was impossible to enforce. Once I felt upset for weeks because my mom made me dump half of my box of valuables in the trash for not doing the dishes fast enough (she said something about Satan being in my heart and that's why I couldn't just let it go) and I think one of my home movies getting taken because I wasn't supposed to be watching stuff I made because it was considered prideful (what else was I supposed to watch? VeggieTales?) and I was in another room talking to myself in a low voice and she heard me say "I'll live" and called me to where she was and demanded to know what I said and when I told her, she was incredulous and ranted for several hours about how ungrateful I was because there are people missing body parts and who went through all kinds of other bad stuff and I have the perfect life so I don't have a right to be sad. I wasn't hardened yet so she made me cry and then spanked me for not being able to open my eyes wider because they were squinty from crying. So yes, basically the way everything bad got "solved" in my family was "You ungrateful brat! You're in trouble until you say you're okay because homeschooled kids can't have problems!" I learned very quickly that if I ever talked about anything that bothered me, my mom would alternate between laughing/ridicule and yelling for 4-6 hours so I learned to "deny, deny, deny". Since they fortunately haven't invented brain scanners yet, I knew she couldn't get me in trouble unless I admitted to having negative feelings so I'd lie my butt off every time she noticed that I wasn't okay and asked about it. Once when I was 12, we were in the car and one of my siblings said they discovered that you can stop and count to calm down if you're angry and our mom was talking to our dad and stopped and turned to us and made a big deal about how that wasn't allowed and how we were only allowed to just not be angry.
That commercial reminds me of this sick Netflix movie where a couple was required to raise this space alien. It was the most depressing movie and I never want to see it again.
Absolutely. I was never allowed to be anything but happy and submissive. I struggle horribly with being vulnerable and open nowĀ
Yes. I don't remember them doing it, but my therapist mentioned that when I explained that I just don't.... emotion?
I don't want to talk about it.
Yes! I wasn't allowed to show them at all or make noise or really be around them. Not that I wanted to be
Yeah, I wasnāt allowed to get frustrated or irritated or grumpy. Even if I just kept to myself, my parents wanted me to always be out in the family common area, in a good mood so as not to ruin anyoneās day š
Yes no negative emotions punishment for natural reaction to unfair rules or situations
They encouraged me to show emotion but would then tell me I was "too sensitive" or "overreacting"
We were beaten and screamed at for a lot of emotions but I actually get a kick out of how some negative emotions did get out to the public. In many Christmas card photos, especially one I remember in particular, we had these horrible expressions on our faces. My aunt said my parents should have been embarrassed to send those Christmas cards out to so many people. Also my aunt said every time she went to our house she could tell it was very strict and boring, but she didnāt know we were abused until I reached the safety of young adulthood and earned a good living. We sat and talked for many hours at a time at my apartment where I lived alone, and I told her many horrible examples of emotional and physical abuse. I canāt describe the euphoria of having the freedom to finally tell people without negative consequences and knowing that āstrong Christianā people opposed abuse and that the literal hell of a childhood I experienced wasnāt some necessity to avoid burning in hell for eternity.
Yeah. I'm naturally happy but I don't feel anger anymore. Not sure if it's just because I lost so much or what? But these emotions are important for us to feel. Just because a parent might forbid us from showing it doesn't mean we don't feel it. We need to process these emotions healthfully, and masking them doesn't do that.
Omgā¦ yes š I noticed this so much throughout the years! š
kinda. even before i was homeschooled my mom would get pissed when i cry and get even more upset with me so i just bottle it up and pretend everything is alright when im around her. it's extremely emotionally taxing. doesn't help that i have autism and cuz of it i often have a neutral expression or rbf. im allowed to not smile like ffs give me a reason to smile then lol
It was highly discouraged. I didn't cry in front of ANYONE except for when my dogs died until I broke free of my family at 23-24. I went through a period where I would cry super easily at small things. Like all the emotions pent up just wanted to come out. I had to learn how to emotionally regulate myself instead of just stuffing it down.
yep. I cannot feel anything negative about my life because itās either disrespectful or emotional.
They punish me when I seen happy or depressed... Idk what they expect me to be lol
Seems like this is is something that comes from fundamentalistic cults