Di,

I did get so overwhelmed a short time after I came here. I was under such a fierce attack (verbally)by my sister that I caved in. I so wanted not to be a bother to anyone and she was behaving like a person possessed by demons. She knew my deepest thoughts about myself. My self loathing, etc... She was screaming in my face and no one was telling her to stop. I even found myself rebuking her in Jesus Name. My Grandmother was praying also. My sister laughed at me. I asked my mothers' husband to get me cup, so I could put my coke in it and take all of my pills. He did and I crossed the road and got in some bushes and took a whole bottle of my tranquilizers. I sat there and thought of my children (son is 21, daughter, 26) and went back in the house. I don't remember the ambulance ride, only the charcoal they were making drink. By the way, no one followed the ambulance or came to get me the next day. I staggered to a motel room and the next day a man in scrubs brought me most of the way back. I know I'd hurt my kids too much if I died, so I'll carry on. But if I feel that way again, to the point of actually 'doing it', I'll post it here. Thank you, my friends!

Love You All,

In case anyone wondered how I actually ended up at my mother's again, here's the rest of the story:

I was sharing a 2 bdrm. apt (for the Mentally Ill) with my grown son. He moved out and the apt manager refused to relocate me into a 1 bdrm. Someone told him that "my sister" was living with me. He also says he thinks my son (whom he never liked) might "try to move back in with me"... My son does not smoke, drink, or use drugs. He works at Walgreens and sends himself to College! This man put me, a Grandmother, out on the streets and this is a place 'for' the Mentally Ill! He says he knows nothing about mental illness. He has been investigated by the press and the article about him is still on the internet. Oh, how cruel people can be!

Wish I could link the article here, but one of the Psychopath's in my life might discover who I am!

Thanks

I know this to a safe place to post, so on second thought I add the News Article describing how Gov. Housing is only as good as the people who manage it. And, I need to add; my son drink a soft drink that he buys by the case. The landlord accessed him of carrying beer into our apt. and no pleading could make him believe otherwise. By the way, it took 3 months to get into this section 811 apt.

Here is the News Article everyone interested should read abt my landlord:


Diary of a Mad Man
http://www.houstonpress.com/2006-05-11/news/diary-of-a-mad-man/


Thanks

Hi Sarah, I am truly sorry for your entire situation. Please don't take an overload of pills that really isn't the answer. Besides, like I said before if it made your brain not function properly would you really like to be stuck forever with these people unable to help yourself? You are in a very toxic situation and with some help and support I am sure you will make it out of there with your determination.

Most states give food stamps to the mentally ill living at home with family but it is a very small amount and more when you are living alone. Also call the state providers you are interested in relocating to and ask them for the list of their local offices and phone numbers. The local office where you want to look into are quite helpful and will know for their state what is available. Most cities/towns have offices located in the area and would give you the best information since it is different State by State. Also I think NAMI might have the local contact info.

I am quite confident that no one in all these years has been "found" here, Jan and I protect your privacy and no one but the two of us have access to your email etc. Privacy is our number 1 priority, that is why we don't use free software where we have no control over people posting personal information or their real emails. I must say that free forums lack the expense and hassles of having a free standing forum;)

I do believe in miracles and know that by your reaching out here and going to the different sites for the mentally ill you have the strength to reach out and find the right situation. The system is tough but with the right searching and the right questions asked, I feel strongly that you will find the answers to your dream of getting away from these people.

So for now, pick a town and give the local offices of Health and Human Services a call and see what they provide. Ask them for the phone number for their local HUD office. You will find the best information this way than trying to search on line by getting a real person in the town you are looking into moving to will give you the right information.

I know in your condition it will be tough but if you first find a town you are interested in moving to the local offices would be very helpful. Since it can get confusing make a list of your questions in advance.

If you have any questions, please post and I am sure we can help. The very best option is to call the local offices of these places to get the correct information. Be sure to not pick a place in haste and research the foreclosures in the area and also the crime rate. The reason I mention foreclosures is you don't want to live in an area that is vacant.

Di

Disown your sister. She doesn't deserve your friendship. You are right, often the abuser gets the sympathy and compassion but remember, never forget what your sister has done to you. She will look for other opportunities to hurt you. Never be in her company and then she can't attack you. Keep your distance and become estranged from her or she might end up killing you. I have a very abusive older sister myself. I have nothing to do with her.

What a wonderful saying and one of the few that I had not heard till now.It rings so true for me and so many people I know!

I am new today, referred by a friend, I can empathize and relate so much to your situation , Sarah! I am reading as much as I can here and will post a proper hello,
soon.

Good support, particularly for surviving a life that a psychopath/s has impacted,
is a tremendous gift! I am part of the solution and hope to gain support and provide
it, to those here.

Hi Pageturner

We will wait till hear from you. I presume you have a story tell. We haven't heard from Sarah for a while. I hope she is still reading here even if she hasn't posted and news or updates of her situation. It's not a case of out of sight and out of mind as I often wonder how she is. Usually when people don't post it's because they have worked through their problems.

Regards
Jan

Hi Jan and all who are here!

Yes, I have a story. I was the youngest child of three in a military family in Canada.
I picked Sarah's thread to make my first comment because the words "psychopath in the family" and "gross injustice" rang true to me like no other thread here and I have read several already.

My siblings were boys, older by three and seven years. It is my middle brother and my mother( who is now deceased ) who I know are psychopaths. I have had counselling and therapy for the affect of their behaviour on me, off and on for forty years, which includes a diagnoses of Anorexia, PTSD, Severe Depression and Anxiety Disorder. I have renamed a couple of these as I don't believe what I am experiencing is a disorder but a natural reaction to the horror I have survived throughout much of my life. So I call them PTSR ( reaction) and Anxiety Syndrome.

I was born to a very controlling mother who claimed she was desperately holding out for a girl before ending her child bearing life. I arrived, when she was forty, in 1955 and since then it is clear to me that I was the "wrong girl". My mum was very scientific and linear, quite emotionless and unaffectionate as were my brothers. My dad, although a military officer all his life, was an artist, very sensitive and affectionate, like myself.

I was very active and had a normal imagination for a small child. I know this now from my many treasured years as a nanny to pre schoolers and after having raised a son of my own.
However, I was treated by my mother and especially my middle brother as though I were mentally ill and dangerous, ever since I can remember, around the age of 3. I was the scapegoat,I understand now, my mother and brother "the elephants in the middle of the room". I don't really want to get into how they treated me, as even after all this time, it still upsets me and there is now a new reason to think about those childhood and early adult days.

The distribution of my mum's ( really my father's but he went first and all was passed to mum) estate, which has been an ongoing process full of conflict for three long years now, with "D" behind the scenes dictating to my equally cold, older brother, how to come as close to eliminating me from ever having a home I own and some security, as a final punishment for telling the world that he attempted to murder me, when I was staying at my parents home (for my own safety) while awaiting a trial against two strangers who had raped and abducted me, at 15, on my way to my own place, from work. Boy, that was a long fact filled sentence, hope it makes sense.

When my brother attacked me at my parent's home, with a rock from behind, hitting me on the skull several times, he claimed I was evil, the cause of all my mothers worry and I had to be destroyed. I talked him out of it by appealing to his logic and claiming some evidence would be found and he would never make it through life in jail. He detailed very graphically how he planned to destroy any evidence of me, pretty gruesome, I won't share it coz I don't see the point, other than to say how gruesome and well thought out his plan was. But, despite that I picked holes in his logic and finally convinced him to call an ambulance before I bled to death, which seemed a real possibility by then. I had just turned 15 and the stranger abduction and rape I had experienced was a few short weeks before. Just like during that assault, I felt something come over me, like when a parent lifts a car off a kid without hurting themselves, I saved my life in a state of heightened ability, that disappeared the moment I was safe.

The ambulance came and I told them the truth the moment we cleared our street.I had suggested an alibi to my brother(which he used) before the cops and ambulance came, which was that I had fallen down the stairs and hit my head. The police questioned "d" for several hours that night and came to talk to me at the hospital where I stayed overnight after they stitched up my head and put a cast on my hand. There were two cops who came to question me and the older one did all the talking. HE refused to believe my story since I was a hippy type he had picked up a few times in our small town for various minor offences, usually curfew broken, and my brother was a very straight,university student majoring in math and physics. He talked like a robot, as always, but that didnt seem to matter.

It was 1970 and stereotyping was not my friend. The police chose to drop the matter as a "family issue". I never returned home to live, after that, and I was a witness in the trial of my stranger assault offenders, soon after, over a period of about six months. They were convicted, after committing many similar assaults in our town and put away as habitual offenders.

I separated myself from my family other than contact with my father, who I adored, even though he did not find a way to protect me, until this will/ estate thing, for the past thirty years. I married and was divorced quite quickly( he was very controlling and had rage issues that came out only after three years) and had one son, who I raised entirely on my own, who is 21. He is a musician(plays jazz sax) and now I am estranged from him too because although he has been kind and sensitive all his life, got hooked on cocaine, this past summer and robbed me of my life savings. Meagre as they were, I worked very hard to have this buffer between starvation and homelessness and me( which I have experienced many times). My son has run to friends, in another city and refuses to pay me back or address why he won't pay me back even though he has returned to life and is making good money. He knows I have a small disability pension and clean houses and nanny when I can to make ends barely meet, as it is.

I am an informal advocate for other women in distress and always have been. I am currently filming my first documentary about "hidden homeless women" with my own money and camera, or was, till my kid robbed me. Now I am trying to find another way to keep my dream of telling my story and that of so many other women I have met,alive. I used to be in tv and film in front of the camera as a minor player before I was thrown into poverty by single parenthood.

That should do it for now.
Sorry if I should have started my own thread.
If this is unacceptable, telling my story on this thread, maybe someone could move it. ; )
I look forward to hearing from you, perhaps gaining and giving support when I can.

Hi Pageturner

I just read your story and it's one of those that draws you in so you 'feel' what you are reading.
What an amazingly strong person you must be to say all these things so clearly and seemingly without bitterness.

There is so much to address that I would like to spend time on the reply your post deserves so I will write again later. I will spend the next few hours with thoughts of what you have written bumping round my head. I will never understand how a human being can be so callous towards another and when it's your own siblings too, it's just too much to fathom out.

Regards
Jan

Hello Pageturner

You certainly do have a story to tell!

It sounds like lifelong stress disorder from living with your family, maybe more a coping strategy disorder? Were any of your family diagnosed with anything?

From what you say about your mother wanting a daughter it sounds as though she wanted ‘something to fill a need/want’ but if she is psychopathic then their needs or wants are never fulfilled. We have another member who says it has been called ‘bottomless pit syndrome’ and that does describe it very well.
The socialised psychopaths take and the unsocialised steal.

It’s incredible that you can leave your childhood treatment behind you as though it can be boxed away, you must be very strong and positive! I think I would have suffered from shock after the attempted murder and the ‘reasoning’ behind it. Does he suffer from schizophrenia? If not I can’t think of any excuse for his actions and how you ‘talked him round’ is amazing at the age of 15.

We hear so often that we are not believed when we relate events and thoughts about those who appear quite normal to those who can’t see through the act. Crazy making scenarios make us question ourselves, we try to rationalise what is going on and think others can’t possibly doing these things so it must be us having the wrong perceptions, so of course we are the crazy one.

I’m sorry to hear that you are estranged from your son, that must be tough. Maybe he stays away because he is so embarrassed about what he did? If he pays you back he is admitting to himself what he did? He might want to block it from his mind and keeping a distance from you allows him to keep up the pretence to himself. I always try to look for a positive reason and rationalise why people do things that are out of character. He is still quite young so he has time to think this through when something triggers a situation where he is introspective and he has to face up to it.

I hope we hear a lot more from you. Please feel free to start a thread to reflect what you would like to discuss.
Being an informal advocate is also what we do here so you could become a valuable member of our forum.

Regards
Jan

Hello Pageturner,
what a name!!

How wonderful you though of changing that PTSD into PTSR..Everytime I read someone with those experieces called a PTSD, I somehow get annoyed...This is it! so thank you.

I got, in different circumstances, the same 'brightness' of mind and many, many times saved myself that way.
Only because outsmarting my parents I am alive today. I really believe that. Not only staying alive but in a way life is now good to me was a real achievment.
I applaud you for doing so and wish you will findd yor way in finishing the film you are making, somehow i know you will!
regards Segaya