Off my chest. Toxic abusive band member. Hissy And The Fits
Update kinda, I posted a while back.
TW possibly: Mental Abuse.
I recently just left a band with a very toxic enviroment, the band went through many lineup changes and I the guitarist was the only other founding member left other than the singer, the singer put me through a lot of shit outside of the band and mentally, emotionally abused me for the last couple years, lots of guilt tripping, reactive abuse and all the classic narc symptoms.
They always tried to humiliate me, and make me look like a fool or a bad person in public whether it was when hanging out or when peforming, it honestly felt like intense jealously not going to lie, being around them in rehearsal spaces, on the road and a venues and peforming after a while it was so triggering to be around them I couldn't be stable, I always had to try pull through peformances without feeling like I could freak out or peform badly, It got to a point where I always felt like I had to not be sober to try and deal with it and even that is a whole messy thing.
Other signs were there, they only ever seemed to care about what they wanted to wear for the gig rather than thinking about sounding good or practicing in their spare time. As the other songwriter I felt like I had to do a lot of heavy lifting, practicing, writing, yet they always complained to me I didn't do enough, which must be projection or something? The other 2 members, the rhythm section, a few we had they chose to stick to their roles but not really practicing much in their spare time and other shit which I wasn't always happy about, we should all be working hard and commiting as a full band, which is odd because nobody ever bossed them around, other than me which was by the singer as I always had to work around them, I would consider myself a reasonbly humble person and always have time to hear somebodys input and ideas in the band, and or experiment with my original ideas.
basically the whole band was a crazy disaster, iam extremely suprised we ended up with 1 whole album with 14 tracks before I managed to finally get out of there without being guilt tripped and manipulated. I honestly hope nobody has to work with them again and deal with their shit, because this isn't normal and isn't what it's all about, band drama may be exciting for some people, mainly people outside of the band but when it's abusive and toxic as fuck it's not right, human beings are involved.
Now i'm just focusing on myself mentally, and have been doing my own music and collaborating with an old friend, and trying to fall back in love with music again and will hopefully get myself back on a stage when iam ready for that and peform in the way I should and most importantly have a lot of fun!
Has anybody else had to deal with this crazy shit of very toxic band mate or band as a whole or even been the one in the middle of it?
Let me know I'm all ears! I will reply to as much as I can and sorry If I haven't managed to make everything as clear but will correct myself or explain if need be.
Kind regards