u/Ok-Organization908

This is lowkey embarrassing and stupid but recently, I have been living alone. Before that I lived with a relative that did a lot of heavy lifting but now it's been rough. When I buy groceries, since the store is near and I can't drive, I have to carry them and I'm always left so sore. It's so embarrassing because sometimes I need to buy more food in one run but I gotta buy a little less because everything is heavy.

I could always get a cart and stuff, but I genuinely want to know some exercises that help with this. I've started trying to do arm stuff lately with 4lb weights since that's the most I can do, but are there any ideal exercises that help with hauling along heavy plastic bags for 10 minutes?!

I've been fighting with my parent for as long as I've remembered and it always results in a meltdown, but in the past year it's gotten to a point where I just hit myself over the head. I feel so uncontrollable, which is scary because I hit myself with things like hardbound books or metal water bottles.

I can't change my parent's attitude but I'm getting so scared that I want to change mine. Does anyone have tips on how to handle this?

For context: I have the type of parent that supports me in many ways and I love dearly, but they are very much emotionally neglectful. My negative emotions tend to be met with immediate aggression, which is hard because I'm someone who cries harder when I'm being yelled at. I used to be hit as a child up to my early teens with slippers. There was one time she felt remorseful and it was when she saw a small bruise.

In moments I feel extremely helpless, I tend to hit myself and this is very rare except for when my parent is mad at me. But in these cases, they just stop me but continue berating me as if I hit myself just to provoke them. Today I had another big fight, and I full-on told them that I can count on my hands the times they were truly there for me in any meaningful way. There was lots of screaming and I said some things wrong for sure I tried to apologize for, but there was so much of my parent twisting things as them being the victim in the grand scheme of the hour we fought. They got extremely mad and changed up plans in ways that really fucks with me.

The thing is too: I know I'm not perfect. I can be a big piece of shit. But between my parent and I, I try my hardest to work on myself even if it's very difficult. But I know in my heart that my parent refuses to change no matter what. My big ask here now is does anyone have coping strategies? Because I am the type of person that struggles with self-soothing and my parent's anger specifically triggers a need for another person to comfort me with some sort of physical touch like a hug. My sibling has recommended just repressing my emotions with them because it's a lost cause, but what else can I do? I'm so tired of feeling like I'm going insane.

Quick edit: I know it seems mean to say they refuse to change, but my family has time and time again brought up their tendency to always be so aggressive. Their response is that they're naturally that way, and they have responded like that for as long as I can remember. There's no hope.