u/ancientpsychicpug

I’m 33f and in intensive therapy and we’ve come to the conclusion that I was never taught to value myself. My entire life i was made to be a caretaker.

I broke down in therapy Monday because my counselor asked what I was going to do to take care of myself. I don’t even know what it looks like to take care of myself, never thought about it.

I made the decision that day that going forward, I am going to spend time with myself and help myself. Brush my teeth because that is taking care of me. Eat because I deserve to eat and nourish myself. Go to the gym because I deserve to spend the time to take care of myself. I am starting small, by showering every day this week.

If you’ve gone through something similar, I would love to hear what you’ve done to take care of yourself and what your journey looks like!

I struggled a lot in my life, with my adoptive mom dying when I was 12. I sought my birth mother out on my own at age 15 because I had no one. My (adoptive) father is abusive and narcissistic. Horrible horrible man. He was really mad when he found out that I had found her and called her. He only found out because my birth mother called him to talk to him about it. Not knowing what his reaction would be.

At 16 he asked her to take me back and she said no. Couldn’t handle me anymore. He told me I was difficult to be around, always walking on egg shells, and hard to love. I was still grieving the death of my mother along with other types of abuse I don’t want to talk about here.

I was never hard to love. I really wasn’t difficult. I worked full time and kept my grades up enough to graduate. I walked everywhere and made my own dr appointments. I’ve never asked for a ride or asked for a car or anything. I cooked for myself, did my own laundry, and just wanted to have time to myself. After the age of 14 my dad never had to pay anything. I worked enough to pay my own school fees and phone bill. Even internet. He would physically push me out of my room when I was just trying to read or do crafts. I was grounded for 4 years too and forcibly took me out of school so I could home school myself. I was also heavily punished for my (undiagnosed) OCD symptoms (didn’t know they were OCD at the time)

I’m in my 30s now. Disconnected from everyone. My birth mother grieves and is laden with guilt. I see her often for family dinners and it always looks like she is about to cry because I know she can sense my pain. She will hold my hand sometimes. She helped me lace up my wedding dress and in the photos she is bawling. My heart just breaks so much for her.

I’m just rambling I’m really sorry. I am in intensive therapy. I am wondering if other adoptees can relate to the feelings.

My father in law is not perfect. He is old school Latino man and a bit explosive (not much recently, but I heard stories.) but hearing him talk about his kids is insane to me.

He was telling me a story, so casually, about a work conflict where people were complaining about really small things. Then randomly he just says “my kids are the most important aspect of my life, so anything outside of my kids, I do not care about.” And the crazy thing is that I believe him when he says that. And his kids agree, he’s always been like that. He goes great lengths to assure that his kids are taken care of at the cost of his own comfort and happiness.

It is really interesting to me because 3 months after my mom died my ndad came out as being gay and moved a man in and they both abused me for 7 years. The day he told me he was dating someone, he yelled at me because I was ELEVEN and crying because it was so much grief and change.

I was adopted, and it had always felt like my ndad put this cape on himself. Acted as being a hero for saving me from a bad situation. When in reality my birth mom really wanted me but felt like she was too young (19) and proceeded to raise 2 incredibly loved and amazing children who were born 2 years after I was born. We are very close now and she has always told people she has 3 kids despite the 10000 questions that follow.

My brain tries to make sense of it. Where would I be in life if I had been offered stability. I struggled with abuse and homelessness until I was 25. I never knew love.

I think about confronting my ndad but I’m 33. And in a happy marriage, I got my kitties and my doggy, masters degree, good job, states away, stable housing. And I couldn’t have wished this life up if I had tried. But my ndad still haunts me. I think it will be a waste of breath if I confronted him. It will accomplish nothing.

I am looking for adoptees who have been doing IFS.

I am trying really hard with my therapist but it is really difficult for me. The theme of my adoption comes up a lot. It was not a complicated adoption, my family was picked prior to birth and my birth mother held me. I feel there is a huge barrier with it.

Would just like your thoughts!

I am very new to this. I’ve been working with my therapist on parts work and visualization. I found my first part today when trying to figure out a certain trigger.

I let myself be triggered with my counselor and saw the part that stopped it. He’s an orange blob just as confused as I am. The more I asked, the bigger he got. I felt like I was having to yell at him to listen. He told me he doesn’t want me to be distressed and when I told him I’m always distressed, he got really small and started crying. It felt like he was new here and trying to overcorrect. Like the part that was SUPPOSED to help gave up and got fired. And brought this guy in who is overactive.

I felt bad for my anger in the moment. But I think I am trying to give him some sympathy if he really is the new guy who walked in on my life being up in flames in 2019.

I asked him what he needed from me, and he said “certainty that it won’t happen again.” I don’t know exactly what “it” is, there’s many things. And I also said I can’t offer certainty of anything. I have moderate to severe OCD and in ERP currently as well. Certainty is what drives my anxiety.

Not sure who he is or what will happen but i do feel hope for the first time in a long time.

My dog is 13 years old and a pug. 2 years ago he started getting wobbly back legs so I took him in and they said he has arthritis. Well it kept progressing and progressing going in every 6 months. And it got to the point that my dog could not go up and down stairs so they give him librela. And then 5 weeks of steroids and containment.

He got worse and worse and worse, now he cannot hold in his poop, he can’t go from sitting to standing. I’m crying over him every night. He’s been on an arthritis medication for these 2 years and he’s in so much pain and on 600mg of Gabipentin

So i decided to find a rehabilitation veterinarian. Well. She keeps asking about his arthritis. She has his paperwork from the vet and she said “I am going to be honest, I had Kevin for the last hour and running tests. He doesn’t have arthritis. Unless it’s something I’m missing but I see dogs and cats with arthritis all day every day and he has some of the healthiest joints I’ve seen on a 13 year old dog.” Then she says “it is all neurological and the librela shot may have made it worse since it can block the regrowth of nerves.” I am shattered

Luckily she said that it can take a couple months for it to get out of the system and he may be better after that. She gave me a whole program to go off of and we are going weekly for hydro therapy to build up his back legs and his core.

But I am so confused. I trusted this vet he has been seeing for 7 years and specializes in smushed face dogs and did his nares and soft pallet surgery.

Am I allowed to be upset? I understand vets can make mistakes and it did not cost him his life. And this is a new vet I saw today who told me all of this. I am leaning towards trusting her because she has so much experience in these special needs dogs.

Any advice is welcome.

I’m very very very obviously not. I have a therapist and I start ERP the end of this month. I’ve been struggling with OCD for like 30 years. Undiagnosed for most of it (got diagnosed last year)

I have a 13 year old dog. We are in the end stages of his life but he is comfortable, he is on a lot of pain medicine and very drugged up. Waiting another 2 weeks to see how he responds to another medicine. My brain has told me I poisoned him which is why he is so sick. So I have to go through everything, reassure myself I did not poison him. My brain thinks I’m giving him pain medicine for attention, so people think I have a sick dog. Again, totally wrong lol. It has been confirmed by 2 vets and a rehabilitation specialist that he is very sick because of a genetic condition.

It just is so frustrating. Because instead of laying there and petting my baby and cuddling him, I am curled up on my bed inconsolable while he is alone on his bed. I hate how much this disease lies.

Im so sick of this shit. And this is just a small rumination that has recently started. My other ones are louder and I think if I haven’t sought out help, this one would be MUCH louder than it is.

I have been practicing thinking things through, and not focus on reassuring myself all of the time. Tonight I made some hot dogs for me and my dog and we are going to eat those and watch some horse videos (his favorite)

Been in IT since I was 18. As help desk. Started at 7.25/h in 2011 (I have been building computers and coding c++ since 13).

Job hopped til I got a sysadmin role in 2014. Making 40k/y

Never really made more than that til I got a job in 2020 at a Security Analyst making around 60k/y. I ended up getting promoted into a senior analyst position and ended up with the salary of $75k/y. With a Masters in cyber security and all of my prior experience. I was the only security analyst. In my position I was building architecture, doubled as devops engineer, ran our pentest and would review our applications after they fixed vulnerabilities. I also was over code scanning and facilitated static and dynamic scanning. I was also over all of our endpoints and was on call 24/7. Endpoint management consisted of vuln scanning and application whitelisting. And NIST CSF audits Soc2t2 audits every year.

In 2026 I got a job offer for 130k/y. As a mid level analyst. I feel like my skills surpass the senior level analyst in a lot of ways. I started in January.

I have poured blood sweat and tears into my career. I have sacrificed my ability to be a mother to focus on my career. It has always been #1. I even had to plan my endometriosis surgery around SOC evidence collection period.

I feel I fall behind. I see people who are new grads making 200k. Or people with my level of experience get jobs in huge companies making 300+ with 4 job offers lined up. Maybe it is just me being greedy. But I have to overachieve to even get to where I am right now. I got my Masters in December 2025 and I’m glad I did. But maybe I’m burnt out.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.