u/born2build

I don't know where to start. I need support. Or advice. Or anything really. I reactivated my Reddit for this.

For those who went no contact with one parent. Was it necessary to eventually block the "safe" parent too? Or was the distance enough?

I went no contact with the rest of the family a year and a half ago. My "father" (malignant narcissist abuser, who went covert) created a horrible family that has never stopped scapegoating me while hoovering me back into his manipulative gaslighting bullshit. All of my siblings are in denial about what we grew up with and the child abuse. We all left that house one by one, with my mother and I leaving him the exact same night 12 years ago. We had a bond at the time, but now I look back and see that perhaps she just used me to escape herself, and she failed to protect me all those years before she served him divorce papers. I basically had to raise and teach myself everything.

I'm in my 30s now with CPTSD from my adult life constantly getting derailed by my traumas repeating everywhere I went. I lost an entire 10 year career due to me not knowing how to stay emotionally steady in my success, and AI taking over, with no support network.

My mom was always the "safe" one. But she was high functioning, cold, emotionally neglectful, has ZERO self awareness, is rigid, a trump supporter, nonstop anxiety, nosy, and overbearing/controlling. Why? Because she was emotionally neglected (her mother didn't even speak to her because language barrier), then married a narcissist, then served him while neglecting me.

Three weeks ago after 34 years, I finally opened up to her face to face about how her emotional neglect and controlling behavior was a massive part of my CPTSD, and adult dysfunction, not just him, and how I resented her for it. We had a few conversations that week about it all, and she broke down crying and apologizing. She was genuinely listening to everything I had learned about psychology and mental health and she was even relating it back to her own upbringing.

But now... the last few weeks, she's slowly been reverting back as if none of it happened. Still treating me like her free therapist, stress dumping onto me, talking AT me, ignoring my boundaries, never asks about me or my life. Then last night, she starts aggressively texting me that I need to vote Republican to keep "the evil people" from winning, and for our freedoms, and blah, blah, blah, conservative Christian trumpism bullshit. I gave her 3 opportunities to stop texting me about that, and she kept violating my boundary and talking about how she isn't controlling and trying to guilt me into voting like she does. It was horrible. I told her off, jumped in my camper van, and then left the house to scream on the freeway.

She's taking advantage of my vulnerable chapter in life because I lost my career and needed temporary help from her. She has tried coaxing me into voting exactly like her. She obsesses over political conspiracies. She even once said "if you're busy how about I fill your ballot for you then you just sign and I'll even mail it?"

It's disgusting. I'm ashamed that my career took a nose dive and I lost everything I accomplished, which made me depend on her in this shitty economy. Maybe if I had a decent fucking family I would've have stayed more emotionally stable years ago and kept succeeding. But now I'm gonna be living on the road homeless again in my tiny van, and trying to rebuild my life (again) from scratch. The paradox is that if she was just emotionally present for me I wouldn't have developed CPTSD, and I wouldn't have failed and lost everything due to my mental health sabotaging me, and I wouldn't have regressed back to asking her for help. I feel trapped again and she doesn't want me to be independent and it's scaring me how much time I've already lost to trusting this woman.

I'm on the fence if I should now go no-contact with her too once I take off and restabilize financially. I need help here. We're fine when I'm far away from her. But all of the phone calls and convos secretly become about her and she provides no motherly advice whatsoever or emotional care. But when I'm visiting or living with her, it's like my life doesn't even matter to her. When her 2nd partner dies she'll be all alone, but a part of me thinks that'll be when she can finally confront herself and I shouldn't be her emotional crutch when she was never mine. Please advise. Sorry for the long story. My life is complicated...

Saying "Chinese trash!", "Chinese piece of shit!", etc. in public would raise eyebrows and offend Chinese people, until the person says "Oh no, I meant your PRODUCTS, not your people. Don't be so sensitive." But just a second prior to that disclosure, they sounded pretty damn racist for a second, didn't they?

Here's the original link: https://np.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/comments/1sx6bls/custom_solar_slide_out_system_at_800w/

I got into it with this guy who I felt was being vocal in the comment section of this post about his hatred for "Chinese garbage" products, and to me it hinted at unnecessary racist undertones. I literally told him I was part Chinese and he just defaulted to his "rights".

The normalized phrasing is something I've had to listen to my whole life as an Asian man. Apart from "Ching chong China", somebody asking if I needed help backing up because "you know, Asian drivers", and other micro aggressions. If I got upset or annoyed or talked back, I was the problem. You don't hear people say "Mexican trash" food or "African trash" music etc. because people, especially racist white people feel that it's completely defensible to scapegoat Asian people and they always have the perfect way out via the misdirection to economics/globalization. But if they said "Black trash" or "African trash" products, oh you bet they'd be all over the news.

White people like this argue that "Well if you said American trash I wouldn't be butt hurt". But that's the difference. "American" isn't an ethnic group. It's a collection of different cultures, and was even built upon a group of Europeans decimating and overthrowing the real natives. If you replaced it with "White trash products", you just know it'd be a very different context for them. The same feeling I and my family members get when people talk badly about Chinese made products.

And there is something to be said about how many high quality manufacturers there are in China, but cheap American entrepreneurs and CEOs opt to source from China specifically to find the absolutely lowest cost products to increase their margins to American/international consumers.

This ass hat doesn't get it. I reflected back to him his hypocritical logic and he just leaned further and further into his defense mechanisms trying to "win" while I was just showing him his ignorance. Nothing new here. The cycle continues so long as they reject how they affect people with their language.

Perhaps he wasn't necessarily consciously racist, and I was admittedly a bit heavy handed with how I called him out, but we have to begin listening to our guts about microaggressions and separating between intentions and behaviors. He'd probably claim it isn't his intention to sound racist, but would also double down on his behaviors and questionable race-bounded verbiage before ever considering an apology or inner change. What are your thoughts on this?