u/pixieyogi81

I have been struggling lately with my 15 year old son. I recently got primary custody a few months ago after 50/50 his whole life. My fiance and I moved to Texas from Arizona. I completely understand there's a lot of change, grief and big feelings that come with that. However, my son was already struggling before this. He's unbelievably disrespectful, defiant and, I'm just going to say it, lazy.

A few days ago, things got really heated and he made me cry. He showed zero empathy then basically told me I cry to much and was crying for attention. For the first time in his life, I told him I hated him. I felt immediate guilt. I'm not an angry or hateful person. I was on several days of very little sleep with a 15 month old and financial challenges. It's just myself, my fiance and the kids. No friends. No family. We didn't have anyone to help in Arizona either. I hit a limit with the disrespect.

The next day I wrote a note and left it on his bedroom door. I told him I was sorry. No excuses or justifications. Full stop. I told him I could never hate him. I told him that I saw how much we were both affected by the behavior of my ex husband (his former step dad). And I told him the repairs I am making: the note/apology itself, getting rid of my evening wine to improve sleep and mood and downloading an app to help regulate my emotions.

We were both in therapy (we both have ADHD and I have anxiety) before moving and it didn't help either of us in the slightest. Medications made everything worse for both of us. We'd been trying and adjusting and even seeking second and third opinions for quite some time. Now, I've spent at least six hours on the phone with my insurance and providers and can't even find someone who will take our state insurance. We can't afford out of pocket sessions. Again, they didn't ever help anyway. So that's a situation in and of itself.

Every day since our fight I have been leaving something small at his bedroom door. A joke book. A picture. A treat. He hasn't brought up the note, but I know he sent a picture of it to his girlfriend, so he did see it. I messed up and am reacting with kindness and action and accountability to try to make it right. He has completely ignored hurting me and is continuing to be hurtful, disrespectful and defiant.

Right now, I just need to be heard. I need a hug. I need to know I'm not the awful mom he makes me feel like. My only real outlet is my YouTube community, but I can't post about this there because my son and his father occassionally watch the content.

Things got really heated with my 15 year old son a few days ago. For the first time in his life, I told him I hated him. I felt immediate guilt. I'm not an angry or hateful person. I was on several days of very little sleep with a 15 month old and financial challenges and hit a limit with the disrespect. I was wrong. The next day I wrote a note and left it on his bedroom door. I told him I was sorry. No excuses or justifications. Full stop. I told him I could never hate him. I told him that I saw how much we were both affected by the abuse of my ex husband (his former step dad). And I told him the repairs I am making: the note/apology itself, getting rid of my evening wine to improve sleep and mood and downloading an app to help regulate my emotions. Every day since I have been leaving something small at his bedroom door. A joke book. A picture. A treat. He hasn't brought up the note, but I know he sent a picture of it to his girlfriend, so he did see it. Sometimes kindness is random. Sometimes it is very calculated. I messed up and am reacting with kindness and action and accountability to try to make it right. I just hope he still loves me.

I know I'm not technically a "NewTuber," but I have been on this subreddit from the early days of my channel, I feel like I might as well be starting over right now and this community always seems willing to give honest feedback.

I've been on YouTube for several years and have grown to about 88,000 subscribers, almost entirely through music reactions aimed to encourage conversation about mental health. Most of those subs though came in about a year and a half in 2021/2022. I've barely grown since despite actually improving my content drastically.

The thing is that I don't really want to make only music reactions anymore, but I don't want to create a whole new channel either. I love and appreciate my community, I just want to expand it. I've seen creators like Hannah Alonzo expand their content and audience successfully, so I know it's not impossible.

I'm wanting to expand to commentary videos on topics I'm passionate about (mental health, influencers, atheism, etc.). I've made 30+ non-reaction videos, and almost all have significantly underperformed. We're talking a couple hundred views vs the thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) that my reactions got.

I think they are quality, they're just not reaching the right audience. It feels like YouTube keeps testing them with people who subscribed for reactions, so CTR and watch time suffer.

I've already tried improving thumbnails, titles, pacing, shorter intros, and posting reactions alongside the new content instead of quitting them cold turkey. This hasn't been a recent experiment, it's been years. I feel like I am missing something obvious.

Any advice on getting YouTube to test to a new audience or am I just screwed?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I just need to post amidst people that understand because I'm trying to cope with all this in a healthy way. A few months ago I posted here about losing ~150 subscribers overnight after being honest about my atheism. A lot of people (understandably) focused on the number. “150 isn’t a big deal when you have 88k subs.” Or "subscribers don't matter". Even though it hurt, I tried to see it that way.

What I didn’t realize when I wrote that post is that it was just the beginning. The tip of the iceberg. It affected my family, my financial stability, my charity outreach and my own mental health.

Over the next few weeks, things didn’t bounce back. They didn’t even stay the same. Things started tanking. Hard. Same content. Same effort. Same intention to help people. But my metrics started spiraling.

And it wasn't contained to YouTube. Support that had been stable for a long time started dropping off. Opportunities that had always been there disappeared.

That’s the part that messed with me the most. It wasn’t disagreement. I expect disagreement. It was realizing how quickly things can fall apart and your support and life can crumble when you stop fitting the version of yourself people are comfortable with, even if everything else about what you do stays exactly the same.

I didn’t understand the depth of this when I made the first post. I just saw that initial drop and was sad. Now I understand what I was actually watching happen. Now I am devastated. Now I am trying to pick up the freaking pieces.

As a mental health channel that believes in being authentic and transparent, I ended up talking about it more in depth (with "receipts" of everything) because I want to continue creating a safe place to talk about our mental health challenges. And god dammit (pun intended), that includes religious trauma.

Just figured I would update you guys since SO many of you commented on that original post.

If you’ve ever experienced that kind of shift after being honest about your atheism.....you already know the feelings I’m talking about. But we don't think about the other things coming out can affect until everything is falling apart and you have no idea how to save it. No clue what I'm going to do except hold onto the quote on the sign in my office: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down!