After issue after issue after issue with my mom and severe CPTSD from my childhood (self diagnosed and unofficially diagnosed with PTSD by my therapist who is also the one who got me to advocate for myself to be tested for ADHD and Autism so I trust her). After talking in this community and talking with my therapists, I see my mom is incredibly toxic. I am writing another post because apparently you are supposed to be comfortable with advocating. My speech therapist says she really wants to focus on self-advocacy with me because she doesn't want me getting to the point that I find it pointless to advocate since nobody is listening to me. I told her I thought I was already at that point and she told me that she was sorry and that is why she was going to focus on self advocacy with me. She asked me what other therapies I was going to and explained OT, ST, PT, and ABA were all the ones I currently had. (The ABA is more like lifecoaching.) She asked me how many hours were going on and if I felt like it was helping. I was honest with her and said I am getting exhausted from the 4-6 hour sessions for 4-5 days a week and felt they were getting pointless. She asked if I had advocated and told somebody that they needed to be shorter because she felt that was even too long for any other adult (neurotypical or not). I told her I had spoken to both my mother and therapists on numerous occasions and they actively discouraged going to less time a week. She asked if I would like her help to advocate for less time and I said yes either less long sessions a week or same amount but the sessions would only be 2-3 hours a day. She said she felt that would be ideal for me and she would talk to my mother because sometimes people just need a different person because they don't trust those who are younger than them or still legally minors. Anyways, I say all this to say, I realize I am in a toxic situation. If I continue to fawn, my mother feels better (still snaps out of nowhere though but less often) but it destroys me inside. My mental health greatly suffers by fawning and my mom will often lie to healthcare professionals if she is in the room and I have to fawn. Now, if she says something that is dangerously inaccurate I do speak up that way nothing catastrophic happens. However, if I advocate and speak up for myself to my mom, everything gets worse for her but I am not destroying my own mental health, she is destroying it for me. What should I do? Continue to fawn, slowly destroying my mental health but helping my mom out, or advocate for myself and be assertive but destroy my mental health (not directly by myself) and not help my mom at all? Either way until I can move out (at least another year or so) I am destroying my mental health in one way or another, the differences are who is destroying my mental health and if my mom's health also gets destroyed.

Posted by Annoymous1 at 2024-05-22 18:15:55 UTC