Can you record a brief video of yourself talking about how Scarleteen has helped you? We're looking for clips for a fundraising video in the new year, and we'd love to have you involved! You can find out more, including how and where to upload your video, here: Scarleteen’s Project For Awesome 2025 submission! Our deadline for these is December 23rd 2024!

Stuff is going downhill, FAST.

When you want support through something scary or rough, and help pulling yourself together and getting through, this is the place.
Forum rules
We ask that users looking for general, ongoing emotional support post in this area of the boards, and that you use this space to both ask for, give and receive that support primarily from each other, rather than from our staff and volunteers. As a staff, we simply are often too overextended with all we need to do in running the organization and its services to do that for extended periods of time, and one of our main aims of our community at the boards has always been to facilitate peers to better be there for each other.

Users often report that they have no in-person peers they can talk to or seek support from: we want this to be a space for online peer support and somewhere everyone can get some practice asking for, getting and giving support so that doing it with people in your lives feels more doable.

Please remember that neither staff, volunteers nor your fellow users can provide or replace mental healthcare when that is something you need. Users struggling with issues like anxiety, depression, abuse or physical health issues are strongly encouraged to seek out qualified, in-person help with those issues in addition to peer or staff support.
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KittyPink
not a newbie
Posts: 378
Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2016 2:11 pm
Age: 24
Awesomeness Quotient: I do art.
Primary language: English
Pronouns: Xe/Xir or She/her
Sexual identity: Lesbian, switch, polyam, rope addict.
Location: Parma,Ohio

Stuff is going downhill, FAST.

Unread post by KittyPink »

So last night I had some news dropped on me, my girlfriend's mother found out she was cutting and her mother took her to the hospital. She got therapy, though in all honesty her mother needs a parenting 101 class after last night and that's all. My girlfriend is on suicide watch, which is something she isn't even remotely close to, in my opinion. Beyond that, her mother took her door (Literally took her door, off the hinges.), took any privacy she had (including bathrooms), found the phone she uses to text others. And the worst of all??!?!? Her mother treats her awfully, like she's a fragile glass doll. She also claims she's seeking attention, which isn't true.

I'm stuck at home finding out about this, with limited contact with her. And I'm already going downhill myself, with my inability to see her due to my school's policy with the 8th graders and my grandmother's crap. I'm also starting to lose the fight against my heaping helpings of dysphoria without the reliable access to support I need, so much to the fact I have phantom limb symptoms coming back on a more consistent basis. Anxiety attacks have become full-blown panic attacks and I feel like I'm going to faint sometimes. It's getting really scary...
"You are a dreamcatcher, you are beautiful to look at and you take the bad away and only give people the good." - Andrea Blankenship

***Transfeminine***

LIVE AND LEARN
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Heather
scarleteen founder & director
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sun Jul 27, 2014 11:43 am
Age: 54
Awesomeness Quotient: I have been a sex educator for over 25 years!
Primary language: english
Pronouns: they/them
Sexual identity: queery-queer-queer
Location: Chicago

Re: Stuff is going downhill, FAST.

Unread post by Heather »

As a just-barely survivor of adolescent everything-is-going-downhill-fast in my life with bad family stuff, partner-in-crisis stuff, and my-own-mental-health-hell, I have some basic advice.

You have two basic, and potentially non-exclusive, choices here to get through this kind of situation, in my personal and professional experience:
a) you figure out a way to dial things down in all respects, or in whatever places you can, and/or
b) you get out of what situations, interactions or relationships you can that are full of bad-downward-spiral.

It may be both. It may be one. There may be an arena where doing either isn't within reach or is outside your control, but another where you can do one or both of those things.

But what you do NOT want to do is anything that could escalate any of these situations of make them worse. For instance, you don't want to do anything ay home that could make things worse for you than they already are if you are going to keep living there. You don't want to do anything that could create more conflict between your girlfriend and her family. You don't want to add or take on any more of other people's crises when you are struggling with your own mental health and your own internal crisis.

See what I mean?

If you're on board, I'd be happy to brainstorm there choices and possible approaches with you with all the going-downhill things.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead
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