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Hi, So for some reason over the past few days I have been rembering random things from my early childhood (preschool to kindergarten). I’m currently 17 and most of the memories that are coming back to me are things I had never given much consideration to or had long since forgotten until now. I also wrote a post in the “sexuality issues” forum but I’m not sure these memories are related to the subject of that post. Some brief insight to my life before I share my memories: I’m a 17 year old male, currently living with my dad. I was raised by two loving parents but two years ago I lost my mom to cancer ( I was 15). Ok, now for the memories, and I apologize in advance if some of these seem bizarre. When I was in preschool, my family took in a foster child. She was about my age and she stayed with us for a few years. I have memories of pushing her around and bullying her to an extent (which I now feel pretty bad about) but I think it was due to jealousy of having a new child in the house, and I never really hurt her, I could just be mean. And for the most part we actually got along fairly well. Now here’s where I’m confused; I remember “experimenting” with her in some fairly innocent ways like kissing, hugging, etc. but now that I reflect I think I also displayed some abnormal sexual behaviors toward her. For example, we kissed once, but I remember trying to put my tongue in her mouth. Or there was a time where we took our pants off and got in my bed and rubbed our legs together. I’m not sure if this was 100% innocent or if I was trying to gain some sort of sexual satisfaction out of it, even though I was only 4 or 5. However these aren’t what concern me most. We were playing upstairs by ourselves once and somehow we ended up naked. I had an erection and I remember we tried to fit it into her... you know what. We didn’t succeed and thankfully gave up. This is confusing to me as I’m not sure where I learned this behavior, as being so young my dad had not yet explained to me how sex worked. I got quite a few erections as a kid which I realize is fairly normal, and while I didn’t masturbate I would touch my penis a lot and I remember feeling some form of something similar to arousal. I remember seeing my mom naked once and trying to touch her vagina, but she scolded me and so I stopped. I also would take my pants off and rub my legs on my moms, and once I tried to take off my underpants and rub on her, but she told me no. Are these things normal?? When I was older and my dad gave me the sex talk, I got scared that he was going to show me his penis and I felt pretty uncomfortable and nervous. Of course he didn’t, and my day was normal after that. Also when I was younger, I’d get really scared at night. This fear was something I’d completely forgotten about until very recently. When I was young, I was scared of being either upstairs alone, or downstairs alone. And when I say scared, I mean i HATED it. It scared me sh*tless and I don’t know why. I would also get really scared when I was in bed. I know being scared of the dark is really common for kids, but I would get so scared that I was afraid to move or open my eyes. I was paralyzed with fear and would feel like someone was watching me. I even imagined that if I left my hands out from under the covers as I slept, a man would come to steal my hands. Recently this feeling of paralyzing fear has come back, and as I lay in my bed I am scared to move and feel as though someone is watching me, or that someone is standing over me. Everything I hear when I’m this scared seems enhanced. The sound of my dad in the hallway, the sound of the TV in the other room. Even the other night I fell asleep on the couch and my dad came to wake me up. His dark shadow standing over me made me uneasy. I realize I rambling now, but there’s a few more memories that are sticking out to me. In 1st/2nd grade I got a lot of intrusive thoughts about hurting my family members or my dog. I felt deep guilt and shame during this time and remember sitting in class thinking “nobody here knows what I’m thinking and going through, nobody can help me”. I remember camping with my dad and being scared of him when I was younger, thinking he was going to attack me with a hatchet. I don’t know why I feared this, it’s totally irrational. Lastly, I remember not liking it when my mom wore glasses when I was young. I thought they made her look angry and she didn’t seem like my mom, it made me feel uneasy. Or when my mom would come back from a Halloween party dressed in a costume, I didn’t like it when she’d give me a kiss because again; she didn’t seem like my mom and it made me nervous. Sorry for this rambling post, I’m just confused as to why I’m suddenly remembering all these things and they’ve been causing me quite a bit of stress as a lot of them seem strange to me now. Is it normal for teens to randomly remember things from their childhood? I feel like there’s something important I’m forgetting but I’m not sure what it is or if I’m just overthinking.

My moms a good lady but she yells a lot. She's been bey stressed ever since my dad died after being unemployed for 6 months. When that happened she had to scramble to get a job and could no longer be a stay at home mom. She's very frustrated with me bc I never ever clean ever. I know it's bad I just have zero motivation. But anyways, she yells at me a lot and she says typical parental punishment threats like "If you don't clean up down here I'll throw away everything laying out!" And she never ever acts on it and she loves me very much but I still get so anxious when she yells. Like anytime she yells at me, no matter how long or short it is I start to panic and get really sick and have irrational thoughts she wants to kill me. (she'd never do that and she's never laid a hand on me) she does her best and I love her a lot but I still need help managing my anxiety in response to yelling.. (please don't call my momma abusive shes a good person and saying that will give me an anxiety attack)

Lately I've been living in fear. The realization started to come about a year ago. I think I fell in love with an 11 year old. I'm 23 years old, have a stable relationship with someone my age and a stable job and this sudden awareness has thrown my mental health into disarray. At first I was just disgusted with myself for having feelings for somebody that age. The disgust faded a bit as I realized I didn't have serious sexual feelings towards girls that age (I really don't want to sleep with them) but I have the undeniable feeling that I'm in love with her and that I want to kiss her / cuddle etc. (Sorry if this disgusts people reading this but I have to get this off my heart or I'll go insane). But all the disgust soon turned into utter despair as I never would or could act upon those feelings.The knowledge that I could never be loved by someone I love, really shattered my heart into a million pieces and soaked it in despair. Never mind acting upon it, I could never ever tell anyone about this. The fact that I have these feelings and that I have to live with never telling anyone fills me with fear. Fear of never truly being happy, the fear of being spat out by society, fear of losing everyone I care about if they ever somehow found out. I have no idea how I'm ever going to get through life like this. I think this all is connected to an underlying fear of getting older. I've been having issues with the fact that my worry-free and fantastic teenage years are gone forever. Lately thoughts about killing myself have popped into my head. I currently think it's a dumb idea the doesn't solve anything. But the fact that it pops into my head fills me with even more fear for the future. I try to keep on living my life but every day the burden gets worse. I don't know what to do anymore. Thank you for reading nonetheless

Please, help me. I am a teenage boy who lives in the US. I'm fairly intelligent (my IQ is around 130, albeit IQ is somewhat debatable in its telling of intelligence). I have a high number of friends and I'm liked by my community. However, I am a very mentally stable person. Due to suffering from bullying when I was a child, I suffer from a generalized anxiety disorder. I also have an at times hard to control rage, which I try to hide from those who are close to me in order to not concern them. I am an extremely fearful person, and I am quite prone to fear mongering; it can prompt me to become absolutely petrified for hours at a time. My fears also frequently overtake my rationality; I once feared that I had a brain tumor for multiple weeks, then feared that I was sociopathic for around a month. I have experienced a fair amount of loss in my life, most prominently within the past few years of my life. I lost two close relatives within a few months. Additionally, someone who I was getting to know committed suicide somewhat recently, which was a somewhat traumatizing experience. Recently, my stress has been at an all-time high. I am currently having an internal conflict over whether or not God is real, of which I am right in the middle. While I used to be Catholic, I left the church for various reasons. I disagreed with them about some things, felt extremely uncomfortable due to being pansexual (attracted to men, women, transgendered people, etc.), and was unsure why an all-loving God would allow there to be so much evil in the world. I now have an extreme fear of hell, but I also am not sure if I can believe in a God, or if doing so is at all rational. I feel like an abomination due to my sexuality, as well. I am also becoming very paranoid about terrorism and conspiracy theories. I am getting over the conspiracies due to how irrational the vast majority of them are; however, I still fear terrorism immensely. ISIS is what scares me the most. I fear that they may be winning, and that they will succeed in killing everyone who disagrees with them. I have minor fear when going outside or being in crowds as a cause of my fears. My biggest fears are things I cannot control; tensions between nations, terrorism, world problems, and potential asteroid impacts are just a few examples. I am also scared about the potential of me dying, or witnessing atrocities happening. At times, I enter this almost "manic" state in which I cannot see any of the positive qualities of my life. I panic. My heart rate rises immensely. I tense up and feel purely fearful and sad. I cry for around half an hour to an hour, and get enraged while doing so. I fear that I may soon harm myself, or potentially even do the unthinkable. I have a therapist, but I'm scared to mention this stuff to him because I don't want anyone to be concerned over me. Please, if possible, help me. Thank you for your time.

Sigh, made this account just to post this shitty stuff. Because where else really. I know it's kind of long, but I'm trying to formulate some sort of story, read if you feel like it. Anyways, backround: Bullied by mom and stepfather, real father alcoholic, bullied and painfully rejected by peers as a pre-teen(average to mild bullying), Grow out of bullying and so starts the struggle to "fix" myself from social anxiety and some sort of need for acceptance, which is ongoing until now at 20 years old. So when I was recently out of the bullying and in a new school, a new chance. Long story short I was into a new savannah and girls were noticing me, The bullying and rejection had taken all trust from me and given me no willingness to connect, so I'm really anti-social and people are generally very scared of me. This is now at 15. But for random girls I'd meet at parties or who don't know me that well, they'd seem interested in me and sometimes add me on facebook or something like that. But here is where the monsters of insecurity were sparked anew, I was in no way fixed and had a HUGE need to be accepted by these women and most importantly, HUGE desperation to fuck or date in general, or be a popular cool guy. I had a pathetic need for validation. Expectedly this resulted in the several girls that I had a thing with all rejecting me in the end, this happens maybe 4 times during my college years, eiter they reject me or I stop talking to them in fear of rejection. It was this almost creepy desperation and I am now sure that they could tell that all I wanted was validation from them, and that I was an emotional wreck. This happened until 17/18ish. That was the end of it, I was NEVER going to get rejected again, so now if I had even the slightest, SLIGHTEST fear of rejection, or if she was not a GODESS in my eyes I just said no, not going to even think about it. I suspect that I even somewhat enjoyed rejecting women that I baited into showing interest in me. Now I am 20 and over that phase, and generally just ignore the sexual aspect of women to the fullest extent. I am in university, and this again, people aren't fully "yeah it's that guy, he is scary and always angry" yet, but that's because I generally just keep my anger for society for myself. I was always a nice person and try to use that aspect now, so now I am just friendly when I am forced to socialize and people generally seem to not hate me when I end up talking to them. But usually it's some sort of shitty thing where I just ignore people fully, and yeah that girl who keeps looking at me in class, and made smalltalk, that stuff makes me feel IMMENSELY pressured, and I just generally feel like shit and scared of her rejecting me. I CAN'T date women because I cannot allow any of them to reject me, it's so pathetic that I am ashamed. I have completely stopped trying to hope for actually becoming normal anymore, the few times I did date I literally forced myself and everything was fake. It's not just women, it's almost everybody, everybody is so afraid of me and I don't know what to do, i cant fake a happy face all the time and I am afraid of socializing so I stay quiet. I have also become a major asshole and insensitive, I used to be a super nice person who would be kind to everybody and people complimented me for it, but after being taken advantage of every time I ended up being a somewhat worse person. And when people actually are nice and when I see the TRUE nature of things, how I just need to open up and that everybody isn't out there to get you, I almost cry. It's like there are barriers between me and everybody else, full of deceptions. So in short, I can't talk or let people "know" me because I'm afraid they will reject me when they get to know what a super insecure and longing for acceptance pathetic guy I am. This is why I act, because if no one knows me I can act like that cool guy they just see and think, "hmm, he looks cool". instead of "welp, better stay the fuck away from this pathetic fucking insecure former bully victim, he is absolutely sad"

I posted my story already in another topic here, but I'm losing myself right now. I caught myself writing down some letters to to those closest to me like my mom, my passed away dad and my girlfriend. I really need to talk to someone but I put myself in such an awful position, by just making up stories so no one would see me you know.. Please, can someone just talk with me?

I was different when I was younger, but in a somewhat troubling way. My anxiety at the time in regards to certain things--specifically sexual things--is what has been on my mind lately. I was wondering if I may have a repressed memory deep within me or if something else is what caused this all. As a young kid, even at age four and five, I was always covering up, even in front of my mother (according to her). After baths, I'd come downstairs in only a towel and my grandfather (who we lived with at the time) would chase after me because he knew I was afraid of him seeing my penis. This made be scared and uncomfortable each time I took a bath. At age five, during a doctor's appointment, I remember being very uncomfortable about him examining me. When I was four, I was playing with clay and made a clay model of a penis, and though my mom laughed, I think back to this and cringe, realizing that the model penis I made was a bit inappropriate for me to be making at that age. When my father taught me how to pee standing up, I saw his penis and got very upset and ran away. I'm still disturbed by that moment. At around four years old, I had a sexual "fantasy" that I reenacted by myself in which my entire preschool class had to be examined by the teacher. To me it sounds strange, and certainly inappropriate for a four-year-old to be fantasizing about. During preschool, I refused to use the bathroom, and to this day I won't use public restrooms. Not because they're gross, but because they make be uncomfortable and paranoid. The only time I was willing to go to a public bathroom was when I was seven years old, in camp, because I thought it was fun and strangely arousing to be in the bathroom when all the other kids were in there. I remember being in the park at around five or six years old and seeing a very young kid--no more than two years old--naked in the sprinklers. After seeing that, I was very disturbed and upset by it.... I'm not exactly sure why, but seeing it depressed me. Finally, I had an intense fear of losing my mother. But looking back, it was much more complex than what a kid feels when their mother leaves for work or drops them off at school. When my mom and I separated, I would be upset because I was afraid of her getting lost, dying, or getting hurt. I was afraid for her being on her own. This is where things get a little abstract. There's one dream I have in which I'm able to demand my dream to show me the "source of my anxiety." Doing so, I expect something insightful so that I may know what caused by anxiety disorders and other problems. In that moment, I'm overcome by flashing images that eventually wake me up in a panic. I see Ronald McDonald (though I've never in my life been afraid of him or any clowns), a crying moon (for some reason, I am intensely afraid of the moon in my dreams...), and myself as a toddler, with mutilated genitals and my grandfather whimpering in the background. I also whimper myself, almost feeling the pain I see. What's interesting about the crying moon is that when I was in my early childhood, I was afraid of the moon. This conscious fear has gone away, but it returns in my dreams. I have no idea why I was so afraid of the moon and why it would appear to me when I asked my dream to show me something as complex as the source of my anxiety. I hope this wasn't too long, for I condensed a lot of it. I'd like to point that I have very mild Asperger's, which may affect this all. I know I only gave so much information, but is it possible that there's a repressed memory deep within me? My conscious and subconscious experiences and feelings lately have been telling me that this is the case, but I have a lot of doubt within me.... I'd be so thankful for some input right now! Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, I had no idea where to put something like this.

My daughter-in-law passed away on July 7th. Although I had spoken with her recently as she was dealing with health issues, I did not know the extent of her illness. She was slowly dying - her liver gave out on her and she would not/could not leave her home. She refused to seek medical attention, yet was trying by using vitamins. I would look up things on the internet and she and my son were doing so as well. My son is suffering terribly as is her son; if only I had... As her liver gave out; an autopsy was not deemed necessary, so it will not be known if she had cancer or cirrhosis; but her fears were so very strong. As I piece together the sadness, she started drinking heavily when her father died and it progressed. She had gained weight and wanted not one to see her this way. She would not leave the house...and yet, when we spoke on the phone I could not detect a sign of these things. She would tell me she was "anal" and would send me articles on-line regarding recalls and issues for me to be aware of, but I did not have an inkling. At the same time, my son would not/could not share these things with me. When I wanted to visit(they lived quite far away) she would say the workload was heavy or they were moving house or something else, and if I asked my son a question - I knew he was speaking carefully as she was listening to him. I respected their relationship and their decisions as on a few occasions I said something that made her angry and I would not hear from either of them for quite a while. I learned to let go and accept the times when we could be in communication. Now my son is grieving and beating himself up for not forcing her to do something differently. I realize he must go through his journey and feel all he must feel(I lived with my youngest brothers mental illness until he shot himself in 2004) but I did remind him he could not force her to go for help and had he done so, the one person she trusted and turned to would not be available to her and she would be all alone. I apologize for this very long post. Thank you