Why is my family abusive to me because of my mental illness?

I'm almost 23 and i have a severe social skill deficit, inability to speak, body dysmorphic disorder, and severe agoraphobia. I have a severe social skill deficit for almost 12 years. eventually, it became severe enough that I could not leave the house. I have been agoraphobic for about 7 years. At age 20, I began to see a therapist and social worker. I am currently going to a group therapy for improving social skills. This social skills therapy is organized by a social worker and psychiatrist. The therapy isn't working, but my parents force me to go and say i have no choice.


My social phobia mostly involves a fear of social situations, talking to strangers, and speaking in any way. I have a complete inability to socialize. my lifestyle is very limited because of my conditions. i also get harassed by my family for the past 15 years for having these things. Someone in my family tells me "We think it's sad that you don't have the life experiences of a normal adult." I have a fear of leaving the house, and an inability to talk to people. My lifestyle is very abnormal. It's very hard to live with, and not many ppl can understand it, but i'm coming to terms with it.


my speaking inability is psychological. This has resulted from many years of social isolation as well as the way that the ppl in my life have acted toward me. I can speak normally around my immediate family, but with extended family i get rly nervous and can't talk to them. It's been that way with my extended family my whole life. If i'm forced to talk to a stranger when out in public, i can barely speak to them and they can't hear me speaking.


Throughout my life, often my family was verbally abusive usually from my 2 older sisters and brother in law. My sisters are 6 and 9 years older and i've known my brother in law for almost 11 years.
in 1999, my father passed away and we were left with a $300,000 medical bill that we could not pay off because he had no insurance. We were forced to file for bankruptcy and the family became very low-income. My sisters are extremely critical of my deceased father because he did not earn enough money. They say very bad things about him all the time and then they accuse him of causing all of their problems in life because of the fact he did not earn enough money and was self-employed.
Often no one would pay any attention to me or talk to me in the family.


I would get treated very poorly by my 2 older sisters. This has been occurring for the past 15 years. The sisters became furious about my physical appearance and they said no one would talk to me because i was "weird." They are especially critical of my weight and how often i ate and what specific food and if i eat too much. My 2 sisters are extremely obsessive about nutrition. My oldest sister has a PhD in human nutrition and my middle sister has a masters in kinesiology and then she went to a special program so she could become a registered dietitian because she is obsessive about nutrition. On a daily basis for the past 15 years (since they became obsessed with food) they called me fat constantly and restricted the food i ate. They would monitor and criticize EVERYTHING i ate ALL DAY LONG since age 9. Since age 9, they would force me to step on the scale and then take body measurements. If i'm with my middle sister and there is food, she becomes FURIOUS if I take too much. She yells at me in front of the whole family for eating.


If i eat in front of my middle sister (who is 29 and the dietician), she will be very specific in criticizing the food i selected. She will tell me to measure out the food i'm eating and if the portion size is too much she becomes furious. Then the entire time she watches me eat the food, and if i eat too fast, she yells and becomes furious. She does this in front of the whole family if we eat together yet she pays no attention to whatever the rest of the family is eating.


My middle sister has been verbally abusive to me for years. On a daily basis she would yell and hit me physically because i was "weird," because of my physical appearance, and unintelligence. For 10 years straight on a daily basis several times a day yelling abusively at me for being very unintelligent and because of my weight. This occurred until she was 23 and moved out on her own and we didn't see her much. She had severe anger management disorders and my mom often called the police. She also verbally abused my mom constantly. On a daily basis until she was 23 she was abusive to me mentally and became violently aggressive for hours a day.


If i was to have a conversation with my middle sister, she instantly becomes furious and calls me a idiot for even speaking to her. Then she would scream loudly complaining why she had to have an idiot fat sister who wasn't good at anything and wasn't like her. She slapped me and tortured me physically. For years she yelled at me and forced me to do intense physical exercise with her (she is also obsessive about fitness in addition to food) for several hours a day and if i said i was too tired, she became furious and screamed at me for 30 minutes straight saying i had no choice but to do the exercises she asked me to do for her.


Once when I was 17-18, I could no longer cope with my middle sister's severe verbal abuse, so I said to her that i didn't like talking to her and when there was a family gathering i couldn't have a conversation with her. I said it was hard for me to talk to her and sometimes I would ignore her.
She became furious to me and complained to our oldest sister that I was being "weird" and said she was offended i wasn't talking to her as much.


My oldest sister then talked to me about it. She said to me "I think what you are doing to your middle sister is incredibly immature." My oldest sister was furious and then she tried to get me and my middle sister to get along. she had a serious discussion with my middle sister about the extreme verbal abuse.


My middle sister said that when talking to me "She was angry at me" and that I was somehow provoking her despite the fact that when I talked to her i never said anything offensive and often was having normal conversation with my middle sister about everyday topics. She then claimed that I was "impolite" and said that she would be nicer to me if i ever considered being nicer to her first. My middle sister was never specific about what i did that made her so angry and whatever i did to make her "furious" at me just for speaking to her.


My oldest sister intervened and now when there is a family gathering and my oldest sister is in the room, my middle sister wont verbally abuse me anymore because our oldest sister told her not to. My 2 sisters are really close and they are best friends to each other and they leave me out of everything. My middle sister does whatever the oldest sister and our brother in law says because their approval is important. If there is a family gathering when my oldest sister and her husband aren't there, my middle sister does the verbally abusive things to me and criticizing my lifestyle.


If i do something socially inappropriate, my oldest sister and her husband will laugh at me in front of everyone and yell that they wish i was normal. Then they talk about it later. They often bring up socially inappropriate things that I did or said years ago and make fun of it in front of everyone. They criticize me for not being a "normal" adult. For the past 6 years they accuse me of having asperger's syndrome and laugh and make fun of me in front of everyone for having it even though i don't have a diagnosis and no ones ever said i have it. When they come over, I get nervous and can't talk to them because all they do is criticize me when i'm not around.


I have also had severe body dysmorphia for 9 years. it is very disabling to my lifestyle. This is a disease when people fixate on their appearance and then they imagine flaws about their appearance that isn't there. I don't go out with ppl because of it. It's very hard to live with, but i'm coming to terms with it.


and there isn't that much for me to do when the body dysmorphia takes up all my time. the phobia got worse because of my appearance and body dysmorphia. throughout my life, ppl ignored me and never talked to be because of my physical appearance. consequently, I never developed social skills at all. then I developed my severe body dysmorphia. I spent over six hours a day on things related to my BDD. I stopped socializing at all. at 16, my parent decided that I should be taken out of school because of severe depression. I was getting so depressed that she decided I shouldn't go to that school anymore. I became more and more isolated because of my appearance. its a complete fixation on the facial features. I look in the mirrors for hours a day fixating. about 3 years ago it became so bad that my parents forced us to cover all the mirrors in the house and said I wasn't allowed to look at all. I spent 7 months actually never looking in the mirror once. this occurred in january 2012 - july 2012 and again in february 2013 - august 2013. if I go out in public all I think about is my features and I constantly have to go look in the mirror and reapply cosmetics hourly.


I also self harmed 3 years ago and another time 2 years ago because of it. And i even self harmed again 4 months ago. In July 2007 at age 15, I attempted to slit my wrists and I was sent to the ER. My middle sister was furious about it and made fun of me for it saying i was a horrible person for doing it. I still have wrist scars And Im self conscious of ppl seeing them. Once last year someone saw the scars on my wrists and touched them saying "What's this? Have you ever considered suicide?" I lied and said it's nothing. in december 2011 at age 20, my whole family found out i had body dysmorphia.


My agoraphobia occurred at about age 15 after i was taken out of school due to severe depression. After age 15, since 2007 i was being homeschooled and i rarely left the house, only when the family forced me. If i refused to go with them, my 2 older sisters, brother in law, and my mom would become furious and yell at me for 30 minutes straight until i finally agreed to come with them. My body dysmorphia at that age was very serious. At age 15, the times i went out in public with my family, I had my head covered to avoid attention and also walked with my head down and face turned to the side. i wore clothes that would make ppl not notice me. My middle sister would become extremely against this and she would yell at me saying "when you walk with your hand in front of your face everyone will look at you even more!" she became furious and yelled at me for not being normal. Then she would yell at me for the clothes i was wearing out in public.
my mom knows that lots of ppl would do bad things to me. She knows i can't function like the "normal" adult and she knows that placing restrictions on me is going to prevent many bad things from happening.


I go to the group therapy and my mom takes public transportation with me to get there. She says i can't go there alone because she is concerned of safety and also sometimes i'm there after dark and she doesn't let me go out at that time alone.


i've taken classes at community college before. when i go my mom comes also. We rode the bus there together. or else i got too nervous to come in. i've been doing this since august 2010. the college is a familiar place for me to come to so i don't get that nervous there anymore. I used to get really nervous at school though. A teacher once stopped me in the hallway asking "are you ok? you look really pale" because i was so nervous. That was 3 years ago. in the fall 2011 semester i had it really bad during the 8-week course I took. It met 3 days a week from 2pm-4:30pm and someone would come to school with me. i was just nervous the whole time. but there were semesters during which i took only internet courses. and i do get nervous if i come there alone.


also, my mom forbids me to go out with people at all and she wants to select who I marry. My mom says she wants me to date someone who is the right ethnicity, doesn't drink smoke gamble or take drugs, very educated and from a wealthy background. And she says if I'm dating someone she wants to come with me and have the date bring his parents also.


She says i'm forbidden to go out with people because they could influence me to make bad decisions, take drugs, and that they will do bad things to me.


i'm not allowed to take ANY medication, my mom said so. she says if i take it i will get metabolic disorders, more severe mental illnesses, and then i'll get addicted to the pills. She spends a long time researching the negative effects of the medication.


My 2 sisters nonstop monitor my food intake and body size. My mom does this to an extent but not for my weight. If i eat something "artificial" or some food she read about on the internet being "poisonous" she yells and says to stop eating it. My mom often controls what I eat because she believes that everything has toxins and that i'm going to get a disease if i eat the "toxic" food. She says i'm forbidden to eat any foods with sugar in them. She says i'm forbidden to eat them ever and if she sees me eating it she yells and says its toxic and i will get a disease.


My oldest sister and brother in law are really against what my mom is doing. They say she is toxic but i disagree. i think that they aren't understanding. They says she inst letting me become a "normal adult." They say "we don't want you living at home when you're 30. We want you to one day become a normal adult living on your own with a normal lifestyle. We want you to work extremely hard so that one day you can have all the things that normal people have." They want me to do all these things in my life that i'm not even capable of and probably will be worse off if i listen to them.


I have been chatting with ppl on the internet since age 11. this has been the only way I've socialized with ppl outside the immediate family since age 11 or 12. that was the ages that I became very socially isolated. I have had no social contacts at all other than family since about age 11 or 12. I had become addicted to talking to ppl on the internet. some ppl in my family are really against it because its "unsocial" and "not what normal people are doing". my brother in law is really against me talking to ppl on the internet. he says i need to go out with real people because "what I'm doing isn't normal." I talk on the internet because since age 15 I have had no one outside the immediate family to socialize with other than the social worker at group therapy.


if i'm not doing that, i do get addicted to the computer. My family knows i go on it over 10 hours a day and they are against it. They were especially critical of this when i was younger, usually my oldest sister. My social worker and psychiatrist are very critical of my computer and game addiction. "Isn't there a productive activity in your house?" they say. I told them that i played games and internet all day because it was the only thing available to distract myself from the intrusive thoughts of my body dysmorphic disorder. There isn't much to do in my house because i'm not allowed to have cable tv. So we go to rent the videos. And my mom has to approve it first. If i'm watching a tv or movie when my mom is in the house with me, she will ask what it is and then she will watch some of it before she approves of the movie or tv shows i'm allowed to watch. for example, If there is any sexual content in the movie or tv show at all, even if it's very minimal, she yells and says i'm not allowed to watch it ever. If she isn't available at the time or not in the room then I can watch the shows and movies i want without her approval.


I also spend a long time researching anything related to my appearance, cosmetic, plastic surgeon, etc. I used to spend a long time taking pictures of myself and criticizing them. This occurred from ages 14-19. I would spend maybe 4 hrs straight taking pictures of myself and criticizing it.


The therapy isn't working because probably this is something i've always had so and just because they tell me how to socialize in group therapy i still have the fear. Also, there are no therapists in my area who specialize in body dysmorphic disorder.


My social deficit is really severe and very hard to live with, but sometimes i some to terms with it. it's not something I can get rid of. I can't talk or make conversation at all. My social anxiety is also very severe. I am completely unable to socialize.


If you have any questions to ask about me or my lifestyle, even very personal questions, I am willing to answer.


I want ppl to give advice for when i have to interact with the family. advice other than moving out and cutting off contact (because i'm not allowed to do either). I don't understand exactly what they are doing specifically that is abusive and what is causing it because i don't understand.

I read your post all the way through when you joined, Lisa. And I've just done so again. And I still don't know how to answer.

Because in my honest opinion. And I'm not an expert or professional or anything. Just how I see what you wrote. Your family are CAUSING many of the issues you're struggling with. And without making a change there. I don't know how much else can be fixed. It's like having a sore patch because you're allergic to your watch strap. It's going to get more and more sore if you keep wearing it. And there's no good way to deal with that. Even when you finally do take it off. It'll take time to heal. It's the same [as I see it] with your family. You need to be allowed to change. And they aren't letting you do that. And their behaviour is making things harder and harder for you to deal with.

Of course it's difficult to imagine making that change. And you're right that things would be difficult or impossible. For a while. That doesn't mean they'd always be like that. At the moment, you aren't getting the chance to practice anything that you're learning in therapy. There's no way to have even tiny interactions with, say, a bus driver. Even very little things like that can build up over time. To become a stronger, healthier way of dealing with people. It doesn't have to be super hard or scary always.

That comment, "I think it's sad that you don't have the experiences of an adult" is a mixture of things. It's attacking, but at the same time the way I read it, is that they don't want you to leave.