First of all: I'm 18 years old, still go to school and live at home with my parents.
During my childhood, my dad oftentimes had very little patience with me. When I did something which offended him, he used to completely lose his temper, he screamed at me and a few times, he also slapped me. Whenever that happened, I had the impression that he didn't have himself under control at all. This caused me to be really scared of his reactions. He never beat me up or anything like that, but the fact that I could picture him doing that was bad enough.
As I grew up, these incidents in which my dad freaked out got less, and it became less of an acute problem for me. From around 7th grade on, I began developing a couple of social phobias. Also, I had a few depressive symptoms and had little social contacts.
When I was around 16 years old, all the old issues with my dad came up again, triggered by a few minor occurrences. I began to be scared of his actions without any apparent reason. It got to a point, at which I questioned everything I did and evaluated if it might offend him. I also started to develop some psychosomatic symptoms, most significantly sweating.
At the time I was 16/17 years old, I also spent a year abroad in another country. The complex with my dad got way worse there than it was before. But the biggest problems came up when I changed families there.
The family which I came in was abusive. The parents didn't allow their children any privacy, severly manipulated them emotionally, oftentimes put them down and yelled at them. They also controlled everything they did and spied on them in every possible way. I also know that physical abuse happened, and that the parents would use violence. Didn't directly witness it, but the parents actually told me that they would.
During that time, the psychosomatic problems also severely increased.
Now, as I live with my real parents again, I have several issues resulting from the year abroad as well as the previous problems.
The problems are:
- -Paranoia - Sometimes, I think that the family from the year abroad is still spying on me; that they might have put something on my phone (they had access to it), the virus might have gone to my computer or whatever and they are watching what I'm doing.
I actually have a different phone now, and there is not any reasonable evidence for that paranoia.
-Fear of my dad and the other family - Very often, things come up of which I think: This may offend him/them and cause violence towards me. I've heard of a term called abuser introject, which describes this issue.
-The psychosomatic symptoms (mostly the sweating)
I know that I should get professional help, I just didn't really find a way to request it. I don't want to talk to my parents about it, allthough I'm pretty sure they'd help me. I'm embarrased by all this stuff, allthough I know that it's not my fault.
Can anyone relate and/or help me?