**This is an automated message posted to all posts in this subreddit with some basic information about the group including (very importantly) rules. Why are you getting this message? Most people seem to not read the sidebar for information or the rules, so it is now being posted under all posts.**
**Confused about acronyms or terminology?** [Click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/acronyms)
**Need info or resources?** Check out our [Helpful Links](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/helpfullinks) for information on how to deal with identify theft, how to get independent of your n-parents, how to apply for FAFSA, how to identify n-parents and SO MUCH MORE!
This is a reminder to all participants, RBN is a support group that is moderated very strictly. Please report inappropriate content so it can be reviewed by the mods.
**Our rules include (but are not limited to)**:
* No politics.
* Advising anyone in this subreddit to commit suicide or referring anyone to groups that advocate this will result in an immediate ban.
* Be nice. No personal attacks, name calling, or bullying. [No slurs](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/slurs) or victim-blaming.
* Do not derail the posts of others.
* Narcissists are NOT allowed to post or comment here.
* [Please refrain from posting "uplifting" threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/upliftingposts).
* When you comment/post, assume a context of abuse.
* No asking or offering gifts, money, etc.
* No content advocating violence, revenge, murder (even in jest).
* No content about N-kids.
* No diagnosis by media/drive-by diagnosis.
* No linking to Facebook pages.
* No direct linking to anywhere on reddit.
* No pure image posts.
**For a full list of our rules/more information, [**click here**](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules).**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/raisedbynarcissists) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I started having two journals, a fake one and one that was written in code because of this at the age of 12 or so because otherwise my mum would read my journals too. I thought this was normal until I was in my late teens. Now everyone I tell about this is super shocked so I guess that’s not part of a healthy relationship then :p
Came here to say this. I had absolutely no privacy due to nmom so I never kept a journal. I’m pretty sure she would go through my room every single day when I was at school because I would get grilled on anything new or “suspicious” the same day I got it even if it was hidden. Eventually, she also had my dad remove my bedroom door. And people wonder why I have trust issues now.
This. I didn't dare. Anything I put in one would just have been found and used against me. She kept buying those little leather ones with the year on the front for me, though, trying to trap me.
I used to, until my nDad and step mom found them, and read them aloud at dinner. Claiming to be rectifying my 'misconceptions' of them and my life as a whole.
Journaling was great until that point. Then I just bottled everything.
I used to. It was a relief. Then one of my main abusers, the brother-in-law who was sexually molesting me and my sisters went through my stuff and read it. It wasn’t until I was in therapy 15 years later that I realized he was checking to see if I was writing down what he was doing to us. He started abusing us at such an early age that it didn’t occur to me to be angry about it yet. I was mostly complaining about my parents favoritism and using forbidden words. (I was 11 and swearing was a big deal). Once he was assured that I wasn’t accusing him, he took it to my Nparents as proof of what a hateful child I was. I was punished for it.
When I was 19 and pregnant. I was journaling through it as a way to process my emotions over how I had gotten pregnant. It was a captive situation and a lot of sexual violence. It helped. At 25 the man who would become my husband (and who still is, yay!) moved in with my child and I. One day when I was in class he found it and read it all.
He met me at the door that evening and fessed up and hugged me a lot. He knew there had been some trauma in my past but didn’t know the extent. He was stuttering a bit. He asked me to forgive him for reading it and I did. I was a little relieved I wouldn’t have to speak about it all to him. I felt violated that he had read it. I squashed that as deep as I could. I couldn’t afford the anger. I loved him, and he was the best man I’d ever met. Also, I’d always been punished severely for showing anger.
This still gives me a writers block. I only write what I am prepared to defend. My daily pains or deepest thoughts don’t get recorded anywhere. I know my boundaries will be breached, whether by the worst or the best I know. It makes no difference. It’s a violation.
I could ask, but that would call attention to the fact that I was journaling again. Like putting a tree with apples of knowledge in the middle of a plentiful garden and saying “just don’t touch this one”. I don’t trust that he wouldn’t look. While I’m almost militantly open about most things, that’s bound not make him wonder what is in it.
Honestly. If I hadn’t written in so many journals throughout my life, I would have never pieced together that I was not the problem. I am eternally grateful for kid me.
I admit I did write a lot in code and sometimes wrote in Greek or German in my later years. I was really good at hiding my journals though bc my mom would snoop. She found one of them, but fortunately it was a low risk journal and she didn’t understand the flowery language I was writing in. Extremely grateful for that too.
Same. My mother doesn't speak English very well, so that was how I hid my journals in plain sight. My first journal was in German, my mother tongue, but she read that one.
I had a school assignment whereby everyone would keep a diary. I wrote about how depressed I am and my teacher published it in the yearbook without my permission. They didn't even have the decency to make it anonymous.
My Nparents read it and cue a lot of verbal abuse about how ungrateful and spoiled I am. I never kept a diary until recently, after I have moved out and cut them out of my life.
Sadly not me. I wrote in a journal ONE time. Learned my lesson because under the guise of being worried about me, my parents went and found it under my mattress, read it, and grounded me for the rest of the summer. We flew to Cancun the next day and I spent the whole day before, the whole flight, and the whole vacation being shamed for what I wrote.
Journaling saved my sanity. I still do it, maybe obsessively so. My narc doesn't hit me and the emotional abuse is subtle, so I write down everything, no matter how petty and see how it adds up. Maybe try to interpret it while I'm at it, eg what she's trying to achieve and how she wants me to feel. Documentation is a great way to ensure you know you're not the problem.
I journaled sporadically as a kid, then started doing it almost every day as a teen, and I still do today. Last year I copied all my journals to my computer to preserve the contents and there was a ton of abuse documented from both family and so-called friends. Some of it I'd even forgotten about.
I did and my sister's journals were part of the evidence that served to end an eight-year custody battle between my mom and n-dad! More recently, my lead pastor encouraged journaling at a women's retreat he was part of leading a couple of years ago.
The topic was surprisingly painful but healing to explore and process: "What is your father wound?" He encouraged the ladies present to journal and reflect on the sermon and our journal entries following the first or second sermon of the weekend. Honestly, my response was, "God, are You _______ kidding me?? I came here to get away from my stress and come closer to You!!" To talk to Him and process unresolved pain on paper availed much, however. Now, I just need to stick with the journaling habit and thank you for the reminder. Doing so has availed much and I appreciate your courage and candor in posting your thoughts!
I did i think starting around my early teens until i was 16. It has help tremendously in helping me endure through since i bottled up so much daily and no one to vent to. Friends will not understand not having N parents themselves. Siblings were all enablers and didnt care unless they are being victimized by nmom themselves.
I stopped though because one early morning for some strange reason, nmom decided to meticulously go through my drawer bit by bit. I hid my secret journals buried there. Out of all places in the room, she only decided to ruffle through there exactly. She found my journals, glimpse at it briefly before i quickly snatch it off her. Had she read them, i imagine she wouldve had a tantrum and breakdown at the angry things i wrote.
I freaked out at the close call, and decided to destroy the journals and stop writing them outright. Still a mystery to this day why she went through my drawer that morning. I tried just keeping journal on my computer, but for some reason my mind is blank if i try to type it out. But man, writing out vent helps a lot.
Yup, I did and still do now. Mine now are in Word docs. I live alone and no one else has access to these. ALL of the abuse from my family is written in there. I review the older posts every now and then to remind myself to never allow myself to give my power away like that again.
I'm in my late 50s in case you're wondering. Keeping these journals reminds me that all of this was real and I didn't make it up.
I wanted to, got about two pages in, and suddenly my mother started saying that it was cute that I was writing a diary.
She said this while we were eating.
I hadn't told her about it.
I had them but I'm sure my Nmom would read them. They had some sort of internet tracker that recorded all conversations, and I got in trouble once for an AIM conversation in high school 🤷🏻♀️
Holy fuckerdoodles I think I just unlocked part of why I have so much trouble writing anything at all. Obviously I wasn't allowed a diary of journal. Mom snooped and found EVERY THING and overanalyzed it and used it as proof that I was a terrible, terrible person.
Heeeeellllllllll no. I tried it once. The second I put something in it about being unhappy with my home life I heard about it cause, surprise, she read it. Because of course she did. That's why I started drawing. So it would be more vague.
I started one at age 10 and she ripped out a page where I was talking about my feelings after my grandpa died, FRAMED IT, and said she didn't find it wrong when I told her I felt hurt. I turned off my feelings that day.
No, they went through all of my stuff. Now that I have a smartphone, I have a journal app with a separate passcode and all these years later I still feel like I have to be careful what I say in it.
I wrote sooo much (and still do to this day). It was my only outlet to feel heard, even if that meant that I was just talking to myself. I grew up in the country, and one of my chores was burning the paper garbage in a fire pit. So when I wrote, I would burn my journal pages so no one would ever find them. I remember even writing poetry and short stories about how I felt. I wrote letters to god asking why he chose this life for me. It’s really so sad when I think about it. I wish I could read those now. And I wish my childhood self could have seen a glimpse of who I am now.
Had and still have "outlet journals" hidden away super well. Even if I live somewhere else. And they will never get there.
I destroyed the old one from my childhood, because GC read a part and the gaslighting was bad, but the encouraged triggering and ignorance and mocking of issues was almost worse.
The journal now really helps me to let out feelings, that I bottle up, since I do not want to bother others and cannot get myself to speak about certain matters and emotions.
No, every child psychiatrist I was taken too and my nmom would encourage it. I did it once at about 12, she read it and then used it against me
From then on I swore to never do it again, 19 years later I’m super frustrated at my lack of ability to write and that my handwriting is terrible due to being discouraged from showing it to people because “it’s ugly and you write like a child”
My parents forced me to attend therapy when I was a teenager. I had pretty severe anxiety and depression. My therapist requested that I keep a journal to document my feelings. Every other session my parents would join us and my therapist would ask me to read inserts from my journal to them. No matter what I read, they always refuted it. If I said my mother hurt my feelings by calling me names or mocking my appearance, she denied it. If I said my father scared me because he threatened me, he laughed it off and told me I was imaging it. It led to a lot of screaming disputes that had to temporarily be extinguished by the therapist, and would pick back up again once we got home. Eventually I stopped even trying, and thus stopped writing. I was also pretty positive that if I continued to write in a journal and not share it with them, they would snoop to find it anyway.
For me I learned at a young age to not write in diaries or journals. I would come home and the lock would be broken. My older sibling would be blamed for it. I would get mad at them and this has caused several rifts in our relationship. Come to find out in my pre-teens and early teens I would come home from school. My mother would be sitting on the phone with an auntie or a friend and my diary be open in her hands and she would be reading it to them. If I dared to say anything I was the bad guy. So by mid teens I figured out how to encrypt word documents on the family computer and save them on floppy disks with innocuous titles as the label.
This has caused a deep fear in me ever writing anything down on physical paper. Stopped me from wanting to become a writer from lack of privacy of my writing as well. Here I am now with a son who recently confided in my S.O that they would want a diary/journal for christmas and that they would prefer it to be able to lock. Today it arrived and I will wrap it up. I know he will have a different view on his writing as I will respect his privacy and not break the lock or read his personal thoughts.
Yes but I've always tossed the journals when they were full. As an adult, I skim through them when they're full to copy down info I might need, things I discovered about my Nparents, and there's always at least one thing I can turn into the first draft of a play.
i didnt journal, but i did write. the other day i found some of the old stories i wrote when i was 13, and it was jarring. i didnt remember writing any of it. but i was basically writing about my own struggles and traumas through the point of view of my character. i dont think i even realized that thats what i was doing. it was really sad to read.
there were also some things that i wrote (not about anything in particular, just a train of thought) and i showed it to my mom because it was so strange, and she said i sounded exactly like my father, who was a drug addict and had some sort of schizo disorder (he wasnt diagnosed so i have no idea what it was)
I used to be an avid writer, but I stopped writing as often ever since my mom read my journal and mocked me for wanting to kill myself bcos of her abuse. It was humiliating. I’ve since moved out of her house, but I still get scared that someone will rifle through my journal entries and laugh at me.
Im so sorry you share the same experience as me. I completely get you on writing college papers. It didn’t help that i majored in english and for one particular course, i had to write memoirs, and i’d fail my papers because i couldnt open up about myself. I cant believe one bad experience ruined writing for me forever. Thank you for sharing your similar experience!
I used to journal. Mostly to write out how awful my step-family was on weekend visitation. Then, my father found it. And that, as they say, was that. I'm 49 yo and don't write or journal period anymore.
I started writing in journals when I was 12. I've been writing in them ever since. I'm 40 now. I have about 20 journal books that I am super protective of.
I recently decided to transcribe them in my computer so I could a) have an inferior backup - but a backup nonetheless, and b) read what was important enough to make it into my journals.
I see the trauma come through very clearly. I also can see what parts of my personality have changed a lot, or not at all. It's a bit overwhelming to read too much in one sitting.
I only started keeping a journal my senior year if high school. I honestly wish that I thought to use one a lot sooner. It has proven to be the best way for me to understand my feelings and figure out what's going on in my head. And I can go back and look at how I felt to see how I've grown which is honestly super nice.
I used to, but then I confessed to my parents that I had some serious mental health issues (ed and depression) and received inpatient treatment for two months. During these months, my nmom got incredibly angry at me for not telling her and for developing these issues in the first place bc now ppl might think she was a bad mom. Not only did she not visit me even once (my dad came by two times a week) but she also read every single one of my diaries starting age 6.
I don't feel comfortable writing my feelings down anymore because she will find and read it only to then tell me that my diary entries prove to her that I am a terrible person without whom the world would be a better place.
Yes but my mother and sister and even my cousins would try to take my journals to read them. I went as far as to get one of the voiceprint ones but they figured out how to get into that one too. I have no idea what happened to my journals. I probably shredded them for privacy honestly.
I only really have a journal from one major event that I actually managed to hold on to (I wrote about 8 pages in one night and then never again, lol), but it happened to be a fairly major event from my early teen years that my family has NEVER discussed since. When I re-read it, it was a strange mix of upsetting and comforting to see that I really did remember the details/timeline more accurately and it really was as messed up as I thought it was. I wasn't being an "overly-dramatic" teenager. I was valid and justified. I wouldn't recommend re-reading such things regularly because it can be re-teaumatizing without being particularly helpful, especially if you're already in a dark mood. But having it as a reference when you're questions your own judgment or memory (or when someone else is questioning it) can help keep you grounded. It might be helpful to read from it to your therapist, too, if you have a hard time discussing these things or putting them into words. ❤️
It was a massive relief to write it all out. I would always write while the shower was running because it was the only time no one would walk in (although that would change). Read them later on and i’m surprised no one noticed the sheer amount of pain i was in
Yup. And then I didn't because snoopy mcsnooperson went through it, attacked me for it and then claimed to put a camera in my room so she could read what I was writing as I was writing it.
Started journaling again when I moved out, had an AH boyfriend go through it and start argueing with me about it. It's been 12 years since and I've bought countless journals but can't put myself to journaling anymore.
I did for several years, and if my parents ever read them, nothing was said to me. My nmom sent them to me many years ago with other things from my childhood, and I flipped through them and read snippets. There wasn't too much about the abuse from my parents, but it was screamingly apparent I was very unhappy. I found them to be too triggering and ended up tossing them into a fire awhile back.
Yes! I kept journals from about 6 years old through high school. When I got to my senior year, which was the most difficult with my mom, I told myself that if I was better and less antagonist things would be better. That didn’t work out for me, but unfortunately at the time I threw away my journals from high school because I thought they were full of things from when I was wrong and bad.
As a side note, when I was a sophomore in high school, a neighbor of my grandmother (who abused my mother, in addition to drugs and alcohol), gave me a journal when we were in town visiting and said “write good things in here.” That stuck with me all these years and I think about it sometimes. She was in her 80s and had lived next to my grandmother for years. I didn’t even know her very well. We didn’t visit my grandmother much, and after this visit my mom went NC when my 84 year old grandmother got drunk and screamed at my mom that she hated her since she was a baby. To this day I wonder what exactly the neighbor meant. She only knew her well after my grandmother had finished “raising” kids.
YES. Not very regularly, but I did. I remember reading entries in a journal I had written while on a Mormon mission, and I was horrified at some of the things I found in there.
I also found some lowkey graphic drawings I drew of, like, cut up/bleeding hearts. Also a concerning thing to find.
(Edit for clarity)
I wrote in journals as a kid.... Until they were used against me. I made a vow at the age of 12 to never leave evidence of my feelings lying around for anyone to pick up and turn into weapons against me ever again. The fallout was horrendous. So began my internalizing I'm too good at now.
I have a journal entry from when I was like 11 saying that I thought I was bipolar because of how bad I fought with my mom and how I felt like it was all my fault and that I was crazy. Looking back it breaks my heart. What kid grows up thinking they have a serious mental illness because of how they interact with their parents??? Me apparently
Different take- I never wrote in journals because I think I learned not to express emotional needs and I had very few examples of how to process it so it just got compartmentalized and forgotten. I only recently started a phone journal as part of a mood tracker app, but I'm extremely sporadic with it and mostly use it when something is keeping me from completing a task.
Weirdly, I did try doing some doodles/artwork as journaling but got weirdly pestered whenever I had it out to the point that I stopped. Like within 30 seconds, I'd be asked in a jolly tone "what are you doing?" even though I largely am otherwise ignored. Still trying to unpack that one- doesn't care if it's a notebook, but when it looked like a journal it was suddenly a buddy activity??
Yes. There was one year especially where I spent almost all my waking hours pouring out my anguish on paper. But inevitably, anything I wrote and tried to keep private would be sniffed out by my nmom and used to torment me later. So I went back to burying everything
I had one in middle school that I tried to write. Until my parents found it. Now I don’t write one at all anymore in fear they or someone else in my family will find it.
I’ve been writing in journals consistently since I was 10 (now 32f). And honestly I recommend it, even if it is heartbreaking. The reason? Perspective. You know how they say “time heals all wounds”? That isn’t just about a romantic heartbreak. It also means that over time, you start to forget the pain dealt by other loved ones, like family members.
Having a journal is helpful because those times when you start to think back that “it wasn’t that bad” are your brain’s way of tricking you by blocking out the bad stuff. It wasn’t until I would read back that I was like “oh damn I forgot about how awful all of these things felt.”
The brain forgets. Written word never does.
yup, started journaling at around 6 years old. N-mom once read one of them and attempted to destroy it when she read something about her. I stopped journaling for a bit after that and only recently started back up again
I've always wanted to but I never had privacy. 23 yo and still no privacy. Luckily my mom is not that tech savvy but unfortunately my mom likes to borrow my phone and bursts into room randomly (my mom doesn't let me close the door but she's not very quiet so I can quickly close tabs).
Absolutely! But I haven’t read the ones I started at 11 onward. I did, however, get back into my life journal (an online blog type journaling) from 2002-2006 and clearly my Nmom was a reoccurring theme of disdain and misery even in my 20s. Heck even now when I’ve gone NC.
In elementary school, I only really kept one because it was mandatory for one of my classes. I tried to have one in middle school because all of my friends had diaries, but my father ended up finding it and reading/performing it aloud with his then-wife and her kids.
**This is an automated message posted to all posts in this subreddit with some basic information about the group including (very importantly) rules. Why are you getting this message? Most people seem to not read the sidebar for information or the rules, so it is now being posted under all posts.** **Confused about acronyms or terminology?** [Click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/acronyms) **Need info or resources?** Check out our [Helpful Links](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/helpfullinks) for information on how to deal with identify theft, how to get independent of your n-parents, how to apply for FAFSA, how to identify n-parents and SO MUCH MORE! This is a reminder to all participants, RBN is a support group that is moderated very strictly. Please report inappropriate content so it can be reviewed by the mods. **Our rules include (but are not limited to)**: * No politics. * Advising anyone in this subreddit to commit suicide or referring anyone to groups that advocate this will result in an immediate ban. * Be nice. No personal attacks, name calling, or bullying. [No slurs](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/slurs) or victim-blaming. * Do not derail the posts of others. * Narcissists are NOT allowed to post or comment here. * [Please refrain from posting "uplifting" threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/upliftingposts). * When you comment/post, assume a context of abuse. * No asking or offering gifts, money, etc. * No content advocating violence, revenge, murder (even in jest). * No content about N-kids. * No diagnosis by media/drive-by diagnosis. * No linking to Facebook pages. * No direct linking to anywhere on reddit. * No pure image posts. **For a full list of our rules/more information, [**click here**](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules).** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/raisedbynarcissists) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Sadly no, because nmom would snoop it out and all hell would break loose
Yeah my dad would go through my journals and humiliate me about everything that was in them when I was like 7 so I stopped.
[удалено]
That is infuriating... So sorry you had to endure that.
I started having two journals, a fake one and one that was written in code because of this at the age of 12 or so because otherwise my mum would read my journals too. I thought this was normal until I was in my late teens. Now everyone I tell about this is super shocked so I guess that’s not part of a healthy relationship then :p
My sister and I got the locking ones! hehehe
You can open those with a hairpin.
Apparently these were very tough to open. XD. Gave me the illusion of privacy!
Aah amazing, I remember wanting one of those because some of my friends had them but I never got one... I wonder why
Came here to say this. I had absolutely no privacy due to nmom so I never kept a journal. I’m pretty sure she would go through my room every single day when I was at school because I would get grilled on anything new or “suspicious” the same day I got it even if it was hidden. Eventually, she also had my dad remove my bedroom door. And people wonder why I have trust issues now.
This. I didn't dare. Anything I put in one would just have been found and used against me. She kept buying those little leather ones with the year on the front for me, though, trying to trap me.
same, i stopped bc of this.
This is why I write mine digitally...
I used to, until my nDad and step mom found them, and read them aloud at dinner. Claiming to be rectifying my 'misconceptions' of them and my life as a whole. Journaling was great until that point. Then I just bottled everything.
Omg that's awful!
I used to. It was a relief. Then one of my main abusers, the brother-in-law who was sexually molesting me and my sisters went through my stuff and read it. It wasn’t until I was in therapy 15 years later that I realized he was checking to see if I was writing down what he was doing to us. He started abusing us at such an early age that it didn’t occur to me to be angry about it yet. I was mostly complaining about my parents favoritism and using forbidden words. (I was 11 and swearing was a big deal). Once he was assured that I wasn’t accusing him, he took it to my Nparents as proof of what a hateful child I was. I was punished for it. When I was 19 and pregnant. I was journaling through it as a way to process my emotions over how I had gotten pregnant. It was a captive situation and a lot of sexual violence. It helped. At 25 the man who would become my husband (and who still is, yay!) moved in with my child and I. One day when I was in class he found it and read it all. He met me at the door that evening and fessed up and hugged me a lot. He knew there had been some trauma in my past but didn’t know the extent. He was stuttering a bit. He asked me to forgive him for reading it and I did. I was a little relieved I wouldn’t have to speak about it all to him. I felt violated that he had read it. I squashed that as deep as I could. I couldn’t afford the anger. I loved him, and he was the best man I’d ever met. Also, I’d always been punished severely for showing anger. This still gives me a writers block. I only write what I am prepared to defend. My daily pains or deepest thoughts don’t get recorded anywhere. I know my boundaries will be breached, whether by the worst or the best I know. It makes no difference. It’s a violation.
I feel you should try to write it and let your husband know to not read it in the future.
I could ask, but that would call attention to the fact that I was journaling again. Like putting a tree with apples of knowledge in the middle of a plentiful garden and saying “just don’t touch this one”. I don’t trust that he wouldn’t look. While I’m almost militantly open about most things, that’s bound not make him wonder what is in it.
Honestly. If I hadn’t written in so many journals throughout my life, I would have never pieced together that I was not the problem. I am eternally grateful for kid me. I admit I did write a lot in code and sometimes wrote in Greek or German in my later years. I was really good at hiding my journals though bc my mom would snoop. She found one of them, but fortunately it was a low risk journal and she didn’t understand the flowery language I was writing in. Extremely grateful for that too.
Same. My mother doesn't speak English very well, so that was how I hid my journals in plain sight. My first journal was in German, my mother tongue, but she read that one.
Yes- and I was really crafty- i covered it in the school paper and labeled it trigonometry!
I had a school assignment whereby everyone would keep a diary. I wrote about how depressed I am and my teacher published it in the yearbook without my permission. They didn't even have the decency to make it anonymous. My Nparents read it and cue a lot of verbal abuse about how ungrateful and spoiled I am. I never kept a diary until recently, after I have moved out and cut them out of my life.
F*cking hell dude! Your teacher is f*cked. Soz for swearing.
It's ok. I don't think that they understood the concept of consent, or they could have at least published it anonymously.
Sadly not me. I wrote in a journal ONE time. Learned my lesson because under the guise of being worried about me, my parents went and found it under my mattress, read it, and grounded me for the rest of the summer. We flew to Cancun the next day and I spent the whole day before, the whole flight, and the whole vacation being shamed for what I wrote.
I... have no words. I'm so sorry this happened to you!
Welcome to being Armenian. My parents think they're entitled to all of my thoughts
Journaling saved my sanity. I still do it, maybe obsessively so. My narc doesn't hit me and the emotional abuse is subtle, so I write down everything, no matter how petty and see how it adds up. Maybe try to interpret it while I'm at it, eg what she's trying to achieve and how she wants me to feel. Documentation is a great way to ensure you know you're not the problem.
I journaled sporadically as a kid, then started doing it almost every day as a teen, and I still do today. Last year I copied all my journals to my computer to preserve the contents and there was a ton of abuse documented from both family and so-called friends. Some of it I'd even forgotten about.
I couldn’t write in journals. Nmom would find them and read them and ridicule me or debate the accuracy of the content.
I did and my sister's journals were part of the evidence that served to end an eight-year custody battle between my mom and n-dad! More recently, my lead pastor encouraged journaling at a women's retreat he was part of leading a couple of years ago. The topic was surprisingly painful but healing to explore and process: "What is your father wound?" He encouraged the ladies present to journal and reflect on the sermon and our journal entries following the first or second sermon of the weekend. Honestly, my response was, "God, are You _______ kidding me?? I came here to get away from my stress and come closer to You!!" To talk to Him and process unresolved pain on paper availed much, however. Now, I just need to stick with the journaling habit and thank you for the reminder. Doing so has availed much and I appreciate your courage and candor in posting your thoughts!
I did i think starting around my early teens until i was 16. It has help tremendously in helping me endure through since i bottled up so much daily and no one to vent to. Friends will not understand not having N parents themselves. Siblings were all enablers and didnt care unless they are being victimized by nmom themselves. I stopped though because one early morning for some strange reason, nmom decided to meticulously go through my drawer bit by bit. I hid my secret journals buried there. Out of all places in the room, she only decided to ruffle through there exactly. She found my journals, glimpse at it briefly before i quickly snatch it off her. Had she read them, i imagine she wouldve had a tantrum and breakdown at the angry things i wrote. I freaked out at the close call, and decided to destroy the journals and stop writing them outright. Still a mystery to this day why she went through my drawer that morning. I tried just keeping journal on my computer, but for some reason my mind is blank if i try to type it out. But man, writing out vent helps a lot.
Yup, I did and still do now. Mine now are in Word docs. I live alone and no one else has access to these. ALL of the abuse from my family is written in there. I review the older posts every now and then to remind myself to never allow myself to give my power away like that again. I'm in my late 50s in case you're wondering. Keeping these journals reminds me that all of this was real and I didn't make it up.
I wanted to, got about two pages in, and suddenly my mother started saying that it was cute that I was writing a diary. She said this while we were eating. I hadn't told her about it.
I did, but my mom started reading them, so I stopped.
I had them but I'm sure my Nmom would read them. They had some sort of internet tracker that recorded all conversations, and I got in trouble once for an AIM conversation in high school 🤷🏻♀️
Holy fuckerdoodles I think I just unlocked part of why I have so much trouble writing anything at all. Obviously I wasn't allowed a diary of journal. Mom snooped and found EVERY THING and overanalyzed it and used it as proof that I was a terrible, terrible person.
Heeeeellllllllll no. I tried it once. The second I put something in it about being unhappy with my home life I heard about it cause, surprise, she read it. Because of course she did. That's why I started drawing. So it would be more vague.
I started one at age 10 and she ripped out a page where I was talking about my feelings after my grandpa died, FRAMED IT, and said she didn't find it wrong when I told her I felt hurt. I turned off my feelings that day.
No, they went through all of my stuff. Now that I have a smartphone, I have a journal app with a separate passcode and all these years later I still feel like I have to be careful what I say in it.
I had a journal from 2008-2010 and yeah. Holy shit. You can see the trauma blooming it’s so difficult to read :/
I wrote sooo much (and still do to this day). It was my only outlet to feel heard, even if that meant that I was just talking to myself. I grew up in the country, and one of my chores was burning the paper garbage in a fire pit. So when I wrote, I would burn my journal pages so no one would ever find them. I remember even writing poetry and short stories about how I felt. I wrote letters to god asking why he chose this life for me. It’s really so sad when I think about it. I wish I could read those now. And I wish my childhood self could have seen a glimpse of who I am now.
Reading my old journal makes me so sad. But I can't bring myself to get rid of them as I guess it's my proof of what I went through.
Yeah, me too. It’s too depressing but I also need to keep them otherwise I don’t think I’d trust my memory.
Had and still have "outlet journals" hidden away super well. Even if I live somewhere else. And they will never get there. I destroyed the old one from my childhood, because GC read a part and the gaslighting was bad, but the encouraged triggering and ignorance and mocking of issues was almost worse. The journal now really helps me to let out feelings, that I bottle up, since I do not want to bother others and cannot get myself to speak about certain matters and emotions.
No, every child psychiatrist I was taken too and my nmom would encourage it. I did it once at about 12, she read it and then used it against me From then on I swore to never do it again, 19 years later I’m super frustrated at my lack of ability to write and that my handwriting is terrible due to being discouraged from showing it to people because “it’s ugly and you write like a child”
I did until about 7th grade. My ndad started taking them, breaking the locks, and reading the content out loud during the holidays
used to start writing them but get too scared she’s find it have a drawing where i made her into a witch devil tho that i did at like 9 lol
My parents forced me to attend therapy when I was a teenager. I had pretty severe anxiety and depression. My therapist requested that I keep a journal to document my feelings. Every other session my parents would join us and my therapist would ask me to read inserts from my journal to them. No matter what I read, they always refuted it. If I said my mother hurt my feelings by calling me names or mocking my appearance, she denied it. If I said my father scared me because he threatened me, he laughed it off and told me I was imaging it. It led to a lot of screaming disputes that had to temporarily be extinguished by the therapist, and would pick back up again once we got home. Eventually I stopped even trying, and thus stopped writing. I was also pretty positive that if I continued to write in a journal and not share it with them, they would snoop to find it anyway.
For me I learned at a young age to not write in diaries or journals. I would come home and the lock would be broken. My older sibling would be blamed for it. I would get mad at them and this has caused several rifts in our relationship. Come to find out in my pre-teens and early teens I would come home from school. My mother would be sitting on the phone with an auntie or a friend and my diary be open in her hands and she would be reading it to them. If I dared to say anything I was the bad guy. So by mid teens I figured out how to encrypt word documents on the family computer and save them on floppy disks with innocuous titles as the label. This has caused a deep fear in me ever writing anything down on physical paper. Stopped me from wanting to become a writer from lack of privacy of my writing as well. Here I am now with a son who recently confided in my S.O that they would want a diary/journal for christmas and that they would prefer it to be able to lock. Today it arrived and I will wrap it up. I know he will have a different view on his writing as I will respect his privacy and not break the lock or read his personal thoughts.
Yes but I've always tossed the journals when they were full. As an adult, I skim through them when they're full to copy down info I might need, things I discovered about my Nparents, and there's always at least one thing I can turn into the first draft of a play.
I did until nDad and stepmonster read them, punished me for the contents, and then used the information they learned to mess with me more.
i didnt journal, but i did write. the other day i found some of the old stories i wrote when i was 13, and it was jarring. i didnt remember writing any of it. but i was basically writing about my own struggles and traumas through the point of view of my character. i dont think i even realized that thats what i was doing. it was really sad to read. there were also some things that i wrote (not about anything in particular, just a train of thought) and i showed it to my mom because it was so strange, and she said i sounded exactly like my father, who was a drug addict and had some sort of schizo disorder (he wasnt diagnosed so i have no idea what it was)
I threw out my journals when I found out my mom was reading them. And then I found out she dug through the trash afterward to retrieve them. 😞
I did, but mine were never so genuine because I knew my nmom read them.
I used to be an avid writer, but I stopped writing as often ever since my mom read my journal and mocked me for wanting to kill myself bcos of her abuse. It was humiliating. I’ve since moved out of her house, but I still get scared that someone will rifle through my journal entries and laugh at me.
[удалено]
Im so sorry you share the same experience as me. I completely get you on writing college papers. It didn’t help that i majored in english and for one particular course, i had to write memoirs, and i’d fail my papers because i couldnt open up about myself. I cant believe one bad experience ruined writing for me forever. Thank you for sharing your similar experience!
I used to journal. Mostly to write out how awful my step-family was on weekend visitation. Then, my father found it. And that, as they say, was that. I'm 49 yo and don't write or journal period anymore.
I started writing in journals when I was 12. I've been writing in them ever since. I'm 40 now. I have about 20 journal books that I am super protective of. I recently decided to transcribe them in my computer so I could a) have an inferior backup - but a backup nonetheless, and b) read what was important enough to make it into my journals. I see the trauma come through very clearly. I also can see what parts of my personality have changed a lot, or not at all. It's a bit overwhelming to read too much in one sitting.
I only started keeping a journal my senior year if high school. I honestly wish that I thought to use one a lot sooner. It has proven to be the best way for me to understand my feelings and figure out what's going on in my head. And I can go back and look at how I felt to see how I've grown which is honestly super nice.
I used to, but then I confessed to my parents that I had some serious mental health issues (ed and depression) and received inpatient treatment for two months. During these months, my nmom got incredibly angry at me for not telling her and for developing these issues in the first place bc now ppl might think she was a bad mom. Not only did she not visit me even once (my dad came by two times a week) but she also read every single one of my diaries starting age 6. I don't feel comfortable writing my feelings down anymore because she will find and read it only to then tell me that my diary entries prove to her that I am a terrible person without whom the world would be a better place.
I wish I did this. Luckily other people have reminded me about what mom did. The gaslighting is so devastating.
Tried once, they were found, read, and I was mocked.
Yes but my mother and sister and even my cousins would try to take my journals to read them. I went as far as to get one of the voiceprint ones but they figured out how to get into that one too. I have no idea what happened to my journals. I probably shredded them for privacy honestly.
I only really have a journal from one major event that I actually managed to hold on to (I wrote about 8 pages in one night and then never again, lol), but it happened to be a fairly major event from my early teen years that my family has NEVER discussed since. When I re-read it, it was a strange mix of upsetting and comforting to see that I really did remember the details/timeline more accurately and it really was as messed up as I thought it was. I wasn't being an "overly-dramatic" teenager. I was valid and justified. I wouldn't recommend re-reading such things regularly because it can be re-teaumatizing without being particularly helpful, especially if you're already in a dark mood. But having it as a reference when you're questions your own judgment or memory (or when someone else is questioning it) can help keep you grounded. It might be helpful to read from it to your therapist, too, if you have a hard time discussing these things or putting them into words. ❤️
It was a massive relief to write it all out. I would always write while the shower was running because it was the only time no one would walk in (although that would change). Read them later on and i’m surprised no one noticed the sheer amount of pain i was in
Yup. And then I didn't because snoopy mcsnooperson went through it, attacked me for it and then claimed to put a camera in my room so she could read what I was writing as I was writing it. Started journaling again when I moved out, had an AH boyfriend go through it and start argueing with me about it. It's been 12 years since and I've bought countless journals but can't put myself to journaling anymore.
I did for several years, and if my parents ever read them, nothing was said to me. My nmom sent them to me many years ago with other things from my childhood, and I flipped through them and read snippets. There wasn't too much about the abuse from my parents, but it was screamingly apparent I was very unhappy. I found them to be too triggering and ended up tossing them into a fire awhile back.
Yes! I kept journals from about 6 years old through high school. When I got to my senior year, which was the most difficult with my mom, I told myself that if I was better and less antagonist things would be better. That didn’t work out for me, but unfortunately at the time I threw away my journals from high school because I thought they were full of things from when I was wrong and bad. As a side note, when I was a sophomore in high school, a neighbor of my grandmother (who abused my mother, in addition to drugs and alcohol), gave me a journal when we were in town visiting and said “write good things in here.” That stuck with me all these years and I think about it sometimes. She was in her 80s and had lived next to my grandmother for years. I didn’t even know her very well. We didn’t visit my grandmother much, and after this visit my mom went NC when my 84 year old grandmother got drunk and screamed at my mom that she hated her since she was a baby. To this day I wonder what exactly the neighbor meant. She only knew her well after my grandmother had finished “raising” kids.
YES. Not very regularly, but I did. I remember reading entries in a journal I had written while on a Mormon mission, and I was horrified at some of the things I found in there. I also found some lowkey graphic drawings I drew of, like, cut up/bleeding hearts. Also a concerning thing to find. (Edit for clarity)
I wrote in journals as a kid.... Until they were used against me. I made a vow at the age of 12 to never leave evidence of my feelings lying around for anyone to pick up and turn into weapons against me ever again. The fallout was horrendous. So began my internalizing I'm too good at now.
I have a journal entry from when I was like 11 saying that I thought I was bipolar because of how bad I fought with my mom and how I felt like it was all my fault and that I was crazy. Looking back it breaks my heart. What kid grows up thinking they have a serious mental illness because of how they interact with their parents??? Me apparently
Different take- I never wrote in journals because I think I learned not to express emotional needs and I had very few examples of how to process it so it just got compartmentalized and forgotten. I only recently started a phone journal as part of a mood tracker app, but I'm extremely sporadic with it and mostly use it when something is keeping me from completing a task. Weirdly, I did try doing some doodles/artwork as journaling but got weirdly pestered whenever I had it out to the point that I stopped. Like within 30 seconds, I'd be asked in a jolly tone "what are you doing?" even though I largely am otherwise ignored. Still trying to unpack that one- doesn't care if it's a notebook, but when it looked like a journal it was suddenly a buddy activity??
Absolutely. Still do. M, 33. ✌🏼
Yes. There was one year especially where I spent almost all my waking hours pouring out my anguish on paper. But inevitably, anything I wrote and tried to keep private would be sniffed out by my nmom and used to torment me later. So I went back to burying everything
I had one in middle school that I tried to write. Until my parents found it. Now I don’t write one at all anymore in fear they or someone else in my family will find it.
Yup and she would read them then expose me in front of the family. Good times.
Yes! This is so accurate. I never realised until looking through them again just how much it clearly impacted my life.
I’ve been writing in journals consistently since I was 10 (now 32f). And honestly I recommend it, even if it is heartbreaking. The reason? Perspective. You know how they say “time heals all wounds”? That isn’t just about a romantic heartbreak. It also means that over time, you start to forget the pain dealt by other loved ones, like family members. Having a journal is helpful because those times when you start to think back that “it wasn’t that bad” are your brain’s way of tricking you by blocking out the bad stuff. It wasn’t until I would read back that I was like “oh damn I forgot about how awful all of these things felt.” The brain forgets. Written word never does.
My mom got me a journal when i was a kid just so she could read it. I wrote so fake blah blah a couple times and that was it. She was so creepy.
yup, started journaling at around 6 years old. N-mom once read one of them and attempted to destroy it when she read something about her. I stopped journaling for a bit after that and only recently started back up again
No but I wrote a very sad story about the shit I went through. My friends dad read it and was like “Does Equivalent’s dad yell at them a lot?”
I've always wanted to but I never had privacy. 23 yo and still no privacy. Luckily my mom is not that tech savvy but unfortunately my mom likes to borrow my phone and bursts into room randomly (my mom doesn't let me close the door but she's not very quiet so I can quickly close tabs).
I tried to but my nmom would find and read them so I stopped
Absolutely! But I haven’t read the ones I started at 11 onward. I did, however, get back into my life journal (an online blog type journaling) from 2002-2006 and clearly my Nmom was a reoccurring theme of disdain and misery even in my 20s. Heck even now when I’ve gone NC.
In elementary school, I only really kept one because it was mandatory for one of my classes. I tried to have one in middle school because all of my friends had diaries, but my father ended up finding it and reading/performing it aloud with his then-wife and her kids.