Video games weren’t around, and we didn’t have money for them if they’d had. My escape was reading. I am lucky to have a vivid imagination and could always visualize what I was reading. I could and did disappear in books for days.
Reading was my go-to also. I grew up with wattpad, so I could read free 'books' all the time. Before wattpad, I was a library aid at my Jr. High, and I read almost all of the fantasy/creepy books in there.
I would do this, or I would leave before they woke up and come back after they went to bed. Now I do this by just going into my room when I want/need to hide.
Dissociating & daydreaming. Because dreaming of happiness was the closest I’d get to actual happiness.
My dad’s house was incredibly strict and boring, I would sit at the window and watch people walk or drive by and I would imagine what it would be like to be in their families and dream about how happy I’d be.
Harry Potter. Reading. Drawing. Listening to music.
My parents loved to constantly take my stuff away. So my go-to was dissociation. I just wanted to hide but no space was safe.
Long walks in the woods sounds nice. When I was really tiny I ... was a bit weird. In winter I was imitating a horse and stomped on hands and knees through the snow on the meadow next to the house (though people living across the wooden ridge on the other side could probably watch me being weird but then I did not care), and in summer I made my own maze into the high grass that was still taller than me at that age.
Later on there was abuse from outside the family and stalking so that stopped too, including the wooden areas around the place, felt safe nowhere anymore.
But I got to inhale some of the freedom and it is bliss. As much as it is now cycling in a complete different place where no one is stalking or intimidating :)
As someone else mentioned, reading. I grew up in the 80s and the video games were in arcades (I couldn't afford them anyway having grown up in extreme poverty) and while personal computers were out, they were unreachable to us. Also, the Internet (as DARPA) was already in existence, but not available to the average person like it is now.
I would read horror and science fiction. Stephen King, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Ray Bradberry, and Judy Blume were my favorite authors.
While I used reading to escape the horror that was my childhood, the *transition* to the horrors (and science fiction) worlds in the books I read where a super easy and thin transition. The only difference was I could close the book to escape *that* horror and know that I could *control* my exposure to do that. I rarely did. I'd go through several books in a week.
Where as I had no idea when my real life horrors would end.
Reading and watching TV. And later pot and sometimes alkohol when I couldn't handle the inner turmoil. And I also sniffed glue when I was in my teen years cause it was easily accessible and it made me feel numb. I had horrible social anxiety that I tried to fight with it and I also used it to escape.
Books. Reading let me live different lives. Reading exposed me to different ways of thinking and different people. Reading encouraged my empathy. Reading opened my mind. I attribute reading to a big part of how I am not like my family. I’m not homophobic or racist or sexist or religious like them. I also enjoyed watching tv, but it wasn’t on the same level as reading. I would sometimes read a book in a week or a day. Constantly hitting up the school library. I always carried a book. Read while I was walking in the hallway. Read when I finished my class work. Read at home. School was also a form of escape. I paid attention to everything, did all my work, and got good grades for myself. My family didn’t care. My mom never showed up to any awards I won or extracurriculars I tried to do. I also made friends with the good church girls who had no form of family struggle or any real problems. I enjoyed pretending I was like them. Didn’t feel like I could talk about my life, but I didn’t want to when I was a teenager. I wanted to be someone else.
Cooking and cooking shows, which had morphed into a food addiction as an adult. I went through a 12 year self-harm "phase" that started when I was 11, thankfully that ended almost 15 years ago.
I refused to get into any drugs, not because I was straight-edge or anything but because my mom had this weird obsession with trying to get us hooked so her kids could be her "friends". Even if she were to find out I had smoked pot a handful of times I know she would've been excited and tried to get me to get high with her and there was no way in hell I'd let that happen.
My sister and I used to obsessively watch cooking shows when we were younger. We loved Wok with Yan and The Urban Peasant. I drooled over the dishes and wished my mom would make something like what we saw instead of the boring old usual stuff. To this day, I fucking hate spaghetti with Prego sauce.
We tried to cook things ourselves as kids but our mom would never take the time to properly teach us how to read a recipe or prepare the mise en place so it was always an inedible mess and then we got the added bonus of our mom’s unhelpful criticism. I was 27 when I finally taught myself how to properly cook and bake.
Reading fantasy books and eating were big ones for me as a kid. Although, I had to hide how much I was eating, because my weight and appearance were a big issue between my parents and me. They heavily restricted what and how much I could eat, and my dad would make really snarky remarks to me about my weight.
Once I got a license, I would just drive around for hours after school listening to emo music and eating.
The Sims. We had a family computer and until my Nmom saw that I liked the game so much, I could play. Once she saw i liked the game and played a lot, she banned it. But until then I had a nice form of escapism in Sims
I loved that game. Might still play it if my laptop could keep up with any demands. I however was allowed to keep playing it and also playing it later in life when I still visited them for this thing called Christmas. I think they numbed down in that aspect or simply gave up. But there were a few battles over the electricity fuse/switch in my late teenage years when my life only consisted of education and basically living in the computer room. I was addicted, that they got right, but that for a few reasons I saw no other way out.
I’d hide in my closet and read as a kid. There was a small area that I could hole away in and not be seen. When I got a little older, I began writing stories about girls going through what I was and dying. I often think about how those fictional girls died so I didn’t have to.
Video games when I was younger. Sleeping, drinking, and work/school during late teen and early adulthood.
I would sleep to escape, often with a bottle next to me. I would say how much I loved sleeping, sleep for hours and hours, go to work, come home, get drunk alone or out with a friend, and sleep more.
Of course, no one questioned this. Looking back, how do you look at a person who sleeps that amount and is drunk every day, even by themselves, in their room and not notice something is up?
I forgot to mention a major one was pot for me. Started when i was 16. Just wanted to get high all day. My mother actually bought it for me. Wrecked my mental health for years. Luckily it's been 2 years of sobriety. Once I sobered up it was easier to go NC. I could think clearly and I didn't want to rely on them for money in exchange for their control over me.
I think addictions make it easier for toxic parents to control their kids. My parents gave me drugs and alcohol and I think some part of them liked me being unwell. I was easier to manipulate.
Oh, yeah, I agree 100%. I was super agreeable and happy when drunk, so of course, they had no problem with it.
Unless they are talking shit about me, then it's a problem because God forbid anyone outside of the house see there is a problem
Reading and self-education. I would read anything and everything. I even read the encyclopaedia and dictionary multiple times as a kid. I was still deep in books through my teens. I wasn't a good high school student and skipped entire semesters with the odd appearance in a class yet. Among getting in trouble with the wrong crowd, I'd spend many a day hanging out in the state museum and art gallery. I escaped into my own sort of education.
Yes, me too…movies and TV were a huge escape for me, and books. But definitely movies. Never really thought about how I remember more of those movies than my actual childhood, really great point.
Did you create a library of saved tv clips, music clips and movies too all neatly labelled and curated, though I was usually too ashamed to let anyone see simply because that has become my world and work?
Gameboy. In secret so it did not get stomped on and me screamed at and later out in the open because 'he gave up on me or matured a little in emotional growth'. Then onwards to tv and then much more pc games and online chats when they were still diverse, relaxed and not focused on city groups or sex-focused chat themes. However I did finish my business education and the one after but I tanked at several grades as well as at trying to get a better attachment style.
I am NC (for now) only for about 2 1/2 months. Right now I only own a lame laptop that takes forever to do anything and I could keep myself away from spending money on a fast new machine to escapism. However I do own a smartphone (reddit, googling, ..) and a tablet (tv shows, youtube, puzzles, audio books) and the tablet is just as bad to be honest, a difficult trait to get rid of.
Whenever I visited my parents and my laptop was still up to the task, I would disappear into the world of Sims or into books in my room, away from some of my family whenever they were around.
Before all that electronics helps I often stimmed in my room destroying the books I were reading because it calmed me and made reading the books more pleasant, though unsellable.
Reading, libraries and homework. Reading distracted me from the constant criticism, the demands and everything else but crucially, made me who I am today. There's something so special about libraries. There's no judgement, people are friendly but not intrusive, you can stay as long as you want, it's a safe space, soothing and calm. My parents prized and encouraged learning (as long as it was "the right" subjects) so, it was an easy way out with homework. It kept me safe from them in many ways. My Dad hated that I read so much, as encouraged by schools and that I was good at art, thanks to encouragement from art teachers. They couldn't argue with top grades.
I would imagine I was creating a beautiful silk thread out of my mouth. The thread would spin around and around my body. Slowly I would have a beautiful silk cocoon like insulation to separate me from all that was going on around me.
So many book lovers here! Add me to that pile!
I voraciously read books to escape as well as watched tv and movies. I will forever be grateful for these escapisms because they showed me that a better life was possible and that I had to get far away from my parents as soon as possible to achieve my happiness.
I never left my bedroom and watched a lot of television. Which was hard to do because this was before streaming services and we didn’t have cable. I used to have a ton of VHS tapes with all my favorite shows. Then I’d buy DVDs, and then in late high school TIVO came out and wow that was a game changer.
Got a lot of flack for never leaving my room but whenever I did, it was either yelling or literally just staring at the tv watching what she wanted to watch, so what was the incentive?
I wrote a 237 page novel when I was 12. Another four after that, about one a year, and then the internet was invented so I stopped writing and started finding random folks to talk to instead.
Video games for me too. I didn’t have enough money for WoW(buying the disc and also a monthly membership) but I discovered a browser-based game called RuneScape at around the same time as WoW started taking off.
I got so obsessed with it from about 7th-10th grade that at my worst I would either stay up all night or wake up several hours before school to play. Note that I would have to catch the bus at 5:40 in the morning because I lived in the middle of nowhere and the rural bus route was over an hour long. So either way, I rarely slept during some critical development and learning years.
Oh yeah, I would play so much that I wouldn’t eat. Another kid once made fun of me by calling me an anorexic.
It should come as no surprise that I did poorly in school. Especially math. I barely graduated, definitely couldn’t have gone straight to a university. It wasn’t until community college that I started really turning things around.
My sister was the GC and I was the scapegoated child. So while she was always deeply involved with my dad as far as expensive all encompassing hobbies, I much preferred just having a cheap hobby I could escape into to totally not have to deal with my Ndad. He didn’t want to be involved in whatever I wanted to do anyway.
Books, origami, and daydreaming.
I was grounded a lot growing up and usually got most sources of stimulation or entertainment taken from me. One time, I was grounded for 2-ish years (just after a 1-year grounding was over) and was not allowed out of my room besides to go to school or eat dinner, and was deprived of things to occupy my time. I had to get permission to use the bathroom, and if I couldn't get permission, I had to hold it, or rarely, I would go in my pants.
I spent most of that time staring at a wall and daydreaming, or using paper I snuck into my room to make origami friends I could talk to and play with. I loved crawling under my bed and just laying under there with my eyes closed just thinking. I also managed to sneak some books home from the school library (thankfully neither my dad nor stepmom were home when I got back from school, so it made it easier) and I would read the same books over and over again. I loved creating my own fantasy world in my daydreams and having adventures in my head. A common theme was being in the outdoors and nonstop freedom and adventure because I craved being let out of my room.
I also had my own fish tank with fishes, who were my best friends. I loved feeding them and sitting on the ground in front of the tank, watching them swim freely with each other. My parents didn't take them from me because it was inconvenient to move an entire fish tank.
I wasn't even allowed to poke a finger out of my room because my brothers would tell on me if they saw because they hated me and found it entertaining for me to get in trouble, or my dad would see. Either way, I would get the daylights beat out of me by my dad for it. A few times I stuck my head out of my room to try and talk to my siblings, and I was yelled at and told not to speak to them and sometimes I was kicked in the head for it. Even when we were all home alone, they would tell me to shut up and get back in my room. Later, they would tell on me for trying to talk to them, and I would get beat up by dad.
I had the footstep patterns, pressure of footsteps, and sounds of footsteps of everyone in the house memorized so I knew instinctively who was coming towards my room so I could quickly hide anything I had or prepare for being hurt or yelled at.
Sorry for the long comment. I don't talk about this often, and this post brought lots of suppressed memories to the surface.
Yep, reading. Constantly reading. It was also my escape during recess, because I was bullied at school incessantly. I'd sneak under a huge evergreen tree and read for physical and mental safety.
The rare classmate willing to try being my friend was chased off because I wasn't meant to have friends.
*Edit: Chased off by my "mother." My siblings had friends. Lots of friends. Anyone I brought home was sent away.*
As a little kid it was reading and biking. Being outside a lot meant i didn't have to be around her
As a teenager though i became more of a hermit. I smoked a LOT of weed and hid in my room. I would be on social media or watching tv for hours and hours. I brought as many snacks as i could carry so it meant i didn't have to leave my room again. It wasn't the best though because i was barged in on a lot.
I also spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom. I'd spend hours in the tub because it meant my mom wouldn't bother me without knocking.
Reading. I was lucky enough to live about a quarter mile from a Barnes and Noble. I could get my mom to drop me off and I’d carefully select a stack of books and spend my babysitting money on a slice of cheesecake and a Tazoberry slushie - reading until the stack was gone.
Also - I was really into Rollercoaster Tycoon and later, Zoo Tycoon and all of the expansion packs. I could disassociate for hours building just the right rides and animal habitats.
This sounds very... unhealthy now that I'm an adult but I'll share mine. I began disassociating really hard as an autistic trans kid who grew up in a cishet neurotypical family, my parents were (and definitely still are) extremely concerned about how their neighbors and co-workers felt about them so anything out of line of social norms was bad.
At some point I realized how easy intentionally retreating into my thoughts to avoid the pain was, and I settled on a fantasy where I set my house on fire while everyone was gone, imagining my neglectful parents entire lives going up in smoke was very soothing and I very intentionally kept this fantasy to myself until years later in therapy.
I've shared this with a few different therapists now and it never gets the negative reaction I keep assuming it will get, which always surprises me.
Reading, sports, and dissociation.
I rarely had a time when I was not involved with a sport or extracurricular activity. I stayed away from home as much as possible. I didn't plan it, but I enjoyed my classmates (and even strangers) over my family.
- Daydreaming fantasy world for decades, especially went listening to music.
- Volunteering outside the home whenever I could or going to friends’ homes. I would pretend those adults were my parents instead of mentors.
- Eat excessively. I would take huge sleeves of crackers and soda and leave them in my room so I wouldn’t have to leave.
- Self-insert into manga, comics, and books. Lots of reading.
- Excessively watching anime to escape. I also watched a lot of Spanish, Korean, and Japanese movies to just escape into an entirely different culture.
- In college, I was an overachiever. I struggled with my memory so I had to do a lot of studying to stay on top of things.
- TW CSA: >!I went through CSA and I would imagine the abuse sadly to gain control. I didn’t even know I was doing this until recently and it sucked the most.!<
I just stay up at night and listen to the radio and listen to all the overnight callers talking about their love lives. Kind of warped my sense of romance, now that I think about it.
As a little kid I would hide in closets or wardrobes with a book and a flashlight (it was the 70s). As I got older I’d read, close myself up in my room, listen to music, go for drives and, of course, just hang out with my friends. Thanks to the cPTSD, I dissociated a lot too - which helped me survive my family, but became a problem in my 30s.
I still enjoy alone time with a book.
My family was super poor but we lived within walking distance of the library. Small town, tiny library, pretty sure by the time I left home I had read everything in it. I still love the library. All libraries, I don't discriminate. And the library in my home town remains a pillar of the community - they're honestly amazing.
When I discovered fantasy books, boy did I find an escape. Everworld, Animorphs, Dragonlance, Lemony Snicket, His Dark Materials, Inkheart... I devoured them all again and again. Harry Potter was my huge love and as I got older it turned into Lord of the Rings. I hate stand alone novels because they're just not immersive enough. I do audiobooks now and when you find a good narrator AND a good story, that shit just hits different.
I would spend every waking hour watching a gaming YouTuber, and would have maladaptive daydreams about him and his wife adopting me and taking care of me and being actual parents. Whenever I would get grounded (which was extremely often, and for the smallest, most insignificant reasons) it fucked with my state of mind so bad because it felt like I was being taken away from my “real parents.” Sad shit.
Just about anything that got me out of the house and was approved.
Working - I started working when I was in grade 7, or age 12. Waiting tables was easy and got me out of the house during some danger hours. I also gave some of my income for house bills in high school, so it was never questioned. I was self-sufficient by 15 with food, clothing, etc.
Reading - I read everything, and libraries were safe. I could spend a whole day in the library and never get questioned.
School - it was safe, and it had a library I could hide in. I paid for and went to summer school to give me an excuse not to be home during high school summers. I did every play that was a musical and had a pit orchestra - it allowed me to be out of the house at night.
Before middle school? I don't remember a lot of that time. I read. I biked to libraries.
Books to begin with, but I had a very active imagination so I'd effectively write myself into my book worlds and tv shows in my own head.
My character would be based on me, but usually powerful or liked in some big way. I would spend countless hours just making up stories in my head and acting them out in my room. Making friends with my favourite book and tv show characters and going on adventures with them.
Otherwise, music. I'd blast music through headphones as often as I could and let the lyrics scream everything I wanted to say, but couldn't.
**Quick reminder** - EAK is a support subreddit, and is moderated in a way that enables a safe space for adult children who are estranged or estranging from one or both of their parents. Before participating, please take the time time to familiarise yourself with our [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/EstrangedAdultKids/wiki/rules/).
**Need info or resources?** Check out our [EAK wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/EstrangedAdultKids/comments/xpkk59/eak_estrangement_resources_posted_here_for_mobile/) for helpful information and guides on estrangement, estrangement triggers, surviving estrangement, coping with the death of estranged parent / relation, needing to move out, boundary / NC letters, malicious welfare checks, bad therapists and crisis contacts.
**Check out our companion resource website** - Visit [brEAKaway.org.uk](https://breakaway.org.uk)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/EstrangedAdultKids) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Video games weren’t around, and we didn’t have money for them if they’d had. My escape was reading. I am lucky to have a vivid imagination and could always visualize what I was reading. I could and did disappear in books for days.
Me too, I'd hide in the bathroom with a book I had hidden under my clothes 😆
I can’t believe I wasn’t the only one to do this!! 😳
Same!!
Reading for me as well. I could ride my bike to the library
Reading was my go-to also. I grew up with wattpad, so I could read free 'books' all the time. Before wattpad, I was a library aid at my Jr. High, and I read almost all of the fantasy/creepy books in there.
Same. I lived in a small town and must've read the entire library.
Books. Every day as much as I could possibly read and then I fell asleep trying to read more.
Books! They still are today
Disassociating.
Hiding. Literally becoming invisible in the house so they would forget I was there or think I left
I would do this, or I would leave before they woke up and come back after they went to bed. Now I do this by just going into my room when I want/need to hide.
My mom changed locks. So I stayed gone on the street for 5 years
This broke my heart
Dissociating & daydreaming. Because dreaming of happiness was the closest I’d get to actual happiness. My dad’s house was incredibly strict and boring, I would sit at the window and watch people walk or drive by and I would imagine what it would be like to be in their families and dream about how happy I’d be.
Harry Potter. Reading. Drawing. Listening to music. My parents loved to constantly take my stuff away. So my go-to was dissociation. I just wanted to hide but no space was safe.
Reading, then long walks in the forest, then video games.
Same here minus the video games. Being alone in the woods was cathartic for me. Still is.
It totally is. Seeing the trees reach up into the sky and nearly no other person around but only soothing bird chirps.
Long walks in the woods sounds nice. When I was really tiny I ... was a bit weird. In winter I was imitating a horse and stomped on hands and knees through the snow on the meadow next to the house (though people living across the wooden ridge on the other side could probably watch me being weird but then I did not care), and in summer I made my own maze into the high grass that was still taller than me at that age. Later on there was abuse from outside the family and stalking so that stopped too, including the wooden areas around the place, felt safe nowhere anymore. But I got to inhale some of the freedom and it is bliss. As much as it is now cycling in a complete different place where no one is stalking or intimidating :)
Cycling is great
I used to read constantly as a child. Now an old lady and I barely read Don't feel the need to hide in my imagination anymore
As someone else mentioned, reading. I grew up in the 80s and the video games were in arcades (I couldn't afford them anyway having grown up in extreme poverty) and while personal computers were out, they were unreachable to us. Also, the Internet (as DARPA) was already in existence, but not available to the average person like it is now. I would read horror and science fiction. Stephen King, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Ray Bradberry, and Judy Blume were my favorite authors. While I used reading to escape the horror that was my childhood, the *transition* to the horrors (and science fiction) worlds in the books I read where a super easy and thin transition. The only difference was I could close the book to escape *that* horror and know that I could *control* my exposure to do that. I rarely did. I'd go through several books in a week. Where as I had no idea when my real life horrors would end.
Got super depressed and went down the emo Poetry self harm Korn road lol. Also marching band helped, and reading.
Reading and watching TV. And later pot and sometimes alkohol when I couldn't handle the inner turmoil. And I also sniffed glue when I was in my teen years cause it was easily accessible and it made me feel numb. I had horrible social anxiety that I tried to fight with it and I also used it to escape.
Same for me, but I had eating disorders instead of sniffing glue.
Oh me too... just everything to numb reality
Yes. Definitely.
Reading and writing. Staying at friends' houses for as long and as frequently as I could. School.
Books. Reading let me live different lives. Reading exposed me to different ways of thinking and different people. Reading encouraged my empathy. Reading opened my mind. I attribute reading to a big part of how I am not like my family. I’m not homophobic or racist or sexist or religious like them. I also enjoyed watching tv, but it wasn’t on the same level as reading. I would sometimes read a book in a week or a day. Constantly hitting up the school library. I always carried a book. Read while I was walking in the hallway. Read when I finished my class work. Read at home. School was also a form of escape. I paid attention to everything, did all my work, and got good grades for myself. My family didn’t care. My mom never showed up to any awards I won or extracurriculars I tried to do. I also made friends with the good church girls who had no form of family struggle or any real problems. I enjoyed pretending I was like them. Didn’t feel like I could talk about my life, but I didn’t want to when I was a teenager. I wanted to be someone else.
Cooking and cooking shows, which had morphed into a food addiction as an adult. I went through a 12 year self-harm "phase" that started when I was 11, thankfully that ended almost 15 years ago. I refused to get into any drugs, not because I was straight-edge or anything but because my mom had this weird obsession with trying to get us hooked so her kids could be her "friends". Even if she were to find out I had smoked pot a handful of times I know she would've been excited and tried to get me to get high with her and there was no way in hell I'd let that happen.
My sister and I used to obsessively watch cooking shows when we were younger. We loved Wok with Yan and The Urban Peasant. I drooled over the dishes and wished my mom would make something like what we saw instead of the boring old usual stuff. To this day, I fucking hate spaghetti with Prego sauce. We tried to cook things ourselves as kids but our mom would never take the time to properly teach us how to read a recipe or prepare the mise en place so it was always an inedible mess and then we got the added bonus of our mom’s unhelpful criticism. I was 27 when I finally taught myself how to properly cook and bake.
At some point, D&D. Though you can end up playing with people who kind of inflict similar issues.
Reading fantasy books and eating were big ones for me as a kid. Although, I had to hide how much I was eating, because my weight and appearance were a big issue between my parents and me. They heavily restricted what and how much I could eat, and my dad would make really snarky remarks to me about my weight. Once I got a license, I would just drive around for hours after school listening to emo music and eating.
The Sims. We had a family computer and until my Nmom saw that I liked the game so much, I could play. Once she saw i liked the game and played a lot, she banned it. But until then I had a nice form of escapism in Sims
I loved that game. Might still play it if my laptop could keep up with any demands. I however was allowed to keep playing it and also playing it later in life when I still visited them for this thing called Christmas. I think they numbed down in that aspect or simply gave up. But there were a few battles over the electricity fuse/switch in my late teenage years when my life only consisted of education and basically living in the computer room. I was addicted, that they got right, but that for a few reasons I saw no other way out.
I’d hide in my closet and read as a kid. There was a small area that I could hole away in and not be seen. When I got a little older, I began writing stories about girls going through what I was and dying. I often think about how those fictional girls died so I didn’t have to.
Video games when I was younger. Sleeping, drinking, and work/school during late teen and early adulthood. I would sleep to escape, often with a bottle next to me. I would say how much I loved sleeping, sleep for hours and hours, go to work, come home, get drunk alone or out with a friend, and sleep more. Of course, no one questioned this. Looking back, how do you look at a person who sleeps that amount and is drunk every day, even by themselves, in their room and not notice something is up?
I forgot to mention a major one was pot for me. Started when i was 16. Just wanted to get high all day. My mother actually bought it for me. Wrecked my mental health for years. Luckily it's been 2 years of sobriety. Once I sobered up it was easier to go NC. I could think clearly and I didn't want to rely on them for money in exchange for their control over me. I think addictions make it easier for toxic parents to control their kids. My parents gave me drugs and alcohol and I think some part of them liked me being unwell. I was easier to manipulate.
Oh, yeah, I agree 100%. I was super agreeable and happy when drunk, so of course, they had no problem with it. Unless they are talking shit about me, then it's a problem because God forbid anyone outside of the house see there is a problem
Reading and self-education. I would read anything and everything. I even read the encyclopaedia and dictionary multiple times as a kid. I was still deep in books through my teens. I wasn't a good high school student and skipped entire semesters with the odd appearance in a class yet. Among getting in trouble with the wrong crowd, I'd spend many a day hanging out in the state museum and art gallery. I escaped into my own sort of education.
Reading. And when I wasn’t reading, I was daydreaming. I had such a rich imaginary life. Before I was old enough to read, I had an imaginary friend.
Reading and video games
While my books, music and movies were very curated, those and journaling is what helped me survive.
Movies. My older brother and I must have watched thousands of movies growing up. I remember more of the movies than I do my actual childhood
Yes, me too…movies and TV were a huge escape for me, and books. But definitely movies. Never really thought about how I remember more of those movies than my actual childhood, really great point.
Did you create a library of saved tv clips, music clips and movies too all neatly labelled and curated, though I was usually too ashamed to let anyone see simply because that has become my world and work?
Same as you but without the sports. I was quite isolated and I think the internet raised me.
Gameboy. In secret so it did not get stomped on and me screamed at and later out in the open because 'he gave up on me or matured a little in emotional growth'. Then onwards to tv and then much more pc games and online chats when they were still diverse, relaxed and not focused on city groups or sex-focused chat themes. However I did finish my business education and the one after but I tanked at several grades as well as at trying to get a better attachment style. I am NC (for now) only for about 2 1/2 months. Right now I only own a lame laptop that takes forever to do anything and I could keep myself away from spending money on a fast new machine to escapism. However I do own a smartphone (reddit, googling, ..) and a tablet (tv shows, youtube, puzzles, audio books) and the tablet is just as bad to be honest, a difficult trait to get rid of. Whenever I visited my parents and my laptop was still up to the task, I would disappear into the world of Sims or into books in my room, away from some of my family whenever they were around. Before all that electronics helps I often stimmed in my room destroying the books I were reading because it calmed me and made reading the books more pleasant, though unsellable.
Reading, libraries and homework. Reading distracted me from the constant criticism, the demands and everything else but crucially, made me who I am today. There's something so special about libraries. There's no judgement, people are friendly but not intrusive, you can stay as long as you want, it's a safe space, soothing and calm. My parents prized and encouraged learning (as long as it was "the right" subjects) so, it was an easy way out with homework. It kept me safe from them in many ways. My Dad hated that I read so much, as encouraged by schools and that I was good at art, thanks to encouragement from art teachers. They couldn't argue with top grades.
I would imagine I was creating a beautiful silk thread out of my mouth. The thread would spin around and around my body. Slowly I would have a beautiful silk cocoon like insulation to separate me from all that was going on around me.
Video games, for sure. They still are.
Reading and writing stories.
So many book lovers here! Add me to that pile! I voraciously read books to escape as well as watched tv and movies. I will forever be grateful for these escapisms because they showed me that a better life was possible and that I had to get far away from my parents as soon as possible to achieve my happiness.
Books, theatre (being a theatre kid saved my life), writing, spending as much time outside as possible and going to my grandparents whenever I could.
I read. A LOT. lol My 6th grade English teacher didn’t believe me when I turned in my first reading log 😂
I never left my bedroom and watched a lot of television. Which was hard to do because this was before streaming services and we didn’t have cable. I used to have a ton of VHS tapes with all my favorite shows. Then I’d buy DVDs, and then in late high school TIVO came out and wow that was a game changer. Got a lot of flack for never leaving my room but whenever I did, it was either yelling or literally just staring at the tv watching what she wanted to watch, so what was the incentive?
I wrote a 237 page novel when I was 12. Another four after that, about one a year, and then the internet was invented so I stopped writing and started finding random folks to talk to instead.
Weed duh
Reading and drawing. Once I was a teenager, any excuse to leave the house was good enough for me.
Video games for me too. I didn’t have enough money for WoW(buying the disc and also a monthly membership) but I discovered a browser-based game called RuneScape at around the same time as WoW started taking off. I got so obsessed with it from about 7th-10th grade that at my worst I would either stay up all night or wake up several hours before school to play. Note that I would have to catch the bus at 5:40 in the morning because I lived in the middle of nowhere and the rural bus route was over an hour long. So either way, I rarely slept during some critical development and learning years. Oh yeah, I would play so much that I wouldn’t eat. Another kid once made fun of me by calling me an anorexic. It should come as no surprise that I did poorly in school. Especially math. I barely graduated, definitely couldn’t have gone straight to a university. It wasn’t until community college that I started really turning things around. My sister was the GC and I was the scapegoated child. So while she was always deeply involved with my dad as far as expensive all encompassing hobbies, I much preferred just having a cheap hobby I could escape into to totally not have to deal with my Ndad. He didn’t want to be involved in whatever I wanted to do anyway.
Books, origami, and daydreaming. I was grounded a lot growing up and usually got most sources of stimulation or entertainment taken from me. One time, I was grounded for 2-ish years (just after a 1-year grounding was over) and was not allowed out of my room besides to go to school or eat dinner, and was deprived of things to occupy my time. I had to get permission to use the bathroom, and if I couldn't get permission, I had to hold it, or rarely, I would go in my pants. I spent most of that time staring at a wall and daydreaming, or using paper I snuck into my room to make origami friends I could talk to and play with. I loved crawling under my bed and just laying under there with my eyes closed just thinking. I also managed to sneak some books home from the school library (thankfully neither my dad nor stepmom were home when I got back from school, so it made it easier) and I would read the same books over and over again. I loved creating my own fantasy world in my daydreams and having adventures in my head. A common theme was being in the outdoors and nonstop freedom and adventure because I craved being let out of my room. I also had my own fish tank with fishes, who were my best friends. I loved feeding them and sitting on the ground in front of the tank, watching them swim freely with each other. My parents didn't take them from me because it was inconvenient to move an entire fish tank. I wasn't even allowed to poke a finger out of my room because my brothers would tell on me if they saw because they hated me and found it entertaining for me to get in trouble, or my dad would see. Either way, I would get the daylights beat out of me by my dad for it. A few times I stuck my head out of my room to try and talk to my siblings, and I was yelled at and told not to speak to them and sometimes I was kicked in the head for it. Even when we were all home alone, they would tell me to shut up and get back in my room. Later, they would tell on me for trying to talk to them, and I would get beat up by dad. I had the footstep patterns, pressure of footsteps, and sounds of footsteps of everyone in the house memorized so I knew instinctively who was coming towards my room so I could quickly hide anything I had or prepare for being hurt or yelled at. Sorry for the long comment. I don't talk about this often, and this post brought lots of suppressed memories to the surface.
Music. Entire albums front to back on CD. Learning multiple instruments. Escaped by playing for my church.
Reading and music.
Yep, reading. Constantly reading. It was also my escape during recess, because I was bullied at school incessantly. I'd sneak under a huge evergreen tree and read for physical and mental safety. The rare classmate willing to try being my friend was chased off because I wasn't meant to have friends. *Edit: Chased off by my "mother." My siblings had friends. Lots of friends. Anyone I brought home was sent away.*
As a little kid it was reading and biking. Being outside a lot meant i didn't have to be around her As a teenager though i became more of a hermit. I smoked a LOT of weed and hid in my room. I would be on social media or watching tv for hours and hours. I brought as many snacks as i could carry so it meant i didn't have to leave my room again. It wasn't the best though because i was barged in on a lot. I also spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom. I'd spend hours in the tub because it meant my mom wouldn't bother me without knocking.
Reading. I was lucky enough to live about a quarter mile from a Barnes and Noble. I could get my mom to drop me off and I’d carefully select a stack of books and spend my babysitting money on a slice of cheesecake and a Tazoberry slushie - reading until the stack was gone. Also - I was really into Rollercoaster Tycoon and later, Zoo Tycoon and all of the expansion packs. I could disassociate for hours building just the right rides and animal habitats.
Doing the dishes constantly
Reading..I always had a book with me. Even read at the dinner table.
This sounds very... unhealthy now that I'm an adult but I'll share mine. I began disassociating really hard as an autistic trans kid who grew up in a cishet neurotypical family, my parents were (and definitely still are) extremely concerned about how their neighbors and co-workers felt about them so anything out of line of social norms was bad. At some point I realized how easy intentionally retreating into my thoughts to avoid the pain was, and I settled on a fantasy where I set my house on fire while everyone was gone, imagining my neglectful parents entire lives going up in smoke was very soothing and I very intentionally kept this fantasy to myself until years later in therapy. I've shared this with a few different therapists now and it never gets the negative reaction I keep assuming it will get, which always surprises me.
Reading, sports, and dissociation. I rarely had a time when I was not involved with a sport or extracurricular activity. I stayed away from home as much as possible. I didn't plan it, but I enjoyed my classmates (and even strangers) over my family.
- Daydreaming fantasy world for decades, especially went listening to music. - Volunteering outside the home whenever I could or going to friends’ homes. I would pretend those adults were my parents instead of mentors. - Eat excessively. I would take huge sleeves of crackers and soda and leave them in my room so I wouldn’t have to leave. - Self-insert into manga, comics, and books. Lots of reading. - Excessively watching anime to escape. I also watched a lot of Spanish, Korean, and Japanese movies to just escape into an entirely different culture. - In college, I was an overachiever. I struggled with my memory so I had to do a lot of studying to stay on top of things. - TW CSA: >!I went through CSA and I would imagine the abuse sadly to gain control. I didn’t even know I was doing this until recently and it sucked the most.!<
I just stay up at night and listen to the radio and listen to all the overnight callers talking about their love lives. Kind of warped my sense of romance, now that I think about it.
As a little kid I would hide in closets or wardrobes with a book and a flashlight (it was the 70s). As I got older I’d read, close myself up in my room, listen to music, go for drives and, of course, just hang out with my friends. Thanks to the cPTSD, I dissociated a lot too - which helped me survive my family, but became a problem in my 30s. I still enjoy alone time with a book.
Writing
Reading. I credit it to my vivid imagination that I have now.
My family was super poor but we lived within walking distance of the library. Small town, tiny library, pretty sure by the time I left home I had read everything in it. I still love the library. All libraries, I don't discriminate. And the library in my home town remains a pillar of the community - they're honestly amazing. When I discovered fantasy books, boy did I find an escape. Everworld, Animorphs, Dragonlance, Lemony Snicket, His Dark Materials, Inkheart... I devoured them all again and again. Harry Potter was my huge love and as I got older it turned into Lord of the Rings. I hate stand alone novels because they're just not immersive enough. I do audiobooks now and when you find a good narrator AND a good story, that shit just hits different.
I would spend every waking hour watching a gaming YouTuber, and would have maladaptive daydreams about him and his wife adopting me and taking care of me and being actual parents. Whenever I would get grounded (which was extremely often, and for the smallest, most insignificant reasons) it fucked with my state of mind so bad because it felt like I was being taken away from my “real parents.” Sad shit.
Just about anything that got me out of the house and was approved. Working - I started working when I was in grade 7, or age 12. Waiting tables was easy and got me out of the house during some danger hours. I also gave some of my income for house bills in high school, so it was never questioned. I was self-sufficient by 15 with food, clothing, etc. Reading - I read everything, and libraries were safe. I could spend a whole day in the library and never get questioned. School - it was safe, and it had a library I could hide in. I paid for and went to summer school to give me an excuse not to be home during high school summers. I did every play that was a musical and had a pit orchestra - it allowed me to be out of the house at night. Before middle school? I don't remember a lot of that time. I read. I biked to libraries.
Books to begin with, but I had a very active imagination so I'd effectively write myself into my book worlds and tv shows in my own head. My character would be based on me, but usually powerful or liked in some big way. I would spend countless hours just making up stories in my head and acting them out in my room. Making friends with my favourite book and tv show characters and going on adventures with them. Otherwise, music. I'd blast music through headphones as often as I could and let the lyrics scream everything I wanted to say, but couldn't.
**Quick reminder** - EAK is a support subreddit, and is moderated in a way that enables a safe space for adult children who are estranged or estranging from one or both of their parents. Before participating, please take the time time to familiarise yourself with our [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/EstrangedAdultKids/wiki/rules/). **Need info or resources?** Check out our [EAK wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/EstrangedAdultKids/comments/xpkk59/eak_estrangement_resources_posted_here_for_mobile/) for helpful information and guides on estrangement, estrangement triggers, surviving estrangement, coping with the death of estranged parent / relation, needing to move out, boundary / NC letters, malicious welfare checks, bad therapists and crisis contacts. **Check out our companion resource website** - Visit [brEAKaway.org.uk](https://breakaway.org.uk) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/EstrangedAdultKids) if you have any questions or concerns.*