terpin

Hey buddy, I can relate a little bit as my mother tried to kill me during a suicide bid when I was a kid. I know the PTSD and depression from surviving something like that can be terrifying and make you feel like you can't move past it, but keep working on it. It may take years but you WILL get to a point where it will just be something that happened to you but not be the thing that defines who you are as a person.

You've got so much life ahead of you, also that video of you playing Mortal Kombat was goddamn awesome. Stay strong!

I've learned over the years to sort out sympathy and empathy. My sister is a sex offender, a violent one, who had multiple victims starting from an early age. We grew up in a real hell and I can empathize with the things that may have led her to that point, but I can't sympathize with her because she chose to victimize others instead of getting help.

The thing that makes me the most crazy is she knew what she was doing was wrong, but she liked it so she did it anyway (she's said so on multiple occasions). Now she's been put away for almost a decade now and may not be released for another decade, but for me that's okay. That means she's inside getting mandatory treatment and not outside victimizing anybody, and sometimes that's the only thing we can hope for.

Honestly I believe in her case the treatment she received on probation only made her a more effective manipulator. She learned new techniques from other people in treatment (example: defeating a polygraph by "writing all the bad things on paper 20x the night before your scheduled test until it doesn't exist anymore") and learned how to appear empathetic to get people to trust her or believe her better by mirroring her therapist.

No, I didn't say that "no treatment" was the answer - but many studies have shown people like her don't benefit from talk therapy because it just helps them become better at manipulating. Many people do benefit from talk therapy (myself included) and other treatment, it can be a great help.

That being said, she's in a minority of a minority. Even if she wasn't being treated she still would pick up useful people skills from others and reappropriate them, it's what she's always done.

We call you guys sanitation engineers where I come from :D Keep up the great work man, without you guys we would be at the mercy of feral raccoons and ducks!