I'd rather you didn't tak a quote of mine that applied to some belongings being moved, and apply it to a legal issue. Can you not paraphrase?

Yeah, I couldn't be doing with that. That's really unhelpful, unpleasant behaviour. I'm sorry he is adding fuel.

Try putting your thoughts in a text or email? Then you can read through, edit, say what you need to say in fewer words? Guilt feelings when someone is angry (and you are not particularly at fault according to a reasonable other) are baggage from long ago. Good to work on that.

It's hard. You want to defend yourself and give context. That's normal! Many people would respond positively to context; some people find it invalidating. You have to know which type of person you have in front of you. Parenting young adults is hard, and some young adults are harder than others, that's for sure. Fwiw, at one stage I did pack up dd's Very Precious exam papers after years of asking and stored them in totes. I've given her a deadline to make them her responsibility and not mine. After that, the bin. So I am way meaner. There was a point at which I am no.longer responsible for dd's anxiety about letting go of 2017 exam papers, and that point was 'You have your own home and storage now'. None of this is objectively egregious, and nor is the packing up of your dd's things.

Less is more with kids like this. Don't get into it unless she is asking for clarification as she builds or rebuilds her narrative. Short and sweet. It really is better to 'leave it there'.

You didn't do anything wrong. Wrong, to me, would be, hey dd we put your stuff in a skip because you refused to deal with it. You weren't perfect in the way things unfolded. Oh well, that's life. Dd will have to learn that, just as every other human on the planet does. Yes, it sucks to have anxiety. But other people, priorities and needs exist and will, sometimes, impinge on you. OK.

Yeah, SIL needs to butt out, but explaining does feel like negation to highly sensitive people. One apology needed. I am sorry we moved your belongings without communicating with you about it. I understand that was rough for you. End of. Ideally then dd will apologize for her role in this, and you can all move on.

I have an anxiety disorder. So do my kids. We are au fait with anxiety here. Having an anxiety disorder means you need to work harder not to hold others hostage to it. It doesn't mean you can have consequence free anxiety meltdowns. Of course, all of us fail to manage our anxiety well sometimes, in which case we later apologize for the impact our meltdown had on others. Re the belongings, I think communication needs to be explicit as well as being validating. Hon, I know thinking about your belongings is triggering for you. It's been hard for you to pack. Leaving home can be such an emotional time. (validate) We will need the room for brother by month X. You are welcome to pack slowly during that time, or have someone else do it for you. After month X I will need to empty the room. I will store all your things in tubs in the garage for the rest of the year.(communicate) And then do the short version on repeat, as needed. It's hard, isn't it? I will store your things for you.

This. I'd suggest that DBT therapy could be useful, in terms of teaching distress tolerance skills.

I hear you. I've been good for a bit but the last few weeks have been rough. I don't know if I cope, so much as endure. I do notice that being outdoors is somewhat relieving. A family member and I have a dark joke about each day getting us closer to the Long Sleep. Some days I really need to keep that prospect in mind in order to keep going. Life is hard. It's especially hard if you have a brain with wonky wiring. Add family/health issues on top - it's just hard. It's reasonable that some days you just can't face dealing with all of it. I think the tricky thing is when you are functional but depressed. Of course you'll go to work. Everyone around you knows it too. There's not a lot of concern for the middle-aged mom sitting on the bed filled with dread at having to perform life again. I think it helps me to try to be the compassionate voice that you won't get otherwise. You were an amazing, dedicated mom. Be that mother to yourself. Yes, it's cheesy. I mean internal dialogue like this: (my own head right now) Hey, I know, it's hard. It's ok, my brave one. I'm here. It's all ok. I've got you. ~ Right, well I told you it was cheesy! But worth a try - internal dialogue is a powerful tool. It doesn't so much make you feel less exhausted or depressed, as it does provide inner support to deal with the difficult circumstance. In general, finding supportive alliances helps me get through the most - internally, in nature, with a hobby, with objects and texts. I honestly hope that things change radically for you soon, and that somehow the depression lifts, or at least remits. But if it doesn't, I hope you can find the tools that work for you to find a kind of healing process, however imperfect ❤️

The person who decided to go ahead and send his girls for the sleepover anyway was actually the BIL. You say no to the person currently taking the p*ss who is standing in front of you. No, BIL. Then BIL - a grown adult - can deal with his baby and his daughters and his wife. Ultimately, OP cannot control anything except her own boundaries, and how she parents when her children are with her. She can't change or control SIL, prevent a custody challenge, or keep her husband stable, and she especially can't do these things at the cost of her own mental health. Imo, the question for the OP is 'why did I say yes in the end, and can I reality test my reasons for saying yes?'

I don't feel a kinship with AH. I believe that men who admit, on tape, to headbutting their wives, have assaulted said wife. I believe, on the balance of probabilities, that the person in court next month for assault, may well have assaulted a partner previously. I believe it's very difficult to run a fair trial when one party is spamming the airwaves. I believe someone should take the ACLU to task for assuring AH the article they produced for her was litigation proof. Ugh. So done.

Is your mom posting in this thread? No. So why bring it up in relation to posters here ? I'll make the same offer to you as to Cat - if you want to know why doing that is a gut punch, I'm happy to talk in PM but no way anymore on this thread. It's OK that you think I have the wrong opinion. Maybe I do. It's not ok to be contribute, even unconsciously, to a narrative that only fake victims question the outcome, and only personality disordered people have a problem with the discussion around it, which is not, so far, with exceptions, been trauma or IPV informed. There's zero reason for the AH hate to slide off into me or anyone else posting in this thread, including Ordinary Shoes. Anyway, I am very much done now in this thread. It's been horrible, and I wish I'd avoided it.

Even if it was directed at just one poster, its just as gross to do it to someone else. I have that other poster on ignore most of the time, but just because we don't get along, is no reason to sit back and accept someone armchair diagnosing her with a personality disorder! She has never struck me as either a narcissist or someone with BPD.

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I guess I felt that the previous trial was the kind of context most serious observers of the trial would already have. I agree the jury can't be held responsible for evidence they didn't hear. One thing influencing my thoughts is that I've seen a sexual harassment defamation trial here where the defamed actor won his case, despite me being told at the time of the alleged incident that it had occured by someone working closely with him, and despite the actor having a documented history of the alleged behaviour. So I am already primed not to trust use of defamation claims.

I don't get a lot of things about the US trial.

How do you document verbal and emotional abuse? Threats and coercion? Over-riding of consent? I'm at the point where I'm thinking maybe the best thing to do is to provoke a verbal/emotional abuser into hitting you. But then, even that isn't enough. So I'm back at do nothing, keep quiet, wait it out. And agree when ppl tell you 'he's a wonderful guy.'

NM, gotta go to work.

And many don't see it that way, and think it does. I think they are naive to believe it won't affect truthful victims. Most truthful victims have far less evidence than AH brought to trial. Yes, there was audio in the UK trial of JD admitting the headbutting.

My preconceived notion is not that AH is 'good' but that there is accepted UK evidence that JD headbutted AH, kicked AH, and did not have his finger cut off by a thrown bottle. Men and boys can be victims. Boys of paternal, maternal and other abuse. Men are mostly victims of other men, but occasionally of women. In those cases, the abuse tends to be less coercive, less physically serious and less dangerous. Men who headbutt and kick their partners are not 'good' and men who 'joke' about f@cking their wife's burnt corpse are generally just a tad 'bad'. YMMV.

Anyway, I'm done with this now. My legal system does not allow a circus, and so I'll be trusting to the non-circus judgement. Final thought - what I'm wrong about is that this sets a precedent. It doesn't - and that's because abusers have always been able to silence victims with defamation threats. JD is in court again soon, related to an on-set assault in which he is alleged to be the aggressor. Evan Rachel Woods is, I hope, getting better legal rep than AH did. Let's hope the armchair psychiatrists and body language experts sit that one out, and that judge in that case treats law as law and not as nationwide entertainment.

Did you sequester yourself as you watched? No. Not did the jury. There is literally no way to parse the extent to which the jury (and general you) were impacted by the relentless campaign against AH. I prefer a written judgement where the judge lays out his thoughts to a tick box form.

Every mainstream media expert I've seen in the past 24 hours has said the jury clearly did not understand the law, gave an inconsistent verdict, and expected an appeal on that basis.