I (23M) grew up in an extremely abusive household. My older brother learned to imitate the violence and lack of remorse my father modeled, while I hid in my room for most of my childhood and slowly deprogrammed until I learned to trust safe people and assert my needs and boundaries. Now that I know what safe people are like, I also know what they absolutely fucking aren’t.
I think most people would consider my brother a psychopath. He beat his girlfriend’s cat to death, brandished a knife at my father in a screaming fit of rage for insulting him, strangled a bird and displayed its corpse hanging in a tree, fantasizes about mass murdering “liberals,” said without hesitation that he would kill me in a “civil war,” spoke extensively about his desire to break women down and control them, drives recklessly and amasses unpaid speeding tickets, and, most importantly to this discussion, insists that he will have to “take care of me” and “force me to live with him” after my father dies, because I will supposedly be too incompetent to take care of myself. He also has an extremely fragile ego, and any perceived slight or defiance can trigger a violent rage that he admits causes him to lose control of himself (hence the cat’s fate for “misbehaving”).
Suffice it to say, I don’t want to be kidnapped. None of the money or outside communication I have will do much good if he takes away my access to them. What can I realistically do if he makes me live in the middle of nowhere with no phone, no money, and no transportation? It may be a fate worse than death.
I’ve been in therapy for half a year and reached the point where I am no longer stuck in a perpetual freeze response and can assert my needs and boundaries. This caused subconscious shifts in my behavior that my narcissistic parents have reacted with hostility towards, calling me “crazy” or “aggressive” for asking to be treated with respect and standing my ground. My mother finally snapped and said she wouldn’t do anything for me anymore… I was frightened at first, but my life barely changed once she withdrew her support, because I was doing most things by myself already without realizing. I don’t feel so helpless and dependent anymore because now I know my family was bullshitting me the whole time, and now it’s even more clear that my brother has predatory intentions when he paints me as incapable of taking care of myself.
I’ve been working on a flexible plan to make a clean break from this situation. I can run away tomorrow and my brother won’t be able to find me. But there’s one problem that prevents me from truly disappearing: he has access to my full name, date of birth, and social security number, if not because he knows it, then because my mother will readily tell him.
Getting a job and a place to live can leave a paper trail that links my name and SSN to my new location, allowing me to be found no matter where I live in the U.S., and emigrating out of the country isn’t a realistic option. It’s also worth noting that my brother travels a lot and regularly takes road trips spanning several states, so it’s not like geographical distance will deter him.
Is self-defense going to have to be a part of the solution here? Or making it almost impossible for him to get away with whatever he might pull if I tell him no? I would really prefer a solution where I could just disappear off the map and live my life separately; I would hate for the situation to have to come to this.
It’s worth noting that I have not explored legal avenues yet because I don’t want my brother to be notified of any actions I take against him, which I fear will escalate the situation.
I expect that no matter what, I will have to make some difficult decisions here. I spend every day in constant anxiety so severe that I am afraid to get food or use the bathroom for fear of encountering my brother. But I have to face reality and accept that hiding in my room isn’t going to protect me from him. I think staying and trying to seek stable employment or education under such extreme threat is an unworkable solution.
I plan on visiting my local library soon, where I will be able to make phone calls without anyone in my family hearing.
Any ideas? I think having a trusted contact to stay with might be a decent temporary solution that will help me get my bearings, but I’m going to have to deal with the discoverability issues eventually. I would also need some way to find people I can trust in a limited time window, which seems inherently risky. But does that really compare to the risk of doing nothing? Staying at any shelter that will allow me to stay might also be a temporary solution, but given the finite number of shelters, I run the risk of being discovered eventually.
Bro your brother needs to be in a high security prison for real.
https://inteltechniques.com/blog/2024/08/08/extreme-privacy-5th-edition-now-available/ (there’s newer editions)
This person’s book can help. I’m sure the high seas have a free version if you can’t afford it
Your main concern are skiptracers. Here is a book how to go about it and avoid being found.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Disappear-Digital-Footprint-Without/dp/1599219778
I’m sure you will find a free version floating about somewhere on the array. ;)
Your folks seem extremely focused on their own lifestyle and only plan for you so you don’t interfere. Getting a huge fucking distance between you and them and leaving lots of frustrating false trails for them will probably help keep them away. Just make it a lot of work to find you and them getting to you.
Good luck my friend. :)
Contact your bank, phone provider see if they have additional security questions to access your account like a pin or passphrase. Freezing your credit score will also be a good idea.
You log every single time they interfere with your life, no matter how small, a phone call at odd hours, contacting you at a workplace, impersonating you for access to your bank or phone records. Then you try to get a no contact order from the courts.
Now that sounds simple, but I have no doubt it won’t be.
It’s simple, but not easy.
I’m simple, but I’m also easy.
Heeey
I’ve been NC since i was 17, 22 years ago. She has that info and has tried to find me. That info doesn’t help her, but social media does. Even if i don’t really use it, i have friends who do. Then again, those old connections either fade away over time or become close enough that they know the story so that nothing gets back to her.
My brother is far from redeemable but sounds like yours is worse. One benefit I’ve found is that if everyone sucks, you can just go NC from the whole group without guilt.
I’m very glad that you see the world as i see it, that there are good people as well as bad people, and we can prioritize how we spend our energy. The quality I needed most was resiliency, and it sounds like you’ve got it. You’ve got this.
I’m not even remotely an expert on any of this, but some thoughts:
Document all of this, and make sure thay documentation is securely stored somewhere where he can’t access it or destroy it, and be sure to keep backups.
I’d say this should be enough for a restraining order, but I believe you when you say that could provoke him, so I suppose prepare and protect the info you would need for a restraining order just in case it ever gets that bad.
I’d also gently suggest avoiding most social media (twitter, bluesky, facebook, instagram, tiktok) since that could be used to locate you, tho if you’re already on Lemmy I’m probably preaching to the choir on that point!
As for self defense, pepper spray is probably your best bet. If you can start taking some self defense classes as well, even better. A concealed pistol is also another option but that of course makes the risk of any potential encounter a lot more complicated and you’d really need to practice with it regularly, which gets expensive with ammo (on top of the actual gun, permit fees, holster, etc), not to mention the risks of merely having a gun in your home, but that’s of course only an informed decision you can make
Dude that guy is going to kill someone one day. He needs to be locked up for everyone elses safety.
They’ll just give him a job at ICE.
He is well qualified.
This is one of those cases, where, unless you are someone with issues of depression or things that would make it risky, I would encourage you to obtain a firearm and learn how to use it.
I would do the following:
- Move somewhere far away. A different region of the country entirely. Somewhere you have no previous connection to.
- Do not give your contact info to your family.
- When you’re leaving, but still within your home state, send certified letters to them informing them that you’re safe, are not in any danger, and are cutting off contact. Have the letter clearly state that you have no desire to be in communications with them, and that them finding you and coming to you will be treated as a hostile act. Be sure to cite all the reasons for going no contact in the letter (especially the animal abuse.)
- Obtain housing with a peephole or other method of looking through the door.
- If they show up at your door, call the police immediately. Do not talk with them.
- Obtain a firearm and learn how to use it. Make sure it’s something you can carry on your person.
- If they accost you in public and try to haul you off somewhere, put the psycho out of his misery. Do not brandish the weapon to “scare him away.” Do not draw your weapon unless you’re firing it.
If you take these steps, you are establishing a clear indelible paper trail that indicates you have zero desire to be in contact with your brother, and that your brother represents a direct threat to your physical safety. This is to protect you. If you do have to kill in self defense, you will be able to make a very strong case that you did so to protect yourself. You’ll have proof via certified letter that you wanted nothing to do with these people, and that your brother’s mere presence there implied hostility.
If you do have to kill to defend yourself, put the gun on the ground and walk away from it. Call the police and tell them you fired a gun in self defense, but that you are currently unarmed and no further threat is present. Give no other details they can hang you with. Just the barest facts. Then stand several hundred feet away from the weapon and wait for the police to arrive with your hands clearly visible. Do no talk to the police without an attorney. You should probably talk to an attorney in advance of this, just in case, so you actually have someone to call if this happens.
Do not give your contact info to your family.
I would argue to not give any info to ANYONE. Not family, not friends, not your boss, nothing. Abusive families can be manipulative and experts at putting pressure on others to get what they want.
When you’re leaving, but still within your home state, send certified letters to them informing them that you’re safe, are not in any danger, and are cutting off contact. Have the letter clearly state that you have no desire to be in communications with them, and that them finding you and coming to you will be treated as a hostile act. Be sure to cite all the reasons for going no contact in the letter (especially the animal abuse.)
I disagree. Certified letters wont do much of anything… I would suggest stopping on the way out of town by a local police office and tell them that you are escaping from an abusive and dangerous home life, that theres a strong chance they might try to report you missing, and you are here to put on the record that you are leaving for your safety, you are not missing, because they are likely to try to use the police to track you down. . . Assuming you can trust the local PD, and they have no connections to your family that would be useful for tracking you down.
Obtain a firearm and learn how to use it. Make sure it’s something you can carry on your person.
This has to be a major priority once he gets whereever he’s settling. Take classes, and go to the range regularly to get used to loading, handling, firing it, and the recoil and noise.
I would add one last thing.
Do nothing on your phone. You don’t know if tracking software or logging software is installed on it. Throw away your phone, and buy a new cheap PoS phone with a whole new number, from a completely different carrier than what you currently have. and do that while you are still in town, so they can’t use it to find out where you are, or get a general direction on where you’re heading.
The same could be said for your computer, too, but thats more easily reformated. you could even get an immutable OS setup so that all it takes is a reboot to restore the system and undo any tampering.
Assuming you are an adult and paying your own bills you cease talking to them and do not go to any venue that they may attend.
Also get as far away from them as you can.
As long as you’re not in the same city, they’re not going to know where you went if you don’t tell them. Leave, change your number, don’t post on social media. You will be shocked at how much instantly easier your life gets when you leave.
I’m concerned that my new address and workplace will appear on public records. I know that physically leaving will buy me some time, but I’m afraid of my brother using data brokering services, hiring private investigators, or potentially abusing the legal system to force me to appear in court with him. (He has a lot of disposable income.)
I believe you on the “life getting easier” part. Yesterday I wrote down everything about living with my family that stresses me out and came up with 183 unique things! I know that life without stable employment or housing will be rocky, but I don’t think it can be worse than this. I can’t wait to finalize my plan and get the fuck outta dodge!
I have “disappeared” myself, and I did it by keeping anything that has my address at an outdaed one, and handling all payments online with prepaid cards or stored value accounts.
When I run my name it comes up with an address from 25 years ago, which the data brokers still think I live at.
I don’t have home Internet, I use a repeater to aim at the store down the street and use their wifi, so no need to put my name ona bill. This is also helped with renting a room instead of an apartment as you pay a portion of the bill which is held in someone else’s name, not in your own.
That’s a major issue, as even when they say they don’t sell your data all of the utility and service companies have “Partners” who do sell it, and while there are supposed to be ways to avoid this they are often things you have to file for after you have an acount and the data has already been sold so preventing it from being handed off again si pointless since it is already in the pacakge their “partner” sells to brokers.
Thanks for the ideas!
What’s it like renting a room? Are there significant compromises or sacrifices you have to make compared to having an apartment?
That varies wildly, from absolute living hell to wonderful, I think the biggest issue I have with the spot I am in now is that it does not have a kitchen and to move to a spot that does would cost more than just eating prepared food from the deli or cafes daily.
As far as places I’ve lived in the past there have been issues from thieves sharing the home where you needed to lock down everything to a landlord who was absolutely insane and broke down a neighbor’s door with a hatchet…
But then crazy landlords show up anywhere, and are honestly easier to deal with than a property management group that automates everything.
a landlord who was absolutely insane and broke down a neighbor’s door with a hatchet…
But then crazy landlords show up anywhere
Erm, just want to go on the record to say this is an extreme and rare type of crazy landlord.
…I’m concerned that my new address and workplace will appear on public records…
Generally that info isn’t really easy to find if you aren’t a property owner. Renters don’t get listed as being renters as such… what gets people in databases is using online services most often tied to property taxes (which you’ll not be paying as a renter) and car registrations (if a loan has been taken out on the vehicle…) Where you work is only available if you make it so. No linkedin. No social media. Just put your head down and stay schtum about your new life.
If you really want to be invisible, you use the US Postal Service money orders to pay your bills and have a PO box for the return address. It’s an archaic paper system and it actually costs for someone to access it, and they would have to have the money order stub in their hot little hands for the Post Office to search for it to track what money order it was and who the money was sent to and what Post Office it came from. And that is all they will get… and as someone that paid for a search for a lost money order - it takes time because the Post Office moves at a snail’s pace.
Getting your online profile reduced by stepping into the slow lane and pivot to the cash economy puts you into a much more privacy oriented world.
The best resource on this front is Michael Bazzell’s Extreme Privacy Guide, written for dealing with exactly the sort of situation you’re facing.
Unironically, use DeleteMe or something similar.
They ain’t gonna 100% scrub you out of like, the NSA’s databases, but all those public databrokers, that you can pay $5 or w/e, to do a ‘background check’? Yeah, they’ll get you off 99% of those, with enough time.
(Now probably, such services themselves could be storing and then making available your data… but net net, to far less people, basically.)
Obv get a new phone number, new bank account. No corpo social media. 0. None. Other online presence? Never be too specific about personal details, trash accounts if you need to.
I… was homeless for years, lost everything, people probably think I’m dead.
Probably don’t emulate that precisely, lol, but uh eventually, try to get a new… every kind of traceable of linkable number, of any kind, basically.
That will work against basically everything short of them hiring a PI.
Psycopaths tend to be spur of the moment, not so great with consistent, long term sustained effort. Narcissists will mostly just be offended you’re no longer around to neg and bully, you’re beneath caring about.
To pre empt the ‘force you to appear in court’ thing, file a restraining or no contact order when you get to new place. Chances are a medium sized town/city will have some kind of pro bono / non profit legal assistance organization to help you with that, hear your concerns, recommend a specific course of action.
They may also be able to help with the ‘PI gets hired to find you scenario’, but that could be… well if no have no contact orders, theoretically that should, in most places, considerably frustrate any… attempted actual use of any knowledge a PI might gain.
Hakuso has very good advice for not leaving a transaction trail that can be followed… the internet thing they’re doing is probably technically illegal so maybe dont do that exactly lol… uh, if you can get a 5G based home internet router modem mabob, well those are literally overgrown phones, and their ips often register as being geolocated at a kind of 5g net center thats not actually that close to you. That and/or use a vpn, always, would be some probably more legal ways to confuse an attempt at finding you via the net, from everybody other than like, the NSA or whatever.
Most importantly…
Remember to breathe.
You got this, just stay cool, keep breathing.
Damn what a story. I can’t give you any advice here, but I wish you good luck and I hope that leaving your family will bring you some happiness you obviously deserve. Now I wouldn’t worry too much about being found if you don’t want to be found. Is there a specific reason your brother would try to find you? It seems like they’re not too fond of the way you’d like to live your life anyway.
Thank you! Honestly, this is the happiest moment of my life. My whole life was spent fantasizing about warmth and safety and feeling hopeless to ever reach it. Now I’m oscillating between deathly terror and boundless euphoria. I know this is the most dangerous and uncertain time of my life, but it’s my only bridge to freedom and happiness.
My older brother will try to find me because he has a god complex and believes he is entitled to control me and do whatever he wants to me without my consent. He literally told me to call him “God” and told me that his sperm is the source of his power (???). I’ve never met someone so deranged in my life. My favorite quote from him is “Everyone needs someone they can control,” because it’s such a dead giveaway for how he views everyone he interacts with. He’s telling me exactly who he is, and I should believe him. He also recounted the incident where he beat his girlfriend’s cat to death without any hesitation, emotion, or understanding of why it was morally wrong to kill animals. I think that convinced me he was a psychopath more than anything. How do you describe bludgeoning a poor defenseless animal to death in gory detail without flinching? I’m done pretending this guy isn’t totally fucked in the head.
He learned early on in my life that he can dominate me through sheer strength, since he was bigger and stronger than me, given he was 2 years older. When we were young, he was way bigger than me! It’s no wonder I was too terrified to ever say no to him. He learned that he had that kind of power over others and never learned to be kind or caring. When the world demanded that he act with any kind of consideration for others’ rights and feelings, he got pissed off and called them “liberals” and fantasized about killing them en masse. He told me the reason he hasn’t done anything to humans yet is because he doesn’t think he can get away with it. But I think I’m a bit different… I’m the original person he had power over, and if I disappear from right under his nose, the relationship that justified his entire identity is gone. I think he’ll become obsessed with getting that relationship back even if it has life-threatening consequences to avoid the nullification of the very core of his being.
At the end of the day, I think one or both of us is fucked. I just have to do everything I can to make sure it isn’t me.
You gotta live.
Be your own advocate for not being dead, lol.
Sucks, but impossible situations rarely have Disney endings irl.
Bro sounds like a proper fucking maniac, yikes.
Intentional violent animal abuse/murder is like, number one giant fucking red flag for ‘probable psycho killer’.
You are definitely correct to get as far as fucking possible from that.
As u/IWW4 sagely stated, get as far away from them as you can.
When you DO land somewhere else, and start with a new job and a bank account - firstly, find a single branch bank to use.
No large corporate bank.
When you open the account - do NOT - have it accessible online. NEVER make an online account for it. Have that noted ON the account so if your bank is discovered (this is why you use a small bank - it’s just harder for family to find…) no one can get into the account. This removes the possibility of it being accessed from afar, even if the person HAS your personal info. You do all your banking in person.
Secondly, pivot to using a secondary account at the bank, and that is what you tie a debit card to and you go in and top it off as you need. If you have credit, lock it down.
Get a new phone number and keep any pictures of yourself in that new location off the net. Consider also witholding where you are from family or friends that brother and parents may also know. Just make the cleanest of breaks and shut or lock down anything in your name that the relatives may try and access.
Good luck.
Nowadays I would also add the requirement to choose a place of residency that does not have Flock in the neighborhood, the amount of danger this thing creates is a completely new aspect to staying under the radar.
Thank you! I’ll keep this in mind.
Yeah, I’m definitely gonna have to cut off the whole family tree. Even if they weren’t in cahoots with my parents and brother, the generational trauma fucked them all up too, so they could certainly hurt more than they help anyway.
I already was a pretty anonymous person on the Internet. I never posted my face once, so at least I have that going for me.
What do you think about transferring from a big bank to a small one? Do I have to do that manually and smuggle a wad of $100 bills to transfer my emergency fund to the new bank? Even if I space out the deposits, I wonder if it would trigger investigations from the bank (to investigate the influx of cash) or IRS (to see if I have an income source I’m not claiming.)
You don’t need to worry about the IRS. You’re transferring money they already know about from one account to a new account. Do it all at once, through an intermediary they cannot access.
To add to what foodandart said, I would use a local credit Union over a local bank. A lot of people forget about credit unions altogether, but a lot of them offer all the same services, and often with better customer service.
As for transferring money from the old institution to the new one, maybe you could use an intermediary PayPal or Venmo account tied to your current number as an intermediary. Just make sure you close it down once the money has cleared to the new institution.
Depending on how much money you are transferring between one institution and another, if it’s under $10,000 it won’t trigger money laundering checks. But adding to that, trying to circumvent those checks by breaking the amount into multiple transactions (e.g. two transactions of $9,999) is not a good idea. I think they consider that ‘structuring’ or something.
I’ve transferred banks a few times. They will give you a bank cashier’s check that you give to the new bank. They usually ask why so they can try and keep you. Each time I’ve done so was because I was moving states and that bank did not operate where I was. It was hassle free.
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I don’t want to bash the USA, but they have such a weird relationship with their SSN. It seems like it acts as both an ID card and a debit card that anyone can use.
I’m in France and I never used my SSN during my whole life. And I could give it to you because it’s a useless random number.
so a smartphone is required to live in your country?
Right? Huge step down
In mine without a smartphone you need to do stuff in person more which probably opens you to more social engineering attacks
Everything about modern America is passing off the risk to someone else, usually the public. and privatizing everything so that corporations make money from what should be government run services. We do have services that does background checks and ask for last 5 address you’ve lived and various personal information, but its all being stored in some corporations database, not wrll protected, whrn it should be protected at all costs by government systems.
Cybersecurity is a joke, cooperation’s get hacked and its just a fun ‘oopsies’, our own government got hacked over 10 years ago releasing the uniquely identifying numbers (social security numbers) of government employees that had clearances and top secret information, and our government just said, ‘oops that sucks, here’s 1 year worth of identify theft/fraud monitoring’ notice I said monitoring they dont actually protect you against identify theft, the agency just tells you when they happen to notice your info is being used publicly.
All of this is by design so that someone’s company makes money through contracts, and no one has to spend more money on cyber security, or be at fault at the end of the day, and the public gets to pick up the pieces.
We could have a better system for uniquely identifying people, but there is an argument to be made, that in the hands of a tyrannical government, that system can get used against you very quickly, but low-and-behold, here we are with a tyrannical governement, with the fun added bonus of no way to actually protect yourself financially from fraud, identify theft, or tyrannical government.
Basically being American is every person for themselves, I absolutely fucking hate it.
Slight caveat regarding workplaces: it can be public knowledge, if you work for a state or town government, depending on the state. My state publishes government employee job titles and wages. It’s a transparency thing. There’s probably a “please don’t publish this, I have a stalker” opt-out somehow, but don’t quote me on it.
Victims of domestic violence can change their SSNs!
See this PDF from the social security administration to see if you meet the criteria, and what you need to do: New Social Security Numbers for Domestic Violence Victims
I’ve looked into this option a bit, and from what I’ve read, you need a ton of evidence to get an SSN change. Still, as another commenter said, it’s worth documenting everything. I already keep a journal about what I think and feel day-to-day, which includes my fear of my abusers and anything notable they do. I’ll make sure to gather evidence as part of my strategy.
It is definitely important to start the paper trail sooner than later. I hope you are able to get to a better place very soon.
I’d leave, go across the country, and never put my name on my door.
Good luck!
