Just Between You and ME

[morrigirl]

Okay, this entry is part of my big New Age self-discovery kick. This particular chapter started two or three days ago when I began writing about my mother in my SCN journal. After a lot of thinking I was able to trace most of my self-defeating habits and emotional instability back to the abuse she inflicted on me as a child. And I decided that the best place to begin any kind of personal exploration was with the analysis and reparation of my feelings about my Mom.

So today I went out and bought some books about recovering from childhood physical and verbal abuse. I sat down with one of them, read the first paragraph, and immediately began to tear up. It just sounded so familiar, and brought up a whole mess of unresolved feelings. I want so bad to comfort myself, but at the same time I'm really afraid to re-tread this ground. I don't want to relive the feelings of helplessness, worthlessness, and terror. But...God, it's funny. With my depression, I experience those feelings every single day, and while I don't necessarily LIKE them, I know how to deal with them. They are familiar. Maybe my depression is just one way I continue to torture myself, or to operate under my mother's principles.

In "Undoing Depression" the author points out that most of the time a severely depressed or mentally ill person exhibits their symptoms as a result of poor family dynamics. They become the embodiment of the family's problems and display those problems as psychiatric symptoms. I am difinitely that person in my family.

I remember that my mother was convinced I was depressed long before I admitted to it. For at least a year she screamed and ranted about how I was sick and needed help. She would literally drag me out of the house to therapist after therapist in an attempt to convince me that I was depressed. I didn't feel depressed though. I kept telling her I'd be happy if she would just stop treating me like shit, or better yet if she'd let me go live with my dad. But she told me my desire to leave her was just a symptom of my illness. She was the only one who could possibly know what was best for me since I was sick and couldn't make rational decisions.

I faught her so long on the issue because A) I didn't think there was anything wrong with me, and B) because it hurt too much to have her tell me day after day that there was something wrong with me. I mean, let's look at this: by telling me I was depressed she was essentially saying that there was something wrong that needed to be fixed. She was telling me I was defective, that I wasn't okay the way I was, that there was something in me that needed to be changed. Sound familiar? HOW many times have I written those very words about myself? Those are almost daily thoughts. Mom sure did a good job of carving those thoughts into my head, I now live my life as the person she always told me I was: a complete defective.

Comments

I know how you feel

[satinalien.livejournal.com]

Carla, I just wanted to let you know that I'm impressed and proud of all the work you're doing. My mother is also awful, along much the same lines as yours. I know how hard it is to confront these issues that you've had to look at all your life. It's an ugly, hard process, but bless you for taking that first step. I'm so very proud of how strong you're being. I know you may not always feel it, but it takes so much to even dare to try.