Depression Understood Forums

Long, boring, uneventful. Spend your time somewhere interesting.

I've had problems with anxiety as long as I can remember. My mother insisted on dressing me up in foofie outfits and presenting me to the world as something wonderful she had accomplished while inside I was dying and couldn't breathe when people looked at me. My shyness was debilitating. In church my mother was involved in everything that came along and they liked to recognize her for her accomplishments by admiring me. This meant if they needed someone to say a prayer they chose me, needed someone to "testify" they chose me. Needed someone to represent the church in some aspect they chose me. I wanted to DIE. I remember sitting in church class one day knowing they were going to choose someone to get up in front of everyone (about 40 other kids) and say a prayer. I couldn't breathe, I had sharp pains in my chest, I was nauseous and thought I was going to throw up and seriously thought I was going to pass out. After the class was over I begged my mother to take me to the doctor. I was around 7 or 8 at the time and my fear of needles was no where near as scary as the episode I had just endured. She flat out refused and told me there was nothing wrong with me.

The older I got the more judgemental and controlling she became. I remember dressing up for my senior prom and she had nothing nice to say. She critiqued my dress, my shoes, my hair and told me to be home at some unreasonable hour. A few months after that she tried to ground me for staying out too late. I was 17 at this time and I'd had enough. I ended up moving in with my dad and launching head first into drinking and staying out all night. Surprisingly I only had to go to school for six months after I was supposed to have graduated but DID get my diploma.

Somehow I ended up with my dad's credit card and blew $1500 in a weekend. I realize now it was to punish him for leaving me with my mother when he divorced her when I was 11. I found out just last year (34 years after the divorce) that he did try to get custody of me and also had restraining orders on my mother during the divorce proceedings. After I spent the money I moved back in with my mother and then out with some friends I met in a few short weeks. At the age of 18 she was still trying to control me by setting a curfew of 9pm. I'd just had enough. Again.

A few months later I met my first husband who I would have three children with. My depression increased with each year of a difficult marriage. I was expected to keep the house spotless. "My mother could keep a clean house with three kids, why can't you?" And I wasn't allowed to work UNLESS I was there to wake him up in the morning, iron his clothes, make his breakfast, get the kids up for school, dress them, feed them, take them to school, come home and clean, have his lunch ready when he came home from work for an hour, clean more after he left, pick the kids up from school, get homework done, make dinner, not say anything while he criticized the kids while we ate, bathe them, put them to bed, clean up after them, attend to his "needs" and be in bed when HE went to bed because he couldn't go to sleep alone. ALL of this while wanting to kill myself.

Ten years into the marriage I snapped. I told him one night that I was going to the hospital to get help or I was going to overdose the next day and he needed to be there to pick the kids up from school because I would be dead. He told me IT WAS ALL IN MY HEAD. Yes. Yes it was. I got in the car and left. The hospital sedated me and called the nearest mental hospital for an evaluation. I was released into my mother's custody on a dose of Paxil and instructed to see a counselor the next day. The counselor asked me if my kids were fed and clean and I told her yes. She announced that I was NOT suicidal. Apparently she'd never been even the least bit depressed and according to the rules and regulations of depression according to her I didn't have a problem. The only way around it that I could find was to have my mother ask her doctor for a prescription of Effexor. He was a quack and would prescribe anything. She had really good insurance and it cost me $20 a month to pick the pills up. We did this dance for about four years until my first husband passed away from cancer (that's another story) and I remarried a man that also has a history of depression and understands when I don't want to get out of bed, when I feel worthless, when I feel unmotivated and supports me any way he can.

I was married to my first husband for 13 years. I've been married to my second husband for 12 years. It's been a long depressing road but because of Effexor and Pristiq I've been able to cope.

That is without a doubt, one of the most difficult life story, that I have ever heard.

Let me tell you one, that's a true story from my history. Evidently, while my mother, her sister, and mother went out of the house for some event, someone threatened my grandfather or he discovered something truly terrifying. From that moment on, either because he was scared because of witnessing something or because of being threatened, he developed anxiety and did not trust himself to be alone, or for the person to have the opportunity to kill him. My mother, sister, and their mother had to arrange their lives so that someone would always be with him. To make it easier on his family, he worked two jobs. Money for his wife, should he die, being the only protection she had.

My grandma was scared too. Evidently, he confided in her after awhile. She went to work too. What people thought of as demeaning behavior was in actuality trying to protect others from sticking around so that they would not also be caught up in what was going on. People were dying, by the tens of thousands.

My parents grew up during WWII, the Great Depression, the concentration camps, the KKK, diphtheria, polio, scarlet fever, etc. Polio and Diptheria disabled and killed tens of thousands of children every summer. Not only were they under the threat of others, but every summer could have been their children's last. I cannot imagine how awful that time was, when funerals were probably a weekly event for children even in small towns. When they could lose their sight, their hearing and become sterile for life and outright die from hard measles, and many did.

I can tell you as a child of the Cold War Era and Vietnam, how horrific that was as it was being filmed for the five o'clock evening news to the people of the US. Kids saw it. Teens saw it. Above ground nuclear tests were shown too and announced. We had constant drills of 'duck and cover' in elementary school, until one day I pointed out that if the evaporation zone was 30 miles from ground zero and the liquidization zone was 100 miles, exactly what was a desk supposed to do? (We lived in a town 100 miles from one of the targeted cities).

I understand that your situation was horrific and difficult. But please understand that the times your mother and father grew up in was really horrific also. It really IS a better world. It really IS important that you realize that and forgive your mother who probably had a lot of anxiety and was sick herself and instead of going to the psychiatrist (because she would have been tremendously ostracized by the only support she felt she had, her church and could have lost custody) and instead try to deal with it by being over controlling. Your father obviously didn't give a damn about you if you had so much freedom that he risked your high school diploma. Your father was trying to take her kids from her. They would have looked for any excuse possibly to take you from her. And, you yourself have found out what bad mental health can be like, making things worse instead of better, and misjudging the situation.

For your OWN sake, you need to let go of what happened in your youth, realizing how scared your mother was, the lack of support she had, that possibly the only 'good reference' and witness defense she had was to be an outstanding member of the church she was in and to leave no room for question in your upbringing and what was going on.

Teachers kids and preacher's kids were in the same boat with you often. Many people had very controlling parents out of the FEAR of what was going on in their community, which often was very scary, or what was going on in the courtrooms.

While you are thinking about all the things that you didn't get to do, maybe you should also think of what didn't happen to you, like teen pregnancy before the age of 17, abortion, rape, drug overdoses, aids, other sexually transmitted diseases, being grabbed off the street and put into prostitution, childhood cancer etc, drive by shootings, etc. Maybe it will help put things in a better perspective.

I'm not saying you didn't suffer. But what I am saying is realize how much suffering your mom also endured.

That is without a doubt, one of the most difficult life story, that I have ever heard.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. But anytime I go into what happened with my mother (she was molested) or her mother (she was beaten on a daily basis) people honestly don't believe me. It's discouraging because I think "you know, I HONESTLY could NOT make this up!"

Let me tell you one, that's a true story from my history. Evidently, while my mother, her sister, and mother went out of the house for some event, someone threatened my grandfather or he discovered something truly terrifying. From that moment on, either because he was scared because of witnessing something or because of being threatened, he developed anxiety and did not trust himself to be alone, or for the person to have the opportunity to kill him. My mother, sister, and their mother had to arrange their lives so that someone would always be with him. To make it easier on his family, he worked two jobs. Money for his wife, should he die, being the only protection she had.

I wonder if maybe he was schizophrenic and may have figured that out while he was alone. Maybe an alien visitor (I'm not poking fun).

My grandma was scared too. Evidently, he confided in her after awhile. She went to work too. What people thought of as demeaning behavior was in actuality trying to protect others from sticking around so that they would not also be caught up in what was going on. People were dying, by the tens of thousands.

It's really not that hard to wander up on something you really don't need to or shouldn't know. Especially during those days. Did you ever find out what it was?

My parents grew up during WWII, the Great Depression, the concentration camps, the KKK, diphtheria, polio, scarlet fever, etc. Polio and Diptheria disabled and killed tens of thousands of children every summer. Not only were they under the threat of others, but every summer could have been their children's last. I cannot imagine how awful that time was, when funerals were probably a weekly event for children even in small towns. When they could lose their sight, their hearing and become sterile for life and outright die from hard measles, and many did.

When I was in school I asked my fraternal grandmother about the great depression and she said she was a young woman that lived at home with her parents. They lived on a farm with goats, cows, pigs and chickens and helped the neighbors any way they could but they, themselves never went hungry. That was a sheer miracle. Now that I look back my grandmother never really talked much about when she was a child. I know she had particular stories she liked to tell about their 365 laying hens and gathering their eggs every day. I can only imagine how long that took! Her mother had a set of twin, Bessie and Jessie. Jessie (the boy) died when he was about two. Bessie grew up and her sanity slipped away. Back then they told her father (my great grandfather) that she was "challenged" because she never started her period. There are stories about how she had a record player and could pick out any singer or song that you could name but she wouldn't (or couldn't) talk. I still wonder what would have caused that, but it was in the 1920's.

I can tell you as a child of the Cold War Era and Vietnam, how horrific that was as it was being filmed for the five o'clock evening news to the people of the US. Kids saw it. Teens saw it. Above ground nuclear tests were shown too and announced. We had constant drills of 'duck and cover' in elementary school, until one day I pointed out that if the evaporation zone was 30 miles from ground zero and the liquidization zone was 100 miles, exactly what was a desk supposed to do? (We lived in a town 100 miles from one of the targeted cities).

I was born in 1971 at the tail end of most of that.

I understand that your situation was horrific and difficult. But please understand that the times your mother and father grew up in was really horrific also.

My father was abused by his step mother. One of my aunts said once that he hadn't had polio, she said his step mother had told him to do something and he didn't do it quick enough for her liking so she hit him with a chain across the shoulder and down his back and it had bruised those muscles to the point of atrophy. I don't know if I believe that or not. He went to live with his grandparents who made sure he got medical treatment and rehab for it. His grandmother made him do his exercises every day to regain strength in his arm. He's always been able to use it to prop things or use his thumb for a hook to hold things but that's about it. He has no gripping strength in his hand. This is really the first time I've ever actually thought of how that was for him. Having that happen so young he had to go through school with that disability. He quit school in 8th grade and ran away from his parent's house again. At this point his mother had 6 or 7 other children and was single and working in bars to try to pay the rent. He worked tons of odd jobs and most of them were simply because someone thought he couldn't do a job (like shovelling corn inside a train car) or they felt sorry for him and gave him a chance. That's how he met my uncle who gave him a job as a mechanic in the gas station he owned and he ended up marrying his sister and had two boys and me. My mother was the only girl with three brother (one was her twin) and they all molested her. I didn't find this out until I was in my 20's. It really made everything fall into place because she hated men and didn't trust any of them. As a result she was married and divorced five times. Once her father came home and stood at the foot of the bed and cursed her and took a swing at my grandmother (his wife) they pushed him down on the bed and rolled him up in the blankets and beat him with a baseball bat. The next day he didn't have a clue what had happened. Half the time they were trying to hide from him and the other half he was in jail for spousal abuse but they could only hold him for 32 days, at which point he would get out of jail, work until he got paid, buy liquor, imbibe while he was tracking them down and the cycle started all over again. It only ended when he was drunk and stepped off the curb and was hit by a car.

It really IS a better world. It really IS important that you realize that and forgive your mother who probably had a lot of anxiety and was sick herself and instead of going to the psychiatrist (because she would have been tremendously ostracized by the only support she felt she had, her church and could have lost custody) and instead try to deal with it by being over controlling.

It is a better world. A more fair world (maybe). My mother tried to commit suicide once that she admitted to, but while I was talking to my daughter about it today (strangely enough) I remember my mother having multiple scars on the inside of her arms. Not the wide scars you see with attempted suicide, but the spidery scars like someone who cuts themselves. Forgiving my mother. That's something I've been wrestling with for years. Since she died actually. I remember something happening a few months after she died and I thought "oh lord mom's going to call and I'm going to have to explain this to her" and the sheer relief that washed over me when I realised she was gone and I didn't have to listen to her criticize me or my decisions was overwhelming. I hadn't realized until that point how I really felt about her. She was sick. I'll admit that. Part of me believes that she had to lay in the bed she made. My father took very good care of us when they were together. After the divorce she told me that he had gone out of town for a business meeting and the day after he got back the hotel called and asked for an address so they could mail the makeup bag to her that they had found in the room after my father checked out. So she immediately assumed he had an affair. After she had died my father told me about a time that he came home from work and she ran to the store and didn't come back. She left him with my brothers who were 10 and 2. He made due the best he could working a full time job and caring for them until he got a letter in the mail about how she had made a mistake by moving in with her boyfriend (she was still married to my father) and after consulting with my 10 year old brother (who was my father's STEP son) they decided they could get along without her and sent her a letter saying so. Two weeks later they came home to find her in the kitchen washing dishes like she had never left. I realize there are a LOT of stories and history there that would make the whole situation make more sense for me, but her being dead and my father being 83 and only wanting to talk about my nephew and not how I feel or think makes it difficult to put the pieces together. Not that they owe me that, because they don't.

Your father obviously didn't give a damn about you if you had so much freedom that he risked your high school diploma. Your father was trying to take her kids from her. They would have looked for any excuse possibly to take you from her. And, you yourself have found out what bad mental health can be like, making things worse instead of better, and misjudging the situation.

I really don't think he knew what to do with me. I lived with him and my step mother and she was more critical than my own mother. I avoided being there as much as I could which is why I stayed out so late (until I knew they were in bed) and came in drunk. I'm not justifying it. It was horrible behavior that I never should have exposed my father to, but I was lashing out the only way I knew how. He worshipped money, so to make him pay for leaving me with my mother when they divorced I wasted what was most precious to him. It didn't gain either of us anything. He learned not to trust me and I learned that he loved money more than his daughter. He was determined to make me pay the money back until my mother told him to forget about it or she would call her lawyer and tell him that my father hadn't been paying child support. He was SUPPOSED to pay my mother $800 a month but was only giving me $100 a month for gas and lunch money. He dropped it and I moved back home with my mother and grandmother.

For your OWN sake, you need to let go of what happened in your youth, realizing how scared your mother was, the lack of support she had, that possibly the only 'good reference' and witness defense she had was to be an outstanding member of the church she was in and to leave no room for question in your upbringing and what was going on.

You are absolutely right. I feel like I have this file folder of nonsense my mother caused and I'm trying to find the cabinet it belongs in. I think I would be more understanding and forgiving of her if it had been fallout from things that happened or accidents, but my mother caused problems ON PURPOSE. She tried hundreds of times to cause me and my first husband to fight, bringing over pictures of my ex-boyfriends that I dated in high school wanting to talk about how crazy I was about them then, or pages out of my journals that I wrote when I was younger that she had read through and specifically tore out pages of painful memories to bring up when she saw me. I finally shredded all my journals and photos from that time in my life to keep her from doing it. At the same time she was treating my brother and sister in law the same way. She took my brother's first wife's wedding rings to him and asked him if he remembered how much he loved her. How did she get the rings in the first place and what purpose did it serve for her to do that? The last straw for me was when (bear with me here) she bought my 2 year old son a vhs movie for easter one year. He thought it was the greatest. I told him that he needed to go potty and he put his movie on the coffee table and we went to the bathroom. When we came back my brother had scribbled on the cover of the movie with a marker and my son started crying. My mother said "if you don't quit acting like that I'll never buy you anything ever again. You should learn to take care of the things I get you." I got all my kids (the girls were 5 and and we left. I didn't talk to my mother for a few weeks after that. My husband encouraged me to talk to her about what had happened and clear it up so the kids could visit her. I went to her house and tried to talk to her about it. She denied it ever happened. Denied what she said. When she laughed at me because I was mad I was done with her. My brother tried to talk to her about it and he called me and said "trying to talk to that woman about what she's guilty of is like trying to back her into a corner in a round room. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN". This all goes back to her not liking men of ANY age. She constantly accused my son of things that his sisters had done and forcing him to clean messed they had made even when they were there telling her they had made the mess. For years I tried to figure it out. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. I tried to understand what the rationale was behind her blatant crappy treatment of my son but I just kept coming up empty handed. I think I'm at the end of feeling guilty because I can't find anything to miss about her. I can't find anything to remember to have liked about her. And I think I've dug that hole as deep as it will go.

Teachers kids and preacher's kids were in the same boat with you often. Many people had very controlling parents out of the FEAR of what was going on in their community, which often was very scary, or what was going on in the courtrooms.

I'm right with you there. I was mad because I could NEVER spend the night at a friend's house when I was growing up. I understand now it was because as far as she was concerned every man was a molester. I can thank her for that because I was never inappropriately handled. I even remember going out of town with my mother and her twin brother one weekend and she made me sleep between her and the wall. I was 18 and mad because I wanted to be close to the bathroom (IBS) and she told me I'd just have to crawl over her. I know why now. I guess that's a thing I can be thankful for.

While you are thinking about all the things that you didn't get to do, maybe you should also think of what didn't happen to you, like teen pregnancy before the age of 17, abortion, rape, drug overdoses, aids, other sexually transmitted diseases, being grabbed off the street and put into prostitution, childhood cancer etc, drive by shootings, etc. Maybe it will help put things in a better perspective.

You're absolutely right. I was spared so many things BECAUSE of her behavior that I think I haven't really looked at it as a benefit. Another note to touched on was childhood cancer. My brother was diagnosed with cancer when he was 3 and my father bailed on my mom. That's when my grandmother moved in and never moved out. 1964. My mother worked two jobs to try to pay the hospital bills so they would continue his treatment while my grandmother cared for him the best she could. I need to think more on what role that played in her personality (not as a point, but just something to ponder). I was born when my brother was 10 and I was the little girl my mother always wanted, which made me a target for my brother's frustration and anger about not being the golden cancer surviving child anymore. That's a WHOLE 'nuther story.

I'm not saying you didn't suffer. But what I am saying is realize how much suffering your mom also endured.
With love

I don't think you realize how much you have helped me. I really feel like I've been stuck in the puddle of quicksand lately and I've had problems with my health and emotions. I was sick for three weeks and on antibiotics for two weeks and I think that pretty much rendered my antidepressant useless. I feel like I have two tons of frustration to sift through but I found the light at the end of the tunnel today (I hope). I happened across a book about being tired all the time. In it is a chapter about low iodine. I'm on thyroid medicine for an underactive thyroid and I also have fibrous tissue in both breasts (MRIs once a year and mammograms opposite of that). I've been frustrated because WORDS ARE HARD!! Socks are foot mittens and my granddaughter is "Monkey" because I can't remember her name. I'm ONLY 45 for god's sake!!! Well low and behold low iodine can and will cause ALL these side effects. So tomorrow I'm off to the health food store to talk to the know-it-all behind the counter about it. My doctor asks me what I want a prescription for and doesn't want to do the legwork to find out what's really wrong, so I feel like maybe this is the step in the right direction that will get me going again. There is SO much more to this story, but this is a start. I can't sufficiently thank you for your time and attention and picking things out for me to think about and recognize. You have been a wonderful blessing.

I never thought you were making anything up, and thank you for saying that I'm helping. Nothing worse than hormonal crap for screwing up your life, but you can get it under control with some good help. I would try maybe a different endocrynologist for your thyroid. There are other ways besides iodine to treat that.

I have some good guesses about what was going on in my mother's parent's home, but that is all they are, guesses. And they have passed on now, so that situation doesn't exist anymore.

Mental illness and trauma tends to run in families, not so much the genetics (although in some cases that can happen), but the strength and stability mentally of the individual under extreme stress. This is why I urge you to realize that this is in the past. As for stressors in the present, every time she does something TODAY or in the future, ask yourself three questions.
1. Is it true?
2. Is it kind?
3. Is it necessary that I spend time on it or take this action?

If the answer is no to the first 1, ignore statement, dismiss it totally as if she never said it. 2. Things might be true, but is it kindness that it was said? If that is a blurry line to you, then I'd do a follow up question like, 'this is what I heard you say and to me it sounded like you meant it this way, is that how you meant it? 3. Is it necessary to take action if the answers to one and two are yes, then no it isn't. If the answer is yes to either one or two, or both, action might need to be taken in regards to yourself, and your family.

Two ways you can deal with this is the following, and maybe a bit of both.
1. If she is acting this way to everyone, have you thought of bringing in a therapist to visit and have her evaluate the situation. She could have something far wrong with her that is not being addressed.
2. See less of her until things get more under control for you. Maybe write letters on paper. Yeah ok, it's using paper, but you can buy recycled paper. And this way, you are not in the line of fire should she react badly to something you said. As you are writing, make sure to stick to the 1, 2, 3 rule yourself in what you say.
3. Pray for her or keep positive thoughts in mind for her to get better or to get some actual help.

It sounds like you are risking your own mental health in this situation, and from what you have said, genetically, you might not bear up under the additional stress well of a sick parent, especially when it seems like you ALSO don't know how to deal with the situation. So I would advise that maybe you should get some advice about that from a professional counselor. It's similar to why there is a reason for alanon as well as AA, because addiction affects the entire family.

I hope things get better for you.