Hello to all. I’m new here but have a lifelong history of anxiety and depression. I didn’t actually know this until I was grown up, as I assumed all people felt the way I did (hypervigilent, anxious, not good enough, etc). It wasn’t until I was prescribed anti-depressant medication and felt, for the first time, that the heavy knot in my solar plexus was lifted, that I understood that my feelings weren’t shared by everyone who’d had a healthy emotional upbringing, and that I could feel different.
Short history: Parents who loathed each other, one a narcissist, the other a passive alcoholic. Took their loathing for each other out on the kids. We had enough to eat and were well-fed on a tiny budget (mother a wartime cook), we were clothed, but we were not loved or cherished. We had to read the emotional weather in the house in order to avoid angry and violent episodes as much as possible, but, sometimes (too often) they happened anyway. It was always our fault.
Two of my siblings subsequently suicided. Not something I’ve ever attempted myself, but for some of my younger years I lived recklessly in a way that basically indicated that if I died right then, it wasn’t a concern.
Now, I’m much older of course, I have grown-up kids and a life partner of over 26 years, and I would never do anything to cause my own death ... but I’m still not living. I’m going through the motions on a daily basis, feeling that each day is just, “another day down” and that if I didn’t wake up tomorrow that would be okay.
I have had excellent psychiatric therapy, and have a great ongoing relationship with my psychiatrist, but knowing that what happened wasn’t my fault, that my scrambled brain chemistry was begun before birth and entrenched in infancy and childhood, and that my family love me, isn’t enough.
I’m still lonely and self-defeating in many ways. I’m lonely and isolated. I’d like to discuss how other people live with this and work with it, because I’m sure many people here do. I’m going back to 6 months of weekly therapy starting in a couple of months, but I’d really like to chat with other people who “get it”.
