YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Where to start.

I'm filled with self-hatred and loathing. It gets to the point where I curse myself out, yell at myself, and try to cut or stab myself with whatever I have in my hand. Usually its nothing, a lot of the time I catch myself. But once I was holding a bread plate and another time it was a bar of soap. If things don't change it'll be a matter of time until its something sharp and I don't stop in time.

Up until recently I had a definitive narrative for how I wound up the way I am. I was born predisposed to mental illness. My parents had their own difficulties growing up and they did the best they could but there were deficiencies. I was bullied in grade school. The thing is I don't remember much before my last year in high school so I'm depending on second hand accounts for what things were like growing up. Those accounts themselves are pretty sparse, my sisters also don't remember much of their childhoods and my friends don't really go into details.

I'm seeing two therapists to work on my issues. I started seeing Ellyn for a reduced fee for a few years. When I started medicare my new GP suggested I see the clinics counselor, Yolanda. The two keep in touch and work on different things. Ellyn is working on emotional regulation, Yolanda is working on everything else.

Recently I asked my therapists how I wound up this way. The answer they both gave was child abuse, probably parental. I'm desperate to figure out what it could have been. I know there was yelling, that mom had breakdowns, that I was deaf a year or two. Was there also hitting? Degradation? I know my step-grandfather raped my mom and that I spent time with him. Could he have raped me too? As explanations go it'd be really convenient, but it's also something I would have told my parents about. According to Mom she started teaching us about bad touches etc. at an early age.

I don't feel comfortable asking my folks about this. I moved back in with my parents after a brief stint in grad school where I had a mental breakdown. Mom has a lot of health issues, and, well, it's complicated.

Does it even matter? Does the exact cause even change the treatment any? Why do I want to turn this into jokes? And is anyone else in the same boat when it comes to not knowing how they wound up, well, broken?

I love your compassion for your mother. Give some of that to yourself.
I hope you can find someone to trust.

I think our parents affect us more than we realize, even if they're good people for the most part. I find a lot of people, including myself, say things like "My parents were great except...and then there was....but it was only a few times..." When I was working with a therapist, I had always thought that my social anxiety was due to being bullied in middle school, and having 2 lifelong friends suddenly cut me off without explanation, and while those certainly weren't great experiences, my issues seem to be more about my mom than anything else. There was yelling, some controlling behavior, playing the victim, getting mad at me for no reason, and not speaking to me for days. But for the most part, both my parents are loving and supportive...hard to reconcile all that sometimes.

Anyway, that was a roundabout way of saying that even if you feel like your mom wasn't that bad, the yelling and the breakdowns could have affected you a lot more than you think. We tend to brush those things aside. Of course it is also possible that something else did happen to you, and you've blocked it out.

I think also sometimes, at least for me, we want to find something to blame, something we can pinpoint and go "There! That's what happened, that's the reason!" Because we want to make sense of it, we want an explanation so we can be mad at something/someone in particular. Because if we can't pinpoint a reason, then who do we blame but ourselves?

I'm not sure how much it matters, having a reason. I guess if you can identify some traumatic moments, it might help to work through them, which can help. I'm still not sure exactly what "broke" me...it was probably a combination of factors. I'm not sure who or what to blame, if there is anything in particular to blame. So I understand what you mean.