Here's a LONG comment that describes how bipolar disorder and alcoholism surfaced and took over my family. Each of us coped in our own ways and each developed different categories of dysfunction to get through. 30 years later we each have miraculously found ways to still cope and even have happy marriages and families of our own...dysfunction still, but I think as positive as can be expected.
By age 16 I started to show signs of bipolar disorder and mood swings set in with a vengeance. Maybe triggered by stress in my family suddenly hitting the fan in a big way when my Dad was laid off in the 80's and alcoholism surfaced and took over for him. In our family we each found a way to cope in our own manner.
I withdrew into severe isolative depressions where I camped out on the sheltered, quiet oasis of the living room couch with long novels to distract myself from the scary severity of depressive mind-set and paralysis in seclusion. These episodes and my seclusion/isolation were interrupted by short manic episodes when I began to sneak out dressed in fishnet stockings and tight vinyl with packs of cigarettes and escape the shelter of suburbia to hang out in music clubs/bars/nightclubs to hear bands and meet strangers I probably should have avoided. I had no direct drug/ alcohol addiction of my own...just the nicotine of 2 packs of cigarettes a day during manic episodes. But I was addicted to the safety of isolation and sleeping and reading to escape reality.
My brother coped by smoking pot and later moving as far West as possible to California, then even a stint in Alaska.
My sister began to jog and exercise excessively and had a period of eating disorder experience (we're not sure though. Concerned sorority friends called my Mom and warned that bulimia might be in the picture).
My Mom pulled away and frigidity and perfectionism seemed her thing. She also frantically tried to find help for me and took time selflessly to meet with my psychiatrists and counselors in an effort to help me survive the manic depressive nightmare my illness thrust on us all.
My parents finally divorced by the time I was 25. Probably a positive solution instead of staying together.
Over the years I was medicated with a long long list of drugs of all classes that had no success, was hospitalized 3 times, and even had ECT in the late 80's. I later worked on the children's and adolescent in-patient units of the psych hospital where I'd been a patient. Loved that job. Saw a lot of patients whose own families manifested trauma in their personal ways.
Finally I married happily, to a supportive sweet guy, have been "successfuly" married 15 years so far, and finally took the risk of having my own child, now a 5 yr old daughter, who is such a gift to me. She is surviving seeing her mother (me) go through long months of ECT treatment.....sometimes 3 x a week during acute periods of depressive relapse. Severe depressions still plague me. We survive somehow. I hope to be able to find a job I can do despite cycling through hard-to-treat episodes.
This illness is intense. Alcoholism history in a family is intense. We all manage to get through somehow.
Sorry to go on so long. There's just so much there and so many individuals with their own styles of coping. Should write a book maybe! :)
There is a lot of research that indicates that trauma (particularly childhood trauma) makes up for most mental illness in our world. Some professionals claim up to 80%. This means that if our children had a better upbringing, free from trauma, we would have less mental illness. A genetic predisposition does not mean that a child will develop a mental illness, especially if she or he is not exposed to trauma or stress.
No doubt about our struggling to overcome our traumas. I have never gave up, I read everything that helps me understand how the brain works. I do wish Scientists could learn more about the brain and how we manage to "malfunction" after trauma for the rest of our lives.
I talk about patterns all the time, and the way to change them but, sometimes I wonder if there is a permanent solution to change our way to react to triggers that makes us go back to our old ways again.
In order to stop the same reaction to our triggers, we have to understand where they are, and stop giving people the power to control our emotions. We can choose if we want to succumb to our emotions or to ignore them and understand it's only noise.
But to do that we can't ever forget that we will not have a moment of peace because it's a fight to survive, not to be defeated. We all know that energy doesn't come easy for most of us and some days we just surrender because we are burnout, completely exhausted with no energy to even say a word.
I know that it's not only about the events that cause the trauma, but the patterns created in our mind that are hard to destroy.
I don't have the courage you guys have to speak out bout my childhood, I don't like to go back there, although they sure pop out in my mind every time an event triggers it, which is practically everyday.
I look at other people who say they have problems in their lives, and see that even though they say they are in stress or nervous or even insecure, it's nothing compare to the brutality of my nervous, stress and insecurity state in important events.
I feel like I am less then they are and incapable of having the success they have, even though their success isn't over the top, I always stay below that because my stress and anxiety are so incapacitating I can't even thing when I need to proof that I have the knowledge to be recognize as a good student, or a good worker, because even though I know my job well and what I have study, I freeze when I am in front of a judge or a boss.
So No wonder I feel different and inferior to those who, despite everything they always manage to stay focus at the moment of truth while I fall apart like I am drowning and I can't never stay above the water.
I feel like most of the time I am in a war zone and my life is at risk and I have no control over me or anything. I have a hard time making plans for my future because I always think I will die long before I can even make a move.
I could never see my future. I am one of those people who can't answer the question: "Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years from now?"
Maybe I pretend that I am alive, I think that inside I died a long time ago. I just want to believe that I can still have a normal life some day but the truth is, I don't understand what is living a normal life having this disorder...
I have just read these posts, and wanted everyone who wrote to know how much your stories and struggles have moved me. I have been struggling with similiar issues such as Bipolar 2 and Complex PTSD. I am estranged from my mother and one of my sisters. The physical, sexual and emotional abuse that occured in my family is generational. The physical and emotional abuse by my mother continued into adulthood. When I had a child, I was determined that she would never experience the knid of life that I had. I have been in therapy, finally finding an amazing therapist for several years. I was extremely fortunate to marry a man that taught me what healthy, safe and commited love was all about. My husband and his family have been incredibly supportive.
I would appreciate information about any ongoing forum where people who have experienced these issues share their stories, as well as their journey of healing.
I just really wanted to acknowledge the tremendous strength and courage it takes to share your stories and struggles to cope and heal. Thank you.
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what gets me is: everyone handles trauma differently and you have, for example, 3 people that will live through a trauma at the same time and yet will struggle differently... just as they will remember the events differently
1 will most likely take it inward, which will manifest itself outwardly in some fashion at some point down the road.. not necessarily immediately recognized at first by those surrounding them
whereas another will have all the emotion, psychological wounding, etc.. manifesting outwardly for all to see from the get go
whereas, another may just block out everything that happened, pretend to themselves that it never happened, and move forward with their lives never to speak or be affected by it again
In my situation: I am one of 3 and I'm the middle of the 3.
The other 2 "claim" to not be the least affected by how we all grew up, though in the same home and by the same adults influencing and raising us. We all 3 agree that the raising was "not right" and we all 3 agree that the adults, in today's society, would be hauled in for "child abuse"...
but whereas I have seemingly suffered the vast majority of the influencing all the days of my so called existence since... the other 2 "claim" to not and in fact, purport that they don't remember the events as harsh as I do.
They have moved forward, went to college, earned degrees and have the same careers since... me? no.
They've had no "need" for psychiatric assistance nor even therapy, for what went on as children... me? I've been in therapy since a pre-teen, on meds off and on, and even in 5 psych IPs for suicide and/or high mixed mania.
They are wired "correctly"...
I've been told by them that I'm "wired wrong and are hypersensitive. It's clouded your life since you were little and you just won't move away from all of it. It's your personality that is warped and broken and sick."
They, each, live manifestations that should they each were to sit in front of a qualified psychiatrist would likely be rocked to their self denying core... but then they'd most likely call it all "hog wash and so called and not valid" as they've called mine... while I'm sitting in the psych hospitals doped to the gills... they, holding their selves tight in a ball afraid they may "catch it".
My mother, on a lucid and clear evening some months before she sucumbed to the cancer eating her lungs and brain... looked at me, from across the dining room table within that old farmhouse that I'm looking at now... from the screened in porch on my double wide for which I sit at the moment. This was in 1999 and I had gone to visit with her... she had, on occasion, lucid and clear periods of time and days and evenings.
She said "Marie, you know I have little time left and when my mom and dad died there were things that I never got to ask them that I always wanted to know. I'll never know and it's always bothered me. So, is there something that you've always wanted to know?"
Me: I took a deep breath, tried to hold back tears... "Why did you hurt me growing up? Why did you treat me like you did? Why did you abuse us, me all those years?"
She: "I admit that I didn't raise you 3 girls right and I admit that I abused you all. I know that I hurt you in particular all those years. You were the most sensitive and fearful, the littlest and quietest."
She went on "What you don't understand is: I had to treat you like I did. I had to hurt you like I did and I had to do what I did by not showing any of you any love or care because if I showed any of you any, your Daddy and Henry would see my weakness and use it against me to hurt me and keep me down. They'd have hurt you and your sisters and I couldn't let that happen. They would've used you against me. So, to keep that from happening... I had to hurt you, I had to not love you, I had to not show any care for you. Don't you see? I was doing it for your own good, for our good."
It's now 2012, my mom long since passed... and to this day... that still haunts me. She did tell me, just before she died "you've always struggled to be a good little girl and it has costed you greatly." with tears in her eyes.
I told my 2 sisters - not too long ago.
Didn't affect them much at all and my older one's only response was "Well, you know Momma was crazy and not right anyway. She had Bipolar for much of our lives. I'd not give any of that any thought at all. I'm certainly not. I don't miss her much and quite honestly, she was a ugly bitchy woman who everyone hated. I'll certainly not give any of that any thought or let it keep me up at night. She was just crazy, you know that right?"
Yep... I'm just wired wrong, long clouded and affected by the abuse - neglect - sexual assault/molestation as a teenager, then as a wife - more abuse and neglect by husband of 20 years.... job hopper, mentally ill person... who tends to just want to scrub herself gone cause deep down I feel unworthy of love and care... only worthy of abuse and anger towards....
yep... just wired wrong and long clouded
my sisters are just fine, well adjusted, "normal" and "correctly wired".