I am younger than eight when I first imagine my parents have been stolen. I am waiting in the back of a car, alone. My mother will have only left me for a minute. But when she returns, I am certain she has been killed and an imposter has taken her face.
For fear of being killed, I go along with the fiction that everything is fine. Eventually, the thought dissipates. But it returns every time I am left alone for a moment. One evening the pressure inside me spills over and I splurt it out in a blind rage. My parents shake their heads in disbelief, laugh, say I am tired, and send me to bed. I can’t remember thinking about it after that.
In the final weeks of the school term, my eldest daughter is exhausted and hollow. Getting ready for school each day is hell. She runs, hides and screams. We become certain we have struck her with a traumatic injury. We blame ourselves.
Her teacher says she’s having energy problems throughout the day. She’s tired all the time.
At bedtime she gets these waves of sadness, outside of her control and quick. A storm settles into her chest and she clings to us. We ask
What’s wrong?
What’s wrong?
What’s wrong?
I had the same conversation with two working mothers in the same week.
Their daughters are about nine.
They are worried about the world.
About how they are perceived.
About friends and enemies and school.
Oh God, both mothers tell me, I thought she would turn out different. But I can see it happening. She’s developing anxiety. Why did she have to turn out like me?
The Dads don’t talk that much.
I am teaching my undergraduate students about the performative nature of the body.
Meaning is inscribed upon the body by societal structures.
Bodies are disciplined by institutions.
Foucault drew a straight line between asylums, prisons, the army and schools.
All of them are designed to train bodies into ‘normal’ behaviour.
My daughter’s only been at school for twenty-four months. Her younger sister pelts around the backyard, naked and moving with the wind—the definition of wild.
The first thing the eldest does when she gets home from school is strip her uniform off and go out to the grass by herself. She is trying to remember something she’s forgetting.
I am thirty-six when I am studying for my Psychology Diploma, and I read about Capgras Syndrome, the belief that people around you are not who they say they are. In many versions of the delusion, patients insist those closest to them are imposters or aliens with malcontent.
It’s related to schizophrenia. Rarely diagnosed in kids.
I message my Dad about it. I ask about when I stopped crying when I got dropped off at school.
He can’t remember details.
I just remember you as heavy with the weight of the world on your shoulders. Trudging off to school each day.
Jesus, I reply.
Was I just born broken from the start?
“Motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be full human. It is the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which becomes the task - unrealizable, of course - of mothers to repair.
What are we doing to mothers when we expect them to carry the burden of everything that is hardest to contemplate about our society and ourselves? Mothers cannot help but be in touch with the most difficult aspects of any fully lived life. Why on earth should it fall to them to paint things bright and innocent and safe?”
from “Mothers: An Essay On Love and Cruelty” by Jacqueline Rose
The doctor says we should take her for a blood test. And she is excited by the nurses and the drama of it all. And when they put the needle in, I hold her tightly in my lap. They tell me to hold her down. She thinks it’s a hug. The pressure makes her feel safe. I am telling her to imagine a puppy—the soft feeling of its ears against her skin. I am thinking, please don’t be like me. Please see this world as a bright and wonderful place. Please see the sun. Please.
I was diagnosed with depression when I was eight years old.
By the time I got married, I’d done enough Cognitive Behavioural Therapy that I was convinced I could think my way out of any illness.
I was wrong. Some things are deeper than thoughts.
Like when my wife is gone late at night, and I am certain there’ll be a car crash, and I think about having to call her parents, and I make myself sick with worry.
I am sitting opposite AC Grayling at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. He’s one of the most influential philosophers of our time, and I’m interviewing him for a gathered audience.
Grayling is erudite, kind-hearted, and has a brain the size of a planet.
He, like the ancient Greeks before him, championed thought and rationality. We should think about how we want to spend our lives. Many of the world’s problems could be solved if people reacted with more forethought.
I am studying the foundations of psychology at the same time. Grayling’s view has a lot of weight when tied to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is the favoured frontline treatment approach from many psychologists, particularly in Australia. The evidence is overwhelming: it’s incredibly effective against mild to moderate depression and anxiety.
In CBT, you aim to change the cognitive behaviour, i.e.: the behaviour of your thoughts.
Simple.
A few months ago, I write a blog about ADD and ADHD diagnoses that make a lot of people angry. I ask about the value of diagnoses, particularly for children, and the freedom with which neurodivergent language has been adopted across social media. I published an addendum sharing some of the responses.
I talk about all of it with my therapist later. What precisely am I troubled by? Why does this cause such a big reaction in me?
Why, when flicking through the Diagnostic Statistics Manual that is used to diagnose mental disorders, do I want to yell in frustration?
No label will make you free. No label will describe all of you.
You can’t just think your way out of this shit.
Emotions and thoughts aren’t separate. Ever. Point to a person who thinks without feeling anything. That’s a fucking psychopath.
I don’t have death dreams when my wife is away anymore.
I don’t think about my children dying in car crashes.
Or what would happen if the house caught on fire?
I’ve done enough therapy and self-healing now (and am medicated) that that’s all vanished.
Except, that is, for the intrusive thoughts. They come a few times a day, like a tic, Fast and red. And I cringe.
ihatemyself iwanttodie
There is a shudder of shame up my spine.
I breathe.
And it goes.
Something is wrong with me. I’m thirty-six, and I can’t tell you what it is.
The blood test comes back pretty clear.
My daughter needs more B12.
Brilliant post. My eldest was almost 7 when he started telling me about the dreams he was having. The house was on fire and I was stuck inside. He was trying and trying to save me, but he couldn't, so instead he laid down in the fire with me. All I could think of was that I had done this. He had inherited my anxiety and depression, and I had doomed him to a life of agony and sadness. All because of my selfish desire to have a child. It's a horrible thing to have to deal with. But hopefully we, as adults who experienced the same thing, come from a more informed perspective than our parents did, and we're able to help our children navigate things a bit more clearly. You're doing a great job ❤️
I spent many, many years thinking my eldest had 'caught' my anxiety from me. So concerned by it that I moved away from my kids for a year. Needless to say, it didn't help.
I've learnt the complex and messy way that kids will be whoever they are and do whatever they do and there is only so much we can do.
But talking to them about what goes on with you helps- at their level- at least with mine who have a very complicated Mum (I now have an 8 yr old who knows psychological terms ).
And talking about how normal anxiety and fear is to development and brain leaps. That helps.
My 8 yr old currently runs screaming from the room at the thought of insects and asked me this morning if her Dad was really her Dad or a robot...
I used to think my parents had been taken away and replaced too and still feel often that I will lose those I love.
I came into the world broken, but i think the broken people make the world more interesting.
I have been smothered in CBT. Never found it helped me think myself out of feeling either...
But excellent fathering there- and good "self care".
I couldn't tell you what was wrong with me either but I know my labels and boxes.
Sorry...messy long comment...excellent post