By the time they hit 40 most people will have their lives figured out and be well on the way to, if not at the top, of their chosen career. Or they will at least have a job that they enjoy and which allows them to live a happy family life. There may even be the fleeting thought of retirement, no doubt provisions having already been made in that regard.
I'm a bit different; I have no job, no career and absolutely no real clue what I want to do with the rest of my life. The difficult thing I have to fight at the moment is the thoughts that there is no point in even trying because it is too late, my life is already over. My depression and anxiety will throw a million different reasons at me to do nothing but sit and wallow, but for now I don't want to think about those. I want to talk about how I got here and how sympathy is probably the worst thing you can give someone like me.
My childhood was an absolute mess. There was bullying, there was fear, there was loneliness both at home and in school. If I had to describe my life until my teens in one word it would be; alone. By far the biggest cause of all of this was the continual emotional abuse I received at the hands of my parents. It was unrelenting, a never-ending life of nonsense that is actually difficult to put into words. Not because of any emotional reason or that I have forgotten about it, I have cried enough in therapy to cause floods like we have seen in the last few days, but because it was such a jumbled mess of anger, abuse, emotional blackmail and whatever else you can think of thrown into the mix. From the outside it looked like an ideal world, as most abusive households do, but living through it was hell. And now trying to process it all and restart my life in a normal manner is hell again.
But the purpose of this post is not to regale you with tales of horror, it is to try to explain to you how dealing with someone like me by offering sympathy instead of empathy will do nothing but lead me further down the hole of self-pitying victimhood.
As simply as I can put it, if I were to sit down with you and discuss all the bullshit my parents inflicted on me there are two simple roads you can take (assuming you don't just run away, which would be understandable), one of sympathy and one of empathy. Sympathy will probably lead to a long conversation of how horrible my parents were and that they should be made to pay and how none of it was my fault. This is all pointless. It will get me nowhere, the conversation focuses on my parents.
Empathy is different. Empathy means you will listen, you might not even say anything. You will just understand as best as you are able. And if you understand that will lead to you doing the right thing, as empathy at its most basic is putting yourself in someone else's shoes. If you do that you would realise that someone like me lacks self-worth and no amount of talking about how bad my abusers were will give me that.
These were hugely difficult concepts for me to get my head around, primarily of course because I was brought up in a house where empathy did not exist, but I hope I have managed to get them across. The reason I have tried to do so is because I see so many today walking around with mental health problems as a badge of honour. They are wallowing in victimhood and are fed by a media who doesn't understand and who probably thinks that talk of the abusers will get more viewers, listeners or readers. It might well do but it is doing harm to a lot of people.
For all intents and purposes everyone with mental health issues should be focusing on themselves and in a positive way. That is difficult, hugely difficult for someone like me, but if you see me wallowing in self-pity you shouldn't be afraid to tell me so just because some others might accuse you of not dealing with mental health in the "correct" way. Trust me, I HAVE to do stuff to get out of this, I HAVE to figure out where my life is going and I HAVE to walk down that path. If you tell me that I need to move my fat ass instead of telling me that I am entitled to sit and wallow because of the way I was treated then you will be doing me a favour. And I am in no way unique.
Coming from a broken and abusive home, I have never thought or felt of myself as a victim.
ReplyDeleteIn my childhood it was normal in my mind and all kids went through it.
It is hard for me to get around the fact that the person who tweets and the person who blogs is the same person. The Gareth who tweets gives an impression of being confident, funny and self opinioted. Maybe the real person is somewhere in between.
DeleteWhen I was in national school life was easy enough in that I went to school in town (where Westbury Hotel is now) and could even have been bought a bit posh compared to the rest in my class who all came from either Ballyfermot, or nearby tenements in Aungier Street, Kevin Street and Bride Street. I came from upmarket Rialto!! and lived in a real house! The truth was something different. I was the oldest of four and had to get the others up when I was 10 years og age, wash them, give them their breakfast and bring them into school all by myself. My father worked in England and my mother was a nurse who worked at night. So at night time I minded the other three on my own in the house. Nowadays we would all have been taken into care.
When I was 13 my dad got a job in Dublin and we moved to a rented house in Rathgar. When I say we moved were evicted. My parents were mad into education so I was sent to secondary school even though it was not free then and they couldn't really afford it. However I never had money to go to the cinema with my new school friends and had to wear my school uniform even at weekends. There was no money for confirmation or communion outings. We just stayed at home. I would have liked to go to University but this was not on with three more to be put through secondary school. Did a secretarial course and started working.
At 28 I was very lucky to get a job which required a lot of overtime and this sort of changed my life as I had money to go to night classes, foreign holidays, go to sporting events, buy a car and socialise. I enjoyed this lifestyle for many years before coming to the conclusion
That I did not need more than one holiday a year, could only wear one outfit at a time and that there was more to life than money.
DeleteThe reason for going into such detail is that I am not sure about therapists going into such detail about the past to solve present problems. I have read about CBT and believe that is the way to go. forget the past, concentrate on only today. Tomorrow hasn't come and may not! Also why suffer tomorrow's pain today. Bad enough having it when it comes. 40 is very young and you are employed at the moment as a house parent. A very significant occupation. In the meantime while enjoying bringing up Ryan keep a watchful eye out for something you are interested in. It might be necessary to work for nothing in the beginning but so what. I must add that while I was never unemployed neither did I have the job of my dreams but this can be balanced out by outside interests.
Meant to add that I never dwell on the fact that my childhood was not ideal. That was then, this is now.
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