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BIO | Depression Anxiety Social problems: This creates an emotional downward spiral
// By Sarah Peters
Anyone can be hit quickly and unprepared by fatal blows. This can quickly lead to an emotional downward spiral.
What is normal life?
My life was initially quite "normal": mom, dad, younger brother, the nice family home in a well-kept settlement, in which the children played outside in front of the houses on the street. My parents got me shortly after my apprenticeship, which means: quite young. House construction followed. The classic family concept that they had experienced at home. Did they ever feel happy together? I dont know. Have we ever been happy as a family? I dont know. My mother, who originally had another man in her heart, my father, who felt early on that she was not the "right one" for him. And then I came!
My parents came to terms with the situation, bought the property in the beautiful family home, built the house. We lived family. The father who earns the money and the mother who takes care of the household and the children at home - that was the idea. Only the mother role wasn't the role my mother played, the family model wasn't the model that made her happy. Therefore, she was looking for a kindergarten place with all-day care for me. That meant: At 7:30 a.m. the kindergarten bus picked me up at home, and at 17:XNUMX p.m. I delivered it again. Practically.
When care is lacking
But after a day in kindergarten, I didn't get to know the feeling of running excitedly outside with red cheeks and disheveled hair, where mom is waiting to hug me and listen to the day's experiences on the way home. When I was four years old, my brother was born. Outwardly, it complemented the beautiful family image. Large garden, the beds made pretty, the hedge trimmed. Great family vacations, nice family celebrations. You have to show what you have ... On the outside, we must have made a happy impression. Yes, the outside, what others think of you - of us - was always very important to my mother. Always mindful of what others might think.
It was the same when she took me to her friends for coffee and cake in the afternoon. On the way back, she always counted me where I would not have behaved "appropriately". I would have played too little with the other children, hung the adults on the tip of my skirt and eaten too much cake, had been too greedy, hadn't been sitting, was too cheeky and not thankful enough. She would be ashamed of me. Again and again I had to listen to these allegations while driving home. I was afraid of her, knew that as soon as the engine started, she would start and would not fall silent so quickly. The children of her friends, however, were always particularly great.
What others might think - when fear is more important than your own feelings
Exactly what other people might think of me, coupled with the fear of being negatively rated, will later play a very central role in my life. When my brother was born, my mother was overwhelmed. Suddenly there were two children. Two children, they just lacked nerves. So I somehow ran alongside, was not really seen, it was said: "Sarah, she'll do it, her brother is still so small." Yes, I did it. I learned to do things that were not common at my age, and I learned to do them particularly well to be seen, to get attention.
Because it worked, I took on more and more tasks, more and more responsibility, and became very independent very early on. Too early. So I got praise, attention and love - the love I missed so much. I linked love with achievement and with perfection. Increasingly took care of my brother while my mother was out. She was constantly looking for ways in which she could just be a young woman. Whether she went out with friends, drove to beauty farms, or went to the bowling club, she found plenty of reasons not to have to be home.
Envy, resentment, jealousy as the predominant emotion
The consequence: I was very far for my age and was not interested in peers. Also because when I was in contact with other children I increasingly felt the feelings that I already knew from home and that had to do with my role as a sibling. Resentment, envy, maybe even jealousy of other children. I wanted to be the best among them. Whenever I was with peers, it meant being in a competition for me. Other children noticed that, didn't want to play with me. You avoided me. My feeling of being different, of being excluded, of not being good enough intensified. I, the foreign body, the foreign body that doesn't fit anywhere?
Too old for her peers, too young for adults. This feeling that something is different about me, the insecurity that I felt among people, the feeling of not belonging, nowhere to fit in, but also not wanting to belong - all of this will run like a red thread through my life similar to the fact that you don't just want to do things well, but as perfectly as possible in order to be seen. To get approval and love. I felt my mother was emotionally absent and felt her dissatisfaction. Maybe that was why I never bonded with her?
Looking for warmth
When I was seven, I baked my first cake for her on Mother's Day, with a baking mix, but at least. I was so proud and quickly transformed the small round TV side table into a gift table. I decorated it with a colorful blanket, massive pink glitter and chocolate hearts. I had planned everything very carefully. I placed my cakes and gifts on this wonderfully decorated table: I had painted many pictures for her and made mandalas. I stood there excitedly that Sunday morning and looked forward to her shiny eyes. She entered the room and was completely sober.
She tried to show joy, but it didn't feel honest. I just felt no warmth, no happy motherhood and no warmth - I missed those shiny eyes anyway. I had also set the breakfast table, and when we ate together afterwards, she only took a small fork from my cake. "Don't you like it?" I asked. “Yes, but little mouse. But it's a real calorie bomb. ”I ate the rest of the cake myself over the next few days. She didn't stick the many pictures I had painted for her on the fridge or framed them like other mothers; I found them later in the wastebasket . Or she kept them in a box in the attic.
Heroes can also fall off the pedestal
I therefore increasingly oriented towards my father. He wasn't at home often, worked a lot, but I really enjoyed the time he was there. I accompanied him on weekends for business appointments. I sat like a princess in the passenger seat next to him in the convertible or went on a motorcycle tour with him. Sometimes we just went for an ice cream or the hype. I was so happy! I, the daddy child. Dad was my hero. I didn't know then that this would change very soon. That heroes can also fall off the pedestal.
So that's how we lived. Together and somehow past each other. Consolation and words of encouragement on an open knee? Closeness and hugs at the first lovesickness? Fooling around together, telling each other about the day? I don't have a single childhood memory in which we sit around a table and paint together or someone reads something to me. I didn't get to know feelings like closeness and security. Perfection and performance also played a big role in terms of appearance and weight. When I started school, when I was six years old, I began to gain weight. At first I wasn't a fat kid, I just had a little baby fat. My mother was slim, my father had always struggled with his weight - he wanted to spare me that. He declared losing weight to be a joint project between father and daughter.
Emotional food and yo-yo effect
On a Friday evening - that was always our TV evening, my absolute highlight of the week - the two of us sat at the kitchen table and my father explained to me that he had thought of something. "Tonight we're going to really hit it again, from tomorrow we'll go on a diet." My father, who loved sweets, needed a partner in crime for his diet phases, an accomplice, and that was me. His plan: I'll weigh in at the weekend, and as soon as I've lost two kilos, I can make a wish. I had absolutely no desire to jog with him or accompany him on the bike when he was jogging, but I went with him, after all, that was our project, especially since I had no other choice ...
Fortunately, my father never kept the diets going forever, and every break was a relief for me. Until the next weight loss phase came and it started all over again. The consequence? Sure, the yo-yo effect. Due to the constant control and the eternal prohibitions, sweets attracted me greatly; I nibbled secretly. Ultimately, I became overweight with any diet. From now on, eating, being overweight, losing weight, gaining weight - will all play another central role in my life. I never really became part of the community at school either, I struggled to build strong relationships. Mobbing? Perhaps that was one of them. I had a terrible boy hairstyle that I had to run around with, and I became increasingly overweight. I was not popular. I was the one who was called up last time in group splitting. About which was blasphemed. With whom nobody liked to share the room on the school trip.
Suddenly divorced child
Then my parents separated. I noticed more and more how a world collapsed for my father, how he suffered. From the dream of a house, children and dog, from a healthy family! That was not how he had imagined it. At some point he moved out. There were three of us in the house for a few months, my mother, my brother and me. My mother was completely overwhelmed with the house where we had previously played family, with the memories and her two children to take care of.
Our relationship was hypothermic. She shone with her emotional absence and was physically on the move as often as possible - actually only. It was even like that when I was lying on our beautiful leather couch in the living room in front of the TV with an ulcerated surgical wound and 40 degrees fever. A few days earlier, all four wisdom teeth had been extracted from me on an outpatient basis. My mother drove me to the dentist that morning and then picked me up again. There was no soup, tea and consolation afterwards.
When care is lacking
My mother wasn't a mother who cooks chicken soup. I felt the wound on the top left hurt more and more, get hot and start to throb. It was a Friday and it got worse in the evening. "Mouse, it's not that bad," she said. "You'll go to the dentist on Monday, I'll meet you soon." She left me alone and went out to party that evening.
My father called and asked how I was doing, I told him about my severe pain and fever. He came by immediately and drove me to the emergency service - the wound was badly infected and had to be cut open. Ultimately, this concept didn't work for all of us, so my parents agreed that my brother and I should live with my father. Then my mother moved out. She gave up custody at the same time, so she could finally live her life. From then on she lived her happy single life.
The new stepmother: like Cinderella
My father's new wife and I, we both made life really difficult...
