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Tufted Titmouse
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19 Feb 2018, 10:51 am

Hello!

*Note* This post has taken me a very long time to create. It was triggered by the quote "Be the person your younger self needed."
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As a child, my life was a bit of a mess. I like to think of it as a ball of twine that needed to be unraveled.

The ball just kept getting more tangled until I was stuck in a very bad place.

My parents were also fighting a mental illness, so I felt very alone.

I had no diagnosis, and that was torture.

Finally, after about five years, I was able to develop enough friends, hobbies, and skills to see value in my life. However, five years is a long time, and I always wonder if I could've been helped before that.

But what kind of help did I need? This question still haunts me, years later.

Did I need someone to sit a listen to me? Would I have known how to communicate with them, to tell them what I thought was wrong? Probably not.

Did I need someone to have me admitted to a hospital? Would it have exacerbated my anxiety? Most likely.

I desperately wanted someone to help me, but I don't know if that was even possible. I don't know if someone could have helped me at that time.

I wanted answers that I wasn't getting.

Now, when I see younger kids with the same problems as I had, I feel helpless and conflicted.

Can anyone relate? Can anyone not relate?



kraftiekortie
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19 Feb 2018, 10:55 am

At least the younger kids have you to convey your experiences to them. That’s a big help to them....and to you, too.

You were dealt bad cards....but you just might come up Aces.



Embla
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19 Feb 2018, 2:12 pm

Yes, I relate. I spent most of my childhood and teens badly wanting/needing help, but not knowing how to ask for it. Even when it was offered, I had no idea how to receive it.
I did have teachers who tried connecting to me, asking if everything was alright and if they could help, and I just didn't know how to accept their efforts. I think I made it seem like I didn't want it, and they gave up quickly.
I hate to meet kids with seemingly similar struggles, because I don't know how to help. I don't even know what could've helped me. Maybe what Kraftie said, that discovering an adult who could relate to my experience would've done something. But I don't know. I remember being really bothered by people telling me how they've been depressed or how they brother has anxiety, in an attempt to get me to open up. But it was as if the got it all wrong, and no one could actually relate to what I was dealing with. I guess the diagnosis gave a pretty good explanation for that. It took some pretty bad meltdowns to finally get me in contact with a psychiatrist who could explain me to me, and eventually improve my mental health.



Last edited by Embla on 19 Feb 2018, 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

elsapelsa
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19 Feb 2018, 2:59 pm

I relate too.

At the time I was sending out every signal for help but no-one was picking them up. And then when they finally picked them up, they did the wrong thing. That made me wounded for a very long time.

I did actually call my mum once (from Hungary - I went there on a whim to walk the streets and cry for a week) and begged her to admit me to hospital, begged her to pick me up and sort me out, but she brushed it aside like everything else.

The other day after I came to pick up my younger child from my dads he handed me a poem I wrote as a teen. It was so broken, so sad, so lonely, if my child had written that I would have done something, certainly not kept it as a nice keep-sake to remember our lovely holidays by!

My mum tells this story of how I sat banging my head against the wall a whole day and she eventually called the GP and he prescribed me antibiotics. This is a funny story she re-tells for humour.

So in my case, at least, what I needed was just to be 'seen'. Beyond the surface of an 'untroubled' girl with perfect grades. Someone who just got me, even if just enough to scoop me up and just hold me and understand I was hurting.

The people who helped me most were adults who gave me their time and didn't expect me to act like a child. A 20 year old neighbour who played mastermind with me for hours at the time, a kind teacher who taught me how to ace ping-pong, people like that. I think those were the people who gave me the most as a kid. Who just gave me their time and fed my interests.

The thing that has helped me most is after years of waiting for my parents to actually 'see' me and my needs and waiting to hear the things I needed to hear, I finally came to the realisation that it was never going to happen and that it would be me who saw me, me who got my needs, me who said the things that i needed to hear each day, to myself. It is a little bit sad, but it is true, and it has helped understanding this.

Saying all this, the few friends I have describe me as the strongest person they know. And if I ever pressed my mum for why she didn't give me more help as a child and why she condoned me moving out at 15 years old, she just says I was so independent and so strong. Maybe I just always sent out the message that I never needed help.


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Dear_one
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22 Feb 2018, 3:47 pm

What I needed was a smart, logical teacher who could explain the reasons behind the rules. One math teacher was disappointed in my erratic performance, but it never occurred to him to set problems in terms of automotive performance or household finances that would have interested me, and many of my classmates too.