Getting used to depression?

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It's just... another episode. My brain is not working the way it should. A little innocent chat that a lady at grocery store tried to start triggered so strong fight or flight reaction that I couldn't hide it.
Yes, I take antidepressants. Yes, I am in therapy. And both the psychiatrist and psychologist say it - I'm in a really poor state right now.
The kids have gone to their grandparents for the winter break. I wass supposed to rest. But I am falling apart more than resting. The kids will come back and I will have to deal with people again. How? Going outside home is something that requires long rest afterwards.
Why nobody warned me about parenting?
Well, because nobody knew who I was... my mother was first to train me to never show my true face... and first to complain that I always pretended. But the way people fought in her family, the way she did it, too - if anyone knew someone's weak spot, they would use it. So I hid all my weaknesses and learned to slip out of a fight before it started.
Am I now paying the cost of it? With a series of major depressions? Will my children have to pay it too because of their depressed mother?

A full recovery can take a very long time. You may have to learn new lifestyle routines, such as adding meditation, exercising more, or modifying your sleep routine. Be patient.

The best legacy you can offer your children is getting well. They might have depressions too, or they might not. Set that worry aside for now.

magz, i am right there with u. still scrabling out of my ptsd, still living of bare traces of endorphine most of the time, still not handling most things i should be doing. but know what i understood recently? worst s**t happens when the kid is NOT around for too long. she is a constant reality check, she tethers me, she makes me do stuff, deal with her needs, and keep my hell in check. when she is away, rest turns into a nightmare too fast. and its not a coincidence. ofc its just me, and u could be different. but well, keep an eye on patterns when u can. ya, they can drive into meltdown, but i just find it more... managable... for myself. hope this helps u too. hold on. u are not alone. and ya getting used to depression could not be as bad as it seems. bc it could be the start of healing... maybe it would work for u. i hope this helps.

Thanks, yesterday my husband came back home and I asked him to hug me for looooong... it made me better.

I'm still struggling with, I guess, CPTSD from my relationship with my mother... I don't blame her much, she did it because of her own CPTSD from her mother's behaviors... and my grandmother likely got it from her war expirience, thought I don't really know. So it is just a chain of suffering I'm trying not to pass to my own kids.

But you know, a troubled parent plus an autistic kid is a horrible combo. My issues were systematically treated with denying, blaming, shaming and all the other forms of... well, let's face it, systematical emotional abuse. But there was always this picture of a happy family, loving mother, loving grandmother that had to be maintained, even at the expense of us, the kids... I guess it all left me confused and insecure in relationships with other people, if AS wasn't enough. I learned that I am loved as long as I fit the picture but if I don't, I'm not a human being any more, I am a danger to be fought instead. And of course, the picture to fit is very tricky for an aspie. So I see contact with other humans as navigating a mine field and when I'm incapable of doing it, I fear other people.

My husband is, luckily, one of the very few exceptions. Maybe he is an Aspie too, I don't know, an introverted engineer prone to meltdowns. But there is never any second bottom to what he says, he may be often rude but you always know that he tells you precisely what he means. It makes me feel safe. He is capable of healing the deep wounds left by conditional love. Has always been.
Only the wounds open again and again, maybe they are still not yet clean inside to heal permanently?

magz. u at least are understanding that thing about urself. i got to it only recently. same story, emotional/narcissistic abuse that started long before i was born. and i've been considering that a norm. knowing the truth, knowing what had been happening to u, is the first step. yes, the damage is permanent. our personalities are built around it, so to speak. my mother chose to feel entitled to repeat everything that had been done to her, and then deny it. i chose to try and break the circle. im struggling with it. where is the border between being strict to a misbehaving kid, and being abusive and not understanding the kid? its strange thing, how simmilar some stories are. we ofc are each a different person, but there are simmilarities. ones we might be able to use to help us both. i've somewhat closed my link to mother. (and especially grandmother, that old vampire b***h). told her, stop being in use by gram, and then stop feeling entitled to take ur emotions on me, then we can talk. when u start listening and giving me a benefit of a doubt (such as admitting i have feelings, in the first f*****g place, ya). i know she wont. she's been in use for narcissistic abuse for over 50 years and there is no amount of help that could dig her out of it. i had tried THAT first and barely survived. she is a f*****g conduit of that s**t.
sorry for offtop, back on track. second step would be, STOP making excuses for ur abusers. we do that. habitual, used-to, "norm". exept that its not. abuse is abuse, and excusing it is indulging it. the fact, that abuse cycles through generations, is no excuse either. every which of us choses her own path. my mother chose to gaslight me, ignore my needs, use me as sink for her own frustration. and then deny it all. im sorry if i am incoherent, its just that weird feeling of seing myself in another person. so what im saying. those wounds will open and open again as long, as u are getting re-traumatized by the same daggers that feel so... habitual... in ur back. to close and heal up, need to remove them first... sorry if im overstepping.

It took me two years of therapy, to see it the way I see it now. The picture of a happy, loving family was always so carefully maintained and the ways of abuse were quite subtle. My mother's relatives are intelligent and self-restricted, so these things were never easily seen. They are not narcissistic, I know a (non-malevolent but still troublesome) narcissist and the differences are quite obvious. What fits my mother's family is some borderline-histrionic mix, making it really hard to distinguish between genuine love and dysfunctional playing a role of loving person.
I'm still struggling to accept that the love my mother has for me is... not true love. It still hurts so deeply.

well my grandmother is outright malignant narciss. mother is more complicated. she shows the same sighns but blurred, different. part of it is the "i dont know how to RIGHT treat a kid, bc i never was treated right". and the fact of her own trauma had allways been... well an excuse for her behaviour to us both. she refuses to admit she f****d up. she dismisses all attempts at a closure. allways turns all arrows at herself and her own feelings, disvalidating mine (or outright denying them). i know that pain so very exactly, magz. and i have been gaslighted all my life to believe that its all normal and okay. scored a jackpot on gaslighting symptoms before i ever knew what to watch out for, ya. now i know. also, borderline and bipolar (no offence to certain bipolar around here who is NOT the case) most often do pack with narcissistic. AND then, narcissism is a spectrum, same as autism, the manifestations can be very different. lack of recognition, respect and relation to other person;s feelings is kinda basic for them all. however, no matter how we classify the abuser. point is, they abuse. and wont stop, no matter how many thousands times they promice to. and it will hurt all the way, but the pain gets easier when u find and cut off the links. the empty link then hurts in another way, also like a total b***h, but its less likely to send u. abusive links, esp parental abusive links, are like f*****g emotional cancer. while a severed/empty link is like pain from habitual trauma - dull, persistent, but also consistent and managable. its a hard thing to do, too. maybe it was easier to me, because of some specifics of my abuse situation. because i know, that none of my caretakers ever loved me, they never ever bothered to get to know me in the first place. they made up some imaginary child and were "raising" her, totally ignoring the real me. trying to not overflood with details here. but try to eval urself, is there such a proxy between u and ur mother?

You are right, the details may vary but the important part is that abusers abuse. The paradox of my family was that they did abuse to defend their self-image of good, loving persons.

u mean, to inflict that image. on u first of all. make u believe it, ya. knowing what a gross lifelong deception that had been, is first step... i was also brainwashed into believing that lie. when i fuckfinally shook it off, they are now SOOOOOO hating me xd i mean literally, i get hate messages from my grandmother xD
basically i totally cut off communication with grandmother (tho she keeps bashing at the locked door), severely reduced communication with mother, and end every conversation without a remorse, once she attempts any shifty s**t. now that i know where to listen for alarms, it got easier. ofc that makes me a sociopath, shizo and many other things that are nicely spread to anybody who would listen. ungrateful brat is the most kind one, ya. thankfully, i dont also have any communication with ppl, who have that image of me whatsoever) forced to sever the ties to that world, bound by lies. basically, ppl who have been duped to believe in the false perfect image, would secondary gaslight u, inflicting once again that image, making it harder to puzzle up the truth. and they would be acting out of "we know whats better for u" intentions, too. and all ur attempts at clarification would be labeled slander. btw, if i understand correctly, u have siblings. do they support u in this? do they understand what happened to them?

My grandmother has been dead for over 10 years now, so whatever, I don't need to make any effort about her now. She had a nice death btw, she was over 80, she woke up, dressed up, got a stroke and never left the room. I wish I would die similar way when my time comes.
My mother is not that bad. I can communicate with her on instrumental issues, I can be quite assertive to her and she accepts it. I've learned that it's often enough for me to tell myself 'that's her problem, not mine' to be quite immune to her strategies.
Last weekend I lowered my guard, she was helping me with the kids and I was really grateful, for in major depression I couldn't do with the kids not going to school. It's not a simple abuse-only pattern, she really helps. But then I lowered my guard and told her I've got a little better... heard this blaming-ready tone of voice in her response and quickly ended the conversation. It's a minefield.
What is worse, this shaming-blaming-negating pattern grew well rooted inside me, even if I can now successfully defend myself from actual shaming, blaming or negating.

My siblings - my brother seems okay, he left home, got married to a nice girl, keeps limited but friendly contact with our parents. I don't know how about our mother but I remember him talking matter-of-fact manner about craziness of our grandmother and aunt (on different ocassions), so he didn't buy the image of prefect love. And I think he was less likely to trigger Mom the way I trigger her. Well, he's NT, this minefield may be more natural to him.
My sisters did not leave home yet in their mid-twenties. The way I see it, they show mild female ADHD patterns. They struggle with relationships and mental health issues. One of them is withdrawn from the family the way I used to be and has extremely low self esteem. The other seems to have bought all the blaming and negating narrative, believes in being all evil herself and gets horribly upset-defensive when I tell her what I think of our upbringing.
I worry for my sisters.

yes, the self-abuse is quite often in people with such "upbringing". been brainwashed into believing that for so long. problem is, when a person doesnt realise they are in trouble, resqueing them is... nigh possible. normalize it. say its okay. pretend not to see it, no vision, i feel it.

this article might help u with that
http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2013/10/ ... a-and.html

and those could hold a useful line or 2 for u, too
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recoveri ... c-mothers/
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recoveri ... tic-abuse/
http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2013/09/ ... o-end.html

Thanks for the links.
Yes, I relate to the pattern of cycle of abuse that is very common and needs to be broken by confronting your own demons.
I can't relate to narcissist patterns. No, my mother's issues are neither entitlement nor control. It's something different, something more borderline-like: a bottomless hole in her emotions that she conciously denies but unconciously she's trying to fill at any cost.

It's a bit like dealing with an apparently normal person that can all of the sudden turn out to be a vampire... And last time I forgot it, showed the blood of my emotions and needed to retreat as quickly as possible.

ya well however understanding and classifying them. what really matters, is knowing the alarm moments, yes. "a good sense of when to duck, more likely" (harry potter commenting on life with his "family")
and yes i've learned long ago to not talk about my emotions. because they will be disvalidated and preyed on. also, abusers have another pattern. when u cut them off, they start being extremely nice. to make u lower ur guard. i know i am extremely vulnerable to that (so now i see smth like that, i gtfo the situation asap), check urself too, maybe that helps...

another article (yes, about narcissic mother, but part of it could be still useful, because its a general mechanism of emotional abuse)
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recoveri ... rcissists/

My brother dropped in because of my birthday and insisted to try to convince me not to take medical leave from my grad school. My mother in law tried to do the same a week earlier. Why do others believe they know better? Better than me, my therapist, my psychiatrist and my advisor together? Why can't they accept that my rythms of work and rest differ from theirs? Why do they need to bomb me with advice?

I had a dream then, first I was sitting covered with a thick blanket, inventing a pirate story. My mother came and wanted me to remove the blanket because it is summer, no one covers with thick blanket in summer. I asked if it does any harm to her but before she answered, the pirate from my story came and took my blanket by force.
So I ran away to a different room, where I covered myself with even thicker blanket.
And then there was dinner. My brother's wive brougth her whole scout team. I asked her why and she said it is because of my birthday.

I guess my brain was screaming: Why can't they leave me alone?!?

ya i had a lot of simmilar nightmares about my dear family. had seriously decreased after i realized the situation. that, and constant sleep deprivation i inflict on myself xD before i puzzled things togather, it was all in subconsciousness and erupting from there. ya, i guess its indeed ur mind screams - they are dangerous, they are harming me. (intentionally or not). hold on and do what u find right, please)

Depression and anxiety in varying degrees have been my lifelong companions. With practice, I have become less reactive, and they don't hold the sway over me that they once did. After all, they're just feelings; and feelings aren't facts. You can't catch one, put it in a bottle, and show it to me. No matter how compelling they may appear, if you deeply contemplate the nature of feelings of depression and anxiety, you'll see that they're actually quite transient and ephemeral; like clouds temporarily obscuring the moon. These feelings are also not something foreign; they arise from within me, so fighting them is actually wrestling with myself; both futile and exhausting. The harder I fight, the harder depression fights back; it's deriving it's strength from me. The only power they have is that which I invest in them. I can learn to stop trying to fight it off and just relax; to allow these thoughts and feelings to simply arise without resistance, observe them impartially without engaging them in conversation (they are lies, after all. Why talk to a liar?), and allow them to pass away without clinging to them, with no more impact than snowflakes falling on a wet sidewalk. Depression actually requires my participation, but I'm under no compunction to participate in it. Like a hurricane that's made landfall and moved inland becomes just a rain storm when deprived of it's source of energy, so it is with negative thoughts and feelings; they can't destroy my life if I don't allow them the power to do so. So it can be with you, too.

May you be well.
May you be happy.
May you be free of suffering,
And at peace.