Quote:
Originally Posted by BuildABridge
Hello,
You said before you've never been abused, just a bit psychologically neglected.
What do you mean by "psychologically neglected", exactly?
One could easliy wander off to the "repressed memories" field and suggest that you might be actually feeling the aftershocks of some traumatic event that you cannot/do not want to remember. But I'd find it dangerous to even suggest such a thing, because that might create even more problems where problems do not exist.
Anyway, I'm no expert, just someone who's been reading too much lately, trying to figure out what's wrong with me.
But one thing I can say: whatever it is going on with you, self-flagellation is not going to help. I'd perhaps risk saying that what you need is a competent mental help professional to aid you figuring out what's wrong.
I know how hard is to find that professional, I've been searching for months actually, and had no luck so far. I've had a couple of "half-appointments" about 10 years ago and I just walked away because people were more interested in telling me to just "get over it" and "change my attitude" rather than working with me and showing me how to overcome my difficulties.
But I haven't given up yet, I'm still trying to find someone able to help me.
I wish you the best of luck.
|
I've had people tell me to "just get over" my weird issues and obsessions, it annoys me immensely. That's not how it works. When the issues have been going on for years, you're not likely to snap out of them one day.
Now, psychologically neglected. The biggest thing I think of regarding that is my own mental health issues. I've had symptoms since I was about 10 or 11 - depressive thoughts, a feeling of "emotional abandoment", even suicidal ideation by age 11. To this day, I don't think my mom takes it seriously. Part of it is bias: my mom has bipolar II and I've witnessed her severe depressive episodes since childhood. The reasoning pretty much went that since my symptoms weren't like hers, I was fine. I've been accused of faking and exaggerating to get attention, of enmeshing (I recall being told to "grow up and stop imitating Mommy like a little kid", assuming that my behavior was merely imitating my mother's symptoms). Talking about it was out of the question. I'd be blown off, laughed at, or basically told my feelings were correct - as in "Yes, you are ugly, stupid, worthless, useless, you're absolutely right." Though, maybe I'm just too emotional a person to understand this approach to crap self-esteem...? Like don't stroke their ego so they work harder to improve?
Living home after dropping out of school and sometimes getting litanies of insults and threats hurled at me (in addition to other small miseries, or so they felt like) didn't help, though I can't complain because I deserved it. I do know living at home probably set me back. I'm just used to feeling awful and it's kind of pathetic. I'm not sure if even I take my mental health that seriously. Even now I sometimes wonder if I'm histrionically exaggerating things in my mind to feel special.
All I can think of for now, and I km know, it'so not really related to the guilt that produced this thread.