Surviving Childhood: Mentally Ill Parents

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What are your experiences of navigating your way through childhood with the added pressure of having a parent with mental illness

What was/is it like for you

My mum had anxiety disorder and depression, and I picked up a lot on her behaviour even if she didn't always show it, and I seemed to have inherited it.

Mentally ill parents and family hierarchy can create a super bad co-dependent situation where one child is holding the family together, another is taking the blame for everything, another is maybe rewarded for rebellious behavior, another is a go-between for the parents to snipe each other, and worse things, too.

I started out being the people pleaser. My father rewarded me for supporting my mother, but she got worse and worse with age. He started drinking just to tolerate her and eventually, he just gave in to the madness and backed her horribleness with sneering contempt. They got old and both needed me to care for them. I moved in to provide care when she broke her hip and he had a TBI and blood clot. In the end, she pulled me down and injured me and was gearing up to do it again when he started mocking my fear in the most chilling way. I ran like hell and never went back.

I spent my life convincing myself that they don't mean it, that they wouldn't really harm me if they knew what they were doing, but isn't that the point? They don't know what they are doing and that's what makes them so dangerous. Loyalty to family should not ever include allowing oneself to be physically or emotionally harmed by the ones you love.

But no one will listen; no one will help. Not even when your mom attempts suicide, nope, they just sent her straight back home. When the folks lose control and refuse to get help, you just have to get out before they hurt you. What they do after that is their choice, not your responsibility.

My father was depressed and my mother had a hormonal disorder that made her volatile, an addiction to alcohol and a lot of unprocessed trauma. The household was self-isolating, there was a high level of enmeshment, weird... attachment, various other stuff.

At the time I didn't cope well. I had childhood depression, dissociated a lot, dissociation was interpreted by parents as psychosis, things got extremely weird as they responded to that and as their mental health deteriorated. Malnourished, outgrew clothes, ended up being physically very unsafe.

I myself did not know what a bundle of simmering rage I was. I thought anger was an emotion I simply didn't feel till my early 30s, when it all came out in a whoosh.

At home silent and obedient: at school hostile. I had no idea how to relate to other people, how to let them know what I was thinking or feeling.

People responded to me differently when I left home and stopped being an ugly feral child. It was my job to shore people up, make them feel good, reassure them, paper over any awkward bits and explain them away: hypervigilance, excessive attunement to other people's moods, a tendency to be preemptively conciliatory.

I still feel anxious when I receive a cue about what someone wants from me and I choose not to follow it. Occasionally I find myself getting upset because I am not able to coordinate my understanding or mental state with that of another person, especially if they are registering on any level as a threat.

I was not able to develop much of a sense of self in childhood. It sort of feels like the line between me and another person blurs the closer I get and I have to struggle to keep hold of myself: it's only recently that I've learnt to remain a separate person. But I am working on it now as an adult. And telling myself, look what a good job you're doing, you could not have done such a good job back then, truly youth is wasted on the young!

^ there's a distinction to be maintained between parents being mentally ill and an environment being adverse or traumatic for a child. But in relation to my own experiences, the line is not clear to me, and here and there I've conflated the two things. I hope it is nonetheless responsive to your question.