Abandonment depresssion sucks

[helliepig]

Hi guys,
I'm in throes of this stuff at the moment, it's very painful and it feels like a hopeless mountain = too much hurt in the past and too little in the present.
I've worked so hard for so long at this stuff and still feel so handicapped.
My therapist says I have to let myself go down to see that I am enough. When you're in the middle of it though, that's hard to believe.
What do you do when there seems to be nothing for you?
And when you feel so boring. lovable and shameful to your core.
You can' tell anyone as they either don't want to know or it makes you feel like you're weird and afraid of driving them away.
I get snatches of seeing the real me, and a bit of genuine hope and connection to something exciting but only briefly and only occasionally.
Life seems so disappointing and a pale imitation of what I wanted it to be,
The emptiness and coldness is immense takes my breath away when it hits.
I tell myself it's old pain but it's hard to believe I can deal with this alone. Just always feel so far behind what other's seem to do so effortlessly.
It sucks!

[Kat]

It does indeed suck!  Sorry you're feeling so down and in so much pain. 

At your true core, you are wonderfully complex and interesting, completely lovable, and good.  That shame you feel is someone else's who put it in you. 

The part about not being able to tell anyone because they don't want to know or it makes you feel like you're weird is a tough one.  I struggle with it as well.  As my therapist tells me, some people just aren't big enough for it.  It may trigger some of their own issues.  When she explains it as the other person being incapable of hearing it, I find it helps.  It's not me.  Does that make sense?  I think only people who have looked deeply within themselves are capable of hearing.  It makes relationships hard for sure. 

It sounds like you're having trouble seeing/knowing that what you are feeling right now is not your whole truth.  It's not all of you or all that life has in store for you.  If you like, I'll hold that knowing for you until you're ready to take it back.

Hang in there.  Cry.  Rage.  Sleep.  Fight.  You're worth it.

[helliepig]

Thank you Kat, you sound a very kind and wise person.
You so accurately hit the nail on the head, Isn't it funny how totally we believe we're awful, It does feel like immutable truth...

[helliepig]

It's hard to share here too because I don't want to bore people but I'll share a little to start with maybe, Toe in the water job.

I am a third child, youngest of 3 girls, my brother is younger. I now know that our family was very dysfunctional although on the surface we were intelligent, Christian, middle class, blah blah blah. Appearances being everything and all...

Mum came from a large family, lots of family rifts, all quite cold and distant and duty bound.
Dad was an only child and his mum was  sociopathic and manipulative - once begging him in tears on bended knee not to marry and leave her even though he was 30 something.

Mum was borderline, abusive and distant/unloving. She was a physio and didn't she just love the kids she worked with....... Just not those at home
Dad was probably dissociative, didn't know how to relate to women, a bit of a bully, Very strict and angry.

I was meant to be the boy that would let mum off the hook of more childbearing. When I was born the men at the pub toasted my birth with "better luck next time"
Mum never connected with me, took out all her rage and resentment at her disappointments on me, Hated me on sight. Even years later, with Alziemers she'd go from schoozing my brother to pummelling me with her fists and swearing at me

I got left with Dad's mum for long periods from being a young baby. She was a paedophile and had paedohilic friends, one of whom was our family doctor. A lot of stuff happened before I had memories... Go figure

There was no love in the family, no one to look at you, listen to you, talk to you. Give a * about you.

My sisters viciously fought for any of the scarce attention in the family and acted out mum's cruelty to me. I was the scapegoat. My eldest sister went from pretending I didn't exist to attacking me and sneering at everything I liked or wanted. Openly so - but no one "saw" it and I always got the blame for reacting, for "being jealous" or whatever... And then my eldest sister would do the whole drama queen, tears and innocent *.
Family mealtimes I would be attacked and then left for days and given the cold shoulder.

I coped by being the best at everything and trying so hard. I worried about everyone, tried to make them better, tried to play happy families, tried to be good enough for someone to care. I felt utterly unwanted, disgusting, useless and hated and pathetic for being upset, scared, needy etc.
The better I did the more they hated that. Even recently my other sister won't let me talk about my son or my career or anything I love as it makes her feel inadequate - and still thinks it's ok to expect me to give up who I am to make her comfortable -  as was my old role. (Even though she had treated me like * and we hadn't talked in 10 years) She does not know how to care, My family are like weird shut down automatons with no clue. I feel ashamed of them yet still, after all this time, hugely hurt that they don't care and I've never belonged.

I also got bullied at school because I was very insecure and scared of the world and too good at everything
Also I got groomed by a guy on the estate and something happenend in his house but as yet not recovered those memories.
And my paedo grandma got dementia and came to live with us.

Cue.. nightmares, anxiety, school refusal, bullying, depression.

Then we moved halfway across the country for dad's job and for a time I successfully reinvented myself. I loved the new area, had wonderful friends and got involved in everything, great at everything.... For a few years, apart from the odd episode (which I now know to be dissociative) I felt happy.
And then I went off to Uni to a place I didn't want to go to, to do a course I didn't want to do and it never occurred to me I had a choice or could say no. I had no sense of self.
Overnight the world went black.

Enough for now,gotta get some sleep.
Thanks for listening xxxxxx

[JamesG]

Hi Hellipig

so much familiarity in your story, probably for all of us. I can totally relate to the current feeling of abandonment and isolation, I've gone no contact and it;s a big step. But boy is it worth it. The treatment you received is appalling, heartless and wrong wrong wrong, but it's sadly a pattern many of us in here recognise. I find it interesting how well you've done academically tho, clearly you have real talent and ability and at times when the conditions are right, you've been able to let rip. That's a pattern I recognise as well, not just in me, but in many others with dysfunctional families. It's almost as if the madness focusses you forward. A strange pay off. The thing now is to realise that your strengths are yours and yours alone, and being out of that mad house means that you can normalise a life that had been anything but for such a long time. The current lonliness will pass, lean forward into life when you feel ready and it will change, but choose the kind, sensitive people, its important that people from backgrounds of abuse keep their eyes peeled for fresh nutters, it's a classic pattern for repetition. There are many lovely kind people out there, look in the right places. In the meantime, share your feelings and experiences in here and we'll be there for you. We understand, and we care. x

[helliepig]

Thank you James for you lovely reply. You have such a depth of understanding and it's amazing to hear someone really getting it That doesn't happen much, like you say you need to have gone through this stuff to know what is what.
You have obviously come a long way on your journey and that is wonderful. You totally get the courage tp leap into the unknown that this deep stuff takes.

I am trying to allow connection with kind people, trying to notice and imbibe it, really trying to believe they are out there for me - eventually!
I am deeply scared of people though, in relation to me, (even though I work with people and get on well in that safe environment)  I struggle to believe they are interested in  me and feel what I am and do is always wrong, whatever it is  I do or don't do!

I know some of it is the abuse, the rest I thought was permament damage from the lack of loving mothers mirroring and attunement etc. But recently I revisited the place I lived at school when I was happy and remembered how it felt - what joy!. I realised that was the real me and THAT's what is missing =  since then I've lost it.  Touching it again made me realise it is about a damaged connection to myself hidden under shame and fear that I need to encourage and allow and build. Give myself permission to say THIS IS MY LIFE!!

I am still labouring under the shadow of the legacy of all the nasty, jealous and narcisstic people that have populated my life, even currently in the shape of my ex husband - I need to weed them out of my garden and let the good stuff flourish.

I saw this quote this morning "Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you... so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place." ~Unknown

[AphoticAtramentous]

I know some of it is the abuse, the rest I thought was permament damage from the lack of loving mothers mirroring and attunement etc. But recently I revisited the place I lived at school when I was happy and remembered how it felt - what joy!. I realised that was the real me and THAT's what is missing =  since then I've lost it.  Touching it again made me realise it is about a damaged connection to myself hidden under shame and fear that I need to encourage and allow and build. Give myself permission to say THIS IS MY LIFE!!

Well said, Hellie. ^-^ I really like what you've written here. "Damaged connection to myself hidden under shame and fear" That really resonates with me. It is a simply damaged connection though - which means it can be fixed! With just some time, patience, and effort, it'll be fixed.

[Andyman73]

Don't know that I have abandonment depression, mostly because I never knew there was such a thing. Helliepig, I see you, and I hear you. 

My earliest experience with abandonment also included the first ever and perhaps only time I was ever separated from my twin brother for babysitting type care. I wasn't even 3 years old. The icing on that tasty cake was csa/r by grown man multiple times over the 4.5 days I was in his care.  That gravy train hasn't stopped yet, 41 years later.

I am so so sorry for all you've been through and continues to experience at the hands of your family.

You derserved absolutely None of that.

[Three Roses]

More from Pete Walker about abandonment depression - http://pete-walker.com/managingAbandonDepression.htm

[Andyman73]

Still here sitting with you.

[Blueberry]

Thanks for the link 3Roses. It sounds as if that's roughly where I am too, in abandonment grieving though rather than depression. But have to make sure it doesn't turn back into depression.

Sitting with you too helliepig and thanks for posting.

[JayDubs]

Hellepig...I'm out here with you too!  Hope things have picked up a bit since your first post in this thread.   I have yet to go through that (I think).  Was adopted and my connections with the newly found birth family didn't go too well either :-)  I have this not-belonging thing down pretty good.  Your brief story sounded all too familiar; especially when you mentioned the dinner table.  Yikes!   

I really enjoy Pete Walker's research and insights.  Thanks for posting Roses.

Bullying rolls downhill.    Parents to teachers to classmates.  They know.  Same situation here.  Everyone knew they could get away with it.  I used to say off the cuff that everyone wanted me to fail.  Not really thinking much about those words until later in life.  Had a girlfriend who met my parents and was really sad..asked her why..she said I was going to have a lonely life.  She knew at the ripe old age of 19.  Not an ounce of love in that house.  I too was the scapegoat and those dynamics never changed.  Sure, there were periods when things looked like they may change.  All a ruse.

Being a scapegoat s***s and am sorry you have to live that.  Never felt like anyone would believe a word I told them.  Which I hear is pretty common.   Have also had some successes in life.  Negative energy turned productive.  Have also made more than my share of mistakes

Patterns can be broken.  We all have strength!

[Candid]

What do you do when there seems to be nothing for you?

You invent a calm, wise, endlessly loving Voice that talks to you and reassures you the way you would help a distressed toddler.  You can do this on paper if you like, writing about your misery then writing what you would say to someone else in that position.  Or you can simply do it in your head, anywhere and at any time.

I did it in writing for more than two years, and it saved my sanity during a very isolated period in my life.  Since then I've been able to do it in my head, and I can tell you: it's life changing.