post

GUEST POST: Fighting With My Shame

Kerry White has a few things in common with me. She was also born in South Africa, and she also lives in North America (Texas, to be exact). Like me, she knows what it’s like to parent a small energetic boy. And like me, she knows what it’s like to live with mental illness, including depression and social anxiety.

I first got to know Kerry through a now mostly-defunct Yahoo group called Homesick South Africans. During its heyday, this group was the venue of some lively discussions – a few of them controversial, many of them humourous, almost all of them supportive. Several friendships that formed during the group’s active existence have continued through social media. I am so grateful to the Internet for existing, because without it, my friendship with Kerry would not have evolved in the way it has. This is a woman for whom I have a great deal of admiration and respect.

As I strive to talk about my own struggles with mental illness, I am immensely grateful to Kerry for this post, in which she frankly and courageously shares her own journey.

So I think I’m crazy. Absolutely strait-jacket-heavily-medicate-me-and-lock-me-up crazy! I have felt this way for a very long time, probably since I was about ten years old and reading my first Stephen King books. I recognized the signs of madness in my mind from the characters in some of his books.

As a much more jaded adult, I now recognize myself for what and who I am. I have severe depression, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and it all comes bursting forth in the less than neat and tidy package of major panic attacks. I live with mental illness, and I am terribly ashamed of it. I feel broken, less of a person, less of a woman, and worst of all I feel like a terrible mother because of it.

Growing up in South Africa in the 80s, my mental illness was not recognized for what it was. My anxiety, and shyness, and my odd acting out behaviors gave the impression that I was a difficult child; not that I was a child in dire need of some thought of help.

Don’t get me wrong, my childhood was not unpleasant at all. My parents were hard-working and loving individuals who did the best they could for us during rocky financial times. But there was no such thing as depression, anxiety, panic attack, mental illness. There was just doing what needs to be done, threatening electroshock therapy when I refused to communicate about an assault when I was a teenager, and threatening to send me away to a mental institution. At 16 I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for teenagers who are in crisis. I felt normal! I felt accepted! I felt safe! I was there for two weeks and then released, but promptly tried to kill myself because I didn’t get the support I needed at home. I spent another several weeks in there, but soon learned that I was better off shutting the part of myself I thought to be crazy away. I was never going to get support outside of the walls of that mental health hospital. I was always going to be told to just suck it up and get over it. Because that was just the way things were handled.

I have spent the better part of my adult life trying to just get over it, trying to avoid the idea that I have a problem that no amount of “getting over” will fix. I have tolerated abusive partners, abusive bosses, and abusive coworkers; because I felt I wasn’t worth more.

When I had my son, my depression and anxiety kicked into high gear – but I expected it to. I refused to take the prescribed antidepressants, in case they made me worse (as others have done in the past), or someone saw me as too weak to raise this child. But I do recognize now that I should have not only taken the medication but sought out help. Help wasn’t offered for my “baby blues” and I didn’t go find it. It got to the point, several times, where I wanted to end my life because I was so miserable and felt like such a failure.

I’ve found myself mentally standing on a ledge, with nothing behind me, not even one hand to reach out and pull me to safety. But then the knowledge of the small body pressing against me, raising out a hand and calling out for “mommy” reminds me that if I jump off of this mental ledge then he loses himself, too.

As my son’s needs have changed, so has my mental illness. It has to. I have to get us dressed and get him to daycare so that I can work. I work at home, which just encourages my social anxiety. We need to go to the store and get milk and the occasional toy car, so I steel myself and leave the house. For him.

I’ve made myself get on a plane to visit family; I’ve made myself go visit friends. But it is hard. I have to find a way to change this, for my son.

So what is my next step then? I have more anxiety than will allow me to even see a therapist. What if they deem me to be as unfit of a mother as I feel some nights when sobbing over a panic attack or crying in my office when he is at school? I can’t just “suck it up and get over it.” I have tried. Believe me, I have tried.

I feel crazy. Insane. Broken. But this is my normal. I just wish I didn’t feel so much shame and fear along with it. How do I find the inner strength I need to get help and not feel so broken? Help that will not judge me as being weak or unfit as a single parent?

My heart breaks for others who feel like I do, and I do my utmost to help them. I even write helpful blogs and books for a counselor who helps women like me!

Why then can’t I find what I need in order to help myself work through this? At what point will my son notice that his mommy isn’t like other mommies? I do not want to continue trying to bury my mental illness, but I do not know any other way to function. I am not strong, I am doing what I need to do in order to provide for this boy that the universe has seen fit to place in my care.

To find out more about Kerry and the children’s books she is writing, visit her website!
 
(Photo credit: Kerry White)

Comments

  1. What a heart-wrenchingly honest post. Please never ‘suck it up’ that is never a healthy approach to life. You have a wonderful sense of autobiography and *that* is what helps people to get through, to over-come and to succeed each day in each little way. Journal-keeping was suggested to me the other day, could that help you clarify and make further sense of your journey?

    • Njabulo Thabo ka-Sishaba says:

      An honest appraisal of challenges faced. An opportunity to come to terms and overcome.

  2. Dear Kerry, you are not alone and you are not “crazy” or “weak” either!! You are the best mother your child could have … because he’s yours! “Guilt” and feelings of unworthiness feed depression and anxiety – I know! Been there and got the T-shirt!!

    I’m writing this from Cape Town, my family moved here from Italy when I was 8 years old. I was first diagnosed with Clinical Depression when I became suicidal at 18 (as opposed to the “reactive” depression caused by my “date rape” when I was 17). That was 25 years ago and I still vividly remember feeling so “heavy” that I couldn’t get out of bed. A period of several weeks went by when all I did was cry and sleep. My worried boyfriend put me on a plane to my grandparents in Italy who “made me better” by using a combination of “tough love” (you WILL get up – that’s NOT negotiable, get showered, get dressed, brush hair etc), and medication (both “regular” and homeopathic). After 3 months of this kind of “therapy” I was deemed well enough to return to Cape Town. Little did I know then that things would still get WAY worse before they got better!

    It would take a book for me to tell you my full story. Suffice to say that I know first hand how a panic attack can land you in the ER because you (and everyone who sees you) is convinced you’re having a heart attack! How at age 43 you still can’t strike a match or light a lighter because your phobia of fire is so ingrained! I know what it’s like to love your baby more than your own life, and at the same time be terrified that if he cries for another minute you’ll throw him against the wall!

    I thank God every day that he sent a man into my life who saw my light (buried under tons & tons of “icky stuff”) and loved me enough to rescue me from an abusive relationship and not dump me when the going got rough (believe me, at times in the past 25 years they were VERY rough)! I eventually said the right things to a psychologist so that I would get admitted into Kenilworth Clinic (a psychiatric hospital) for 5 weeks in 2009. Finally I felt safe enough to “look behind the wall”. I’m sure you know what I mean, that “scary place” inside us we never go near for fear of “breaking down” completely? I’ll let you in on a little secret – do you want to know what dreadful thing lurked behind my carefully constructed wall? A big, fat, nothing!!! I learnt the truth of the saying: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”! I thought that I would be committing emotional suicide by lowering my defences, instead that was when I started living for real.

    My road has finally led me here. Sharing my “secrets” with the whole world. I’m no longer ashamed of what I live with. Yes, I take anti-depressants every day. Some Diabetics take insulin shots every day – what’s the difference? I’m not “depressed” – I live with depression which is currently controlled by meds, the same way I deal with the pain caused by Fibromyalgia. I live with fibromyalgia but that is not who I am!

    Kerry, I’m glad I went through the hell I did. I can tell you that there IS light at the end of the tunnel, because I came through the tunnel and now I’m on the other side!!

    I had to change psychiatrists and psychologists roughly every 6 months until I found the doctor and medicine cocktail that work best for me. In my case, the best thing I ever did for my children was to check myself into Kenilworth Clinic. It was a real turning point for my family. My son is now 19 and my daughter 16 years old and we have the loving relationship I dreamt of as a child. I still have “bad days”, but they are a lot fewer and I KNOW FOR SURE now that “this too shall pass”!! The Serenity Prayer also helps! Consider yourself hugged! Love, S.

    Kerry, I have no doubt that you have a bright light inside you too! If you’d like to correspond privately, Kirsten has my email address. Keep taking

  3. oops, sorry … the end of the sentence is “Keep taking things one day at the time.” 🙂

  4. Jacquie says:

    Kerry, I also want to extend an invitation to talk. Kirsten has my address, too. I am a bipolar mom of two. My oldest claims to remember me throwing a toaster across the room when he was small; yes, they notice these things. But I have always been honest and open with him about my mental illness, the challenges it poses, and when mom just needs “a swim in lake me”. I believe he’s a better, more tolerant person to others because of what he sees in his mother.

    To get through my life, I rely on a mix of Buddhism, knitting, and ‘filling my own pitcher first’. I’m sure you’ve heard that analogy many times — it really is important, as selfish as it may sound; and to a depressed person, it sounds ridiculously self-indulgent. Volunteering at my kids’ school in the library has allowed me to get over some of my social anxiety without having to interact directly with others for extended periods, and the expectations of the volunteer role are clear, so I don’t have to worry about doing the wrong thing. By keeping my head down, doing my thing, and just asking teachers and others about themselves, I’ve managed to get fairly comfortable without putting my EEE foot in my mouth.

    Anyway, I’m beginning to blather, which is what I do. what you wrote struck a chord in me. If I can be a support to you, or just someone to listen who gets it, please don’t hesitate to contact me.