Posted by zinya on June 14, 2003, at 12:50:25
In reply to Re: My First Day on Effexor » bgbham, posted by NThompson on June 14, 2003, at 10:13:11
wow, NT. How brave of you to be confronting this now. I'm so moved to read of your step back from the brink, and what i hope feels like the relief of having your 'secret' out of the closet. For so so so many of us, in fact i would say almost a universal experience -- about whatever phenomenon, for us about depression (and probably other specific things too), it is the hiding which is the worst of all. Not feeling able to reveal to anyone your reality... surely from early deep-seated fears that it's not okay to be not okay. Even though we know intellectually that everybody is not okay about something. Yet *our* not-okay thing seems worse, seems more shameful or more something to feel guilty about... and also to tell ourselves somehow, magically, we'll conquer it from inside our 'closet', while still in secret and no one will ever need to know.
Ah, the irony. Cuz the closet we put ourselves in, the very hiding and secrecy not only worsens the problem, it *becomes* the problem.
Your story, even just sketched as you have shared with us here, evokes such powerful feelings of the false 'knowledge' we can so easily betray ourselves with, by not feeling able to communicate and thus turning in on ourselves.
I hope you hear what a tribute it is to you, that regardless of what you can conjure up to berate yourself with about bills unpaid or whatever, your husband and children are testimony to how much you *are* more than what you *do*. I don't know if you've ever heard of John Bradshaw, who writes and speaks (one of many of course) about family dysfunction and essentially communication skills that most of us don't have, partly cuz our parents didn't either, cuz their parents didn't either... and no one's to *blame* but one of the messages too often passed from generation to generation, esp. in a society like ours, is that we are, as Bradshaw says, "human doings" more than "human beings" -- that our self-worth is measured in terms of what we achieve -- daily or over the long haul -- instead of who we *are.*
It seems clear that you have those who love you for who you *are* ... And perhaps one of the messages that will start to penetrate, as effexor or whatever helps on the biochem side too, is that you're not merely -- as they say about Hollywood -- "only as good as your last film" -- your last deed ... Instead, all of us probably need to take away the internalized sense of shame that is focused on what we haven't *done* (or did *wrong*) ... and is surely the theme of every anxiety at some level...
I'm so glad, in an odd way, that you actually have the bitter reminder of charcoal which perhaps can sharpen for your memory the recall of a path you will only ever take that once.
Welcome here, NT... My posts tend to be long and i've already spoken so much of myself that i won't repeat here, but i'm fairly new too, and it's such a resource and strength that we have each other for support here... Blessings to you,
zinya
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030614/msgs/233962.html