Becoming the Emotional Caretaker For My Mum With Depression
As a teenager, I would get home from school and stand on my doorstep hesitantly. Staring at the green door, I would listen silently for a few minutes to see if I could pick up any clues as to what I might find when I am inside. I listened mostly for raised voices or desperate sobs. If I heard nothing, I would cautiously turn my key in the lock and enter. If I heard something, I would sit on the doorstep for a while or text a friend to see if they wanted to meet at the park. More often than not, there were no audible clues, but I would enter to find my mum tidying with silent tears streaming down her face.
I was thirteen when my dad pulled me aside and told me my mum had depression. I don’t remember what he told me about it other than that it was a mental illness. I remember logging on to my computer and reading everything I could about it on Google. I remember thinking it explained a lot of her behaviour - how she cried all the time and was always talking negatively about herself. I remember feeling afraid when I read that depression could cause suicidal thoughts. I remember thinking I needed to help her and not be a bother so that she didn’t feel any worse.
She had already been leaning on me for emotional support for a long time, but I finally understood why. The fear of losing her drove me to diminish my needs even more than I already was until it became the norm for me, and I lost sight of what my needs were. The script went something like this: when I found my mum crying silently, I would ask her what was wrong. She would ignore me completely. It was like she couldn’t even hear me as her body didn’t even seem to respond to my voice in recognition - not even a single glance of the eye or a nod of the head. Often, I felt like a ghost. I would ask her again and get no response. I would tell her that she could talk to me if she wanted and would make her a cup of tea. Giving her the tea, I would ask a third time, and she would just smile and say thank you for the tea. It wasn’t until I walked away from her that she sometimes decided to talk.
She would spew out negative thoughts like word vomit: arguments and intimate details about her relationship with my dad, conflicts at work, etc. She told me she was a terrible mother. She told me she was worthless. I cooed at her, telling her anything she needed to hear to get her to stop crying. I was unable to share any of my feelings because, if I tried to, the conversation would always come back to her. If I told her that I was finding the situation stressful, she made me feel guilty by wailing that she was a horrible person. I coped by daydreaming often and dissociating from reality, which means that I now struggle to remember large portions of my childhood and teenage years.
It has only been in the last year or so, after a lot of personal therapy, that I have been able to recognise that this dynamic with my mum is toxic and that she displays many traits of narcissistic personality disorder due to her severe low self-esteem. In her article for Goop, Dr. Robin Berman explains that a little bit of narcissism is healthy for humans, but it becomes malignant when it interferes with relationships. That person might have a ‘very fragile and reactive sense of self’ and be ‘fueled by praise and admiration’ but ‘deeply injured by criticism and even honest feedback.’ I saw that this description fit my mum and began to discover that it went beyond her subverting my needs and demanding my care and attention as she was also ‘modelling me in her own image,’ which Berman describes as a classic trait of a narcissistic parent. In public, my mum was the epitome of a ‘perfect’ mother - she would always show up to support me at events or activities and drive my friends and me around. In private, it was a different story where I would have to tiptoe around her and her unpredictable moods. She wanted me to be and do everything she couldn’t. I was to go to law school because she hadn’t been clever enough to do so. I was to marry a man that could support me financially because my father couldn’t. I received praise when I lived how she wanted me to and felt her crushing disappointment when I didn’t. I went to study law, but I quit after one year as I was severely unhappy. I was terrified to tell her. When I did, she was angry and told me I was making a huge mistake.
Since the age of thirteen, I have been through several severe bouts of depression, panic disorder, and generalised anxiety disorder. I ended up in an abusive relationship that echoed the cycle I was stuck in with my mum, where my partner would withdraw from me completely when I said no to him and I would feel like a ghost again, desperate for attention, which would lead to me giving in to his desires. I felt so strongly that others’ needs were more important than my own that I was unable to recognise and assert my own boundaries. It’s not surprising that I found myself in this situation, as our relationships with our parents become the model for how we form attachments with others.
When I ended the relationship with my ex-boyfriend, I finally began to realise my own worth and embarked on a journey of self-discovery. I had lost so much of myself that I didn’t even know what I liked or disliked, even down to small things like food, music, and clothes. Eventually, I felt like I had stepped out of my ghostlike existence and back into my body. I am now free of depression and anxiety and I am living as myself authentically.
However, though I have changed, my mum has not. She still makes me feel invisible and guilty sometimes. I still can’t talk to her about my feelings. But I now see when she is doing it and understand that her emotions are not my own. It’s easier said than done, and therapy has helped me establish realistic expectations and boundaries so that I no longer have to sacrifice myself. I avoid spending a lot of time with her in one go so that I don’t slip back into my role as her emotional bin bag. Understanding and empathising with her challenges with depression and low self-esteem doesn’t change the fact that she was unable to meet my needs as her daughter. My mum has finally started going to therapy this year. I hope that she can deal with the trauma of her past so that she can stop projecting it on to me and others and that one day she may be happier within herself. I hope that in the future we’ll be able to have a closer, more healthy relationship. But I know that there is a possibility that may never happen so I am working on finding peace with that idea. For anyone reading this struggling with their own mental health, know that things can get better. I am living proof. Know that you are worthy of help and that help is out there. With time, the grey skies that cloud your mind will start to clear.
For more information and support with mental health, visit Mind’s website here.
