The Student Room Group

have my parents made me depressed

please please don't neg me and hear me out first


As with Freud, I DO believe that your childhood upbringing is correlated to how you turn out to be when you are older. Recently, I can't help but blame (I use the term blame very lightly) for the "mess" I am right now. I'll give you some examples.


- I am the middle child, and I do feel I get treated very differently compared to my younger sister/older brother. My brother is 19, lazy, does nothing around the house and gets whatever he wants simply by asking. He's a bit of a hermit, doesn't leave his room and has anger issues (I constantly hear him shouting at the X-Box, he breaks things and rages out) I asked for a DSLR for my birthday/christmas present. refused several times saying "why do you even need one" Settled without it and I wasn't too bothered. Brother asked for one for xmas and both mum and dad went out with him looking for one. In anyones eyes that's a bit unfair but i'm not going to make a did deal out of it. Little sister gets away with murder. She's a couch potato, is incredibly rude to my parents and is lippy as hell. When I was her age, if I had attempted any of that I would have got a canning!

- I'd get in trouble for seriously little things when I was younger "13-16ish" like wanting to go out etc. I seriously couldn't understand why but as a result, I feared asking to go out or for things because I didn't want to annoy my parents. My social life started to decline, i'd make up excuses not to see my friends and I became very isolated and depressed.

- I took a liking to science at GCSE, and so my parents bombarded me with the "you must become a doctor bla bla bla". My parents are both in the medical field and they are making me feel like such a failure for not opting to do so, constantly comparing me to other family friends children who are training to become highly successful. I feel like they are trying to mould me into the "Perfect" daughter, which is something i'll never be because they disapprove of everything I ever do (festivals etc)

- things took a turn for the worst when I developed an eating disorder (parents always commented on what I ate and compared me to thinner friends), began self medicating (mum found out, beat me to a pulp but she does the same thing) and school grades began to decline (my own fault tbh)


does anyone else feel that parents may/may not be to blame for outcomes ?
Hiya,

I can't really say anything specific about eating disorders, but I can really relate very much to the other things you've described, and I can offer a bit of general advice too.

Firstly, it's natural that parents treat their kids differently. Nobody is born knowing how to be a parent - it's something you learn. Parents learn from their experience with their first child and treat their second child differently. Maybe yours were too slack at putting the foot down with your brother and then they overcompensated with you when they realised they hadn't been tough enough with your brother. The same thing happens with each subsequent child, and everyone with brothers and sisters goes through the same thing.

Anyway, I've also had problems coping with the things my parents could've done better. I'm 30 now and I've never really had a girlfriend and I've only slept with a couple of women. My Dad in particular is really excruciatingly shy and that's come out in me. Both my folks have also encouraged me to be interested in things (which is actually what produces high achievers in school), but never made me work hard and strive to make my position in life better (which is what produces high achievers at uni and in work). Seriously for years these things caused me upset and outright depression. Coming up to my birthday this year, I was even considering getting so wasted the night before that I wouldn't really wake up until the day after, even though these days I'm normally totally fine.

When I was 15 I started going out, and drinking was a big thing where I lived, but my parents hated it. My Mum told me the last time she could remember my Dad actually being drunk was in the mid-80s. Dad would go ballistic when he found me drunk and cue comments like, "You're ****ing up your life!" etc etc.

I know it's a struggle to deal with these feelings, but I think that it's important to differentiate between blame and responsibility. People make mistakes and as you get nearer my age you'll start to appreciate more and more and more how many of them your parents have made. But it's not a blame game. They're still your parents and they're probably doing their absolute best for you. Nobody's perfect.

The responsibility for dealing with these problems now lies with you, because adults deal with their own problems. That doesn't mean you have to do it on your own - just that it's your responsibility. If you can move yourself into a frame of mind where you concentrate on the responsibility and not the blame, you WILL start to move forward.

Try and put your thoughts into compartments, like you're packing old photos into boxes. You don't have to deal with everything at once, as long as you can keep at the back of your mind the worst feelings about what you're keeping for later. You don't have to have normal principles about dealing with mental health - you just find a way of processing your problems that works for you and then grab hold of that and go with it.

I hope this is a bit helpful. People can be different, but post back if you want to chat more.
Original post by Anonymous
please please don't neg me and hear me out first


As with Freud, I DO believe that your childhood upbringing is correlated to how you turn out to be when you are older. Recently, I can't help but blame (I use the term blame very lightly) for the "mess" I am right now. I'll give you some examples.


- I am the middle child, and I do feel I get treated very differently compared to my younger sister/older brother. My brother is 19, lazy, does nothing around the house and gets whatever he wants simply by asking. He's a bit of a hermit, doesn't leave his room and has anger issues (I constantly hear him shouting at the X-Box, he breaks things and rages out) I asked for a DSLR for my birthday/christmas present. refused several times saying "why do you even need one" Settled without it and I wasn't too bothered. Brother asked for one for xmas and both mum and dad went out with him looking for one. In anyones eyes that's a bit unfair but i'm not going to make a did deal out of it. Little sister gets away with murder. She's a couch potato, is incredibly rude to my parents and is lippy as hell. When I was her age, if I had attempted any of that I would have got a canning!

- I'd get in trouble for seriously little things when I was younger "13-16ish" like wanting to go out etc. I seriously couldn't understand why but as a result, I feared asking to go out or for things because I didn't want to annoy my parents. My social life started to decline, i'd make up excuses not to see my friends and I became very isolated and depressed.

- I took a liking to science at GCSE, and so my parents bombarded me with the "you must become a doctor bla bla bla". My parents are both in the medical field and they are making me feel like such a failure for not opting to do so, constantly comparing me to other family friends children who are training to become highly successful. I feel like they are trying to mould me into the "Perfect" daughter, which is something i'll never be because they disapprove of everything I ever do (festivals etc)

- things took a turn for the worst when I developed an eating disorder (parents always commented on what I ate and compared me to thinner friends), began self medicating (mum found out, beat me to a pulp but she does the same thing) and school grades began to decline (my own fault tbh)


does anyone else feel that parents may/may not be to blame for outcomes ?


I totally agree with you OP based on my experience and research into this a few years ago. For surebelieve anything unnatural such as an eating disorder is a result of childhood experiences.
Reply 3
Original post by Anonymous
I totally agree with you OP based on my experience and research into this a few years ago. For surebelieve anything unnatural such as an eating disorder is a result of childhood experiences.


What are you experiences if you don't mind me asking

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