Your Mental Health Will Affect Your Children
You can choose which lessons your children learn from your example
My earliest memory is very clear. I can visualize the setup of the hand-me-down sofas in the living room, the placement of the television, and even where each of my parents sat with respect to the coffee table. I can see the beer cans in their blue foam holders.
My mom had “the tray” on her lap and a small orange box in one hand. She used a flap from that small orange box to push some green stuff around on the tray. I’d seen her perform this ritual hundreds of times before and, while I had no idea what she was doing, I thought nothing of it.
I was sitting on the floor playing with some toys when, seemingly out of the blue, my mother raised her eyes toward me and said, “Don’t ever tell anyone we do this.”
“Do what?” I asked, looking from my mother’s face to the tray, from the silver cigarette packs on the coffee table to the huge glass ashtray that sat in the middle of it all.
She removed a thin paper from the orange box and began wrapping some of the green stuff inside. “This,” she said. “Smoking pot. It’s illegal, and we could go to jail if anyone finds out we do it.”
My jaw hit the floor. “Smoking is illegal?”
“Well, smoking cigarettes isn’t,” she said, gesturing to the packs flanking the ashtray. “But this is different.”
In my house, smoking was so normal I’d have never thought to mention it to anyone outside my family. If my mother hadn’t told me that day about the difference between cigarettes and pot, I’d never have known they were smoking two different things.
Nothing had changed, but now I had a secret to keep.
Several years later, I sat in my mother’s car waiting for the school bus to pick me up. I was twelve years old and in seventh grade. Tears of hurt and rage streamed down my face, mirroring the rivulets of rain that coursed down the car windows.
I never quite knew where they came from or what they were about, but at least once a week a morning fight would present itself, courtesy of my mother. Never one to back down from a challenge, I would stand up to her, throwing back all the nastiness she slung in my direction. That particular morning, she’d backed me into the bathroom against the mirror, spitting words like horrible and ungrateful, and even slut. She threatened to take away all my things, strip me of all my privileges. For what? I had no idea.
“Hit me,” I’d dared her, so close she could surely feel the mist from my breath on her face. “Do it!” I wished she would so I could file charges and get out from under her toxic grasp.
She hadn’t, though. She’d just continued chipping away at my crumbling self-worth with her vitriolic words.
I boarded the bus in tears, falling into a seat and leaning my forehead against the cold window. I stared wordlessly out at the drenched streets, vaguely aware of some of my friends whispering nearby: “Must be another fight with her mom.”
By the time we were deposited at school, though, my eyes were clear. The incident, like all the ones before and after it, was never mentioned to an adult.
My mother’s mental health wasn’t just a “her” problem
I was well into adulthood before I realized that my mother suffers from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. She’d never say it — in fact, she probably doesn’t even know a name for it — but after dealing with my own mental health struggles and watching my loved ones react to theirs, it’s clear to me that her mental health issues have impacted nearly every facet of her life.
Another thing I realized far too late was that my mother’s struggles, and the way she chose to deal with them (or not) also ruled me. Lessons I learned at home determined who I came to be, how I came to navigate my world and my relationships, and what kind of parent I was becoming.
Spoiler: It wasn’t good.
The good news is that once I realized all the ways in which my mother’s mental health affected me, I was able to begin making different decisions for how I lived my life and related to my own children.
How we cope with our mental health
The day I learned the difference between pot and cigarettes — the day I came complicit in my parents’ secret-keeping — was the first time I ever gave thought to their behavior. After watching them smoke pot and drink a case of beer every day for my entire life, I realize they engage in these activities to cope with issues they avoid addressing head on.
Therapy was never considered in my house, probably because of the profound denial that any of us had any issues in the first place. Since no one ever mentioned the depression, anxiety, and personality issues that existed among our little triad, we could pretend they never existed at all.
So there was the drinking. A DUI when I was in elementary school, riding home from the river in the jump seat of our pickup truck. Countless unwitting trips home from parties and friends’ houses with an inebriated parent at the wheel. Endless nights listening to my mother retch from the next room over, hoping she’d gotten out of bed before vomiting. Morning upon morning of occupying myself or facing certain wrath because my parents were too hungover to deal with me. Years of worrying about my parents’ health, begging them to stop drinking, and eventually refusing to even bring them beers from the kitchen.
And there was the smoking. Lost jobs, lost worker’s compensation claims, lost opportunities for both my parents because of dirty drug tests. The bath of apathy in which my parents steeped as I desperately tried to connect with them. The secrets I kept for them, terrified they would be arrested and go to jail if I made a mistake, and then I would be left to live with some other family.
And there was not one attempt in all these years to get at the root of the feelings these coping mechanisms were designed to cover up.
How we feel and behave as a result of our mental health
That before-school fight was just one of dozens over the years. My mom would pick fights with me or with my dad, and would just generally be suspicious and nasty about other people.
She would get paranoid ideas in her head and confront us about them — from small ones like the time she yanked me out of bed because she thought I hadn’t brushed my teeth before bed, to larger ones like the time she all but accused my dad of adultery when he walked their female friend to her car one night (we had an aggressive dog and my father wanted to be sure the woman was safe).
As I gained more life experience I became more able to pick up on little signals that one of these explosions was building up. This helped me in my romantic relationships, as often my physical or emotional safety would depend on my being perceptive enough to avoid such conflicts.
Even now, though no longer subject to the dysfunction of my earlier years, I am someone who knows those close to me very deeply. I memorize their patterns of behavior without even trying, using that knowledge to determine how to behave in order to keep the peace.
My mother’s mental health issues made her unpredictable. She was never a reliable source of comfort, even when she seemed to show care and compassion. In fact, often the times I let my guard down were when she came in for the kill, blindsiding me and further breaking down my trust compass until I truly could not tell who had my best interest at heart and who only desired to use me to fulfill their own self-interest.
How we talk about our mental health
My mother was the volatile one, but both my parents have struggled with mental health for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, though, I only know this as an adult, looking back as I wrestle with my own challenges. As a child, I only knew that life was stressful and unpredictable.
Since we didn’t talk about the mental health challenges, or the drinking, or the smoking, and since no one ever discussed even the nastiest of incidents after they ended (never mind issued an apology), I never had an explanation for the way events unfolded. I also never developed an internal rule book for the kinds of things we talk about, and to whom, and the ones we don’t.
Unsurprisingly, communication was always the biggest problem in all my relationships. When I was frustrated, I swallowed it down. When I was worried, I denied it and pretended everything was okay. When I was feeling sad or upset, I used it as an excuse to mistreat people rather than a signal that I needed to talk things out.
I am taking control of my own mental health story
I came out of my childhood with one or two adaptive skills. Knowing my friends and family members deeply, for example, can foster positive relationships when I use my knowledge to communicate rather than to manipulate.
But for the most part, I’ve had to learn how to be in the world through trial and error, through countless dysfunctional friendships and romantic relationships, through the loss of some people I truly cared about.
I want better for my own children, and for my marriage, and to that end I’ve taken control of my mental health story in a few different ways.
I go to therapy, and I talk about it. I’m not coming home professing every little detail of what I discuss with my therapist, but I talk about therapy as if it’s something normal that many people find helpful at some point in life. I also support my family members in seeking and following through with therapy when they need it.
I talk about mental health, and how it affects behavior — mine, and everyone else’s. When I’m feeling sad, I let the tears flow and I talk to my family about what I’m feeling. When my anxiety makes me fly off the handle at my kids, I apologize and we talk about the similarities between my struggles and their own. I help my kids recognize when they’re having feelings and look at their default behaviors to see how they affect others.
I try to avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms, and I help my family members do the same, helping them find replacement behaviors or just talk things out when they’re worked up.
I won’t know for many years the effect my approach has on my children in the long term. I do know, though, that I feel far closer to my children than I ever have to my own mother. And if that is the only benefit I gain from my updated parenting style, I’ll take it.
Invisible illnesses are so difficult to manage, in part because it’s hard for others to understand what they can’t see. It can be even more difficult to understand the debilitating effects of trauma on the developing brain, because “trauma” is not a diagnosis. Yet it still manifests itself for a lifetime, a double-invisible influence, informing the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world and guiding our behavior, especially in times of struggle. For, me everything started with childhood trauma.
Join me here every second and fourth Monday, where I explore the invisible influence of past trauma on current beliefs and behavior. Find all my past columns and subscribe for updates here.