Help without Anti Depressants

[SugarHut]

I'd really like some (kind,helpful) advice please, as I've seen some very harsh and condescending things written where people seem to genuinely be seeking help.

I have a 5yr old boy, and being very honest, I've never really even liked him...I feel like if I could press a button and it would take me back to never have fallen pregnant then I would press it like a shot. I make myself be as good a mother as I can, I hug him and tell him I love him, but I feel nothing. I don't feel repulsion, or hatred, but I feel nothing towards him. It makes me so sad...mainly for him, although I feel I hide it well and he's none the wiser. I long for the 2 days a week my mother has him when I can be me. I'm not a drippy "woe is me" failure, I'm a very strong woman, he's in private school, I have a very good job, which is not even very demanding...on the outside, I look like I have it made....but I wanted a girl so very badly, and every day I feel disappointed.

He's very smart, he gets outstanding reports, his behaviour is excellent, they are talking about putting him up a year in school...all things other parents tell me are amazing. On the outside I smile and gush and agree...on the inside I couldn't care less. I hate it.

Does this sound like depression? I can't bring myself to take any medication, so please don't advise me too. And please don't lecture me for "you shouldn't have had a child if you only wanted a girl" yes I did...but trust me if I knew I'd be this permanently disengaged and hate it to the extremes I do, then I would not have had him and saved us both. No pointless battering me for a decision I can not reverse, I feel bad enough as it is.

I look at other children at the school, and if I look at one of his little girl friends, I imagine it was my child and I get overwhelmed with these warm loving feelings, I want to pick her up and cuddle her, take her shopping, brush her hair, make cakes with her, read stories with her, I feel overwhelming pride and love even though it's a random child, then I look at him and want to cry. I am looking at him right now, and I picture him being a girl and I feel like there is so much love in me for a girl and he's just this child in my house that I don't even feel related to that's ruined my life.

What do I do??? Are there any non medication routes that actually work if I am depressed? Does it even sound like depression? I know these feelings aren't normal, and I know it shouldn't have taken me 5 years to say something about it. But anyone who has had a remotely similar experience please help me. x x x

[Salbertina]

I had no thunderbolt moment.. That I remember.

Many of us on MN are also successful professionals (not that this is important, necessarily), many of us are also well-groomed, materially wealthy and make a good impression of behaving as a "good mother" should... Others maybe not, whatever, we're all human behind any trappings of success. We are all susceptible to various weaknesses and we all encounter suffering of one kind of another. It helps to share openly and with compassion, MN at its very best when this occurs.

[Salbertina]

Satan- I agree that this thread has been.. direct to say the least at times, but OP is clearly suffering and clearing being very open about her issues. I don't think it's fair to use these to attack her.

A quick read of the MH threads demonstrates the v broad span of MH issues- we all suffer in different ways, no one textbook version.

[SugarHut]

On the advice of a lovely person earlier, I will gloss over moronic comments from those who can't understand what they read as opposed to verbally annihilate them. Off to paint my nails, buy my child some needless toot, and stare adoringly at myself in the mirror to cheer myself up....;) Ah bugger, I can't help myself can I.

I can't thank you guys enough for the comments and questions that you have raised, this is precisely what I need prior to seeing the GP for the first time. You've made me really look at where my problems seem to be stemming from, and although I still don't have much of an idea, I think my own mother/daughter relationship, and the boys in our family play a considerable part though, and it had never crossed my mind until someone raised it earlier. Seems rather obvious now. Along with a whole sackful of things that seemed too clichéd to apply, but probably have all contributed to the weird way my mind has grown and settled.

On a weird notion, I've had the urge to take him out of private school. I think a lot of the mothers there are uber competitive (as are non private, but these women are in a different league of obsessed in my humble opinion) and I thought perhaps if I wasn't accosted on a daily basis and had to listen to "oh you look so fab blah blah blah, oh your son is so fab blah blah blah, oh what i'd give to trade places blah sodding blah" I wouldn't leave there feeling crap every day. Kind of like not knowing someone has an eating disorder and on a daily basis waxing lyrical to them solely about food and their weight. So I'm going to look at two local village schools this week and have a think about transferring him. Might be left alone a little more there. And he can make some new friends who are normal, and realise not every one has a swimming pool and a horse called Hugo the Third. Again this is as a result of this talking to you guys, if I hadn't been able to pour everything out, I wouldn't have noticed this. Funny how you write something, read it back, then think my god, how have I not noticed that before, no wonder I feel crap, you should do something about that. So I am :) Off to look at the first school now! Peace and love x x x

[VisualiseAHorse]

I think you might be right Sugar - the local schools might be a bit less competitive, may put less pressure on you/your son to be 'perfect'.

[EstelleGetty]

I would add, Sugar, that you might well hear things you don't like or disagree with during talking therapies. Just allow yourself to let your guard down a bit.

I'm just saying this because a lot of what you've said reminds me of my BIL. Lovely guy, worked incredibly hard to become one of the highest earners in my city after a tough childhood with no money. And because he could do that through hard work, he can't get why he can't transform every situation through hard work. He has enormous control issues: bought a beautiful house for his family, his wife doesn't have to work,gives his kids everything they could dream of. But he can't control his anxiety any more than he could control his family being poor when he was young, his dad drinking and hitting his mum. It frustrates him so much.

He was in private therapy but refused to go to any more sessions when the therapist suggested things he didn't agree with, namely him having issues with control. He took it as criticism when it was not meant to be.

Please let yourself be as open as possible if you do engage with therapy. You owe it to yourself to hear what they might have to say. You've made a good life for yourself on your own, like my BIL has done, but you don't have to fight your unhappiness on your own.

[Hoophopes]

Hope you find a school you are happy with and will suit your ds. Changing things sounds a good idea so hope it helps. When people engage in therapy it often means being prepared to change opinions, adapt beliefs etc ( eg if one thinks one is a bad person can come to accept one is a person of value etc.... Not a great eg but was trying to think of a generic one and not one aimed at you) or change how view things and act.

Hope you have useful appointment with gp and you can say what you need to and be heard.

[working9while5]

I think this thread is a very hard thread to read Sugar and I suspect that is why you have had a mix of responses.

You are clearly in a really hard situation here but I think you really urgently need to be seen by a psychiatrist. This has been going on such a long time. I think that the extent of your gender disappointment really needs support very rapidly indeed because unfortunately, no matter what you provide for materially for your son this way of seeing him through the distortion of your mind's lens is very highly likely to deeply damage him. The fact you are posting here is a testament to the fact that you don't want that. You need to be very straight with any professional you speak to, perhaps printing this off and sharing it with them because this really needs to be dealt with for both of you with a matter of some urgency.

I am laying this on the line here. Many of us here have had the deep pain of realising our afflictive mental states have caused pain to our loved ones and children despite our best hopes both for them and for ourselves when we became pregnant or dreamed of having them.

I think from what you write you know that your viewpoint is deeply harmful for both you and your son. The sad reality is that having such extreme expectations for any child is dangerously limiting and bound to cause intense suffering for both mother and child, regardless of gender. We have so little control over our children and who they become, gender is only a very tiny part of it. When they come into this world and take their first breath they are immediately unique, sovereign human beings who deserve to be seen for who they are, not who we want them to be. The sorts of thoughts of spa days and the like are just fantasies, illusions. It bears no relationship to the thorny, messy reality of parenting which has nothing whatsoever to do with "happy ever afters".

You also came into the world this unique and sovereign human being and somewhere along the line, some coincidence of conditioning, biology and circumstance has led you off-path. Your mind is playing these crazy tricks on you, your mind that you have always trusted at work etc and creating this story of who your son is, who a daughter would have been etc and allowing that story to spin out of control into a whole web of pain. The fact that this was so extreme and immediate from the 20 week scan and has been so enduring suggests to me a very deep undercurrent of pain which is causing your mind to try to protect you by concocting this version of reality for yourself. This is incredible suffering for you and for your son. It needs to be stopped.

From what you have said about independent school etc it appears you may have the privilege of being well off enough to seek out private psychiatric help.

I know this is terrifying for you and the desire for control and the shame about what you feel drives you to bury this but that is also your mind playing cruel tricks on you.

You and your son deserve so much better than this. You really desperately need help very, very urgently. I think it is a testament to your strength you have survived with this pain, anguish and anger for so long.. but it is time to just let go of the control and wholeheartedly, self-compassionately and courageously to seek out the very best help to end this torment. I am so glad you are going to speak to your GP.

[SugarHut]

Estelle, that's really struck a chord. I have always felt like I can transform whatever situation I have ever wanted, through hard work, and sometimes through very little effort. And it's always worked. And in this situation, it's the polar opposite. I think because in quite a black and white way I can't fix that he's a boy I had always resigned myself to not even addressing an impossible problem. I still ask myself the question, even if it's clearly not him that needs fixing and it's my head...he is and always will be a boy, I can't understand or visualise how I will ever accept that. Again, I desperately want to be proved wrong.

I know that I will hear things I disagree with, and a lot of "home truths" and I'm ok with that...people here have done the same and it's been ok with me. The only time I get tetchy is when you get a preachy div, lacking intelligence, life experience or anything of any particular value, and yet with the right answer and opinion on everything and so very pleased to tell anyone who's interested or not. Probably grows their own alfalfa because Nigella does. ;) I quite want to be challenged, and I need to be asked difficult questions to force me to address them, because until I have someone who knows what they're doing having a good dig about in my head, this will never get fixed.

Working9. Thank you. That really took me aback. Made me cry a little...but in a positive way. You're right in everything you say, but that's the first time I've read something all about my personal situation, that I agree with in every word, and I feel that someone has hit the nail on the head. It feels like a massive weight has lifted that someone finally whole heartedly sees where I am coming from, despite how alien my mind may be. It gives me a lot of hope that if a stranger on here (no offence meant) can see through me with such clarity, that a professional psychiatrist will exceed this and actually bloody help me. You've cheered me up no end, I feel like this could really stand a chance and work now. Hugs.

x x x

[working9while5]

I'm really glad you saw my intention, I was worried you might find it hard to read.

I had written a mammoth post but it has been lost.

I think it's very important that you see someone with perinatal specialism. You need specialist help with attachment. It may be that you have issues yourself with feeling unattached to those who cared for you in infancy as lots of us really struggle with this in pregnancy and after childbirth.

Something that might help you is to hear that anger often masks fear (especially contemptuous and derisive anger, which we often use to protect our deepest selves from charges we fear to be true). Boredom and hollowness are often the means by which we protect ourselves from a mass of conflicting and messy emotions. It's a sort of psychological coping mechanism to tune it all out by telling yourself that another's opinion is beneath your consideration when somewhere it disturbs and challenges you and you are terribly afraid it MIGHT be true but sort of know that it isn't... Both anger and boredom often occur together in a way that can contrive to make one come across as deeply unlikable which is part of this illness too really... there is an undercurrent of self-hatred, doubt and pain which invites us to interact with others in distancing ways.. in ways which push us further from the world and from others, which isolate us and compound our pain.

[SugarHut]

No, I really did see your intention, and agree to the core with everything you wrote.

There are a few things that I can be certain about...I had a fantastic upbringing and parents, couldn't have asked for better, so I know (without any sense of being in denial) they are not part of my unattached feelings. I also have a lot to be grateful for, and I can acknowledge this too, I know in a lot of my life I am very lucky which I certainly recognise.

I don't feel angry either...which a few people have commented on...I'm very sharp tongued which I think people have incorrectly perceived as "hitting a nerve" and me responding in a snappy defensive way. I think because I know exactly what I mean, and I think I explain it in a crystal clear way...when someone puts forward a suggestion that is plain ridiculous in the context of my situation, I just respond because I can't believe how wrong a grasp they have. It's not anger...I just feel at the end of my tether with these feelings and it's more that I have no patience to re explain to people that don't get it as such. I certainly don't feel they are beneath me, they just don't understand what has been written, and definitely don't disturb or challenge me. Anger is probably the virtual opposite, I'm almost unemotive.

I watched the clip, and to my surprise, did not really relate at all. I've wondered right from the get go whether this is anything to do with depression as I don't seem to have the "textbook" symptoms. It's certainly some kind of problem in my head...but what, I'm not sure. I'm confident in social situations, I have been to an exercise class with my friends already today, had a half hour chat on the phone with my best friend, been looking at a new car, I have a pretty stress free life. It's just when he's about. All I ever see when I look at him, is an null and empty feeling, why couldn't you have just been a girl.

x x x

[SugarHut]

Hi Miiemohrs....

I just want to point out that what you think, and a lot of people have assumed is categorically wrong. Blah blah blah you may think, but until you saw the kind of family I'm from and how we have all been raised, you probably will still refuse to accept it. I was like him as a child....and could not have had more loving parents. Most of the children in our family are only children, and we all jabbered away to ourselves. Entertained ourselves. Created our own little worlds. I excelled in school, not through a desperate plea for my parent's approval, I was simply very smart. As is my son. He is not crying out for love and approval, he is that way from the values he has instilled in him. I was impeccably behaved, as is he, as are all of my cousins' children. And my cousins too when they were children...we were all like something out of Enid Blyton.

I am not in denial, I am not being defensive before we even go down that predictable route. I am far, far from not admitting my feelings about what is wrong with me and my situation. There are many things that need addressing, god knows even where to start. But you do not know what you're talking about when you say he is behaving in this manner for underlying reasons. That is how children in our family behave. He has NO clue. I'm not "having a go" but I'm conscious to keep this thread on to the issues that matter, which are really helping a great deal, not watch it wander off on a tangent of irrelevant misinterpretations.

x x x

[working9while5]

I have a number of thoughts here.

Attachment issues in adulthood can come from all sorts of things, like early trauma from things like ongoing hospitalisation or having been sent to boarding school at a young age and somehow misunderstood why that was happening/attributing abandonment to it etc etc. You don't have to have had an abusive childhood. Also some people have parents who demonstrate "absent presence" as you are doing... there in body with the mask on and providing everything/going through all superficial outward emotions but not in heart or mind. Sadly the evidence points overwhelmingly to this having a very serious effect on an individual's ability

Sometimes too people have other issues which cause them to have empathy difficulties and not to be able to truly understand another's mindset.

A red flag for me here is that your "crystal clear way" of describing things is coming across as being rude and unlikable (I am not saying how I see it, just how I think most would view it based on your phrasing and word choice) and sometimes people with social cognition difficulties (including attachment disorder, autism spectrum conditions, nonverbal learning disabilities, some personality disorders etc) don't really realise the impact of their words and think quite literally e.g. "I just respond because I can't believe how wrong a grasp they have". What some might describe as "cold" or "detached" can be a sign of quite significant psychiatric and in some cases neurodevelopmental conditions.


No one can tell you here of course but I strongly feel you need a referral to secondary care and to a psychiatrist and a GP or counselling isn't going to quite cut it. It will take a lot of work to get to the bottom of this but on some level what you are saying belies what you are presenting. This is really common when you are in the grip of illness or psychological conditions.

[working9while5]

Also re: "that is how children in our family behave".

This may very well be the case but can you see that the outcome of this upbringing is that you have brought a child into the world you feel little emotion for based on the fact of his gender and that this, in itself, demonstrates that you are experiencing issues with attachment. If this doesn't bother you, you wouldn't be posting or looking for help... so in some ways if you strip it back and just look at what's here, your current issue is that you feel no love for your son and feel a lack of emotion and that needs to change.

You can have values of creating worlds, being bright, jabbering away to yourself without experiencing an absence of love and approval, it's true. But is this relevant? The bottom line is that if you find it uncomfortable to not love your son, it is quite likely that he will one day find it uncomfortable to not love a child he brings into the world. Are you okay with that? If you are, do you know why you are posting here? (I ask this gently).

[working9while5]

individual's ability to empathise and feel a range of emotions that should read, sorry.

[SugarHut]

Miemors...good lord, I 'm not even going to dumb down and entertain that GCSE answer. You don't get it (yes of course you do, you're a counsellor, of course you understand) I tried to simplify, and you still don't. I have no time or patience or necessity to spell things out when you just do not get it.

Working9, that is a lot of food for thought. But I think you maybe slightly presume because I have a mental head in some respects, I can't have any clarity or any valid self diagnosis in others. I don't have mummy issues or daddy issues. I am not passing on subconscious treatment of myself as a child onto my son. I am not the victim of absent present parents and passing this on either. My upbringing is the cause of nothing....my views as a result of my upbringing on the possible relationships I am capable of, perhaps...that's one to reflect on.

I do see how I write is abrupt, to the point, not candy coated...but I apply this to myself equally as I do to others. And it is crystal clear. And harsh. And factual. And the truth. I appreciate you do not see it like this....you very clearly to me from the first thing you wrote have an almost freaky understanding of me. Others do not and get snidey for being told that they don't get it. And they don't...and you (and others) do....they just can't accept that their interpretation is wrong....and it's not me refusing to understand another mindset, I do understand their assessment of me and my situation, some critical, some sympathetic. Some have got it spot on, and others can't accept that they have massively got the wrong end of the stick. This is a reflection of them, not me. You are being very helpful here, you are making me think in the right way, and about the right things, thank you.

I still can say with certainty though that my upbringing has not screwed my head up. The notion is almost ridiculous to me...it couldn't have been more supportive. To the point where I would put it bottom of the list of causes/contributing factors. It just seems very easy to relate everything back to childhood problems.

The other thing that may be worth pointing out, (or not) is that I do get emotional at almost everything else...I am the kind of sap that cries at Disney films (!) and bounces with excitement watching my friends race. So I do know there is a lot of emotion naturally within me. Does that strike you as odd?

x x x

[working9while5]

" But I think you maybe slightly presume because I have a mental head in some respects, I can't have any clarity or any valid self diagnosis in others."

Not at all Sugar and I understand you writing that because that was certainly how I felt a lot as I went through mental health services, that certainly some people did seem to think that because I had a diagnosis I didn't fully "get" where I was at, even when I really felt huge clarity about it.

This is a sort of tricky thing to work through because on the one hand there is a deep truth in the reality that no one else can fully understand us. What you must remember about diagnoses etc is that they are only descriptive terms, they don't have absolute reality e.g. there is no "OCD" in the same way there is an "apple". There is a lot of subjectivity here. Someone described it to me as being like a descriptive term like bouquet - it could be dandelions or roses but it is still a bouquet.

It is quite difficult to find words for these experiences. There is a school of thought that we mediate experience through the language that others use around similar experiences to our own. In some ways what mental health difficulties represent is a time in life when our experiences fall out of line of what either can be talked about or is acceptable to talk about within the larger verbal community. So nowadays if you started talking about having visions from God, people would worry greatly for you whereas at other times in history it has inspired great faith and pilgrimage. Nowadays being anti-secular is a sign of strangeness, but in a different age the secular viewpoint might have had you burned at the stake etc etc.

Yet in some ways, everything is conditioned. This is not a straightforward issue of cause and effect. A person or organism has an experience and derives relationships between this experience and others. This is not a Jeremy Kyle or Oprah type pushing of all self-responsibility or image onto painful experiences from childhood. It's simply that where you are now is where you've got to. It is a product in some form of your individual response to your own learning history.

You are repeatedly contradicting yourself.. and that's a sign of this internal linguistic struggle to represent your experience when what you are speaking about is not easy to put into terms readily understandable by others as it is so taboo to talk as you are doing. It doesn't mean that your experience internally is necessarily contradictory - you may have a deep level of awareness about this subject on some levels - but it is not translating in a way that always appears to be coherent.

This doesn't mean YOU are not coherent. This means that language is a blunt tool for describing experience here.

In some ways it really doesn't matter why. It matters now that it is... and for whatever reason, you are having attachment difficulties. That is what you are describing. You have not been able to attach to your son thus far. This troubles you which is why you are posting and considering help. Yet there is a degree of distance and numbness about it too. What you have to ask yourself is what is the deep yearning within yourself to address this issue? What do you want? Your words, to me, say you do want desperately to love this little boy and you knpw on some level that it is not right that you don't.

So if you had a magic wand to wave, what would happen? I suspect you may say "he would be a girl"... but I'm going to put the strict limitation on you in answering this question that you need to deeply consider what would be the best outcome to this situation allowing for anything but that. Be honest with yourself. It will tell you a lot about what it is you want now.

[showtunesgirl]

I think much of what working9while5 is very helpful OP.

It's about what you can change rather than insisting that the only solution is something that you definitely can't change. As you can't change the situation, you have to examine and rearrange how you feel and deal with it.

[working9while5]

Miemohrs, it struck me when reading your response which I very much understand that there has been a lot of talk on this thread about Sugar's poor son. I 100% feel deeply and compassionately that he desperately needs Sugar to get help but I think that Sugar is suffering in a very deep way here.

It is deeply taboo to talk about the mother-child relationship in this way and I know for many of us it will be quite triggering. My own mother found it very difficult to connect with us though she provided everything etc. I also know that she would have denied it to the very last fibre of her being because actually it was an experience that was so painful and against who she saw herself to be that she just numbed it all down in relation to me in particular.

I am not saying that Sugar is like my mother because I think it is reductionist to compare these experiences... yet I do believe that mother and child are a dyad and the only way either party will ever find peace from this situation is for Sugar to experience deep compassion and unconditional regard for where she is at, which is a difficult and unpleasant place for many of us to see anyone.

Sugar, do you feel deep unconditional regard for yourself, would you say?

[Salbertina]

Gosh, hard to know what to add....

I think we all have posted in good faith, to try to help, posting according to our own, valid experience, in some cases after many years of parenting and/or MH involvement as a professional or a patient. To ask for candid opinions and then to be quite so dismissive of some feedback you received is both shortsighted and an indication of how defensive you are. It is also quite hurtful, I'm sure.

We ALL default to subconscious patterns laid down in childhood. That's fact. Parenting tests this to the full, certainly for me. Great that your childhood was happy, but it is likely that certain rigid ways of thinking were established then (of which you may not be aware).

I can't be more lucid right now, got my own kids to sort before bed. I also have plenty enough to resolve in my own life so better focus on that.

Anyway, I wish you well, OP.

[Salbertina]

Sugar- please don't lash out, it's unnecessary and reflects badly on you.

Can you speak to/get a hug from your mum? You sound like you need one.