Depressed living with parents

Editor's note: We do not indicate the name of the heroine, since the text refers to her relatives.

Cocktail

When Tanya was ten, she began to notice that something was wrong with her mother: she began to cry constantly and a lot. Tanya asked her what happened, but she answered that nothing, nothing, just very sad. She was upset even by the little things - and sometimes they were not even needed. Sometimes mom said she was crying because she couldn’t love anyone after she broke up with Tanya’s dad, and she was sad that the child didn’t have a father. nine0005

Tanya and her mother lived in Kyiv, in an apartment with her mother's twin sister, her daughter and grandmother. Everyone had their own life, Tanya and her mother had a separate room, and no one particularly interfered in their affairs.

“When I came home after school, my mother was almost always asleep. And when I didn’t sleep, I drank “cocktails”. That's what it was called. I noticed her with a glass, reached for it - and they answered me that it was not mine, it was a “cocktail,” recalls Tanya. "Cocktail" was vodka with juice.

Mom still tried to work somehow, but every month she managed to do it worse and worse. She was an artist, she spent a lot of time in the workshop, where in general almost everyone liked to drink: “But her friends only drank when they were hanging out, and she continued to do it during the day, on weekdays, in the middle of the day, in the morning, non-stop”, Tanya recalls.

Tanya tried to negotiate. Like, "let's not drink since the New Year, let's start a new life." Usually the agreement was valid for several days. Further, “cocktails” quickly returned to my mother’s life. Tanya began to look around the apartment for bottles and knew all the hiding places. nine0005

• Photo: Bhavyesh Acharya / Unsplash

“I don’t know how old I was – maybe 12-13 years old – but I had an obsessive thought that I had to constantly monitor so that my mother would not drink,” the girl recalls.

Tanya quickly realized that it was pointless to turn to her mother for help: she fell out of life, could not respond to her daughter's greetings or appeals. Once Tanya had several teeth at once - the pain was hellish, and the girl did not know what to do in such a situation. She woke up her mother - she replied that she was not up to it, she was sleeping. Tanya lost those three teeth rather quickly, now they are replaced by implants. nine0005

When my mother wasn't drinking or sleeping, she went to the store to replenish her stock of alcohol. Tanya hid the keys to her, but her mother was stronger.

After a while, my mother stopped taking care of herself completely. She didn't have the energy to take a shower or brush her teeth: she could go weeks without doing it. Tanya took her mother to the doctor - she refused to go herself. I washed her hair, looked for clean clothes in the closet, led her into the bath by the handle.

Tanya stopped inviting her friends home, and she didn't want to go there herself. nine0005

• Photo: Ivan Chernichkin / Zaborona

“I was ashamed. I felt different than everyone else - the worst. I couldn't tell anything about my mother. The worst thing that could happen is to accidentally meet classmates on the street. It was evident that my mother drinks a lot: no clean clothes could hide this, ”recalls Tanya.

Despite this, the girl regularly tried to take her mother out of the apartment - everything to distract her from alcohol. Tanya came up with joint trips to the store or to the park, arranged film screenings at home, asked to sew some things. Previously, even when my mother felt good and did not drink, she loved to sew and went in for sports, so Tanya grabbed the threads from this past life and pulled her mother to a fabric store or to some kind of competition. These methods really worked, she got better - for a day or two. And then I had to come up with something else. nine0005

Adult

Parents are something like a cocoon, says Elena Kazakova, a psychologist. A child should be a child, and if this does not happen, then all other processes in adult life require much more effort. There is a risk that a person will always do something good for others, but not for himself.

“A child in childhood must be fed up with adults: to be with them, even to conflict with them, to be comforted by them, to receive love. The first experience is always given by an adult. If a lot of adult load falls on a child early, he can simply endure it. He still does not have an internal support, the child feels the hunger of emotional relationships. It is from his parents that he must receive this care before giving it himself, ”explains the psychologist. nine0005

• Elena Kazakova

When a child begins to take care of an adult who cannot cope on his own, it is about survival, the expert clarifies: “A child wants to keep an adult near him, if only to grow up physically and not be alone. He saves an adult, but at the same time he cares about his safety: such a survival. That is why, she adds, children often mess around with alcohol addicts, trying to improve the condition of their parents - to do everything so as not to lose touch. nine0005

“Even the presence of a sleeping father or mother on the couch gives the child at least some sense of stability. And there should be an object of stability: without it, one cannot survive, ”explains Kazakova.

Mom or dad are the people who lay the foundation for emotional relationships.

“Everything is important: warmth, care, touch, passion for the child, comforting him, experiencing both positive and negative emotions, creating a sense of security. This is the human that the child as a social being should receive. If this is not there or a person does not receive it, then he will unconsciously look for it in other people and relationships, the expert adds. But the other person doesn't know about it. He hopes to meet an adult, but he meets a man who was not allowed to be a child. nine0005

Grandmother

Tanya found out that her mother apparently had a severe form of depression only many years later, already an adult. She began to consult with psychologists and realized that depression is a disease, and not just a bad mood. Therefore, the chances that a joint film screening could bring mom back to life were really small.

• Photo: Ivan Chernichkin / Zaborona

Tanya's grandmother was a psychiatrist. She worked at the Pavlov Hospital in Kyiv, in charge of the department of child psychiatry, but she liked to prescribe homeopathy and was suspicious of other doctors. nine0005

“I don't know how we even survived. I think against all odds. Grandmother always believed that she knew everything herself: she was a doctor. We have never been to other doctors. She also tried to somehow treat her mother, took her to some kind of coding and groups. But nothing helped, and it was actually forbidden to turn to other doctors, ”says Tanya. Even when Tanya's mother poured a pot of boiling water over herself, she was treated at home - there was a scar on half her body.

It was generally difficult with my grandmother. Tanya recalls that she emotionally choked everyone. It was difficult to communicate with her, even unbearable. nine0005

“Grandma controlled everyone and always with her violent care. She actually forced you to take care of you. She was so intrusive with her offers to eat, see or listen to something that sometimes I just wanted to kill her so that she would stop, says Tanya. - When my mother or I refused, she was offended: every 5 minutes she came into our room with her mother, screaming. I (and my mother) ran away from this into the bath, closed, but she followed me and demanded that I not close the door. There was no chance to be alone even for a minute. I think it suffocated my mother." nine0005

Tanya

In conditions when my mother is constantly crying and drinking, and my grandmother is screaming, nobody really thought about Tanya's needs. When she was 14 years old, she already went to the second-hand store to look for some things for herself: no one at home cared if there was something to wear. In her free time, she read fantasy. From time to time, her grandmother forbade this too - she took away the books and hid them, so Tanya usually read at night on the bed next to her mother, covering the light bulb with a sweater. She especially loved Harry Potter - she imagined that she herself lives in a magical world, completely different from the one in which she grew up. nine0005

• Photo: Ivan Chernichkin / Zaborona

“Everything that was interesting to me was always rejected. I wanted to go swimming - I was reminded that at the age of 7 I lost consciousness, so I will not go in for sports. I wanted to play the piano - my grandmother answered that I had no hearing. And so it happened with everything. Depreciation was the main postulate of our family,” recalls Tanya.

True, before the 5th grade, Tanya went to acrobatics. Then, when her mother started drinking, Tanya stopped going to training: she herself did not see the point in this, and no one controlled at home. That Tanya was missing classes was noticed only by the coach a few weeks later. nine0005

“Mom started drinking, and in general everything lost its meaning. Before that, I studied for one five, and at the end of the year I could hardly cope. I gave up studying. All this seemed unnecessary and unimportant against the backdrop of events at home. I barely graduated from high school and also studied at the institute - sucks. I don't know how they handled me. I came for a couple of times every two weeks. I watched anime, hid from real life. It was better in fantasies,” says Tanya.

Tanya moved out as soon as she turned 18. Family friends moved out of an apartment nearby and offered Tanya a room. A cousin ran away even earlier: at the age of 17 she moved out to a guy. nine0005

• Photo: Ivan Chernichkin / Zaborona

The move did not solve all the problems: “It's just that my mother and grandmother began to boil themselves in their lives. But they called me ten times a day. Both my mother and grandmother asked why I left them, why I don’t help, because only I can do it. My grandmother accused me, saying that I am my mother's only daughter and should be next to her. I was offended, because I actually helped anyway, I came. I also felt responsible: I knew that my mother and I would quarrel and she would drink more. But I already wanted my life, I could no longer save everyone. Aunt fell ill after some time, in the same apartment - I didn’t have the strength to save her too, ”says Tanya. nine0005

When Tanya was 22, her mother fell ill. She moved closer to the same house to take care of her recumbent. Came in the morning and evening, washed. Mom died two years later. Six months earlier, my aunt, my mother's twin sister, also died. She also drank, and they died from the same diseases. Before their death, both said that they could no longer live: they did not have any strength for this.

“When my mother died, I felt relieved, however sad it may sound. My friend's mother said then: "That's it, Tanya, you've been exhausted." It was weird, scary, but it was true.” nine0005

Violence

Tanya did not immediately come to the idea that she would not be able to clean up the psychological consequences of her childhood herself. After the move, she began a relationship with a guy, but it did not end well.

“Of course it was a toxic relationship: what else could it be? In my family, I could not learn how to build healthy ones, because I did not see such ones. I had an unbalanced, overprotective grandmother and a mom who couldn't take care of herself. And, of course, I found myself a person who also had to be saved, ”recalls Tanya. nine0005

Her boyfriend was one of those who are called abusers. He was a tyrant - he didn’t beat, Tanya says, but he did everything except that. Controlled, followed, devalued, intimidated, accused, cheated, lied.

“I had constant panic attacks, it was very difficult. It was psychological abuse, as if copied from a textbook. When he was around, it seemed that there would be no life at all, ”recalls Tanya. This relationship continued for two years. Tanya was able to stop them only after she accidentally got into psychological training. Then she began to go to psychologists, to understand, to delve into herself and find out why it is so difficult for her to leave. nine0005

Relationships

What a person does not get in childhood, he tries to find later, because he feels hungry, says a psychologist.

“Often people cannot fully realize and understand what they want. Although in reality they want warmth, care and some kind of presence of another person. They try to get what they didn’t get from their parents to get from partners, friends, and then from their own children. Unconsciously, they make a partner a significant adult for themselves - someone on whom you can rely, from whom you can learn something. Moreover, this other person may not even be aware of such expectations, ”says Elena. nine0005

• Photo: Ivan Chernichkin / Zaborona

If emotional relationships with parents fail to be established, people unconsciously jump into dependent or co-dependent relationships - because they are not aware of their own desires and needs.

“At first, a person worries about his safety, it seems to him that he gets something in these relationships, but does not understand what exactly - but he needs care, attention, warmth, and is ready to do anything for this, to be “good” says the psychologist. nine0005

In her practice, she explains, she often comes across clients who say that in childhood they guessed the mood of their father or mother so that they would not fly for it. Like, if the parents are not in the mood, it is better not to touch them. And these children, who have already grown up, still spend energy trying to guess the behavior of others, to protect themselves and at least somehow control the situation around them.

In addition, people who have not had time to be children think that they need to constantly do something for another person so that he is near and does not leave. They focus on others and miss out on what they really want, the expert explains. nine0005

“This is also extreme. When there is no other person to take care of, it is as if they do not exist. Life seems to revolve around the needs of others. This is the position of the victim, - says Elena. “In the end, people nearby feel guilty that a person seems to be doing a lot for them, but they do not do as much - and they are usually regularly reminded of this.”

Psychotherapy provides an opportunity to work through these problems - the psychotherapist becomes the person with whom you can live the experience missed in childhood, Elena explains. nine0005

“Not to replace, but to live, disassemble, understand what you want. Even get experience when someone hugs you - to secure it. Then a person has a conscious choice: to rely on this experience and develop it so as not to demand from another what he cannot give. Or even learn to ask - and for this you need to understand what exactly you want. It gets hard. More often than not, those who jump into adulthood early just skip themselves.”

Life

When her mother died, Tanya signed up for a group for relatives of alcohol addicts: “If I go through a hundred trainings or spend a hundred hours with a psychologist, I don't know if it can be cured. When my mother died, I realized that the death of our parents would not solve our problems either. Codependent relationships stay with us: then we find partners with addictions. I went to various psychological groups until I felt better. Until I realized that I did everything I could for my mother. Until I forgave her. nine0005

Tanya broke up with her boyfriend and began to think about what she wants from life. With a diploma in interior design, but without the slightest desire to do this, she got a job working in a candy store. Now, eight years later, Tanya already has her own: she bakes cakes and cookies to order. Two more people work under her leadership, and in general, Tanya says, she found what she likes. She is married - according to her, in a happy one.

• Photo: Ivan Chernichkin / Zaborona
• Photo: Ivan Chernichkin / Zaborona

She lives in the same house where she lived all her childhood. Her grandmother still lives in the apartment nearby. She is sick and cannot take care of herself. Tanya comes to her every day and pays for the nurse.

“My mother's death freed me, but my grandmother is still holding me. But it’s still not the same — not the prison in which I lived,” she says.

Tanya adds that she is very lucky - thanks to psychotherapy. Other survivors in their family are less fortunate: their brother has depression and alcohol addiction, and his sister is married to a tyrant: he mocks her, but she cannot break free. nine0005

At the age of 25 on my mother's neck. Why sometimes adult children continue to live with their parents

A teenager of 15-16 years old, he sits at the computer and does not go for a walk. He is 18-19, he flew out of the institute, sits at the computer and does not leave the house. And at 25 he does not work and continues to live with his parents. Is it depression, laziness, wrong upbringing? Pravmir starts a big conversation about why some children are in no hurry to start an independent life. Our first interview about this was with psychologist Katerina Demina. nine0005

Katerina Demina

— It seems that Goncharov was the first to describe such an overgrown baby: Oblomov does not want to go out into the world, but curled up on his sofa, as in a mother's womb. In Japan, according to statistics, there are now more than a million hikikomori unemployed people who have voluntarily isolated themselves from society. In Italy, they complain about bambocchino - adults sitting on their parents' necks. And in Russia, for sure, many people know families where adult guys (rarely girls) sit on their mother's neck. nine0162