Dear Dandan,

I am glad you returned to the forum – welcome back!

With myself, I am mostly low and depressed, for no reason. My mom too is like me. She feels low most of the time. If she is surrounded by a dull environment, she feels low.

You’re depressed because you were raised by a depressed mother. A depressed mother cannot properly respond to your emotional needs, she cannot express joy that you exist, she cannot be happy about your little achievements, cannot encourage you to try out new things, cannot root for you in a sports match etc.

But beyond that, she cannot really be happy, and if a mother is unhappy, the child is unhappy too. The child always tries to make the mother happy, and if it doesn’t succeed, the child too becomes sad and depressed. He starts feeling hopeless too, because nothing works, and he blames himself for his mother’s unhappiness – he believes he’s not good enough to make her mother happy.

So if you feel depressed, have low energy, feel not good enough, and are a pessimist, often having negative thoughts – that can all be a consequence of having a depressed mother.

You’d need to restore the joy for life and the hope, and I think the best way would be to work with a therapist who could see you and mirror you and encourage you – to sort of act as a positive, nurturing mother figure. This way you could build up the capacity for joy and hope, which right now you don’t seem to have. And also, you’d need to learn to love yourself and realize that you’re good enough, and that it’s not your fault you couldn’t make your mother happy.

These are my thoughts for now – let me know how you feel about it, and whether it resonates.