Hi Anita,

It’s good to hear that you’ve recovered from the eating disorders and it’s great that you’ve found a way of eating – the ordered food- that works for you! It’s such a tough feat to beat an eating disorder (I hope this isn’t triggering but please let me know if it is) and it’s so great that you were able to have a better relationship with food.

I took a couple of days to reply because I’ve been reflecting on myself since reading your response. You are so good at getting to the issue! What you wrote in your second message is exactly correct to the tee. When growing up, my brother and I were really close. But he was the “popular” kid in school, had tons of friends, made the dean’s list in college, got a great job right out of college, and is now married. On the other hand, I was a bit of a loner in school and had no friends to the point that I ate lunch in the library because I didn’t want to sit alone in the cafeteria. I became really depressed in college and moved back home and I tried grad school but I ended up moving back in with my parents and still live in my parents’ home. I feel like I greatly disappointed my parents because I wasn’t as successful or didn’t turn out to be the daughter they wanted. This morning, I was venting to my mom about this same health issue and I kept saying “sorry, I don’t mean to irritate you”, before reading your message, I wouldn’t have thought about it but I realize now that it’s because of these years of feeling like I’ve disappointed my parents that I say things like that. That makes so much sense about having empathy for my parents and others but not really feeling that for myself.

The complete opposite has happened from your post – you posted exactly everything that I felt in my life going back the last two decades or so and it has made me reflect so much. I truly appreciate your posts and your taking the time to write to me.

I love my parents but I think you’re right. I had severe depression in college and when I told my dad, he said “you just need to think positively”. When my mom found my self-harm scars, she said “you need to stop doing stupid things to yourself” and shamed me and my parents mocked me for saying it’s an addiction (it’s 9 years later and I still struggle with self-harm addiction – I just started self-harming on my leg so my parents wouldn’t see, but I’m 1.5 years clean). For almost a year after, I couldn’t wear long sleeve shirts without my mom asking “did you do something stupid to yourself?”. In grad school, I became suicidal and I told my mom. She said “you need to stay in grad school and continue on with it”. I remember being terrified driving to grad school (I’d come home each weekend mainly for my dog) because I didn’t want to die but I wanted out of the pain of a depressive episode and especially the day my mom told me this. I remember calling my friend and asking if she wanted to meet up for dinner and she and her boyfriend were free. If it weren’t for that dinner, I really don’t think I’d be here today and it’s just anytime I reach out for help for my depression or anxiety, I don’t receive the help I need. My mom put me in complete fear of hospitalization in a mental institution into me and I never quite received the help I may have needed for my suicidal thoughts because I was afraid of telling a therapist (I’m not suicidal now – this was 3 years ago). In college, I talked to my parents about going on anti-depressants, they said I could on the condition that I don’t go above 10mg and I have to do research to pick the one I saw the best reviews of. I picked 10mg lexapro and while on medications, I developed bulimia and didn’t get the help I needed. I also had textbook symptoms of depression in high school and got bad grades because of it and my dad would yell at me daily saying I’d never amount to anything in life. It feels like a lot of the lack of empathy from them came around my depression and comparing myself to my brother and it wasn’t until I wrote this all out that I realized it.  I don’t think they understand mental health/illness and what to do with it because maybe they’ve never experienced it themselves or they just didn’t know what to do but the way they handled my depression has had a longstanding effect on me to this day. My mom volunteers as part of her church that deals with mental health and it really irritates me because she doesn’t understand the first thing about mental illness. This is so long and all over the place but it felt like a weight off my shoulders to type it all out.

I realized yesterday in a therapy appointment that all of the regrets I’m feeling is actually self-blame, which makes sense. I think I’ve blamed every part of my life on myself – whether it’s the bad grades in high school, the untraditional college experience, not having many friends or not finding a job right out of college, the diabetes diagnosis (which I know isn’t really my fault – it’s highly genetic in my family), and now the diabetes complications, and everything in between. But there’s still that thought in my mind that “if I had tried to do well in high school, tried to make friends in my sorority at college, got my health in order, even if I was diagnosed with diabetes at the same time, taken care of that asap, then my life would be different and better” and it’s a cycle of self-blame because I know I can’t go back and change any of that.

I’m sorry for such a long response, I just started reflecting on my life and it all came out on the keyboard lol