Dear Sarah:

You shared that you are 16, that your parents never really cared about you, but instead were focuses on “cheating on each other in secret and not caring about anything else”. As a result, you’ve been depressed for about 4 years, “tried 4,5 types of antidepressants but none worked”, “feeling unfamiliar with everything around me.. the spark of life.. it died inside of me”.

I read all of your post and this is my input: life can get better for you, much better; it is possible for you to heal from the devastation of growing up without love. It is a process that will take time and work and you will need professional help and guidance. If you started the process now, by the time you are 20, you will feel that “spark of life” again, every day.

Here is what will not help you: magical and extreme thinking. Children naturally think in magical and extreme (all-or-nothing) ways, but to heal and function well in life as an adult, you will need to correct your thinking so to fit it to reality.

Here is your magical thinking: “I seek a marvelous adventure, something like fairytales and superhero movies.. be like a magical person.. and do things that the ordinary can’t even imagine”- this is good for pleasant daydreaming, similar to watching a science fiction movie, but it is harmful when it comes to everyday functional living. Everyday living does have adventures in it, but they are small adventures, not marvelous, flashy out-of-this-world adventures. If you look for flashy adventures, you miss the small yet meaningful adventures.

Here is your extreme thinking:

1) When a teacher bullied you in 6th grade, humiliating you in front of the whole class because you weren’t devoted to studying”, you didn’t choose to devote more time to studying in the school you attended. Instead,  you decided to go to an extreme: “to study really hard to get accepted in the best school.. school for gifted/ smart students.. I used to think that I’d grow up to be a useless person if I never get in that school”, “thinking i’m going to be the best student there”- the extreme, all-or-nothing thinking is: either I get into the best school and be the best student in the best school  or I am useless. The middle way in between extremes would have been studying hard in the school you were attending, being a good student in that school.

2) Currently there is “an international competition on programming.. If I don’t make it to that international competition, then I’ll most likely never be able to make  a life for myself”- again, it is the extremes of either you make it in that competition or you don’t make it in life.

This extreme thinking creates a lot of pressure on yourself, like you suggested yourself (“I put so much pressure on myself”), and as a result of this pressure, you lose motivation.

About the gifted school you attended, you wrote: “I just wanted to have something, an achievement, a form of success under the name of the gifted school, so that maybe (your parents) would pay attention to me”- your parents didn’t pay attention to you not because you were not successful but because they had other things on their minds. You were already as lovable as can be, but they failed to see it because,  like you suggested yourself, they were otherwise occupied. As you proceed, you will need attention, a caring attention. A professional caring therapist would be best for you. In the context of this thread, I, as a very active participant here and not a professional, can be a caring, attentive individual for you.

anita