Dear Jess,

it sounds like you haven’t really felt appreciated in your own family, and felt better and more accepted by your friends.

In your family, there was one family member who’s always mocked you, and “there was not much support and positivity coming from this connection.” Your parents were “nice”, your father a bit disengaged, and it appears they were preoccupied with their jobs and your other siblings:

My parents have always been nice. My dad a little bit disengaged though. They have always provided support but not always the right support for ‘me’. They are their own people, they have their own lives, jobs, my other siblings to take care of.

They might have provided material support, but they didn’t provide adequate emotional support for you, weren’t there for you when you needed them. You got that support from your friends instead:

I remember feeling a little bit more emotionally interdependent from my parents and less family orientated than a lot of peers. for me family was always the people who treat your nicely and care and for me, and that was my friends.

Perhaps it wasn’t just your father that was disengaged, but your mother too (because she was too busy and preoccupied with care for your other siblings)?

Then, when you were 12, you went to an overseas trip, and when you returned, your friends weren’t exactly jumping up and down from joy that you’re back. They didn’t even ask you much about the trip. It appears as if their lives went on, regardless of whether you were there or not.

That’s when you felt a strong sense of rejection and the sense that “I don’t matter”, I suppose. Till then you felt you mattered at least to  your friends (you didn’t feel you mattered that much to your parents, did you?), but from that moment on, even that was shattered. You lost interest and became disengaged with school, and an “empty and grey feeling” overwhelmed you out of the blue.

That was the feeling of rejection by your parents that was always dormant, but was until then successfully held at bay by the interest provided by your peers. But when their interest seemed to have evaporated, the empty and grey feeling took over completely.

I think this is what happened, Jess. If you’d like to share some more about the ways you felt neglected and emotionally not supported in your family, please do. Healing that emotional neglect, I believe, will be key for healing your recurrent depression too.