Ex with BPD is pregnant and going to be a single mother. What have I just sucessfully avoided here ?

I honestly wouldn't remember what the experience is like at 4 years old. There are a lot of things I remember from being little, but the general experience of being depressed isn't something that would have actually stuck out. I think when you have depression that early, it's not something that seems weird to you, you don't understand that you're different.

The reason I was diagnosed is because my Father died when I was 3. This isn't the reason I have depression, it was just the leading factor to me getting diagnosed. When a very young childs parent dies, getting them to a psychologist and getting them therapy is very important. The level of depression and anxiety that I had then was considered (according to my mom) off the charts. I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Some forms of depression go away. Clinical Depression is something that you have for life, and it will never go away. You can have a really really great week, month, year, but it's always waiting to take over again at some point, which can make it hard to try to keep moving forward, because you know that at some point you're going to end up in this hole again, and there's not really anything you can do about it except for figure out how to climb out again.

I was diagnosed very early, and my mom had me in therapy and set up a lot of support, so it wasn't until I started school that the depression really hit as noticeable to ME. I don't remember a day between Kindergarten and third grade where I wasn't depressed. I wasn't suicidal, but I always wanted to run away, or hide, or just disappear. I spent a lot of time just wanting to disappear or stop existing. The concept of killing myself wasn't a thing, because I just hadn't really been exposed to the idea. My response to being asked how I was for years was "happy" despite almost never being actually happy. I couldn't talk about how I actually felt, and happy was the easiest answer to give. I had people to talk to, but I couldn't actually talk to them. Figuring out why I was upset was almost 100% guesswork every time. As a little kid you don't understand that you're depressed, you just know that you're different from all of the other kids. You don't understand that other kids have never thought about running away from home because they don't want to be part of the world anymore. Other little kids never think about just disappearing, and other little kids don't hate themselves and think that they are worthless. Other little kids don't put their head down on their desk and cry every single day, then pretend that the teacher is right when they assume you're sleeping. But you don't understand what's wrong with you, and you can't explain it, and other little kids don't understand.

I don't remember most of fourth grade. Fifth grade was hell. Fifth grade set back a LOT of progress I had made as far as working through my depression and anxiety went. I went from being able to actually function in the classroom to completely shutting down. Having a teacher who doesn't listen can be absolutely detrimental to a students mental and emotional progress. I never really recovered as far as functioning in school went, I just learned to hide my tics better. (Never tell a depressed person how you can tell they are depressed. I don't know why the hell they thought this was a good idea, but it just made me try to hide it more. It also came off, at the time, as them making fun of me, which definitely was not helpful.) I literally have no idea how I graduated High School. Suicide still wasn't an option after fifth grade, but more because there isn't actually a painless, failsafe, way to kill yourself. I spent an enormous amount of time thinking about it and eventually decided that Hanging was failsafe enough that if I had to I could endure the pain. This was in 6th grade, I was 11. I also didn't cut or harm myself because I knew that would show that I was depressed, and I couldn't do that. I internalized literally everything.

I was in therapy through Middle School, but I couldn't/wouldn't talk to them unless it was about a subject that had nothing to actually do with me. There was one therapist I had who I spent every week in her office sitting there silently while she worked on the computer until I could leave. I wanted to talk, but I couldn't because she wasn't asking the right questions, and I didn't know how to say what I needed to. I still won't go to therapy, and I find the idea useless since I'm not capable of making myself speak about things. Writing things down gives me the ability to put my thoughts in order and process my emotions properly. Even when I was really little I wasn't honest 100% with the therapists, and I know I never will be because therapists want you to talk to them, and I can't talk about emotional things in that type of setting. I choke and get a huge emotional block and I shut down. Which pisses therapists off because you're "wasting their time." At the time, trying to talk about anything at all just made me want to cry.

The mental blocks are the reason I'm not dead, and the entire reason it took so much work for me to be able to function as a human being. I absolutely couldn't show people that I was depressed. I couldn't talk about it. In my mind I had to hide it and couldn't show anyone. I was never abused. No one ever told me that I couldn't show what I was feeling. It was just there. It had always been there and always WILL be there. I'm almost positive that those mental blocks have to do with anxiety, which goes hand and hand with my depression so much that they aren't actually separate things for me. I can tell you the symptoms of both and how each effects me, but as far as how they work together, they may as well just be one disorder. It wasn't until I started actually writing, that I figured out how to really talk about things. It wasn't until I was out of school that I started figuring out how to not internalize so much. Until a few months ago my mom thought I had just chosen to never do school work, when really I was so severely depressed that I couldn't function. I just never showed how depressed I was because I couldn't.

I'm sorry this is so long and all over the place. I felt like I had to explain a lot more than things from when I was just little. Even up until this year it didn't really hit me that people think differently from me, and that there are people who almost never think about wanting to die or just disappear from their lives. That there are people who don't wake up in the morning feeling completely worthless and have to fight to get out of bed and actually do something with their day. That there are people who get home from work and can actually get more things done without having to struggle with themselves over it. These concepts are foreign to me, but are supposed to be the things that I work towards every day of my life.

The biggest difference between being depressed as a little kid, and being depressed as an adult, is that as an adult you understand what is going on with your brain. You can tell a little kid why they are the way they are, but they aren't going to understand fully. They're just sad all the time and hate themselves, and that's how it's been for so long that they don't really understand that it should or can be different.

These are my own experiences and explanations, and they are from a standpoint of Clinical Depression. Everyone has different experiences and different feelings, so how I saw things as a child are going to be very different from other children. I hope that this helped you learn some though, and if you have more questions please feel free to ask.

Also if you haven't, watch Inside Out. A lot of kids who are depressed REALLY identify with the main character, and while it doesn't portray clinical depression, it does show some of the emotional side of depression and how it happens for the short term. (Basically you don't feel happy, but you also aren't able to be (or feel like you can't be) sad.)

/r/childfree Thread Parent