Not Okay? Okay. by Sheridan Taylor

Author:Sheridan Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sheridan Taylor
Published: 2022-09-08T19:51:34+00:00

62

62. Children of Mentally Ill Parents

In which our hero explains how mental illness passes down generationally.

The children of mentally ill parents grow up in fear. Even parents who try not to let their illness fuck up their children do exactly that. Such is the nature of mental illness. It can’t be helped, and mental illness is contagious, so imagine how much worse it is for kids. Our first seven years psychologically program us unless we work to change it. Now imagine how attachment theory affects children of parents struggling with mental illness.

My sons are the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren of Indigenous veterans. That is four generations of PTSD and trauma. My shit had me completely under control for the first three years of my older son’s life. My greatest fear is I’ve scarred him emotionally and caused him to suffer from anxiety. I can’t let go of that fear despite being told it isn’t true from psychologists and teachers.

The children of ill parents know their parents are different. Maybe it’s school, whatever, but they realize their parents are different pretty early, they just can’t understand how. Kids can’t really grasp mental illness, and they can’t separate the parent from the illness. We explain it to the boys as wolves in my brain fighting for control. They seem to grasp the imagery. My son shocked me out of an episode once, asking if the angry wolf was winning. I realized what was happening and dragged my ass into the present. Then I cried for exposing him to that again. Then I dragged my ass out of the shame that created and hugged my kid.

Ill parents ignore their kids’ physical and emotional needs because they’re trapped in the hell of their own minds. I remember my mother-in-law holding my son, him reaching for a hug. I just stood there, staring at him. Part of my brain was screaming, “Hug my kid!” but my arms wouldn’t move. I just drove off, weeping. See the connection with attachment issues? Mental illness gets in the way of being as good a parent as you could.

It’s cyclical. I didn’t have the relationship with my parents I saw other kids have. I was scared of my parents and their unpredictability. Now I dread I’ve programmed the same damage into my son despite psychologists saying he’s fine.

Ill parents don’t really talk about the illness with their kids. Always the goddamn stigma, the fear of judgment. The children of ill parents learn from example not to talk about the illness. Some are even explicitly told by a parent, the ill one or the healthier one, not to talk about it, and thus stigma continues. Some children of ill parents are ashamed by their parents’ behaviour, so they don’t talk about it, even to people who could help, because they’ve learned to fear judgment. This is no doubt part of why I didn’t seek help to deal with Dixie’s eating disorder and depression. I’d learned to protect the secret of mental illness, and so my wife died of starvation.

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