Something shifted inside me the day of the car accident, when the driver of the Jeep SUV slammed into the back of my SUV. Being hit from behind unearthed, exhumed all my fears of being caught off guard, being ambushed.
That’s what it felt like each time my mother criticized me and/or as a result of the anger and rage she experienced either in response to me and my actions of events out in the world, physically punished me.
As a child you believe that your parent’s anger results from something you said or did. When your mother or father is sad, you seek to make them happy and joyful, as if you possess the almighty power and quality to do so. This is what Freudian/psychoanalytic psychology calls omnipotence.
The age at which a child holds this belief is the most pronounced fashion is around six–eighteen months of age. And yet it seems that children, well into the ages for grade school, experience a sense of omnipotence regarding their parents’ welfare, and the ability of the child to influence, modify or improve the parent’s feelings and state of emotions.
Psychology tells us that it is imperative that a parent mourn and grieve when in the wake of losing a child or the other parent in death, not only for the parent’s recovery, but that of the surviving child.
The parent’s ability to mourn their loss determines whether the surviving child/children, if they exist, will or will not grieve.
Children worry about their parents.
And as depression, as postulated by Freud, is the loss that that which never existed, making the ability to grieve non-existent and distinguishing depression from grief and mourning, so too the depression of a child’s parent casts a shadow over the daughter or son, preventing them from finding joy and experiencing life as the gift to humanity that it is.
I believe that my mother was terribly, most likely, psychotically depressed.
Her inability to enjoy life has made living and realizing the purpose in remaining alive and thriving, a challenge for me.
Likewise this challenge had forced me to risk all that I am and possess to a gamble on myself and this journey called life.
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