I’m a 19-year-old student in my first year at university. When I go back home I have started to have issues with my family, especially my mother. Looking back, my childhood was quite dysfunctional: I was the product of a drunken one-night stand, yet my parents stayed together for quite a while. Because of this, my mum had an affair with a work colleague and thanks to all the tension in the house, both my parents became severely depressed and argumentative.
The man she was seeing moved in, but he was controlling and creepy. My mum later told me that he is on the sex offenders register. He eventually moved out and my mum had to find a smaller house.
She has become very tearful with me lately because she thinks I am cold towards her. I worry about her becoming depressed again (she’s been to her GP to ask to be put back on antidepressants), but I feel so hurt that my instinct is to stay away. I feel like a terrible human being, but I’m sick of being her emotional crutch.
I’m contemplating staying at my university town for as long as possible to have some time away from her, but she said that when I left home she felt lonely and isolated. It feels selfish, but I’d much rather focus on my degree than have to check on her. I hate how much repressed anger I feel. I’ve turned into such a judgmental, aloof person, I doubt many people at college like me. I wish I could put everything behind me, but I can’t.
It is not uncommon for people to leave home for the first time and look back and think, “What the hell was that all about?” Some of the actions of the adults around you were/are indefensible and irresponsible, and your anger is justified and valid.
What I see is someone who (in your original letter) blames herself for a lot of things: for your parents staying together; for your mum’s affair; for her sex-offender partner leaving; for her moving to a smaller house; for her being depressed. Stop. None of this is your fault, or your responsibility.
But I want you to think about the things you have done: you’ve got into a good university; you are doing a course that is challenging you; you are questioning things. You are not selfish.
I talked to Avi Shmueli, a psychoanalyst (bpc.org.uk), who thought you were “insightful and determined to have a better existence”. He thought your belief that your parents had stayed together because of you gave you a feeling of huge power (although probably unconsciously). It took me a while to understand this comment but then it clicked: if you think your existence has caused something as colossal as two people to stay together, you then feel responsibility for it and everything that follows.
And, Shmueli continued, “because you feel responsible for your mum’s unhappiness but can’t make her happy, you are hugely angry, but don’t know what to do with that anger, other than blocking it”. The problem is that you can’t choose to suppress only the anger: block one emotion, and you block everything. This is why you probably feel “aloof”. It’s a protection mechanism.
Shmueli wondered what you thought would happen if you told your mother how you felt? He said that you probably feared destroying your relationship, but that, actually, part of you already feels as if you have done that. You haven’t, of course, but you’ve internalised that guilt. “You also seem to feel that having any sort of life takes it away from your mother.” It doesn’t.
Your instinct to be by yourself is not selfish but self-preserving. Listen to it. Your mother has made her choices. You aren’t as powerful as you think: this sounds like an insult, but it’s an attempt to help you look at things in proportion. What you can do now is accept responsibility for your life. Study, make the best of what you have and leave your mother to her life. It won’t be easy and won’t happen overnight. I would also urge you to talk to someone in more depth – maybe a counsellor attached to your university or GP’s surgery.
I find it helpful to visualise responsibility as bags of shopping. If you go through life carrying everyone else’s bags, eventually you become so weighed down you can’t move. You then have a choice: either collapse under the weight or stop, divide the bags and give them back to their owners. This isn’t unkind, it’s the start for a potentially equal, healthy relationship.
• Send your problem to annalisa.barbieri@mac.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.
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