I was day dreaming this morning about my Irish Grandmother. My Dad used to say, half jokingly, if you picked her up she’d rattle with all the pills she got from her Dr. She also had a shelf full of good old fashioned tonics, also prescribed. She was a lovely woman.
Anyway, she used to talk about the terrible potato famine in Ireland that was the death of more than a million people from starvation and how the English did nothing to help. She talked as if it wasn’t such a long time ago. My Grandmother was born in 1898 and her Grandmother was born at the end of the potato famine. So, to my Grandmother, the famine was within living memory.
See where I’m going with this?
My German Grandfather, at 18, was old enough to fight in the First World War and young to fight in the Second World War. He disappeared for a year or more and was eventually found in a prisoner of war camp. This had a profound effect on my German Grandmother. She suffered with bouts of depression where she didn’t/couldn’t speak for weeks on end for the rest of her life. She was a lovely woman too.
My Mum came to England after the war bringing some of the collective guilt that the German post war generation experienced.
She married my Dad, an alcoholic. Enough said. From a very early age I took on trying to reassure my Mum that she had nothing to worry about. I never managed it because stupidly I never recognised that I was in the same boat.
There is research into inherited anxiety and depression and also into the biological basis for the risk of becoming an addict. In no way do I mean to ignore our own life experiences which can also have very negative affects on us. I am also not looking to apportion blame on parents or grandparents for passing on their anxiety with a squeeze of a hand, a look or a harsh word. They did the best they could. Just that maybe our heritage has made it difficult for us to cope.
I am so thankful that I live in an age where medication can truly alleviate the agony of anxiety and depression and that we have communities such as this with access to a wealth of information to help us learn how to overcome our pain.
My story about family, coping with depression, and lack of support
Anxiety, I laugh in your face!
I have lost my only support 😞
