Defiant Not Compliant – Cerridwens Heart’s Mental Health Journey Part 1
by Cerridwens Heart
Mental health challenges are a mixed bag that are not as easily definable as we’d like them to be. Life would be so much easier if we all fit into those classic textbook definitions and could respond to treatments and therapies in the way that science and logic dictate we should.
As I’m sitting down to write this all I know is that the challenge is real; it encompasses so many variables and is a unique journey to all of us, not unlike the grieving process is.
Personally I’ve always struggled with some form of anxiety, paranoid thoughts, depression and all those other labels that get put on mental health challenges. As I’ve grown older, I’ve developed a better understanding of why I am the way I am.
To me it’s a combination of nature, or rather perhaps a lack of it. Nature because I do believe we can be genetically predisposed to it, as well as environmental causes resulting from life events that cause some of us to be more challenged than others with our mental hygiene.
Allow me to ramble, (as my more charitable friends refer to it) and bear with me as I try to give you a little insight into my own struggles. My mother, who is not an overly nurturing or supportive woman and had me later in life has told me quite blatantly that she never wanted me, and wishes she’d had an abortion.
This information has caused me to wonder as I got older if I was heavily predisposed to anxiety, self-loathing and never quite feeling like I was worthy of being loved.
My father was an abusive alcoholic, who abused me physically, emotionally, sexually, then would later in life criticize the men I became involved with for not being good enough for me.
Ironically the men I choose were almost exactly like he was, but that was the only kind of love I knew so I took what I could get when and where I good. Not anything I’m overly proud to admit to, but it’s the truth.
Suffering from often in silence, because back in the day so called “nice girls” from good families didn’t talk about any of these things.
So I suffered often in silence, being labelled moody and emotional by my parents and family members, many of who had no clue as to what went on behind closed doors.
Finally, in my late teens I was able to escape and desperately tried in my own ways to break the cycles that were so ingrained in me.
In those early years I made drastic changes but went about them all in the worst possible ways. I lost the weight that my Dad had told me was the reason he drank, and I fully believed.
The weight came off, as result of becoming a bulimic, which I was a master at hiding from everyone who knew me. They honestly thought I was working out, eating clean and just getting my act together about my health.
I became quite the party girl, who had no limits and didn’t really get a wake up call about what a mess I’d truly become…
In the next post, Cerridwens Heart continues the story of her remarkable journey.
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