I Wasn’t a Problem Child. I Was a Child with Mental Health Problems.
My family made me feel ashamed of having symptoms of mental illness. This is the support I needed from them but never received.
I come from a British, working-class family. Crying was seen as a weakness. If you had a problem, you sorted it with your fists and you didn’t ask for help. It was frowned upon to talk about negative feelings and talking about mental health was out of the question.
The first time I heard an adult in my family talk about mental health was when I was seven years old. My aunt said I would kill myself before I reached adulthood. I was displaying symptoms of anxiety and my family was ashamed of me. Even though I was well-behaved as anxiety made me fearful to the point of obedience, I was viewed as a problem child.
I tried to bottle up my feelings and be normal. I wanted to please my parents. I wanted my aunts and uncles to like me instead of talking about me as if I was weird. I wanted people to stop talking about the “funny farm.” This was an expression commonly used in my family to refer to the local mental hospital. If I struggled with anxiety, I was warned to “snap out of it” else I would end up in the funny farm.
