All about my mother

One of the sure-fire things about therapy that never fails to make you feel like someone in a Woody Allen movie is the way it always comes back to your mother. At some point, whether you went in to address your fear of knitwear in tight spaces or incontrollable rage brought on by free-to-air TV playing Scrubs episodes out of order, it's going to be your mother's fault.


At some time in the long years that constituted your upbringing your mother (should you have been fortunate enough to have one around) will have done or not done, said or not said something that wormed its way into your psyche and has forever prevented you from forming close bonds/ reacting appropriately/ expressing your anger/ eating/ breathing/ sleeping and/or having sex with anybody. That's just a fact.

When I was in therapy I discovered it. Now my sister is in therapy and she's discovering it too (which makes sense as we have the same mother so clearly she really is responsible for it all).

Which brings me around to the inevitable conclusion that one day I too will be the butt of the therapy-has-opened-my-eyes-to-the-mother-fault revelation.

Joke about it I may but it's my very real fear that our son will end up in therapy. (Why does that sound kind of funny even when I'm trying to be serious? I think it's heat exhaustion or something.)

Anyway, there's a couple of things that weigh on my mind pretty heavily at times. One: is my son more likely to suffer from depression because his father has it and because I've suffered from it in the past? And two: Is living in a house with a depressed parent going to constitute a stressful childhood that will cause issues in later life?

Actually, I'm not in a state of mind to discuss either of these points seriously tonight. (Something in the air-conditioning?) I'm going to do something really daring tonight like get a soft-drink at the shop instead of heading straight home from work. Woohoo!

Flo