Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond. Lots here to think about. DJ

Hi DJ, After reading your message, I believe that you are very concerned about rupturing the harmonious relationship that you have with your kids and your husband by talking about your negative feelings. This is possibly giving you even more anxiety than you have from your depression alone. I think that before you attack the cause of your sadness and anxiety, you should tell yourself that your kids and husband can only help you. Also, what you said about there not being a reason for you to feel depressed when you have everything you have always wanted I completely understand! But just think: this kind of thinking is also contributing to your downward spiral. I think we all have to accept that this depression thing is beyond our control. Sadly. Keep writing. All the best. Rina

hi DJ, something you wrote struck a cord with me... hurting yourself to find relief. I did it so many moons ago to learn to stop the pain from the verbal abuse I was subjected to. I learned to ignore the physical pain and through those lessions I learned to ignone the emotional ones. I felt strong. I was able to deal with every situation. I was dying inside. Then I became a young adult with my own life to lead and with no idea how to relate to others... Now I am learning to moderate my emotional responses to situations... up till now I have had a quiet smile or tears! and tears make others uncomfortable. My therapist has had a series of exercises for me...

DJ, Although you are correct in saying "the past is the past" it's also important to heal yourself from the hurt that the past has caused you. If what happened to you in the past has caused you to doubt your self-worth for example, those feelings are going to follow you wherever you go no matter how much you try not to think about it. If you keep working through the program, you'll begin exploring those underlying feelings and core beliefs you hold of yourself as a result of those experiences. Use those thought records frequently and you may find your negative thought patterns. You'll then be able to see which came from the past and which you developed along the way, then you can begin to heal. Hope this helps. Danielle, Bilingual Health Educator

Leaving the past in the past is a very good thing to do, unless it's creating problems for you in the present. There are so many different things that can lead to depression -- as Daily Llama says, it could simply be wonky brain chemistry, and once you find the right medication you'll be fine, but childhood trauma is not an uncommon cause. If there seems to be no current reason for your depression and there's been a trauma in your past, it's probably worth doing some dredging to see if there's a link. When I left my marriage, I didn't realize the impact on me of 9 years of verbal and emotional abuse. Ok, looking back now it's obvious that not many people could walk away from that unscathed, but at the time I was just focussed on moving forward and minimizing the impact of the divorce on my children. Long story short: we were living in Austrailia, I moved back to Canada with my kids, found a good job, bought a house, settled the kids into school and neighbourhood, and never really talked about my marriage or what I'd been through. It was in the past -- over and done with, as you said. I believe that everything happens for a reason, however, and I think that the powers-that-be felt that I hadn't taken the learnings that I was supposed to take away from that experience, so they started heaping on the stressors until eventually I cracked and then had no choice but to go back and heal my old wounds. I suppose that if, say, my father hadn't taken ill and passed away, or some of the other stressors hadn't happened, I could have kept going the way that I was, but it really wasn't a life. More like an automaton, or the Energizer bunny. I'm still healing, and still learning, but I'm feeling again which is... well, ok, it's still a little raw and tender, but I'm rediscovering my authentic identity -- if that makes any sense. Maybe your trauma and your depression aren't connected, but I think that it would be a good idea to find an experienced therapist to help you check. And keep writing. It's as helpful to be supportive as it is to get support on this site, and we can all learn from one another's experiences. Take care.

Welcome, DJ. Just a note on something I learned about my own childhood ... I, too, came from a rough childhood (alcohol, abuse and insanity). I did the same thing as you, tried to ignore it, but that just did not work for me. Instead I had to take the plunge, go back and look at those feelings. It was hard. I've never done anything more difficult, in fact. But you get what you work for and it was so worth it! The freedom and healing I found was worth all the pain. As for not crying, I can identify with that too. Until the past couple of years, I basically did not cry. I was called "hard hearted" more than once, but that wasn't true. I simply couldn't express the pain I felt inside. It felt like if I started crying I'd never be able to stop. I'm not sure what changed, exactly, but I can cry now. I don't hear echos of "I'll give you something to cry about!" from my childhood, I don't feel like a weak idiot ... it's just one more colour in my emotional rainbow. I'm glad to see you posting here. Perhaps being able to express some of what you're feeling here may help? The self harm stuff is a difficult thing to admit to and even tougher to live with. Maybe having a safe place to talk will help? I hope so. At any rate, welcome. :)

Thank you for your responses. I appreciate the insight. I did have a very traumatizing childhood, some of which I recall, however, I also know there are things which my siblings have mentioned happened of which I have no recollection. Possibly blocking it. I really don't know enough about all of this stuff and how the brain works. I am very easy going and a people pleaser and when I do get angry I don't show it, I just laugh and shrug it off like it's no big deal. I don't want to hurt anybody or have anybody upset at me. A question I have is that because I haven't really thought about my past all through the years is how can it have such an effect on me if it is in fact my past that's my problem? You know....I think about different things now and again but I don't dwell on it to any extreme. To me, I feel that it's over and done with and there's nothing I can do about it so it shouldn't bother me or shouldn't be such a problem for me. Just get on with 'life' and do the best I can. Is that incorrect thinking? thanks, DJ

Hi DJ, I wish that I was a well-trained psychologist and capable of seeing-into what is making you so depressed for so long. I can only wonder why, if everything is so wonderful in your exterior life, you are suffering so. I agree with Confused that if I had to guess about the situation I might suggest that you're bottling up some really traumatic experiences from your youth, experiences which have left you very angry, perhaps?? And anger that you haven't recognised or that you're blocking on because it is so antithetical to the goodness of this life you have around you now. Perhps some experiences that may seem benign in retrospect now but which really hurt you when you were too young to understand the damage that had been done to you. These are all guesses, DJ, and again, I wish I could see-into what your life experiences were as a child-teenager. Perhaps it's all just poor brain chemistry and you are just very short of serotonin and it's all just a matter of finding the right SSRI and dosage to put you in gear. I was brought up in a Victorian-Edwardian disciplinary mode where frequent slaps across the face and head were designed to 'straighten" me out of my poor behaviour; discussion or reasoning were not high on my parents list of methods of teaching their children.. This was true for the mores of virtually all the families where I lived. Humiliation and pain were the standard teaching tools at that time ('50 & '60s. I was always in a state of anger and humiliation which all led to blind rage to the point that I left home at age eighteen and only returned home sporadically after. School was the same; leather strap on hands and backside for silly infractions of the "rules". Fear was my daily bread, fear and loathing (not to say hate) of all authority, much of which is still present in me today but which I have studied and controlled after many years hard work on myself. I'm only telling you this to give you an idea of what things may have caused my anger. I blocked on these things for decades (i.e. didn't work on understanding them as cultural phenomena and legacies of an even crueler experience my parents suffered in their youth) and only felt the pain subside when I had let the cats out of that bag where we hide things we don't know what to do with! Confused has her finger on the pulse the way I see it here but only you can begin to unlock those little mysteries in your memory to see what you are sublimating. I magine that you are so intimidated by your family's apparent happiness that you might find it anathema to enlist them in your search for the roots of all this pain you feel... maybe it's best to find a good talk therapist and get help to weasel the thorns out of your mind...

DJ, You've gotten a great response from your fellow member. Do any other members have an experience to share? Danielle, Bilingual Health Educator

Your brain's way of coping, perhaps? I went through a period like that a few years ago -- I was re-establishing myself and my children after leaving a nasty marriage, and I was helping my mother care for my sick father. I needed to be the strong and steady one for my mother and my daughters, and I did it by disconnecting from my emotions. Not consciously, and I didn't really notice it until the cracks started to appear. What is it that you don't want to feel? You say that your life now is good -- is there something from your younger days that you haven't dealt with? Strong emotions that are repressed for very long can create all sorts of trouble, as I've found :| Can you enlist your family's support in keeping on track with this program? A family activity -- even if they're not depressed, it's not a bad thing to be aware of our self-talk :) Good luck