I heard a talk about this once, where the speaker said he'd like to relate something a female friend had told him.
She'd said, "Take the worst physical pain you've ever felt. Multiply it by ten. Now take away the cause."
I approached him afterwards and said, "
Yes. That's me."
I go into hibernation, too. I stock up on the bare minimum to keep me alive - milk, teabags, bread. Maybe dry biscuits. Or boiled sweets (hard candy, I think you'd call it) to keep up my blood sugar without having to eat a proper meal. It's not that I suddenly turn anorexic; it's that I lose my appetite. The thought of food makes me sick.
I lock the door, get changed into my pyjamas and stay in bed for as long as it takes to stop thinking I'm the world's ugliest, most useless, talentless, hopeless, good-for-nothing
cunt. (And no, I don't use that word in all seriousness very often, but I do here).
Too, being raised a Catholic and being taught the greatest sin is despair, that's another thing to beat myself up about.
Weird thing is I'm so tired, but at the same time unable to sleep. I just kinda...doze on and off.
The worst of it lasts for three, four days, but I can have that 'walking through treacle' feeling for weeks afterwards.
Whoa. I make myself sound like a total sad sack there. But anyway. The fact I'm online and speaking shows I'm not.
It's when I go quiet than I'm likely having one of my episodes.
But you asked about parent/child relationships. I wonder if my mother wasn't a fruit loop too, although her behaviour was...shall we say...mercurial. I never knew whether I'd get nice Mummy or nasty Mummy. She could, I kid you not, turn on a dime. One minute she'd shower you with affection and you'd be Mummy's Little Princess, the next her fists would start flying. Depression? Unlikely. Mental illness? Sounds like it.
A huge problem is getting other people to understand the difference between personality disorders, character weaknesses and
mental illness. No one
chooses to be depressed, so often depressed folk will, as I do, hibernate - not to seek attention or make others worry, but it's honest-to-goodness "They won't understand so I'd rather deal with it in my own way."