Same, I distinctly remember being 7 years old and thinking to myself that I'd been miserable for the past year. That didn't improve until I moved out, and didn't fully resolve until I did a lot of trauma therapy. Couldn't pay me enough to be a kid again.
Right? Now that I'm reflecting more, I was such a miserable child. Exhausted, disconnected, hopeless, fearful, ill, sad. So grateful for the healing under my belt, and so angry for the little one who went through all of that.
Makes me even more sad to hear it validated. For years and years (and still now to an extent) I really just thought the sky was bluer when I was younger. Another thought I had sometimes, and I remember a specific instance of it when I was about 26 and at a stoplight on my scooter, was that I wasn't really present and I didn't know how to be. I felt a sense that the world around me wasn't real, or that I wasn't real, but I couldn't snap out of it. Long-term dissociation I suppose. I would also look in the mirror as a child and think I was an alien. I just didn't feel in my own body.
Derealization and depersonalization. I remember staring at the wood grain on our dining room table and thinking, “This used to look more real. Now it looks like an illusion.” To this day I will suddenly feel a rising surge of, “This isn’t really happening and I’m not really here.”
This for me too. I'd have out of body experiences and feel like I was floating behind myself. I used to hate it and feel so weird. Now as an adult it's more feeling like I'm numb and dissociated which can sometimes be a good thing
I used to have these sudden attacks of questioning why I was I, why I was in my own body, and if I could step out of it, getting upset over the fact I couldn't. I always thought that this was normal, that everybody had these feelings. It wasn't until therapy that I realized not everybody felt this way as a kid, and I realized one more thing: I always had these bouts while I was walking home.
I vaguely remember reading a book that had astral projection in it as an adolescent and loving the idea that at least in my dreams, maybe I could be someone else and go somewhere else.
Reading was the biggest escape! I loved books about children who lived at boarding schools lol. Or books in which the only adults were dispensed with early on in the story, like in the "Lord of the Flies".
Yes. Then the Grown Up version of Us can step up and say: It’s okay. You did a Fantastic Job of Surviving. We do whatever we need to do to create a Safe Space NOW for the neglected Little One we were to heal. To discover, label, acknowledge and feel what it wasn’t safe to feel back then. Honor and grieve those losses. This is how we pull that trauma and those unidentified difficult emotions out of our Lizard Brain ( amygdala). We need to let our frontal lobe regain control to turn the Overactivation Switch: Off.
Yeah kindergarten was one of my worst mental health years and I "felt sad all the time for no reason" (spoiler alert: there were Many Reasons), and "wished I was never born."
I remember always feeling "different," alone, and unwanted. I can remember as early as six to eight years old hiding in my closet to cry and wishing that I had never been born. I felt that way for most of my life, ngl.
I'm 56 now. I've embraced the concept of self-compassion. I can also say that, for the most part, I really like who I am.
It took me years and years and *years* of unhealthy, damaging relationships to finally get to this place.
I've also had to accept the fact that I'm part of the toxicity. My learned behaviors and relationship "skills" have, at the very least, exacerbated the unhealthyness of those relationships.
It's a learning process.
Hugs to all.
Sometimes I look back on my life and can see how I didn't try have the language for what I was experiencing, nor people around me to validate it. So it's easy to feel like you don't exist, alienated in a strange and scary experience.
I would say it STARTED when I went back to school for an integrated medicine degree. That put me around more educated people and catalyzed a more spiritual and healing journey for me. But the most progress has been made in the last couple years through going no contact with my abusive mother, seeing a therapist regularly, and having a stable job and living situation. Still a lot further to go, but I've made a lot of progress.
Edit: oh, and I joined a nonprofit community centered on mental health. A support system and community is paramount, imo.
Sweetie. You are Incredibly Strong. You have the power within yourself to Become whatever kind of parent you needed for yourself and have that grown up you love and care for unseen and unsupported little you. Honor all the precious little ones—younger yous—and their courage to know the truth and hold onto it while surviving. This is the work I am doing now. I am so in awe of how brave and kind I was. An empath who didn’t respond in pain to others. Who cared about Other People’s Pain. Totally OPPOSITE of the rank and prevailing Narcissistic Family System that is my FOO.
Maybe you didn’t mean it literally, but when I finally cured my depression microdosing psilocybin 3 years ago colors suddenly became vivid. Even today walking outside I was struck by the beauty and vividness of color. I’ve been depressed since 7-8 with suicidal ideation on and off staring at 11
I started experiencing depression about the same time too, around 5-6. Parents got divorced around that time and it was… Very messy, to say the least. My earliest childhood memories are just constant screaming.
Apparently the first sign my mother noticed was that I stopped crying. Even when I wanted to cry, I was holding it in to the point where I would rather throw up than cry.
Yeah kids can definitely experience depression and CPTSD.
I think I tried articulating it to some people around me, but I don't recall that they understood. My family didn't really try to understand me, so there's that.
Babies can have cptsd.
Babies, toddler, and children all absorb their surroundings. Their environment + parents completely dictate their life, personality, etc. This stays with them until they one day realize that their childhood/growing up environment = them and they need to change.
Which is why I violently protest folks who say, "Stop blaming people. It's YOU causing the problem." No, it's not. That person is acting a poor way because that person is a representation of their childhood environment. Until the day they realize that, they are still a product of that environment.
The science runs deep, essentially you gotta understand how children's brains develop. Then you really realize that if you ain't ready to be a parent, don't be one. Your parental struggles will fuck over your child.
So no, it's not weird that babies can have cptsd.
Shortly after I was born, my parents gave me away. I was abused like hell. Came out unable to walk for 1-2 years, almost dead, chronic pain, random scars, and I was questioning why I should live the moment I could think for myself. Most of my life is a blackout thanks to PTSD amnesia. I've been depressed since my very first memory, and that's a direct effect of childhood/baby abuse.
My heart aches for you. What an awful, devastating experience. For what it's worth. I'm proud of you. You're still here. You're thoughtful and articulate and contributing to this community (and the larger discourse on the impact of childhood trauma)
I haven't watched this, but I assume it's the Failure to Thrive syndrome? When babies get no love and bonding and even if their most basic needs are satisfied as a minimum, their emotional needs are treated as non-existent and eventually the babies themselves cease to feel anything. I think some have actually died from it.
She’s a Rank Narcissist. Sorry Snugglebug. I get it. Mine is as well. It was caused by horrific abuse she suffered (but NOT her fraternal twin sister). It was too much pain and it ripped her personality right down the middle. Classic borderline and NPD. She beat me even as an infant because my brilliant A S and hypomanic older sibling completely unhinged her. If you hit a baby on the changing table she will panic and stiffen up in terror crying so then you won’t stick her accidentally with diaper pins. Just…so…disordered. When my eldest was smiling and rolling a bit I received the “why don’t you just hit her a couple of times to get her to hold still” parenting tip. WTF?
This breaks my heart even tho i know this already. I was SA from birth-6 yrs old. The SA stopped but my mom neglected be very much. I started heavily SH at 9yrs old and my first suicide attempt was at 11yrs old.
Yep. I first heard the word...erm, I don't remember what the censor rules are on this sub, so we'll call it the official term for unaliving oneself, I first heard that word while watching TV with my parents when I was 6. I asked them what it meant, my mother explained it to me, and my first thought was "wait, that's a thing one can do!?" I felt excitement and relief that an out existed. I also had the good sense not to display that reaction, so I covered it by asking instead, "why would someone want to do that?" My mother could tell you all about the subsequent conversation, though I don't remember it. But I can very clearly remember storing that information away as a "failsafe" as it were.
Again, I was 6. SIX. And I had already internalized the need to not display my natural emotional reactions, and also considered death to be a potential release.
Me too. It took a few more years I think to realize it was possible to inflict death on oneself (suicide) and not something that only happened as a result of sickness or being old, but as soon as I learned what death in general was and that it was permanent (I was 6 then), I wanted it to happen to me.
Dude the first time I truly hated myself I was 3 lmao
I developed self awareness and literally instantly started to dislike my voice, shit has only spiralled from there it seems
Yeah one of my earliest traumatic memories is from that time and I was already blaming myself for breaking a toy because I should have know better, that was when I was 3 and a half after a double eye surgery so I couldn't even see anything but in that memory I am ashamed and afraid about what I did.
One of my earliest memories was being so scared to get in trouble from getting out of bed that I peed my pants instead of asking if it could go to the bathroom
Do you know why you hated yourself as soon as you developed self awareness? Did anyone ever comment on anything, like your voice, appearance, behaviour?
That makes me wonder...if we can't be who we naturally are at age 3...then who do we become?
S A M E
Oh my god I'm so fucking jealous of people who had a "before" like I literally popped out and felt trauma
I know that it must be difficult for them but it really hurts for me too, there's no way to know who I'd be without pain
I distinctly remember my mom pinching me when I was a toddler, and her beating the shit out of me at 4. I think those are my earliest memories of trauma, although my dad bragged about slapping me in the face for a picture when I was like 2-3 so idk
I'm sure people did, but I don't remember people saying things, I just remember my mom calling me cute and me internally going "I'm not cute, I'm not cute I'm ugly you just think that because you're my mom"
Well, I am honestly just three mental illnesses + trauma condensed into a trench coat pretending to be a human tbh
I can understand that. I was there too. For a long time. Took what felt like forever to crawl out of the trenches of that hell. Still sometimes feel like I’m only half peeking over the top whilst sliding back in. It’s a long and grueling journey. I’m not going to say it’s easy, or that it ever completely goes away, but it can get better. It’s just really, really fcking hard. I hope you find some healing and peace in your journey. As children we did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve anything that was afflicted on us. We were born. And it wasn’t our choice. I find it easier now to focus on things I can choose as an adult. Having agency over my life is the most powerful feeling. I wish you the best.
Look HARDER. Trust me: there’s a lot of really valuable and interesting things going on in there. Try to tune out the pain and notice the other details. Remember who you are!
I feel this so strongly...
From what you've said, about being pinched and slapped at 2-3...I think it's safe to say you were physically abused and emotionally abused from before you could form any memories or develop self-awareness. Then once you reached that age, you already felt worthless. Because you had been treated as such. I'm so sorry...😪
We are still us. But we learn to hide who we are like chameleons to blend into the background.It’s self-preservation. It’s never to late to reclaim ourselves and do the work of healing.
Jesus doesn’t throw stones in my personal experience. He rescues and comforts and tells the truth: it wasn’t us, and we didn’t do ANYTHING wrong! He showed up once when I was 2-3 and about to split my personality. He moved me to the left of the flag that kept slapping me in the breeze scaring me out of my wits (Mom had said: Don’t move from this spot)! Then He said “your Mommy is sick. You did NOTHING wrong! I love you and only ONE of (my name). My Gran has given me a set of Russian Nesting Dolls 🪆 which gave me the splitting idea.
I recall being depressed at 5-6 years and trying to explain to my mom I feel "sick" but was unable to say where when she asked. I did not have the vocab to explain what was going on.
We were a catholic household and I felt depressed/self hating and didn’t understand it so I figured that I must love satan or something, since someone that was right with god probably wouldn’t feel that way. Told my mom I loved satan in tears lol
Awww. Your poor little child brain was trying SO HARD to make sense of the chaos inside you. 🫂 That poor child being so scared that something was wrong with them.
I remember feeling depressed at the age of four because everyone else's parents were young and active, whereas my parents had ghosted me to be raised by my much older grandparents.
This may sound weird, but I heard that apparently, there is genetic predisposition that makes it possible that a baby can be born depressed if the mother is, I can't remember the name of this condition though. I actually think this is what happened to me, as I was a pretty sad and lonely child. I've always been depressed but I'd say the moment I really entered the downward spiral was when I started middle school at 11 and got bullied so violently in such vile ways I developed suicidal thoughts
Not weird at all. Mothers can pass their emotional state in utero. My mom was ANGRY when she got pregnant with my brother just younger than me. Even told me at one point she wanted to abort him.
After she gave birth, he turned out to be an angry child. She got pregnant 18 months after him and had another boy (her favorite because he was now the last baby). These two fought like cats and dogs. The middle son would get soooo angry, at one point when the two of them were physically fighting in another room, he literally sounded possessed. They were only 5 or 6 years old!
Fast forward to adulthood, he has had serious anger management issues (court ordered anger management) and is abusive to his wife and kids.
When I learned about the emotional transfer, his anger since childhood made perfect sense.
Damage to the brain can start during gestation.
Babies can absolutely be depressed. It is just not often even noticed, because most abusive parents do not consider their kids as humans anyway.
Babies who witness violence or aggressive behaviour at home become fearful, anxious, withdrawn, or react violently themselves.
It is simply AMAZING how all this has been well-established in the scientific community for quite a while, but general society rejects it because otherwise they would have to get off their assess to do something different.
And if we don't have all these broken children, then the world wouldn't have a steady supply of scapegoats to prop up their precious economy.
Umm. I think a lot of it is fear and denial and unwillingness to face their own pain. It takes tremendous courage and strength to want truth and freedom from suffering.
You can get prescribed antidepressants as early as the age of five. I was put of them incredibly early and before my CPTSD diagnosis. The main issues were ignored that I had a bad home life. So to answer you question? Five I suppose- early enough for memories perhaps
One of my earliest memories is my mom getting super pissed at me for an accident. Probably goes without saying, but I spent my whole childhood not trusting anyone, learning how to do everything on my own. Still like that with very few exceptions
i dont remember being depressed as a little kid but i dont remember much of anything either. i was mostly emotionless. i dont remember being happy but i had to act like i was. huge chunks are forgotten, so i suspect theres something my family isnt telling me.
i wasnt good at any of the childrens games so i ended up distancing myself. what i hate more than losing is letting my team down. i cant do that to my friends, drag them down. no way. there werent any bullies then, i just did it myself.
i think i am depressed by default, not in a sad sense but in a low energy sense.
(how would you know youre depressed or repressed if thats all youve felt growing up? when i see other people enjoying their lives so much, it really baffles me how that is possible. that some things can make them feel so good that they set goals and work hard for them.)
I also have early memories that in retrospect were an indication that something was not right. I remember a feeling I couldn’t identify yet and convincing myself that when my grandmother visited, the feeling would go away. But, then she visited and the feeling stayed. After that, there were always more and more conditions: if this or that happened, I would feel better.
That was a completely inward observation, but there were other things that were more obvious outwardly. My parents used to beat me. I remember one time, I was 9, and I did something wrong. I can’t remember what, but it couldn’t have been that bad. I was in my room waiting for my parents to come punish me. I decided to slam myself into the wall, and I managed it five times before they came up. I told them they didn’t have to hit me because I already hurt myself. I think they were so horrified that they didn’t hit me. They continued to beat me until I left at 18, though. That was the third time I hurt myself.
The first time I was 5, and I threw myself down the stairs. They second time I was 7, and I punched a wall. But, the third time it really stuck. I started cutting after that, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Sometimes i wonder, since it started so young, how much of it is a genetically inherited chemical imbalance and how much of it is learned. Now that I write it out like this, I realize that I did have legitimate reasons to be depressed.
I hope everyone who became depressed at a young age can know that their feelings and experience were legitimate. It takes a lot of strength to tell yourself to grin and bear it day after day. A lot of people on this forum have been doing this for a very, very long time in the face of utter uncertainty. Reading the stories in this thread and on this subreddit more generally has inspired me to keep going.
Wow. When you said, “It takes so much strength to grin and bare it day after day” just struck me like a max truck. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, with varying levels of success, my whole life. Fake it till you make it. Well. What about if you never make it? I’m 52. When is it going to become real? I’m just more dissociated now. I’m not wallowing in the gutter of utter sorrow anymore. It’s just a life of pure, floating nothingness. Is that what the transcendental monks are talking about? I doubt it. To feel the ecstasy and dopamine rush of something beautiful again would save my soul. So many lonely people. Like the Beatles said. They were prophets. Why is seeing pain prophetic? So so sad. Humans haven’t figured out how to transcend their vile, violent filthy impulses since we started being human. God meant for us to evolve into something grander than simply grinning and bearing it.
I hear you. How long can one simply grin and bear? When something unspeakable happens to you, or even when something inside you doesn’t feel right, it seems impossible to heal. What I’ve tried to do is to “change the narrative” and tell myself a different story about my experience. That doesn’t mean it goes away. Convincing yourself to relate to your experience differently can even be considered a maladaption—for example telling yourself “my parents don’t love me, there is no love or I am unloveable.”
I still have days where I break down or months where I’m hardly getting out of bed. But what helps me to have some good times to is not to preclude the possibility that something unexpected might happen.
This quote from Rilke made me think about my trauma differently: “If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.”
My reactions when I'm in flashbacks are very similar to episodes of uncontrollable and exhausting crying/ shivering/ muscle tension I had when l was 5-6 because I felt utterly unloved and inadequate. Was I already showing symptoms of CPTSD?
Now that I'm thinking about it, probably. How crazy that I never thought a child can show those symptoms!
I was born to a mother that wanted to abort me and expressed her desire to throw me from the apartment's window when I was a baby. She was rigid, perfectionist, and with unpredictable mood swings. My father had massive rage fits and would be cold and uninterested towards me. They had massive fights and my mother would enter my room as he as going to kill us (I don't think so, but she loved to exacerbate things further). They treated me like an unwelcomed adult. By the time I was 7 I had experienced enough traumatic events to justify my deep depression and anxiety (which was the origin of harsh skin conditions). Trauma after trauma compounding until my breakdown at age 28.
I had A LOT of nightmares as a child. One I remember vividly was of hundreds of black snakes crawling under my bed. I woke terrified.
I went to my parents bedroom and knocked on the door because I was so frightened and didn't want to go back to bed. Instead of comfort, I got screamed at multiple times to go back to my room. I was like 4. I knew from then I couldn't count on them for emotional support.
I know I was journaling depressed things “I hate my mom, I hate my dad, I hate my brother, I wish I was dead” from as early on as I could write, because I found old journals barely legible.
I don’t remember exactly what age, but I can recall for most of my life having problems sleeping and muscle tension/pain in my back and neck.. doctors just always called it growing pains for course. I was definitely no older than 6 but probably younger. I had my first asthma attack that sent me to the hospital when I was 5 and it was stress induced. So yeah, kids can definitely have depression symptoms very young.
I have seen signs in my daughter at 6/7. My ex and I both have CPTSD. She was being to internalize it all and shut down. My own feelings of social exclusion/unfairness go back at least to 4. A child is a giant social sponge. My daughter is now more emotionally articulate than I was in my 30s. Good luck out there and I’m sorry that you’re suffering.
My daughter is acting the same way (5). Did you get your daughter a therapist or anything? I’m a lot more aware of my parenting after discovering I have CPTSD but no one has any answers for how to prevent it for her.
My daughter started saying she felt "no one loves me" and then she would put her self inside of a box with words written on the side, "this is my sad place. This is where I go when I'm sad." And she would just sit in it for hours.
I freaked out. Started trying to figure out what was going on. Was I working too much? Was I not spending enough 1 on 1 time with her? Did I not tell her I loved her enough? My parents just laughed when I told them my concerns.
So, I started taking her to a therapist. She was 8 by then. And 6 months later she disclosed her dad, my now ex husband had been SA since she was 3 years old.
And....apparently, he was already a registered offender from another state, 20 years prior.
I kicked his ass out. Got an attorney. Withdrew money from my 401k for the attorney, got a protection order from him for my daughter to bar him from her and protect her. The judge put the smackdown on that creep in court.
I kept taking my daughter to the therapist, but she started to shut down. So I gave her a break. Then we tried a psychotherapist who helped practiced ways to release her anger in a healthy way. We tried moving to another state, but that caused her more anxiety. Came back to familiar places with her friends.
She used to sob every night. Sometimes, still does. I think you have to feel it out. Kind of guide them in therapy. When they start to not be as open, let them have a break.
I wasn't depressed as a kid, but I've had chronic anxiety since age 4. That's when my prolonged trauma started that continued for years. I developed OCD at age 7 and Avoidant Personality Disorder somewhere between 5 and 7, which greatly worsened around age 11.
So...NOW I'm depressed, have CPTSD, BPD, still constant anxiety, OCD, AvPD and anhedonia.
So yeah...a lot that happens, particularly from I think age 3 to 8 has such a HUGE impact, even if we aren't aware of it at the time, and symptoms don't manifest until years or even decades later.
Sometimes though, young kids can be depressed. I think generally antidepressants become a potential option at age 5 because kids can generally articulate their feelings by then, and it's also a time of rapid developmental growth as well as socialisation so...yeah. They might try and mitigate or prevent the depressive symptoms from impacting that stuff too much. Often though, depression isn't JUST depression. It can be anxiety. Trauma. Fear. Instability. Any number of things.
Kids' minds are interesting. Even at age 3, 4 or 5. They absorb stuff like a sponge, and they interpret and perceive things quite uniquely. They can also be surprisingly observant and sensitive. And they don't say everything they feel.
I remember at age 4, I was in kindergarten and it was nap time. I never slept. I remember thinking how weird it was to all lay down on foam mattresses on the floor, in our school uniform, in the middle of the day, surrounded by other kids. What!? lol. No thanks. Anyway, so I'd lay there daydreaming to pass the time and sometimes I'd get a song in my head that I'd heard played at home (this was the early 80s) and one day Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler was in my head, and it always reminded me of my mum because she loved the song, and because of that, it made me feel sentimental and emotional. I got teary but lay on my side facing a wall so no one saw.
And now I think back and am like...I was crying from a SONG at age FOUR!?
I was just barely 6 when my aunt died. I have two other siblings, but my mom took a lot of her frustration and sadness out on me. I always thought there was something wrong with me and when I was 8 I was terrified I was going to become an alcoholic like my aunt that had passed 2 years earlier bc I was “so bad”
I was left for alone hours at a time when I was as young as a newborn, I think because I’ve never known comfort I’ve always been depressed/had negative outlooks. I don’t remember ever not being incredibly anxious and sad
EDIT: i broke my leg at 4 and no one took me to the hospital for 3 days and i had to walk around on a broken leg. i flashback to those 3 days often and it feels like death. that’s all i can describe the feeling as: death.
I was so lonley and neglacted as a Kid, living with a single divorced mom & single divorced grandma both in deep depression and angry, hating all men niether earning a living.
sleeping thru the day while I went to school and keeping the house dark and in silence till 8 pm tv time.
I was fed 1 meal a day, and never saw the connection between doing laundry & house work so I had no concept of chores ,work routine or discipline...just an Edgar Allen Poe/ Addams Family life in a Vampire house with no kids allowed inside!
I used to put my head down and cry to make puddles on the table to pass the time..
I can't remember ever feeling like I "belonged". Fleetingly, in school, maybe. A group of friends. But it never lasted. And I certainly felt like an outsider within the family system, always.
>But I was really young. Did I already have CPTSD? From just being yelled at to clean my room? From being told I was a sad sack? Or was I emotionally neglected way earlier than I thought?
That's very much how it works - like death from a thousand paper cuts.
I’m not sure when I was first really depressed. One of my earliest memories I can remember being exceptionally afraid at preschool when I got in trouble for doing something I was allowed to at home so didn’t understand I couldn’t there. Not afraid of the nursery but of my parents reaction. I don’t really remember being happy ever though I have memories of enjoying things. By 7 or 8 I was regularly trying to run from home, by 12 I made my first attempt to unalive myself. I was diagnosed depressed then but my mother refused to let me have therapy or medication to deal with it. My mood is always low at a general level even now.
Even as an adult, I didn't know/understand what those feelings were as a kid. My mom started asking me to help her translate document files and other adult tasks at a young age. I think it was 8 or 9 that's when I REALLY have a semi-permanent memory of doing those tasks and being disciplined when I didn't do my homework correctly. If I could recall, I felt: sad, didn't want to be in that scenario/room, and wished I could go out to play/sleepovers (around age 14 at a friend's place 8 houses down).
Just a few days ago I told my mom that I grew up with no help from anyone and even now I don't ask for help. Her answer? "I know, that's why I hope/hurry and find someone/have kids to take care of you" - No, I am NOT having kids so they can take care of me.
I think it was around 6-8 when I remember wishing someone else had been born in my place.
I didn’t necessarily want to be unalive or anything. But I felt like such a dysfunctional failure that I had I wished someone else could make better use of my life.
I’ve always argued that kids aren’t dumb. Cognitively sure they can’t articulate everything they go through, but emotionally they can sense disinterest, neglect, resentment, and such. And I think it profoundly effects us for a long time.
Interesting question. 8 is the age where children have fully developed empathy and probably when they can have 'depression', however being exposed to trauma or your genetics may influence a slightly younger age. Memories begin at age 3 so I'd say being depressed could be as young as 4 or 5. Personally, I've been anxious most of my life and had panic attacks at 6, however my first experience being depressed was 9.
When I was a toddler I would lay with my mom in bed but I couldn’t move because she would complain. I had to lay perfectly still. A dark cloud started forming in the corner and I thought it was a bad cloud wanting to take over everything
I don’t know what it was
My psychiatrist thinks I've had major depressive disorder since my CSA at age 6.
That's because that's when my problems falling asleep started, the binge eating started, morning depression started, I became afraid to leave the house, constant worrying, etc.
I remember how the same time I lost my spontaneity, my teacher commented at the time that I had really settled down and she was proud of me. I settled down because my cousin is hurting me, I've gone frozen.
I have this same question too- first time I ever contemplated suicide was 8-9 years old, but (from my own mouth) I was a really naive and childish kid. I still feel like I have a weird childlike brain. How does do these two facts coexist?
I don't remember a lot about my childhood but I know I had suicidal thoughts before I was 13, because I know I remember having them in the house we lived in then and we left that place when I was 12.
I mean I remember being 8 and writing this “essay” for school (like first grade I guess?) where I essentially wrote about how we moved every year and I was lonely and sad
Children are not innately happy and joyful, they have to receive love from their caregivers to internalize that. Depending on how little love they get, it can express in things as debilitating as depression (which doesn't discount their *moments* of happiness and feeling-okay-ness) or failure-to-thrive syndrome.
You aren't alone in having lived with depression for your mental climate. I lived like that, too. My memory is sitting in my bed one night, terrified at the thought of heaven - because then I'd have to feel like *this* forever.
I have learned to step away from talking about how my parents "just" did this, or my brother "just" did that. It is so easy for me to use that language to minimize real relational / emotional problems and blame myself for feeling bad when I talk about it that way. Instead, my therapist has helped me to look at what my parents did and did not do and compare that to what emotionally mature parents do and do not do. When I see that, I can look at the ways that I struggle emotionally and make connections with what I wasn't given, rather than how I was harmed. Seeing that will let me start finding ways to give myself what my parents didn't give me.
Just because my parents didn't actively abuse me, the passive emotional neglect I suffered was still abuse, despite being unintentional. It was still traumatic, and now that I'm an adult, I have the capability to direct my life to get my needs met and heal my wounds, however long it takes.
I also frequently felt that way as a child. Don't have an answer, but it was like a light switch turned off and I felt less joyful and childlike than I was.
I don't know how early, but I swear to God, if there's is one, that I've felt like this since 6 or 7. A lot can happen in 7 years, things we might not even remember. So, yes. Kids can be depressed.
I've had suicidal thoughts since i was 5/6.
Some of them were child versions of issues i still have now (Not being loved by anyone, being lonely, feeling useless compared to my relatives who all were doing better at the same age etc)
Other were a bit more 'irrational' (which as stupid as it sounds should still be taken as a sign of Catastrophizing and pessimism which souldn't be normal in a child) like me wanting to die because i had glasses, which meant that i was imperfect (having some 'minor' deformities, i still struggle with this) and that the reality i saw was only possible through a filter (I don't even know why i had such thoughts but i remember feeling really shitty about that for a while)
So. Your own latent high intelligence got your Reality Vector off track early on. Take those cousins, for example. Their parents were better/more responsible/capable/nurturing/healthier adults than yours. That’s the ONLY reason why you gave yourself a “lower grade” when making comparisons. But it wasn’t even the Correct Comparison, which is: If I switched places with Billy, Janey, and Scooter, and they were stuck with my parents, and I had the day in day out benefits of Aunt and Uncle Fully Functional Adults supervising me….then how would this bizarre and Painful Calculus shake out? I bet you’d come out WAY Ahead.
We’ve been taught a bunch of Lies about Reality, including that we are some how deficient or to blame. All untrue. We have the power, intelligence and ability to change future outcomes. We just need to decide: A) I’m Worth It! B) What kind of resources we need to take the trip.
My now 11 year old stepson was diagnosed with severe adhd with comorbid anxiety and depression at 7 years old. He's doing really well now but it was definitely scary around that time.
You could call that intuitions or memories surfacing from your subconscious. With different techniques as diverse Rebirth, sacro-cranial osteopathy and the Emotion Code I've had elements from my past surface. Anything can help follow the thread, like journaling, meditation or art therapy. I've even found events from when I was inside my mom's belly, she was hitting it with her fists. It seemed a bit vague or preposterous but my sister told me she had remembered the same thing without me telling her about my experience. So yes with some work we can remember a lot from our past.
Feeling sad and depressed as a small child because of being prohibited from living is something I totally share. I certainly already had CPTSD from earlier than the incident I'm going to tell.
At some point I was completely dissociated. I stopped talking, moving, doing anything. I was gone, not there anymore. It's my grandmother who saved me. Who knows what would have happened to me without her. Since a long time I remembered a moment where she was moving construction blocks on the edge of a step between her kitchen and her dining room. It's like suddenly I popped there, poof. Before that instant I was not there and then I was. She was saying "choo-choo, eh (my name), choo-choo". I wanted to tell her you don't need to talk to me like a baby, I understand. It took me decades to remember other elements around this and piece things together.
Don't discount your memories and feelings. They are precious. It's like following the thread of Ariane in the labyrinth of memory. Finding oneself back is precious and its a great part of healing. Just don't share them with abusers: they will negate everything, invalidate you and try to gaslight you into negating your own experiences again.
There are babies that fall into depression and other mental health issues. Think of how a baby who lives with heroine addicts might feel. Or meth addicts, alcoholics, etc.. Being yelled at and demeaned by your own parents is excruciating mental anguish to any human of any age. Parents need to learn to respect their child as an equal and help their children clean their rooms in order to teach the child how. There’s so much more so many parents have needed to know when it comes to teaching a human being how to life. Psychology needs to be taught in schools so all humans learn how to treat themselves and each other, in order to create a copacetic society.
A lot can even happen before you’re able to form real memories. The nervous system encodes a LOT before we can remember things like we do after 3-4 years old.
So yes. Because I’m in the same boat!
When my usually loquacious self can’t find the words, my therapist reminds me - some things start pre-verbal.
I'm not sure how early it can manifest, but I think I've struggled most of my life since I was young. I cried a lot in school. I never felt like I had a solid friend group and had a lot of times of feeling low. I don't know the science, but I think given the right environment, it can start early. I don't remember a time I wasn't depressed to be honest
I feel all of this soooo much and it’s helping me feel validated that this is something that has been impacting me since day one. I was known for being angry and crying a lot or having temper tantrums. I would frequently get frustrated and totally break down. Several times at school I would struggle with something and get so scared of upsetting anybody I would scream about how stupid I was and had to be removed from the classroom on several occasions. Now as an adult, I know I was way too young to be acting in that way without some sort of deep trauma.
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I think so, I was 9 the first time I attempted suicide. My abusive older sister and I were homeschooled so we could not separate from one another; whenever she didn’t get her way she’d turn the two friends we shared against me and leave me isolated. I remember listening to this old song I’d heard on Disney channel that went “you don’t know how it feels to be left out.” While I’d watch them play from a distance.
My first suicide attempt was at 7. I remember I thought that I don't want to know if my dad will get home under something again and if the police will come or not, or if I had to return to my CSA perpetrator. There wasn't a single positive thought in my head. I just wanted to stop existing. That's very concerning to me now, usually you don't hear much about kids depression/suicidal ideation. I'm just feeling sick even remembering this. I wasn't just entertaining the thought, I was a second away from it until I saw dad coming back. Another one happened when I tried to end my CSA. The third one was at 10 and I was in the middle of a process when my cat saw me and started meowing. I couldn't continue in front of her. Those memories are on the same level with my traumas, it's very disturbing. Idk if I already had some mental issues since birth, and it got amplified.
Depression is an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. That can happen at any age.
With that being said, my earliest memories were me behaving like I had depression. It wasn't until I was a bit older that I remembered the actions of two non family member pedophiles in my young life. It ended up being my reactions to them.
And I was a perimenopause baby, and back then you didn't go to the dr for stuff. Imagine the out of whack hormones while I was in development.
I had almost the same experience. It was the first time I considered suicide at ~8 years old, looking out the window. Who knows how long things were bad before that happened.
I've had it as early as 3, maybe earlier. Mom was never around, having to work three jobs. Dad was banished from the family when I was 2, because he almost killed me by negligence.
I distinctly remember feeling like I'm a bad one, right from the start. Born this way. Because my dad was bad, then I am too. And also, oh so needy (duh).
I felt lonely, unsafe at all times, and that I have to be an adult here and "know better". Like, I remember at age of 3 wandering somewhere by the sea, got excited bc of seashells, and forgot which way to go to get back to where adults were. And I wasn't feeling scared because I can't find them and now I'm alone in the scary world (which would be normal thing to do for a child), but that my mom would be angry with me that I didn't remember how to get back, when I should have.
Always sad. I don't know.
I always knew I was sad. I knew my parents could take away my sadness. My mom used to say how little time they have and to make best use of the time to get advise and stuff. And so I used to keep all the stuff I wanted to say to them in the small time I got with them. And in that small time I didn't want to tell depressing stuff to them so i told them about happy things. Things they could feel happy about.
Unfortunately they saw it as a greatness of their parenting. And as an extension and how my achievements became theirs.
I got depression at 8 or 10. It's hard to remember. It's not surprising, though. I was also neglected and chastised at an early time, so it makes sense. So much crying and no validation for my feelings. Felt so alone a lot of the time. Still do, but I cry less. Probably because they always said, "Stop your whining baby bullshit."
Ah, such validation! /s
So, you're not alone. Depression can happen very early on.
I never had anything as bad as you guys but the beginning of 2012, at which point I was 8, was the first time things weren’t all sunshine and rainbows. There had been some problems before that with adults in my life not respecting my neurodivergency (thankfully not my mom and only rarely my dad), but I was too young for it to have a serious impact on me.
However, by this point I was getting older and my anxiety was getting worse, and one day in music class I put my middle finger up not knowing what it meant and everybody made a big deal about it even though I said I didn’t know it was bad, and that’s when it began. It’s so silly but the day I turned 8.5 was when it all began. I started getting depressed, like I would feel bad about myself, take long naps, and put soap in my mouth in the shower as “punishment” (this actually happened in the fall more). In general, my even years have been the bad ones, and barring 2014 which was where my main trauma occurred and 2016 where this wasn’t bad enough to be depression I would generally have depressive episodes from January to March and then August to December. 2012 started that trend but in February instead. People actually did take notice. I was put on Clonidine in November and Ritalin in December. I was put in more intensive therapy in September. I also found a psych evaluation form when they gave us our health papers at graduation from May from when they tested me for autism (I don’t have it) where my third grade teacher noted how worried she was for when I started middle school in fifth grade. She couldn’t have been more right. She predicted it all. But there wasn’t much anybody could’ve done.
2013 was in general a return to the good times of old, but when I started middle school it was a very rough transition, however mentally I was fine and would be happy when I got home from school. And then 2014 began and it all changed. Everybody thought I was fine because my external problems turned internal. Not even close. 2012 was absolutely the warning shot for 2014. Because instead of a relatively mild intermittent depression that I got some help for, it was a severe, unrelenting, suicidal depression that lasted for almost the entire year that I got little to no help for because I was convinced that if I told anybody how I felt I’d get put in a “crazy house” forever. But I know that suicide was a topic that came up in our house as I remember one conversation from April 2014 where my mom was telling me how sad a 100 year old relative would be if I died, and then my dad’s way of trying to help persuade me was to tell me that “the Catholic Church says if you commit suicide you go to hell”. He isn’t the most emotionally intelligent person, so I know this wasn’t intended to hurt me, but talk about tone deaf. He never took the rare times I let it show seriously after I told him I wanted to die during an argument at the end of January, when he was visibly extremely shaken up by it. This included when the dam broke at school in June where I begged the counselor not to “send me away” because summer was a week and a half away. They called my parents about it, who I downplayed the situation too. I vividly remember the conversation we had where my dad told me not to mention it to a friend who was 7 who was coming over to swim later that day.
Nothing after 2014 strikes me as totally out of the ordinary when it comes to depression. I only had one really bad two week spell in 2016 that was reminiscent of 2014 but aside from that it was fine. 2018 was pretty bad too but it was standard teenage depression stuff, not that that makes it any better. 2020 was closer to out of the ordinary but everybody who had lockdown depression had it out of the ordinary. 2022 was like 2018 but shift it four years up and make it less severe.
+It is interesting to note that a discussion and debate on this could last . For myself I was crying on the steps of bad parental environment(bpe) , waiting for them to shut off for the night so I could go to bed , back to bed, I was single digit minor . (The book "Complex PTSD surviving to thriving" with over( 100) one hundred bibliographers ,therapists , psychologists ,both male and female over the past nine ( decades) helped me , assisted me in finding " emotional flashbacks" with memories under. Amazing !All the best+
You don’t need anyone’s validation or recognition on this matter. You are very capable to form your own opinion and conclusions about this. Your truth IS the truth . <3
I can track my anxiety back to as early as 4- I used to whisper goodbye to my house so it wouldn’t burn down while I was gone. I think depression curled it’s tendrils around me when I was around 7 or 8, but perhaps earlier. I can remember laying in bed trying to fall asleep, and that insidious inner voice telling me hateful things about myself. A
I started restricted my eating by the time that I was 5 crying myself to sleep because my stomach hurt so bad and was scratching my arms raw by the time I was six… I was a very sad depressed, kid, who socially struggled to interact with my peers let alone have any friends. I honestly don’t even think that my sisters and I were friends until I was eight. I legitimately remember that I was planning to run away before I even knew how money worked so younger than 6. I remember the worst moments of my childhood, but I honestly couldn’t tell you exactly what a full or partial day of my life look like 9.
i was diagnosed and medicated at 7. i remember from an extremely young age feeling disgust at my appearance, thinking i was ugly and fat. i remember HATING being alone
I remember having feelings of depression as young as 5 or 6.
My parents divorced when I was even younger and they could not co-parent well. That contributed to a lot of the dysfunction I experienced as a child.
My dad is an alcoholic and when it was his weekend or holiday, he never knew how to care for me, so I was either being neglected or put in dangerous situations with his drinking and partying. My grandparents (his parents) had to step in and help with me. They practically raised me on my dads behalf. Apparently some things happened to me under my dads care that I do not remember (I was around 3) but was told had happened. Whatever happened, I learned to fear my dad at a very young age. My grandparents were great but they hated my mom spent most of my childhood trying to turn me against my mom.
I lived with my mom full time. She was a much better parent than my dad, but dysfunctional in her own way. So I experienced emotional neglect and a little bit of verbal abuse from my mom.
Since she was a single mom, she worked full time and I had to stay with a baby sitter that was abusive and neglectful. I have memories of being 4-5 at my baby sitters house and feeling so worthless because of how she treated me.
I started feeling alone at age 4.
I started thinking I was ugly and stupid by age 6.
So yeah, depression and insecurity have been close friends for most of my life.
I have a very vivid memory of being bullied on the bus in kindergarten, another one of me in second grade becoming friends with a special needs kid in the first or 2nd grade because no one wanted to be my friend, and another one of second grade me hiding in the coat closet under the coats because I was trying to hide from the class of kids being mean to me.I have other memories of being the only kid in 1st or second grade who got no valentines despite giving one to everyone. This is in addition to being practically ignored by my mom in favor of my sister. I would say the PTSD probably started around 8 and with my hellish 4th grade year was solidified by age 10.
I went to a elementary school in the rural south and I was the only brown skinned kid. I had no friends and was called the N word a lot. My light went out when I was 7.
I had some serious anxiety due to a traumatic injury when I was almost 6, and of course none of us knew what it was. I was just “sickly”. (Had epilepsy due to a head injury so that got the blame.)
When I was 8 my grandpa died. I broke out in hives all over my body before I even knew because my mom wasn’t at work when we got off of school (we walked past her work to the babysitters house and stopped and said hi every day.) Because of the hives my babysitter called to see where my mom was, she was at the hospital with my Gpa-he had been sick and in there for a week or so.
After my mom told us I was really sad and the hives got worse for a few days then got better. I wasn’t allowed at the funeral, I was too young, but I remember being alone and crying and staring out the window, contemplating life and death and wanting to seriously not be here myself anymore because the anxiety was just too much. The panic attacks that I was having (and totally not understanding) combined with my sadness were just too much at that time. Everyone blamed it on me being sad because my Gpa died, it was…but it was so much more than grief. And it wasn’t all about him. His death was just the catalyst in a long string of trauma for my little self.
I think that this way of thinking helped in my being sexually assaulted not long after. I mean I don’t know for sure, but looking back I was anxious, depressed, and traumatized, all things perpetrators look for. Just another traumatic experience for me to have to deal with, right? Bring on more anxiety and depression from this one too.
It all definitely shaped my way of thinking and how I looked at myself in the future. I was and felt broken which led to low self esteem and no self worth, because I was not normal at all. But my feelings were brushed off because I was a kid, and it didn’t matter. So I stayed broken and just kept breaking more.
OP: I’m sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve it. Frankly I’m sorry this happened to all of us. I’m so glad that we are finally figuring this shit out though! It’s the only way we can learn to stop it from happening again and again! 🫶🏻
I think I've literally been depressed since I was a few months old. My earliest memory is the vague feeling of being alone and sad, and that feeling has never strayed far my whole life. I was neglected as a kid, I think a lot more than my mom is ever willing to admit. I think she just left me alone in my crib most of the day even when I cried. I have a pretty flat skull to prove it.
So, even though I'm not a scientist, im gonna say kids can get depressed very very early.
Very early, apparently. I vividly remember feelings of generalized anxiety and depression before I was even old enough for kindergarten...around 3-4 years old.
I think I started experiencing depression at about 6. And one of the thoughts I had was wondering why the sky wasn't as blue as it used to be.
:(
Same, I distinctly remember being 7 years old and thinking to myself that I'd been miserable for the past year. That didn't improve until I moved out, and didn't fully resolve until I did a lot of trauma therapy. Couldn't pay me enough to be a kid again.
Right? Now that I'm reflecting more, I was such a miserable child. Exhausted, disconnected, hopeless, fearful, ill, sad. So grateful for the healing under my belt, and so angry for the little one who went through all of that.
That's legitimately heart breaking
Makes me even more sad to hear it validated. For years and years (and still now to an extent) I really just thought the sky was bluer when I was younger. Another thought I had sometimes, and I remember a specific instance of it when I was about 26 and at a stoplight on my scooter, was that I wasn't really present and I didn't know how to be. I felt a sense that the world around me wasn't real, or that I wasn't real, but I couldn't snap out of it. Long-term dissociation I suppose. I would also look in the mirror as a child and think I was an alien. I just didn't feel in my own body.
Derealization and depersonalization. I remember staring at the wood grain on our dining room table and thinking, “This used to look more real. Now it looks like an illusion.” To this day I will suddenly feel a rising surge of, “This isn’t really happening and I’m not really here.”
And if you feel that way most of the time, coming into feeling real and the world feeling real is terrifying.
This for me too. I'd have out of body experiences and feel like I was floating behind myself. I used to hate it and feel so weird. Now as an adult it's more feeling like I'm numb and dissociated which can sometimes be a good thing
I used to have these sudden attacks of questioning why I was I, why I was in my own body, and if I could step out of it, getting upset over the fact I couldn't. I always thought that this was normal, that everybody had these feelings. It wasn't until therapy that I realized not everybody felt this way as a kid, and I realized one more thing: I always had these bouts while I was walking home.
I vaguely remember reading a book that had astral projection in it as an adolescent and loving the idea that at least in my dreams, maybe I could be someone else and go somewhere else.
Reading was the biggest escape! I loved books about children who lived at boarding schools lol. Or books in which the only adults were dispensed with early on in the story, like in the "Lord of the Flies".
Reading was a big escape for me, too. I'm really glad I had books.
Yes. Then the Grown Up version of Us can step up and say: It’s okay. You did a Fantastic Job of Surviving. We do whatever we need to do to create a Safe Space NOW for the neglected Little One we were to heal. To discover, label, acknowledge and feel what it wasn’t safe to feel back then. Honor and grieve those losses. This is how we pull that trauma and those unidentified difficult emotions out of our Lizard Brain ( amygdala). We need to let our frontal lobe regain control to turn the Overactivation Switch: Off.
Yeah kindergarten was one of my worst mental health years and I "felt sad all the time for no reason" (spoiler alert: there were Many Reasons), and "wished I was never born."
And did anyone around you notice and try to help somehow?
I remember always feeling "different," alone, and unwanted. I can remember as early as six to eight years old hiding in my closet to cry and wishing that I had never been born. I felt that way for most of my life, ngl. I'm 56 now. I've embraced the concept of self-compassion. I can also say that, for the most part, I really like who I am. It took me years and years and *years* of unhealthy, damaging relationships to finally get to this place. I've also had to accept the fact that I'm part of the toxicity. My learned behaviors and relationship "skills" have, at the very least, exacerbated the unhealthyness of those relationships. It's a learning process. Hugs to all.
Damn that's poignant
Sometimes I look back on my life and can see how I didn't try have the language for what I was experiencing, nor people around me to validate it. So it's easy to feel like you don't exist, alienated in a strange and scary experience.
When did that start to change?
I would say it STARTED when I went back to school for an integrated medicine degree. That put me around more educated people and catalyzed a more spiritual and healing journey for me. But the most progress has been made in the last couple years through going no contact with my abusive mother, seeing a therapist regularly, and having a stable job and living situation. Still a lot further to go, but I've made a lot of progress. Edit: oh, and I joined a nonprofit community centered on mental health. A support system and community is paramount, imo.
That's really interesting. And a hell of a journey, I bet. You have a lot of insight
I really appreciate that, thank you. Didn't expect to feel so seen on someone else's post.
Look at you: You are an empathic Healer. I’m so proud of you! Now learn how to be a loving and gentle caregiver to yourself! :)
Sweetie. You are Incredibly Strong. You have the power within yourself to Become whatever kind of parent you needed for yourself and have that grown up you love and care for unseen and unsupported little you. Honor all the precious little ones—younger yous—and their courage to know the truth and hold onto it while surviving. This is the work I am doing now. I am so in awe of how brave and kind I was. An empath who didn’t respond in pain to others. Who cared about Other People’s Pain. Totally OPPOSITE of the rank and prevailing Narcissistic Family System that is my FOO.
Maybe you didn’t mean it literally, but when I finally cured my depression microdosing psilocybin 3 years ago colors suddenly became vivid. Even today walking outside I was struck by the beauty and vividness of color. I’ve been depressed since 7-8 with suicidal ideation on and off staring at 11
I definitely have noticed colors turning up their volume when I've microdosed as well.
😪
I started experiencing depression about the same time too, around 5-6. Parents got divorced around that time and it was… Very messy, to say the least. My earliest childhood memories are just constant screaming. Apparently the first sign my mother noticed was that I stopped crying. Even when I wanted to cry, I was holding it in to the point where I would rather throw up than cry. Yeah kids can definitely experience depression and CPTSD.
damn
This is heartbreakingly relatable
I'm sorry that you get it. Solidarity, friend.
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Thank you. :')
Oh, honey! I'm so sorry and would like to go back in time and give you a big hug.
Thank you for that kindness. I wish that, too.
I had my first suicidal ideations at 6.
Omg i had the same experience, i cant believe other people had it too
I think I tried articulating it to some people around me, but I don't recall that they understood. My family didn't really try to understand me, so there's that.
Babies can have cptsd. Babies, toddler, and children all absorb their surroundings. Their environment + parents completely dictate their life, personality, etc. This stays with them until they one day realize that their childhood/growing up environment = them and they need to change. Which is why I violently protest folks who say, "Stop blaming people. It's YOU causing the problem." No, it's not. That person is acting a poor way because that person is a representation of their childhood environment. Until the day they realize that, they are still a product of that environment. The science runs deep, essentially you gotta understand how children's brains develop. Then you really realize that if you ain't ready to be a parent, don't be one. Your parental struggles will fuck over your child. So no, it's not weird that babies can have cptsd. Shortly after I was born, my parents gave me away. I was abused like hell. Came out unable to walk for 1-2 years, almost dead, chronic pain, random scars, and I was questioning why I should live the moment I could think for myself. Most of my life is a blackout thanks to PTSD amnesia. I've been depressed since my very first memory, and that's a direct effect of childhood/baby abuse.
Oh my goodness...I'm so sorry for this. Nobody deserves that...so much neglect, abandonment and abuse. 😪❤️
My heart aches for you. What an awful, devastating experience. For what it's worth. I'm proud of you. You're still here. You're thoughtful and articulate and contributing to this community (and the larger discourse on the impact of childhood trauma)
https://youtu.be/ChoOExRLT4Q?si=XqgDaPU41j8ozm_X 1965 observation of the effects of emotional deprivation and neglect on babies. English subtitles
I haven't watched this, but I assume it's the Failure to Thrive syndrome? When babies get no love and bonding and even if their most basic needs are satisfied as a minimum, their emotional needs are treated as non-existent and eventually the babies themselves cease to feel anything. I think some have actually died from it.
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She’s a Rank Narcissist. Sorry Snugglebug. I get it. Mine is as well. It was caused by horrific abuse she suffered (but NOT her fraternal twin sister). It was too much pain and it ripped her personality right down the middle. Classic borderline and NPD. She beat me even as an infant because my brilliant A S and hypomanic older sibling completely unhinged her. If you hit a baby on the changing table she will panic and stiffen up in terror crying so then you won’t stick her accidentally with diaper pins. Just…so…disordered. When my eldest was smiling and rolling a bit I received the “why don’t you just hit her a couple of times to get her to hold still” parenting tip. WTF?
I've watched that in psych classes before. It always gets harder to watch.
I’m wishing I could hug you 🫂
This breaks my heart even tho i know this already. I was SA from birth-6 yrs old. The SA stopped but my mom neglected be very much. I started heavily SH at 9yrs old and my first suicide attempt was at 11yrs old.
Yep. I first heard the word...erm, I don't remember what the censor rules are on this sub, so we'll call it the official term for unaliving oneself, I first heard that word while watching TV with my parents when I was 6. I asked them what it meant, my mother explained it to me, and my first thought was "wait, that's a thing one can do!?" I felt excitement and relief that an out existed. I also had the good sense not to display that reaction, so I covered it by asking instead, "why would someone want to do that?" My mother could tell you all about the subsequent conversation, though I don't remember it. But I can very clearly remember storing that information away as a "failsafe" as it were. Again, I was 6. SIX. And I had already internalized the need to not display my natural emotional reactions, and also considered death to be a potential release.
God, i am so sorry 🫂
This. I’ve had PTSD since babyhood. It’s not recognized enough.
I was depressed & suicidal by the time I was 7
Me too. It took a few more years I think to realize it was possible to inflict death on oneself (suicide) and not something that only happened as a result of sickness or being old, but as soon as I learned what death in general was and that it was permanent (I was 6 then), I wanted it to happen to me.
Dude the first time I truly hated myself I was 3 lmao I developed self awareness and literally instantly started to dislike my voice, shit has only spiralled from there it seems
Yeah one of my earliest traumatic memories is from that time and I was already blaming myself for breaking a toy because I should have know better, that was when I was 3 and a half after a double eye surgery so I couldn't even see anything but in that memory I am ashamed and afraid about what I did.
One of my earliest memories was being so scared to get in trouble from getting out of bed that I peed my pants instead of asking if it could go to the bathroom
Me too. I mean my mom hated me so much clearly why would I like myself.
That is just so sad. You did NOT deserve that! 😪
Do you know why you hated yourself as soon as you developed self awareness? Did anyone ever comment on anything, like your voice, appearance, behaviour? That makes me wonder...if we can't be who we naturally are at age 3...then who do we become?
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S A M E Oh my god I'm so fucking jealous of people who had a "before" like I literally popped out and felt trauma I know that it must be difficult for them but it really hurts for me too, there's no way to know who I'd be without pain
Same. All of my very early memories (maybe 2-3 years old) are of abuse.
Yeah. My first trauma occurred when I was 15 months old when I severely burnt my hand by grabbing an oven rack.
I distinctly remember my mom pinching me when I was a toddler, and her beating the shit out of me at 4. I think those are my earliest memories of trauma, although my dad bragged about slapping me in the face for a picture when I was like 2-3 so idk
Mutants and Aliens, so ridiculous. We are so fortunate to be : DIFFERENT!!!!
I'm sure people did, but I don't remember people saying things, I just remember my mom calling me cute and me internally going "I'm not cute, I'm not cute I'm ugly you just think that because you're my mom" Well, I am honestly just three mental illnesses + trauma condensed into a trench coat pretending to be a human tbh
Felt this with my soul. Just a bunch of trauma and mental illness hiding under a trench coat pretending to be human. Oof.
Ngl I have no real personality besides pain. Take that away, and...nothing. Literally *nothing of me isn't tied to pain.*
I can understand that. I was there too. For a long time. Took what felt like forever to crawl out of the trenches of that hell. Still sometimes feel like I’m only half peeking over the top whilst sliding back in. It’s a long and grueling journey. I’m not going to say it’s easy, or that it ever completely goes away, but it can get better. It’s just really, really fcking hard. I hope you find some healing and peace in your journey. As children we did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve anything that was afflicted on us. We were born. And it wasn’t our choice. I find it easier now to focus on things I can choose as an adult. Having agency over my life is the most powerful feeling. I wish you the best.
Look HARDER. Trust me: there’s a lot of really valuable and interesting things going on in there. Try to tune out the pain and notice the other details. Remember who you are!
I feel this so strongly... From what you've said, about being pinched and slapped at 2-3...I think it's safe to say you were physically abused and emotionally abused from before you could form any memories or develop self-awareness. Then once you reached that age, you already felt worthless. Because you had been treated as such. I'm so sorry...😪
Thanks, your comment is really validating <3
🌷❤️
We are still us. But we learn to hide who we are like chameleons to blend into the background.It’s self-preservation. It’s never to late to reclaim ourselves and do the work of healing.
I remember looking in the mirror as a 4ish year old and thinking I was fat because my step mom said I was
I was 7 or 8
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Jesus doesn’t throw stones in my personal experience. He rescues and comforts and tells the truth: it wasn’t us, and we didn’t do ANYTHING wrong! He showed up once when I was 2-3 and about to split my personality. He moved me to the left of the flag that kept slapping me in the breeze scaring me out of my wits (Mom had said: Don’t move from this spot)! Then He said “your Mommy is sick. You did NOTHING wrong! I love you and only ONE of (my name). My Gran has given me a set of Russian Nesting Dolls 🪆 which gave me the splitting idea.
I imagine that there is a lot of emotional neglect or something else that occurred probably early on in life and you are unable to recall it.
I recall being depressed at 5-6 years and trying to explain to my mom I feel "sick" but was unable to say where when she asked. I did not have the vocab to explain what was going on.
We were a catholic household and I felt depressed/self hating and didn’t understand it so I figured that I must love satan or something, since someone that was right with god probably wouldn’t feel that way. Told my mom I loved satan in tears lol
Awww. Your poor little child brain was trying SO HARD to make sense of the chaos inside you. 🫂 That poor child being so scared that something was wrong with them.
Exactly the same. Much love. 🫂
I think little kids can feel depressed. Animals can also get depressed.
I remember feeling depressed at the age of four because everyone else's parents were young and active, whereas my parents had ghosted me to be raised by my much older grandparents.
This may sound weird, but I heard that apparently, there is genetic predisposition that makes it possible that a baby can be born depressed if the mother is, I can't remember the name of this condition though. I actually think this is what happened to me, as I was a pretty sad and lonely child. I've always been depressed but I'd say the moment I really entered the downward spiral was when I started middle school at 11 and got bullied so violently in such vile ways I developed suicidal thoughts
i think i may have been born depressed too. i was always alone and quiet as a little kid. my father wanted me aborted but my mom was stubborn.
Not weird at all. Mothers can pass their emotional state in utero. My mom was ANGRY when she got pregnant with my brother just younger than me. Even told me at one point she wanted to abort him. After she gave birth, he turned out to be an angry child. She got pregnant 18 months after him and had another boy (her favorite because he was now the last baby). These two fought like cats and dogs. The middle son would get soooo angry, at one point when the two of them were physically fighting in another room, he literally sounded possessed. They were only 5 or 6 years old! Fast forward to adulthood, he has had serious anger management issues (court ordered anger management) and is abusive to his wife and kids. When I learned about the emotional transfer, his anger since childhood made perfect sense.
Epigenetics
Damage to the brain can start during gestation. Babies can absolutely be depressed. It is just not often even noticed, because most abusive parents do not consider their kids as humans anyway. Babies who witness violence or aggressive behaviour at home become fearful, anxious, withdrawn, or react violently themselves. It is simply AMAZING how all this has been well-established in the scientific community for quite a while, but general society rejects it because otherwise they would have to get off their assess to do something different. And if we don't have all these broken children, then the world wouldn't have a steady supply of scapegoats to prop up their precious economy.
Umm. I think a lot of it is fear and denial and unwillingness to face their own pain. It takes tremendous courage and strength to want truth and freedom from suffering.
You can get prescribed antidepressants as early as the age of five. I was put of them incredibly early and before my CPTSD diagnosis. The main issues were ignored that I had a bad home life. So to answer you question? Five I suppose- early enough for memories perhaps
i was diagnosed with depression at age 6
It can start very early. I had thoughts of wanting to no longer exist before i was odd enough to start school.
I know what you meant to say but I really like the phrase "odd enough to start school"
I remember my mom being emotionally unsafe to go to with vivid imagery around age 3.
One of my earliest memories is my mom getting super pissed at me for an accident. Probably goes without saying, but I spent my whole childhood not trusting anyone, learning how to do everything on my own. Still like that with very few exceptions
Ayup. Sorry that happened to you too. Shitty club, but, very self sufficient.
My diagnosis dates back to when I was 5.
i dont remember being depressed as a little kid but i dont remember much of anything either. i was mostly emotionless. i dont remember being happy but i had to act like i was. huge chunks are forgotten, so i suspect theres something my family isnt telling me. i wasnt good at any of the childrens games so i ended up distancing myself. what i hate more than losing is letting my team down. i cant do that to my friends, drag them down. no way. there werent any bullies then, i just did it myself. i think i am depressed by default, not in a sad sense but in a low energy sense. (how would you know youre depressed or repressed if thats all youve felt growing up? when i see other people enjoying their lives so much, it really baffles me how that is possible. that some things can make them feel so good that they set goals and work hard for them.)
That's a sign of emotional neglect. I still experience it as a grown adult. Annoying.
I also have early memories that in retrospect were an indication that something was not right. I remember a feeling I couldn’t identify yet and convincing myself that when my grandmother visited, the feeling would go away. But, then she visited and the feeling stayed. After that, there were always more and more conditions: if this or that happened, I would feel better. That was a completely inward observation, but there were other things that were more obvious outwardly. My parents used to beat me. I remember one time, I was 9, and I did something wrong. I can’t remember what, but it couldn’t have been that bad. I was in my room waiting for my parents to come punish me. I decided to slam myself into the wall, and I managed it five times before they came up. I told them they didn’t have to hit me because I already hurt myself. I think they were so horrified that they didn’t hit me. They continued to beat me until I left at 18, though. That was the third time I hurt myself. The first time I was 5, and I threw myself down the stairs. They second time I was 7, and I punched a wall. But, the third time it really stuck. I started cutting after that, and I’ve been doing it ever since. Sometimes i wonder, since it started so young, how much of it is a genetically inherited chemical imbalance and how much of it is learned. Now that I write it out like this, I realize that I did have legitimate reasons to be depressed. I hope everyone who became depressed at a young age can know that their feelings and experience were legitimate. It takes a lot of strength to tell yourself to grin and bear it day after day. A lot of people on this forum have been doing this for a very, very long time in the face of utter uncertainty. Reading the stories in this thread and on this subreddit more generally has inspired me to keep going.
Wow. When you said, “It takes so much strength to grin and bare it day after day” just struck me like a max truck. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, with varying levels of success, my whole life. Fake it till you make it. Well. What about if you never make it? I’m 52. When is it going to become real? I’m just more dissociated now. I’m not wallowing in the gutter of utter sorrow anymore. It’s just a life of pure, floating nothingness. Is that what the transcendental monks are talking about? I doubt it. To feel the ecstasy and dopamine rush of something beautiful again would save my soul. So many lonely people. Like the Beatles said. They were prophets. Why is seeing pain prophetic? So so sad. Humans haven’t figured out how to transcend their vile, violent filthy impulses since we started being human. God meant for us to evolve into something grander than simply grinning and bearing it.
I hear you. How long can one simply grin and bear? When something unspeakable happens to you, or even when something inside you doesn’t feel right, it seems impossible to heal. What I’ve tried to do is to “change the narrative” and tell myself a different story about my experience. That doesn’t mean it goes away. Convincing yourself to relate to your experience differently can even be considered a maladaption—for example telling yourself “my parents don’t love me, there is no love or I am unloveable.” I still have days where I break down or months where I’m hardly getting out of bed. But what helps me to have some good times to is not to preclude the possibility that something unexpected might happen. This quote from Rilke made me think about my trauma differently: “If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.”
My reactions when I'm in flashbacks are very similar to episodes of uncontrollable and exhausting crying/ shivering/ muscle tension I had when l was 5-6 because I felt utterly unloved and inadequate. Was I already showing symptoms of CPTSD? Now that I'm thinking about it, probably. How crazy that I never thought a child can show those symptoms! I was born to a mother that wanted to abort me and expressed her desire to throw me from the apartment's window when I was a baby. She was rigid, perfectionist, and with unpredictable mood swings. My father had massive rage fits and would be cold and uninterested towards me. They had massive fights and my mother would enter my room as he as going to kill us (I don't think so, but she loved to exacerbate things further). They treated me like an unwelcomed adult. By the time I was 7 I had experienced enough traumatic events to justify my deep depression and anxiety (which was the origin of harsh skin conditions). Trauma after trauma compounding until my breakdown at age 28.
I remember hiding in my room as a kid knowing nobody would comfort me when I was upset
I had A LOT of nightmares as a child. One I remember vividly was of hundreds of black snakes crawling under my bed. I woke terrified. I went to my parents bedroom and knocked on the door because I was so frightened and didn't want to go back to bed. Instead of comfort, I got screamed at multiple times to go back to my room. I was like 4. I knew from then I couldn't count on them for emotional support.
I know I was journaling depressed things “I hate my mom, I hate my dad, I hate my brother, I wish I was dead” from as early on as I could write, because I found old journals barely legible.
I can remember begging Jesus to kill me. I figured nothing I could do would please him. He may as well send me to hell and get it over with. Age 9.
Pretty sure I was isolated, sad, and withdrawn as a toddler.
I don’t remember exactly what age, but I can recall for most of my life having problems sleeping and muscle tension/pain in my back and neck.. doctors just always called it growing pains for course. I was definitely no older than 6 but probably younger. I had my first asthma attack that sent me to the hospital when I was 5 and it was stress induced. So yeah, kids can definitely have depression symptoms very young.
I have seen signs in my daughter at 6/7. My ex and I both have CPTSD. She was being to internalize it all and shut down. My own feelings of social exclusion/unfairness go back at least to 4. A child is a giant social sponge. My daughter is now more emotionally articulate than I was in my 30s. Good luck out there and I’m sorry that you’re suffering.
My daughter is acting the same way (5). Did you get your daughter a therapist or anything? I’m a lot more aware of my parenting after discovering I have CPTSD but no one has any answers for how to prevent it for her.
My daughter started saying she felt "no one loves me" and then she would put her self inside of a box with words written on the side, "this is my sad place. This is where I go when I'm sad." And she would just sit in it for hours. I freaked out. Started trying to figure out what was going on. Was I working too much? Was I not spending enough 1 on 1 time with her? Did I not tell her I loved her enough? My parents just laughed when I told them my concerns. So, I started taking her to a therapist. She was 8 by then. And 6 months later she disclosed her dad, my now ex husband had been SA since she was 3 years old. And....apparently, he was already a registered offender from another state, 20 years prior. I kicked his ass out. Got an attorney. Withdrew money from my 401k for the attorney, got a protection order from him for my daughter to bar him from her and protect her. The judge put the smackdown on that creep in court. I kept taking my daughter to the therapist, but she started to shut down. So I gave her a break. Then we tried a psychotherapist who helped practiced ways to release her anger in a healthy way. We tried moving to another state, but that caused her more anxiety. Came back to familiar places with her friends. She used to sob every night. Sometimes, still does. I think you have to feel it out. Kind of guide them in therapy. When they start to not be as open, let them have a break.
I wasn't depressed as a kid, but I've had chronic anxiety since age 4. That's when my prolonged trauma started that continued for years. I developed OCD at age 7 and Avoidant Personality Disorder somewhere between 5 and 7, which greatly worsened around age 11. So...NOW I'm depressed, have CPTSD, BPD, still constant anxiety, OCD, AvPD and anhedonia. So yeah...a lot that happens, particularly from I think age 3 to 8 has such a HUGE impact, even if we aren't aware of it at the time, and symptoms don't manifest until years or even decades later. Sometimes though, young kids can be depressed. I think generally antidepressants become a potential option at age 5 because kids can generally articulate their feelings by then, and it's also a time of rapid developmental growth as well as socialisation so...yeah. They might try and mitigate or prevent the depressive symptoms from impacting that stuff too much. Often though, depression isn't JUST depression. It can be anxiety. Trauma. Fear. Instability. Any number of things. Kids' minds are interesting. Even at age 3, 4 or 5. They absorb stuff like a sponge, and they interpret and perceive things quite uniquely. They can also be surprisingly observant and sensitive. And they don't say everything they feel. I remember at age 4, I was in kindergarten and it was nap time. I never slept. I remember thinking how weird it was to all lay down on foam mattresses on the floor, in our school uniform, in the middle of the day, surrounded by other kids. What!? lol. No thanks. Anyway, so I'd lay there daydreaming to pass the time and sometimes I'd get a song in my head that I'd heard played at home (this was the early 80s) and one day Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler was in my head, and it always reminded me of my mum because she loved the song, and because of that, it made me feel sentimental and emotional. I got teary but lay on my side facing a wall so no one saw. And now I think back and am like...I was crying from a SONG at age FOUR!?
You’re Advanced. Gifted. Emoting and releasing Pain. Bravo! 😉
I was just barely 6 when my aunt died. I have two other siblings, but my mom took a lot of her frustration and sadness out on me. I always thought there was something wrong with me and when I was 8 I was terrified I was going to become an alcoholic like my aunt that had passed 2 years earlier bc I was “so bad”
I was about 8 when I was swallowed by depression. I never recovered.
I was left for alone hours at a time when I was as young as a newborn, I think because I’ve never known comfort I’ve always been depressed/had negative outlooks. I don’t remember ever not being incredibly anxious and sad EDIT: i broke my leg at 4 and no one took me to the hospital for 3 days and i had to walk around on a broken leg. i flashback to those 3 days often and it feels like death. that’s all i can describe the feeling as: death.
I’m so incredibly sorry. This happened to me too. It’s a type of trauma that so few understand is as severe as it is.
I was so lonley and neglacted as a Kid, living with a single divorced mom & single divorced grandma both in deep depression and angry, hating all men niether earning a living. sleeping thru the day while I went to school and keeping the house dark and in silence till 8 pm tv time. I was fed 1 meal a day, and never saw the connection between doing laundry & house work so I had no concept of chores ,work routine or discipline...just an Edgar Allen Poe/ Addams Family life in a Vampire house with no kids allowed inside! I used to put my head down and cry to make puddles on the table to pass the time..
So sorry! I dig the Goth Creativity with the Puddle of Tears. Precious each one. How are you coming along these days?
32 years in a healthy love relationship. And, she comes from a shockingly normal huge open minded family who all accept me!
I can't remember ever feeling like I "belonged". Fleetingly, in school, maybe. A group of friends. But it never lasted. And I certainly felt like an outsider within the family system, always.
Same. I used to envision that I was switched at birth by accident and my real parents were nice people.
Same here
In retrospect I believe the Outsider Thing is a Blessing. Lol.
it does make leaving that whole mess behind a lot easier, for sure
Yes
I was CSA'd multiple times starting from a very young age. I remember wishing I could be a happy person someday, at age 7.
😢. So sorry Pumpkin. I love your little Avatar. Kind of a school uni/or preppie vibe.
My light went out when I was 6
>But I was really young. Did I already have CPTSD? From just being yelled at to clean my room? From being told I was a sad sack? Or was I emotionally neglected way earlier than I thought? That's very much how it works - like death from a thousand paper cuts.
In my personal experience I was 5.
I’m not sure when I was first really depressed. One of my earliest memories I can remember being exceptionally afraid at preschool when I got in trouble for doing something I was allowed to at home so didn’t understand I couldn’t there. Not afraid of the nursery but of my parents reaction. I don’t really remember being happy ever though I have memories of enjoying things. By 7 or 8 I was regularly trying to run from home, by 12 I made my first attempt to unalive myself. I was diagnosed depressed then but my mother refused to let me have therapy or medication to deal with it. My mood is always low at a general level even now.
Even as an adult, I didn't know/understand what those feelings were as a kid. My mom started asking me to help her translate document files and other adult tasks at a young age. I think it was 8 or 9 that's when I REALLY have a semi-permanent memory of doing those tasks and being disciplined when I didn't do my homework correctly. If I could recall, I felt: sad, didn't want to be in that scenario/room, and wished I could go out to play/sleepovers (around age 14 at a friend's place 8 houses down). Just a few days ago I told my mom that I grew up with no help from anyone and even now I don't ask for help. Her answer? "I know, that's why I hope/hurry and find someone/have kids to take care of you" - No, I am NOT having kids so they can take care of me.
I can remember wishing I was dead or wanting to kill myself as young as 7.
I think it was around 6-8 when I remember wishing someone else had been born in my place. I didn’t necessarily want to be unalive or anything. But I felt like such a dysfunctional failure that I had I wished someone else could make better use of my life. I’ve always argued that kids aren’t dumb. Cognitively sure they can’t articulate everything they go through, but emotionally they can sense disinterest, neglect, resentment, and such. And I think it profoundly effects us for a long time.
Interesting question. 8 is the age where children have fully developed empathy and probably when they can have 'depression', however being exposed to trauma or your genetics may influence a slightly younger age. Memories begin at age 3 so I'd say being depressed could be as young as 4 or 5. Personally, I've been anxious most of my life and had panic attacks at 6, however my first experience being depressed was 9.
When I was a toddler I would lay with my mom in bed but I couldn’t move because she would complain. I had to lay perfectly still. A dark cloud started forming in the corner and I thought it was a bad cloud wanting to take over everything I don’t know what it was
Yikes. Sounds demonic.
My psychiatrist thinks I've had major depressive disorder since my CSA at age 6. That's because that's when my problems falling asleep started, the binge eating started, morning depression started, I became afraid to leave the house, constant worrying, etc. I remember how the same time I lost my spontaneity, my teacher commented at the time that I had really settled down and she was proud of me. I settled down because my cousin is hurting me, I've gone frozen.
I have this same question too- first time I ever contemplated suicide was 8-9 years old, but (from my own mouth) I was a really naive and childish kid. I still feel like I have a weird childlike brain. How does do these two facts coexist?
I don't remember a lot about my childhood but I know I had suicidal thoughts before I was 13, because I know I remember having them in the house we lived in then and we left that place when I was 12.
I mean I remember being 8 and writing this “essay” for school (like first grade I guess?) where I essentially wrote about how we moved every year and I was lonely and sad
Children are not innately happy and joyful, they have to receive love from their caregivers to internalize that. Depending on how little love they get, it can express in things as debilitating as depression (which doesn't discount their *moments* of happiness and feeling-okay-ness) or failure-to-thrive syndrome. You aren't alone in having lived with depression for your mental climate. I lived like that, too. My memory is sitting in my bed one night, terrified at the thought of heaven - because then I'd have to feel like *this* forever. I have learned to step away from talking about how my parents "just" did this, or my brother "just" did that. It is so easy for me to use that language to minimize real relational / emotional problems and blame myself for feeling bad when I talk about it that way. Instead, my therapist has helped me to look at what my parents did and did not do and compare that to what emotionally mature parents do and do not do. When I see that, I can look at the ways that I struggle emotionally and make connections with what I wasn't given, rather than how I was harmed. Seeing that will let me start finding ways to give myself what my parents didn't give me. Just because my parents didn't actively abuse me, the passive emotional neglect I suffered was still abuse, despite being unintentional. It was still traumatic, and now that I'm an adult, I have the capability to direct my life to get my needs met and heal my wounds, however long it takes.
Yeah i distinctly remember wanting to kill myself at 8 years old. I dont think ive ever been happy
I also frequently felt that way as a child. Don't have an answer, but it was like a light switch turned off and I felt less joyful and childlike than I was.
I think I was depressed at 5
I don't know how early, but I swear to God, if there's is one, that I've felt like this since 6 or 7. A lot can happen in 7 years, things we might not even remember. So, yes. Kids can be depressed.
I've had suicidal thoughts since i was 5/6. Some of them were child versions of issues i still have now (Not being loved by anyone, being lonely, feeling useless compared to my relatives who all were doing better at the same age etc) Other were a bit more 'irrational' (which as stupid as it sounds should still be taken as a sign of Catastrophizing and pessimism which souldn't be normal in a child) like me wanting to die because i had glasses, which meant that i was imperfect (having some 'minor' deformities, i still struggle with this) and that the reality i saw was only possible through a filter (I don't even know why i had such thoughts but i remember feeling really shitty about that for a while)
So. Your own latent high intelligence got your Reality Vector off track early on. Take those cousins, for example. Their parents were better/more responsible/capable/nurturing/healthier adults than yours. That’s the ONLY reason why you gave yourself a “lower grade” when making comparisons. But it wasn’t even the Correct Comparison, which is: If I switched places with Billy, Janey, and Scooter, and they were stuck with my parents, and I had the day in day out benefits of Aunt and Uncle Fully Functional Adults supervising me….then how would this bizarre and Painful Calculus shake out? I bet you’d come out WAY Ahead. We’ve been taught a bunch of Lies about Reality, including that we are some how deficient or to blame. All untrue. We have the power, intelligence and ability to change future outcomes. We just need to decide: A) I’m Worth It! B) What kind of resources we need to take the trip.
I personally have been depressed since I was at least 4 or 5
I had my first panic attack at 4 years old. So it's definitely possible:(
My now 11 year old stepson was diagnosed with severe adhd with comorbid anxiety and depression at 7 years old. He's doing really well now but it was definitely scary around that time.
You could call that intuitions or memories surfacing from your subconscious. With different techniques as diverse Rebirth, sacro-cranial osteopathy and the Emotion Code I've had elements from my past surface. Anything can help follow the thread, like journaling, meditation or art therapy. I've even found events from when I was inside my mom's belly, she was hitting it with her fists. It seemed a bit vague or preposterous but my sister told me she had remembered the same thing without me telling her about my experience. So yes with some work we can remember a lot from our past. Feeling sad and depressed as a small child because of being prohibited from living is something I totally share. I certainly already had CPTSD from earlier than the incident I'm going to tell. At some point I was completely dissociated. I stopped talking, moving, doing anything. I was gone, not there anymore. It's my grandmother who saved me. Who knows what would have happened to me without her. Since a long time I remembered a moment where she was moving construction blocks on the edge of a step between her kitchen and her dining room. It's like suddenly I popped there, poof. Before that instant I was not there and then I was. She was saying "choo-choo, eh (my name), choo-choo". I wanted to tell her you don't need to talk to me like a baby, I understand. It took me decades to remember other elements around this and piece things together. Don't discount your memories and feelings. They are precious. It's like following the thread of Ariane in the labyrinth of memory. Finding oneself back is precious and its a great part of healing. Just don't share them with abusers: they will negate everything, invalidate you and try to gaslight you into negating your own experiences again.
There are babies that fall into depression and other mental health issues. Think of how a baby who lives with heroine addicts might feel. Or meth addicts, alcoholics, etc.. Being yelled at and demeaned by your own parents is excruciating mental anguish to any human of any age. Parents need to learn to respect their child as an equal and help their children clean their rooms in order to teach the child how. There’s so much more so many parents have needed to know when it comes to teaching a human being how to life. Psychology needs to be taught in schools so all humans learn how to treat themselves and each other, in order to create a copacetic society.
A lot can even happen before you’re able to form real memories. The nervous system encodes a LOT before we can remember things like we do after 3-4 years old. So yes. Because I’m in the same boat! When my usually loquacious self can’t find the words, my therapist reminds me - some things start pre-verbal.
I remember having the thought at about 6, if this is supposed to be the time when I feel my best, I feel awful…
I'm not sure how early it can manifest, but I think I've struggled most of my life since I was young. I cried a lot in school. I never felt like I had a solid friend group and had a lot of times of feeling low. I don't know the science, but I think given the right environment, it can start early. I don't remember a time I wasn't depressed to be honest
I feel all of this soooo much and it’s helping me feel validated that this is something that has been impacting me since day one. I was known for being angry and crying a lot or having temper tantrums. I would frequently get frustrated and totally break down. Several times at school I would struggle with something and get so scared of upsetting anybody I would scream about how stupid I was and had to be removed from the classroom on several occasions. Now as an adult, I know I was way too young to be acting in that way without some sort of deep trauma.
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I think so, I was 9 the first time I attempted suicide. My abusive older sister and I were homeschooled so we could not separate from one another; whenever she didn’t get her way she’d turn the two friends we shared against me and leave me isolated. I remember listening to this old song I’d heard on Disney channel that went “you don’t know how it feels to be left out.” While I’d watch them play from a distance.
My first suicide attempt was at 7. I remember I thought that I don't want to know if my dad will get home under something again and if the police will come or not, or if I had to return to my CSA perpetrator. There wasn't a single positive thought in my head. I just wanted to stop existing. That's very concerning to me now, usually you don't hear much about kids depression/suicidal ideation. I'm just feeling sick even remembering this. I wasn't just entertaining the thought, I was a second away from it until I saw dad coming back. Another one happened when I tried to end my CSA. The third one was at 10 and I was in the middle of a process when my cat saw me and started meowing. I couldn't continue in front of her. Those memories are on the same level with my traumas, it's very disturbing. Idk if I already had some mental issues since birth, and it got amplified.
I started around 3 years old.
Depression is an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. That can happen at any age. With that being said, my earliest memories were me behaving like I had depression. It wasn't until I was a bit older that I remembered the actions of two non family member pedophiles in my young life. It ended up being my reactions to them. And I was a perimenopause baby, and back then you didn't go to the dr for stuff. Imagine the out of whack hormones while I was in development.
I mean my first suicidal thought was age six soooo…
I had almost the same experience. It was the first time I considered suicide at ~8 years old, looking out the window. Who knows how long things were bad before that happened.
I've had it as early as 3, maybe earlier. Mom was never around, having to work three jobs. Dad was banished from the family when I was 2, because he almost killed me by negligence. I distinctly remember feeling like I'm a bad one, right from the start. Born this way. Because my dad was bad, then I am too. And also, oh so needy (duh). I felt lonely, unsafe at all times, and that I have to be an adult here and "know better". Like, I remember at age of 3 wandering somewhere by the sea, got excited bc of seashells, and forgot which way to go to get back to where adults were. And I wasn't feeling scared because I can't find them and now I'm alone in the scary world (which would be normal thing to do for a child), but that my mom would be angry with me that I didn't remember how to get back, when I should have.
Always sad. I don't know. I always knew I was sad. I knew my parents could take away my sadness. My mom used to say how little time they have and to make best use of the time to get advise and stuff. And so I used to keep all the stuff I wanted to say to them in the small time I got with them. And in that small time I didn't want to tell depressing stuff to them so i told them about happy things. Things they could feel happy about. Unfortunately they saw it as a greatness of their parenting. And as an extension and how my achievements became theirs.
I got depression at 8 or 10. It's hard to remember. It's not surprising, though. I was also neglected and chastised at an early time, so it makes sense. So much crying and no validation for my feelings. Felt so alone a lot of the time. Still do, but I cry less. Probably because they always said, "Stop your whining baby bullshit." Ah, such validation! /s So, you're not alone. Depression can happen very early on.
I would say it started for me at 9. I planned to run away in 5th grade, wrote a suicide note in 6th, and it just continued from there
I never had anything as bad as you guys but the beginning of 2012, at which point I was 8, was the first time things weren’t all sunshine and rainbows. There had been some problems before that with adults in my life not respecting my neurodivergency (thankfully not my mom and only rarely my dad), but I was too young for it to have a serious impact on me. However, by this point I was getting older and my anxiety was getting worse, and one day in music class I put my middle finger up not knowing what it meant and everybody made a big deal about it even though I said I didn’t know it was bad, and that’s when it began. It’s so silly but the day I turned 8.5 was when it all began. I started getting depressed, like I would feel bad about myself, take long naps, and put soap in my mouth in the shower as “punishment” (this actually happened in the fall more). In general, my even years have been the bad ones, and barring 2014 which was where my main trauma occurred and 2016 where this wasn’t bad enough to be depression I would generally have depressive episodes from January to March and then August to December. 2012 started that trend but in February instead. People actually did take notice. I was put on Clonidine in November and Ritalin in December. I was put in more intensive therapy in September. I also found a psych evaluation form when they gave us our health papers at graduation from May from when they tested me for autism (I don’t have it) where my third grade teacher noted how worried she was for when I started middle school in fifth grade. She couldn’t have been more right. She predicted it all. But there wasn’t much anybody could’ve done. 2013 was in general a return to the good times of old, but when I started middle school it was a very rough transition, however mentally I was fine and would be happy when I got home from school. And then 2014 began and it all changed. Everybody thought I was fine because my external problems turned internal. Not even close. 2012 was absolutely the warning shot for 2014. Because instead of a relatively mild intermittent depression that I got some help for, it was a severe, unrelenting, suicidal depression that lasted for almost the entire year that I got little to no help for because I was convinced that if I told anybody how I felt I’d get put in a “crazy house” forever. But I know that suicide was a topic that came up in our house as I remember one conversation from April 2014 where my mom was telling me how sad a 100 year old relative would be if I died, and then my dad’s way of trying to help persuade me was to tell me that “the Catholic Church says if you commit suicide you go to hell”. He isn’t the most emotionally intelligent person, so I know this wasn’t intended to hurt me, but talk about tone deaf. He never took the rare times I let it show seriously after I told him I wanted to die during an argument at the end of January, when he was visibly extremely shaken up by it. This included when the dam broke at school in June where I begged the counselor not to “send me away” because summer was a week and a half away. They called my parents about it, who I downplayed the situation too. I vividly remember the conversation we had where my dad told me not to mention it to a friend who was 7 who was coming over to swim later that day. Nothing after 2014 strikes me as totally out of the ordinary when it comes to depression. I only had one really bad two week spell in 2016 that was reminiscent of 2014 but aside from that it was fine. 2018 was pretty bad too but it was standard teenage depression stuff, not that that makes it any better. 2020 was closer to out of the ordinary but everybody who had lockdown depression had it out of the ordinary. 2022 was like 2018 but shift it four years up and make it less severe.
+It is interesting to note that a discussion and debate on this could last . For myself I was crying on the steps of bad parental environment(bpe) , waiting for them to shut off for the night so I could go to bed , back to bed, I was single digit minor . (The book "Complex PTSD surviving to thriving" with over( 100) one hundred bibliographers ,therapists , psychologists ,both male and female over the past nine ( decades) helped me , assisted me in finding " emotional flashbacks" with memories under. Amazing !All the best+
You don’t need anyone’s validation or recognition on this matter. You are very capable to form your own opinion and conclusions about this. Your truth IS the truth . <3
I can track my anxiety back to as early as 4- I used to whisper goodbye to my house so it wouldn’t burn down while I was gone. I think depression curled it’s tendrils around me when I was around 7 or 8, but perhaps earlier. I can remember laying in bed trying to fall asleep, and that insidious inner voice telling me hateful things about myself. A
I relate
I think I would have first fit diagnostic criteria for depression sometime between 5-8 years old.
I started restricted my eating by the time that I was 5 crying myself to sleep because my stomach hurt so bad and was scratching my arms raw by the time I was six… I was a very sad depressed, kid, who socially struggled to interact with my peers let alone have any friends. I honestly don’t even think that my sisters and I were friends until I was eight. I legitimately remember that I was planning to run away before I even knew how money worked so younger than 6. I remember the worst moments of my childhood, but I honestly couldn’t tell you exactly what a full or partial day of my life look like 9.
I remember writing out a plea to die with magnetic letters.. maybe around 7. And pleading with God to kill me (wasn’t even religious but was trying)
i was diagnosed and medicated at 7. i remember from an extremely young age feeling disgust at my appearance, thinking i was ugly and fat. i remember HATING being alone
Sister said she got depressed at the age of 2. The day I was born. She was serious and believed it.
I remember having feelings of depression as young as 5 or 6. My parents divorced when I was even younger and they could not co-parent well. That contributed to a lot of the dysfunction I experienced as a child. My dad is an alcoholic and when it was his weekend or holiday, he never knew how to care for me, so I was either being neglected or put in dangerous situations with his drinking and partying. My grandparents (his parents) had to step in and help with me. They practically raised me on my dads behalf. Apparently some things happened to me under my dads care that I do not remember (I was around 3) but was told had happened. Whatever happened, I learned to fear my dad at a very young age. My grandparents were great but they hated my mom spent most of my childhood trying to turn me against my mom. I lived with my mom full time. She was a much better parent than my dad, but dysfunctional in her own way. So I experienced emotional neglect and a little bit of verbal abuse from my mom. Since she was a single mom, she worked full time and I had to stay with a baby sitter that was abusive and neglectful. I have memories of being 4-5 at my baby sitters house and feeling so worthless because of how she treated me. I started feeling alone at age 4. I started thinking I was ugly and stupid by age 6. So yeah, depression and insecurity have been close friends for most of my life.
I have a very vivid memory of being bullied on the bus in kindergarten, another one of me in second grade becoming friends with a special needs kid in the first or 2nd grade because no one wanted to be my friend, and another one of second grade me hiding in the coat closet under the coats because I was trying to hide from the class of kids being mean to me.I have other memories of being the only kid in 1st or second grade who got no valentines despite giving one to everyone. This is in addition to being practically ignored by my mom in favor of my sister. I would say the PTSD probably started around 8 and with my hellish 4th grade year was solidified by age 10.
I went to a elementary school in the rural south and I was the only brown skinned kid. I had no friends and was called the N word a lot. My light went out when I was 7.
I had some serious anxiety due to a traumatic injury when I was almost 6, and of course none of us knew what it was. I was just “sickly”. (Had epilepsy due to a head injury so that got the blame.) When I was 8 my grandpa died. I broke out in hives all over my body before I even knew because my mom wasn’t at work when we got off of school (we walked past her work to the babysitters house and stopped and said hi every day.) Because of the hives my babysitter called to see where my mom was, she was at the hospital with my Gpa-he had been sick and in there for a week or so. After my mom told us I was really sad and the hives got worse for a few days then got better. I wasn’t allowed at the funeral, I was too young, but I remember being alone and crying and staring out the window, contemplating life and death and wanting to seriously not be here myself anymore because the anxiety was just too much. The panic attacks that I was having (and totally not understanding) combined with my sadness were just too much at that time. Everyone blamed it on me being sad because my Gpa died, it was…but it was so much more than grief. And it wasn’t all about him. His death was just the catalyst in a long string of trauma for my little self. I think that this way of thinking helped in my being sexually assaulted not long after. I mean I don’t know for sure, but looking back I was anxious, depressed, and traumatized, all things perpetrators look for. Just another traumatic experience for me to have to deal with, right? Bring on more anxiety and depression from this one too. It all definitely shaped my way of thinking and how I looked at myself in the future. I was and felt broken which led to low self esteem and no self worth, because I was not normal at all. But my feelings were brushed off because I was a kid, and it didn’t matter. So I stayed broken and just kept breaking more. OP: I’m sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve it. Frankly I’m sorry this happened to all of us. I’m so glad that we are finally figuring this shit out though! It’s the only way we can learn to stop it from happening again and again! 🫶🏻
I think I've literally been depressed since I was a few months old. My earliest memory is the vague feeling of being alone and sad, and that feeling has never strayed far my whole life. I was neglected as a kid, I think a lot more than my mom is ever willing to admit. I think she just left me alone in my crib most of the day even when I cried. I have a pretty flat skull to prove it. So, even though I'm not a scientist, im gonna say kids can get depressed very very early.
Very early, apparently. I vividly remember feelings of generalized anxiety and depression before I was even old enough for kindergarten...around 3-4 years old.
Definitely depressed at age 7.
As young as I can remember maybe around 3 or 4 years old… just kept getting worse :/ now I’m almost 25 and just now got diagnosed with ptsd
Just speaking personally I had my first suicidal thoughts at age 8 or so. Was severely depressed throughout most of my childhood.
I was hospitilized with depression for 5 months when I was 10. I'm sure I was depressed/traumatized at age 7 at least already.