want a little crazy with that coffee?

I'm not going to say it...
that phrase we all say when we haven't posted in over a week.

Instead...I'll just say that mental illness is just awful. But the road to real recovery can be lined with such revelation. It's a beautiful thing (sometimes).

Right now I'm reading this book "Creating Optimism". I came to it full of scepticism. I've felt that self help books are often times full of hollow promises. They are supposed to help you learn and grow and most of the time I walk away feeling jipped.

But this one... This one has definitely peaked my interest.

Like this one particular passage that talks about a family dealing with tough financial times. The dad has been laid off the mom is carrying the full financial burden, the son acts out for attention, the daughter over achieves for attention.
The daughter is full of guilt and spiralling into her own full fledged depression.

the observation is that children feel they are the center of the universe. We make them the center of the universe for the first few years of their lives do we not? We sleep when they sleep, we eat only after they have eaten, we take care of our to do list when their schedule deems it plausible. It's actually not far fetched at all to rationalize that In their early formative years they believe that everything around them is in fact affected by them. So when mommy and daddy are down, when they fight. What else could it be but them? And when that's not corrected. It becomes an ingrained response when faced with disfunction amongst loved ones.

My jaw actually hurt from hitting the floor. I feel guilty for EVERYTHING. Guilt because my loved one is sick, guilt because I don't call my friends enough. Guilt because the earth is round. If it's wrong in the world it's somehow my fault. (to some degree)

The guilt that a child feels is never apparent until it's too late. What 5 year old is going to tell their mom they feel responsible for not having enough money to pay the power bill. They feel it so intensely but they lack the communication skills to share it. And by the time they do. It's too late. The guilt becomes an knee jerk response to stresses in the world around them.

Guilt can be sickeningly selfish emotion, It's not my fault that my loved one is sick. It's not my fault that Mr & Mrs Drama are in constant financial crisis. It's not my fault that society has the problems it does. It's not up to me to fix it. I am not that powerful. No one is.

I'm going to learn a lot about myself from this book. I actually feel a little better each time I read it. I feel like I'm getting somewhere. Somewhere new and exciting. A place that once I would have been scared of. But now...I'm not so afraid anymore.