Nature Vs. Nurture

Be sure that she knows that it’s not our fault you’re like this.”
– Mom Mallory instructing me upon hearing I was voluntarily entering therapy 10+ years ago

I’m kind of on a roll here with this therapy stuff. It’s kind of like I opened a door and I don’t want to shut it again. There’s all kinds of thoughts and memories about my childhood that are kind of floating in and out. There’s nothing that’s really “ah-ha!” or defining about any of it, but then there wouldn’t be a singular moment that sent me plummeting over into this ball of paranoia, would there. It’ll be a thousand tiny pushes and pin-pricks.

This week in the reading materials and therapy group/class we talked about the nature vs. nurture theories around depression and anxiety.

Some doctors and scientists theorize that it’s genetics that cause mental illness, that you are born with the genes that predetermine if you will have schizophrenia or depression or bipolar or whatever, but the general acceptance now if it is actually in your genes, it’s not so much set in stone as a likelihood, a predisposition. And it’s kind of a hereditary thing. So like if the gene runs in your family, the chances are more likely that you’ll get it, just like cancer or baldness or blue eyes.

So that’s the nature part. It’s pretty clear that on my dad’s side of the family there’s a mental illness gene. My grandmother is diagnosed as bipolar. My uncle is more than likely undiagnosed bipolar and extremely controling. His daughter is anorexic. My aunt’s son committed suicide. I suspect my father has some sort of OCD. I suspect my mother’s side has some too with a grandfather and an uncle who were alcoholics and addicts and a great-grandmother with paranoia tendencies.

Some scientists and doctors think that mental illness is all about nurture, that it’s all about the environment a person lives in — a person’s childhood, any traumas, illnesses, experiences, etc.

The psychology my group/class is going with is that mental illness results from both a combination of nature and nurture — a person’s predisposition to mental illness as well as those things in that person’s environment that might push the buttons that would or could cause the person to suffer from an episode of a mental illness.

So, a person who is born with the gene might be perfectly fine his or her whole life or two people who are in the same terrible car accident might react completely differently because one is less predisposed to depression and anxiety than the other.

And I’m not really sure any of that made sense, but I went to all of that effort because we talked in our session the other night about how over time people’s views of their parents change for whatever reason. For the most part, most of the people in our group are very defensive of our parents and families. I know I am.

I’ve been thinking very hard on that. I’ve also been thinking about that quote at the top of the post.

It wasn’t the first time I went to therapy. I’d kind of forgotten until today. Oh, it kind of bubbles up every now and then and I always kind of think it’s kind of odd and funny when I think about it. I was ten or eleven and my mother had taken me to this very stuffy psychologist because I was having trouble making friends in my new school — I was at that point attending another somwhat less fundie non-Catholic Christian Private school and to my misery I had been held back so that I was repeating sixth grade because they thought I should be in with kids my own age, who I didn’t get along with. I was having a horrible time at the new school. I did not fit in. I didn’t wear the right clothes. I didn’t say the right things. Oddly, I was too goody-goody for most of the kids who were being raised on the Baptist Seminary there. There were two other girls with the same name who were already popular. In fact, everyone else already knew each other and there wasn’t room for a new girl in the mix. I came in at the bottom of the pecking order and I pretty much stayed there. I always felt like the main character in a Judy Blume book.
Anyhow, I remember the psychologist’s office was dim and full of dark woods, very stereotypical. I think he was a child psychologist but his office certainly wasn’t very welcoming and I don’t really now recall anything about him except that he didn’t seem to actually listen. I do recall being very frustrated that all he wanted to talk about was my family and my parents. He made me draw pictures of me with my parents on those yellow legal pads with red lines.
I only went to this shrink a couple of times and then my mother decided that he was a quack because he seemed to think there was a problem with my relationship with my parents. I think at the time they were the only people I didn’t seem to be awkward around. At least they never stole my gum from my desk and chewed it in front of me and lied to my face, taunting me. At least they never talked about me behind my back at my own birthday party. They never made fun of the clothes I wore.
Mind you, I didn’t start this post to brag about my parents. It’s clear that they aren’t shiny clean innocent in all of this. Oh, I don’t think that my parents abused me in any way. Certainly, I was never physically abused. I earned every spanking I got just like I earned every one of those detentions. I’m still not sure I earned those suspensions and I’d like to debate that at some point. Anyhow, my parents love me and have always loved me and have never meant me any harm. Anything they may have done that led to my being totally screwed up is purely accidentaly — probably because I think they’re kind of screwed up in their own ways if you look closely enough.

So, what I’ve been struggling with the last couple of days is finding a way to share the blame with my parents without accusing, finding a way of understanding that these things happened in my childhood, these experiences, and they can’t be changed but they can be recognized and dealt with and forgiven, if need be. I mean, if they’re to be given credit for the fact that I am an intelligent, independent, open-minded woman, then they’ve got to get some of the credit for the rest of it too, genes and childhood and mistakes and awkwardness and all.

tags: therapy

2 comments

1. on March 31, 2006 at 9:50 am

   Anne said:

   I’m quite the oppisite. I give my parents the blame for the utter hell that was my childhood, but don’t tend to give them the positives of the life we led, unless I stop and think about it a bit. I should do that more often. Life’s not all one-sided, god knows.
   But…it’s hard. It’s really, really hard.

2. on April 1, 2006 at 10:43 am

   n. mallory said:

   I really wanted to stop and think before responding to your comment. I wonder sometimes if I’m in some sort of denial, but I do truly believe that everything my parents did, they did out of love and that I didn’t grow up in an abusive home. I admit that it was dysfunctional, though I think all families have some dysfunction. That’s not to say that they aren’t to blame in any way for how I turned out, but certainly they aren’t completely to blame either. After all, I’m not a bad person, just a little mentally off, right?

   However, I recognize that there are others that do not have the benefit of my situation. I have on friend who did in fact grow up in a very abusive family and who never saught any help and probably should and it’s clear that her parents really should take quite a bit of the blame in her case.

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