One of the discussions that surrounds mental health is whether it is caused by genetics or environmental factors. The classic “nature vs. nurture” debate.
There are studies and evidence that support both theories, and then the question focuses around which came first: the genetic disposition for mental illness, or environmental factors that brought them to the forefront. In essence, it’s like asking if the chicken or the egg came first.
Understanding mental illness is important when it comes to dealing with it. The reason science wants to determine if nature or nurture is responsible for the issue is so that it can look for ways to prevent it. But looking at it from that perspective misses the point. In many cases, mental illness has already presented itself in a person. At that point, finding a way to heal is essential.
I know from experience that my mental illnesses come from both nature and nurture. My maternal grandmother took anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication for practically her whole life. My dad has been impacted by anxiety and panic. When necessary, he would take Xanax.
I was “lucky” enough to be “blessed” with both of these ailments. For as long as I can remember, even in my early teens, I was prone to bouts of depression. Looking back as an adult, I can also pinpoint moments of anxiety. I didn’t know what they were at the time, but I can see the signs now.
Alcoholism is also something that runs through my family. I had the pleasure of falling down that rabbit hole in my late teens and early 20s. Mainly, it became a coping device for my depression and anxiety; a way to combat the cold, hollowness that often presented in the center of my chest and touched me to my soul.
In addition to the genetic disposition of mental illness, environmental factors would influence how I felt. Now, I know that these moments are called “triggers.” At the time, I just knew that the people around me were making me feel like shit.
Not Knowing What I Was Dealing With
The thing that made all of these mental issues more challenging was the fact that we didn’t talk about them in my family. Grandma may have been taking medication daily to ensure she remained even, but I didn’t know this until later in life. When my mom was little, it was always referred to as her “nerve pill.”
When I still lived at home, my family and I took a trip to Iowa every summer to visit family. Apparently, my dad had a map with all of the hospitals on the route marked -- just in case he had a medical emergency. That would have been his anxiety. My mom didn’t even know about that map until a couple of years ago when my anxiety was taking over my life and he shared that tidbit of information with me.
Mental illness carries a lot of stigma around it. People don’t always like to share that they are suffering because they may be ridiculed, shunned, or dismissed. Or potentially all three and then some other horrible things. Instead, they suffer in silence.
Unfortunately, this isn’t helpful. It’s also how generational trauma gets passed down. Ignoring the situation doesn’t make it go away. Not talking about the issues makes the child feel like what they are experiencing is abnormal, so they hide it away for fear of being different. That’s how I felt.
The Impacts of Mental Health Issues
As you can imagine, this did not lend itself to healthy coping practices. I didn’t have the vocabulary, let alone any type of knowledge, to understand what I was going through. Since many of these issues were secret shames of the family, I felt like I needed to hide how I was feeling.
Not only did I fall spectacularly into unhealthy coping mechanisms, but I also developed terrible life habits and patterns as well. Since the adults in my life didn’t talk about the hard subjects, including recognizing toxicity in myself and other people, I often fell victim to manipulative people. My “first abuser” walked into my life when I was in kindergarten. There was a steady string of them through my life from then on.
Of course, I can recognize these patterns and issues now because I’ve done the work.
I dove headfirst into self-help and discovered vocabulary to define and explain the things I’ve been feeling throughout my entire life. It took a long time to get there. And I came into the self-help practice thinking that there was something wrong with me; that I was broken and needed to be fixed. I believed that I was the reason that the relationships around me kept crumbling and falling apart.
Don’t get me wrong: I did play a role in the outcomes of my relationships, but I wasn’t always to blame. Just because I didn’t recognize the traits/red flags of a narcissist did not mean I deserved the abuse I was put through. Just because I may have had codependency or people-pleasing issues, that didn’t mean I deserved to be taken advantage of, used, and then abandoned like I didn’t matter.
We all make decisions in life.
We get to decide on a moment to moment basis how we are going to act toward the people around us.
The individuals I most often surrounded myself with made a conscious decision to treat me like trash. That was their choice. If I wasn’t the subject of their bad behavior, someone else would have been. The only reason I tolerated it for so long was because I didn’t know better. I thought the way I was being treated was normal.
It took me a long time to get to that realization. And before I could get there, I had to understand what was going on with me. That’s when reading self-help books became beneficial.
Knowledge Gained
More often than not, I would learn about a certain personality trait, behavior disorder, or mental illness through reading. I found out about my depression in college, which was the first time I took a depression inventory.
My anxiety came to light in adult life, after the first time I had a panic attack. I was in therapy at the time, and I explained to my therapist what had happened, and that’s when we went through the signs and symptoms and I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
Having this information was both beneficial and detrimental. I at least had a name to put to how I was feeling, but I chalked it up to nature (my genes), so I assumed I was stuck with feeling like shit for the rest of my life. It wasn’t until my anxiety and depression got worse that I discovered that environmental factors could impact their onset and severity.
I learned about codependency and people pleasing. I became curious about what these issues entailed. Part of me also thought that if I fixed these things about myself, it would fix my relationship with others.
Part of that thought process was true.
Truth be told, neither codependency or people-pleasing are good traits to possess. In essence, they are survival mechanisms. They are ways to deal with horrible situations to ensure you get the attention and support you need to live in the world.
More often than not, they develop in childhood as a way to appeal to parents or other caregivers to ensure you are taken care of. They are a learned trait that ensures you don’t die. You bring these behaviors with you into adulthood because they were reinforced and worked for you at a young age.
Unfortunately, they don’t often serve you once you become an adult.
From learning about codependency and people-pleasing, I also discovered other issues such as complex PTSD, disassociation, trauma, abandonment wounds, and so many others. Not everything I found applied to me, but a lot did. And it felt wonderful to finally understand what was going on in my brain -- the physical and emotional side of it.
But it was also really hard.
Learning that I was a people-pleaser or codependent hit me hard.
I had always taken pride in my independence. To find out I wasn’t actually being independent but changing my personality based on who I was around and the situation I was in forced me to see that I had no idea who I truly was. I was so concerned with making sure other people liked me, I gave up my identity and tried to become what I thought they wanted me to be. I had no true self.
Learning this helped explain why I was prone to depression and anxiety. It’s a lot of work changing yourself to meet the needs and expectations of those around you, and it can be incredibly contradictory. Since I had to lose my true self in the process, I was left confused and lost.
I couldn’t relate to myself any more.
I often felt disconnected from my mind and body (disassociation). This caused me to lose touch with my feelings, making me feel numb. Or like I had a hole in my soul.
The coping mechanisms I employed couldn’t be sustained for long. I did what I could for years, but it became apparent that they would eventually kill me. At this point, I had kids to think about. They became my focus and reason for living.
Finding Myself the Hard Way
While this is grand and noble and helped me get my shit together, it wasn’t all that I needed.
I was still disconnected from myself and needed validation and approval from the people around me.
That’s why I tried so hard to get my then-husband to love me. That’s why it cut me to the core when friends or family members decided they no longer liked me.
From my self-help books, I learned that they were tearing open my abandonment wound and pouring salt into it.
Again, the fear of abandonment was something that developed early in childhood. It was actually what drove me to develop codependency and people-pleasing traits.
As a child, I needed adults around to provide me with the basics, including food and shelter. I don’t remember when or how I realized that they may not be there for me (most abandonment fears form before 18 months, which is before I had developed memory), I had to look for ways to be pleasant to be around. How I achieved this as a baby, I have no idea. But I know what I did as a young child well into adulthood.
I did what I had to to survive. Since changing who I fundamentally was and ensuring the comfort of others around me worked as a kid to get (most) of my needs met, I assumed that was how life worked. I didn’t realize there were other options available to me. I didn’t know that asking for what I needed was something I could do. I settled for way less than I deserved because I was mostly getting what I wanted/needed. I had no idea more was needed to live a healthy, happy life.
I only learned these things by having some basic knowledge about mental illness and how it impacted me. I’m also an incredibly curious person that likes to learn as much as I can about the world. I’m endlessly fascinated in the human psyche and all that can go wrong -- which probably explains my obsession with serial killers.
But I was also looking for a way to make life better for those around me because I thought something was wrong with me.
The end result of my self-help journey was gaining the knowledge to grow as a person, but I didn’t come into the practice with my wellbeing at the forefront of my mind. I was still putting other people first.
The Journey Takes a Toll
The journey hasn’t been easy. It’s actually really hard to admit to myself that nature AND nurture played a role in my mental illness -- and I was my greatest enemy.
I did a lot of damage to myself by allowing certain things to happen and not knowing myself. Learning about the toxic traits that exist within yourself isn’t exactly a moment of pride, either. Having to find out that most of my life was ruled by terrible, horrible people was shocking and depressing as well.
There’s this idea that finding yourself is an incredibly magical moment.
The accepted imagery is that you’re on a mountaintop and the lights of heaven are shining down upon you. There may be tears, but there’s also joy and salvation. Renewal and rebirth.
The reality of self-discovery is actually quite different.
It happens once you’ve reached rock bottom. When you find yourself in the gutter covered in filth and guilt and shame. You have nothing else to lose. You're left with only two choices: find a way up or keep living your miserable life.
I chose to pull myself up, but it hasn’t been easy.
There are days when I slide back down and once again get covered with shame and guilt. I fall back into old patterns of people-pleasing or refuse to deal with a situation. Anxiety tingles at the edge of my existence, and thoughts of shutting down take over my mind. I cry. I rage. I throw my hands into the air and say, “Fuck it!”
But then, I realize how far I’ve come.
Yes, the journey has been hard.
Yes, I have learned unpleasant, terrible things about myself.
Yes, I have done some toxic things.
Yes, I dealt with my emotions (or lack thereof) in unhealthy ways.
I’ve hurt people.
I’ve hurt myself.
But then I look at all the things I’ve accomplished.
As of the writing of this, I’ve been sober for 14 years.
I can recognize the situations and triggers that impact my anxiety and find healthy ways to deal. Occasionally, I may still fall into panic, but the dread of attacks doesn’t impact my life as much as it used to.
I recognize the signs and symptoms of anxiety and tough feelings in my boys, and we talk about what they’re feeling. I give them ways to ground themselves and the vocabulary to put what they’re going through into words.
I’m learning to create boundaries so that manipulative people don’t get as much access to me and can’t drag me into their bleak existence.
I do what I can to validate myself and not rely on others to give my life meaning.
I’m learning that it’s okay to not be perfect and to feel all of my feelings.
Mental Illness Doesn’t Go Away
I am still plagued with mental illness, and there are occasions when I slip back into depression. That’s part of who I am, and it’s not anything I will be “cured” from. Same with anxiety. I am genetically wired to freak out at random times. I’m learning to be okay with this. I’m also learning how to keep environmental factors from spinning me out of control.
The discussion about nature vs nurture when it comes to mental illness will continue, but it’s not the most beneficial debate to have.
The most important thing to realize is that these issues exist and they have serious impacts on a person’s life. That doesn’t make anyone unworthy or broken. All it means is that they have challenges to overcome.
Nature and nurture have an impact, but it doesn’t have to be detrimental. It sucks diving deep into the core of your being, and there’s a lot more pain that comes with the process than you can imagine. You’ll probably find yourself plunged into darkness like you’ve never experienced. But you don’t have to stay there. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. There’s freedom as well.
Self-help isn’t a one-and-done type of journey. You don’t read one book and find yourself cured.
It’s a never-ending process.
It’s something you do for the rest of your life.
This may seem daunting and scary, but it becomes less so the more you learn about yourself.
Through the process, I’ve discovered some absolutely amazing things about myself, and I’ve changed the dialogue around mental illness for my boys. They won’t have to suffer like I did or flounder in ignorance.
I have empowered myself through self-discovery, and I hope to pass those tools on to the next generation. Even if my kids suffer from mental illness, I hope they know they don’t have to go it alone and there are resources and tools that can help.
Nature. Nurture. Who cares? The most important thing is to recognize that there’s an issue and find a way to take care of it.
