When I was a Freshman in high school, I asked my mom if I could start seeing a therapist, because I was feeling depressed and anxious (and unbeknownst to her, suicidal). My mother’s response was “No, it will show up on your high school transcript and you won’t get into college.”
I have a diary entry from that day fuming and raging at my mother’s dismissal of a very audible cry for help. But in retrospect, all these years later, I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for my mother to know that her daughter was struggling with something that she, herself, probably struggled with and just had to “deal” with.
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