Tranquil House
258 Old Birmingham Road
Lickey, Bromsgrove
B60 1NU

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Telephone

01527 875813

Mobile

07922 040464

Client Experiences

Marcia (daughter of an alcoholic mother)

My GP referred me to a psychiatrist for depression and the psychiatrist suggested cognitive-behaviour therapy with Jane. I had 8 sessions and a follow-up after 3 months. I found therapy extremely helpful. My culture and religious background frowns on drunkenness but nevertheless my mother was an alcoholic. I know it now, but as a child I believed she had a mental illness because that is what my father said she had. My mother’s behaviour was so bizarre at times. Sometimes after a drinking bout she would become paranoid and hide under the bed saying MI5 were after her. Other times she would sneak off late at night to the local off-licence, wearing only a nightdress under her coat. She would invent excuses such as posting an assignment to a distance-learning course we all knew she wasn’t doing. She attempted suicide a couple of times but they were not serious attempts - more like cries for help - but nevertheless very distressing at the time. My father remained as much in denial of my mother’s alcoholism as she was. An informed psychiatrist diagnosed her with ‘alcohol dependence syndrome’ but my mother was having none of it. She refused to see the psychiatrist again saying that the diagnosis was wrong and her problem was depression caused by our behaviour.

In therapy, I learned to get in touch with my feelings of childhood shame and confusion when growing up in an alcoholic home where the abnormal was normalised for the sake of appearances. As a child, I learned to cope by cutting off my feelings and working hard academically in order to be praised and feel good about myself. But as time went on, my ways of thinking got in the way of my relationships with others. My unrelenting standards drove me hard and I expected the same effort and commitment from other people. They always failed me and I ended up feeling angry, resentful and bitterly hurt. When I came into therapy, my marriage was going through a rough patch and I know that much of it was due to my perfectionist thinking and irascible behaviour. It wouldn’t matter who I was married to: in the end my behaviour would sabotage any healthy relationship and impact negatively on my own children just as my mother’s behaviour had taken its toil on me. I’m glad I realised what was happening and acknowledged that I needed help with sorting my life out. I certainly feel a lot different now.