Invisible Children

by Anna

The sun rises every morning painting the trees and ground with soft light. It warms the cold night air and brings in another day. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you are rich or poor, what race you are, or what you look like. Nature does not discriminate. It treats us all the same.

We are all a part of it as if mother nature just somehow knew we would be here. There are no questions asked when we walk on a path through the woods. Our footsteps are counted among the rustling of all other life in the forest. When I was a child, nature was my mother, my family, my home. I was visible. I was a part of something.

When I was home with my family of origin though, I so often just did not exist. The only time my mother really looked at me was when she was criticizing me, and even then, she wasn't really seeing me, but some shadow person from her own childhood. At all other times when I came near my mother she would look at the floor, the wall, at one of her other children, or anywhere except at me. I began to believe that I was so horrible, that my mother could not bear to look at me.

I remember staying out all night long in the woods. When I came home the next morning, no one even noticed that I had been gone. This happened so often that I lost count. I began to take on a kind of invisible personality. I just was not noticed anywhere that I went.

My sister Laura stopped eating for awhile when we were children. She stopped showing up for dinner. She ate one piece of bread a day and drank water when she needed to. Little by little Laura became so thin and frail that I began to be afraid that she would end up in the hospital. No one but me seemed to notice. I asked Laura why she was not eating, and she said that she was doing it just to see if anyone in the family would notice it. When she realized that I noticed, she began to eat again.

My mother, my father, my other brothers and my younger sister, never said a word about it. It was like they did not even see her.

My sister Laura would also sit in a corner of the room alone and rock back and forth. I could see my parents and other siblings walking past her, but no one looked. No one tried to go up to her and ask her what was wrong. They went about their lives near and around her without really paying all that much attention to her. Laura would also go for days, weeks and months without talking to anyone in the family.

When Laura was put in a mental hospital and my parents were asked how long Laura had displayed unusual behavior, they both said that Laura seemed like a normal very well adjusted child up to the point where she needed to be hospitalized. They said that they did not notice anything wrong with Laura before her breakdown just days before having to be put into a mental hospital.

When Laura was put into the mental hospital she stopped being invisible. There was an overload of counselors, psychologists and other mental health workers and nurses seeing her and trying to figure out what was wrong with her. It seemed as if each doctor or counselor came up with another analysis or version of Laura until the real Laura became hidden amidst a mountain of psychology text book jargon and theory. Only a few very feeling and compassionate counselors and doctors have ever been able to see the real Laura beneath the over-analyzed and misunderstood version. There were even some doctors who decided that Laura was spoiled and overprotected. They came to that decision based only on what my parents were telling them, and not on what Laura had to say.

Some of the counselors were not even concerned with what Laura had to say, they pieced Laura together into an odd shaped puzzle based merely on family history and what Laura may have inherited. Laura became the victim of just too many people stirring the same pot. Over time, Laura even began to become what some of the people in the hospitals were saying about her. The analysis that was wrong in the first place eventually became true in a very horrible and destructive way. As if she was not bad off enough when she was first brought into the hospital, she became even more neurotic by the time the year was over.

After Laura was put into the mental hospital, she disappeared from the family tree. At home, no one mentioned her name. It was as if Laura was a subject that was too taboo to mention. Little by little, my parents erased all evidence that she had ever even lived there.

There was a psychologist at the hospital who told my parents that I was jealous of my sister Laura because she was getting all of the attention. When I was told that, I was shocked. I saw Laura strapped to a bed, given shock treatments, confined and not allowed to leave the hospital, intravenously fed when she wouldn't eat, and over-analyzed by people who were so often wrong. I was filled with horror, compassion, and helplessness about not being able to do anything to help my sister.

Never once do I remember feeling jealous of the attention Laura was getting. If that was attention, I'd rather just remain invisible as I had always been in my family of origin. When I was brought to visit Laura at the mental hospital, I stayed very quiet. I hid around the corners of the walls as much as possible, and when a doctor or anyone else did give me any attention, I was terrified.

The psychologists and other mental health people always had so much more power than my sister or I did. Their status in society was far above the status of two young frightened girls. It felt as if we were totally at the mercy of their ability to analyze us. It seemed that people were more interested in their version of us, than the version that was really true. I began to develop a personality based on what the doctors wanted me to be. I began to say, think and do whatever they wanted me to. They could not see me any more than my family of origin could see me. The real me would not have fit into the textbooks or rigid training of the world of psychology. When I grew up I started to look back at them from the glass I was under and I began the long journey to free my self from it.

It took me years to overcome my fear of psychology enough to actually get the courage to go to see a counselor. The first counselor I saw only three times. The third time I saw her, she said that I was not interesting. The next counselor I saw was a psychiatrist. I saw him because I wanted to know if I was crazy or not. I sat in his office the first hour and did not say a thing. I was not trying to be difficult, I just couldn't get the courage to say anything. He smiled at me and told me that I could start talking when I was ready. I felt myself trying to disappear in his office, to be as invisible as I was in my family of origin when I was a child. The next time I went to see him, I was able to talk about some things. I went to see him for a year and talked about my childhood, but I never cried or felt any emotions. It helped, but I did not heal.

Since then I have learned that psychology is a gray area. There are good counselors and counselors who do more harm than good. I am still terrified of all psychologists, but I am slowly healing from that. No person is right all of the time, not even psychologists. I’ve learned that If I’m seeing a counselor who tells me something about my self that is not right, or if feel uncomfortable with a mental health worker, I will stop seeing them and find someone else. All people are just human and no one is perfect. No one can know me more than I know my self.

At one point in my life I just made the decision to work at my recovery 100 percent. I bought self help books and really started to work on my childhood. I started to pray to God to be my counselor. I will continue with this until I know inside of my self that I am healed. Maybe that day will come, and maybe it will take a lifetime to heal.

I exist. I take up space. I am here.

When I take a walk in nature I belong with all of the other creatures in the forest. The sun shines softly on my face like it does on the faces of all of the other people in the world, and every once in awhile, I see myself as I really am.

I know that when I see someone else only by the false front that they are trying to send out to the world or only by what others say or think about that person, I am looking at another person who in all reality is also being invisible. I try very had to see that person as they really are. Somewhere inside all of us is a real self that needs to come out in the light.

Response from Dr. DeFoore

Thanks for this contribution, Anna. That feeling reality of being invisible is so very real. I have experienced it, and I know many others have as well. The deep desire to be seen is one of our primary needs as human beings, and your story describes it beautifully.

My best to you,

Dr. DeFoore