Debbie Lee > Quotes

“I always wanted to please my parents and do well, but despite how hard I tried I always failed. With people calling me stupid, and with the lack of support or encouragement I faced, I soon believed that I was truly hopeless. I grew up with very low self-esteem. Every time I met someone new, I would think that he or she belittled me, so much so that even I belittled myself all the time.”
― Debbie Lee, Perfection

“Grades were everything to my mother and, according to her, my relatives too. Grades defined if the kid was good or not. If they got good grades it meant that they were intelligent and knew how to play less and study hard, and were therefore good kids. If they got bad grades, it only meant that they were playful, not smart and a bad influence on the good kids.”
― Debbie Lee, Perfection

“I learnt that from years of my mother trying to affect me with her reverse psychology, and what she told me about people looking down on me. I developed these negative thoughts and massive self-doubt. The self-doubt which we’ll call ‘my mother’s voice’. The voices seemed to have the ability to build a firewall around my head. Whenever someone praised me for the work that I’d done or complimented me, the voice in my head would immediately put up a firewall, blocking it, and counter it with something negative.”
― Debbie Lee, Perfection

“Charles then proceeded to tell me that he believed that depression was simply ‘all inside the head’ and could be countered by not ‘thinking’ about it. How typical. There were a lot of people like him who told me similar things too. On top of that, they would make me feel worse by adding, “There are a lot of people out there who are worse off than you, starving in Africa. Or people who have no money and families. You are considered lucky, so how can you be suffering from depression?”
― Debbie Lee, Perfection