DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

1e) Playing a false
role
1f) Post natal
depression
1g) Fantasies of
freedom
“I kind of had a go at playing housewife, I had a go at cooking meals
like my mum does for my husband when he comes home.” 3
“I had been playing a role, a false role, and very much this quest for
some authenticity, some recognition, was really bursting to come out.”
6
“An empty existence” 3
“Certainly, I just felt that my role was wife and mother and being the
best I could be in that role.” 11
”I chose the baby thing and got pregnant, had my baby and was
miserable, really really very unhappy, depressed, I think the post-natal
period really homed in on everything. I felt isolated, despairing, I’ve
got this bundle of joy in inverted commas in front of me, but it was
actually this screaming baby, and I was isolated in this little house out
of town. I was at my wits end, I used to walk the streets with my
pram, with my baby screaming, round and round the streets, same old
paving stones, absolutely stuck in the worst place I could imagine.” 3
“I sensed that hold on I have this baby, isn’t this supposed to be what
all women want, isn’t there this biological need to have a child where
all your womanhood comes out and you can be your perfect wife and
mother. No way did that happen to me, at no point did I really bond
with my baby or feel that it added to any sense of completeness in
me. It certainly didn’t do anything for the relationship.” 3
“I sense that there was no particular trigger other than within me a
gradual unfolding of a desire to be free – to be free from the existence
of the marriage, to be free from the relationship I was in with my
partner, my husband.” P.1
“I had dreams and fantasies to be free, I allowed myself to look
outside the marriage, and imagine myself to be free, what might I do,
how might things be different for me? I only allowed them to be
fantasies and dreams, not reality.” P.11
2. The flow of the crisis – events, emotion, cognition and actions
Codes
Illustrative Quotes
2a) Misery “I was at my wits end..absolutely stuck in the worst place I could
imagine.” P.3
“Um, I then said to my husband I am deeply, deeply unhappy, not
sure what the future could hold for me in terms of making me
happy…I feel really, really unloved.” 4
2b) Continued external “I kind of voiced my unhappiness, I said there is something making
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me really unhappy here and I don’t know what it is – I’ve got this
crying baby, maybe the house is too small, maybe it’s the size of
the house and I am in this little village and I’m bored, maybe I need
to go and live near my mum, she can help me, we’ll have a bigger
house, which we did. We moved to a lovely house in Leigh on
Sea, which is where I am living now, its very, very lovely.” 4
“I then said to my husband I am deeply, deeply unhappy, not sure
what the future could hold for me in terms of making me happy. I
said give me another baby, that will be something to love me, I feel
really really unloved. Give me a baby which will love me
unconditionally, and maybe that will help me get through this.” 4
“So environmentally every thing was perfect, but the misery went
2c) Assertiveness and
expression
on of course, because it was in me.” 4
“I started doing things like going to assertiveness classes, which
was another big catalyst for me realising that there was something
really badly dysfunctional in me and something very bad about
staying with my husband.” 4
“And something that was changing in me – something that he was
trying to crush and something that my parents noticed and they
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