I was born into a family that wore perfection like a mask: privileged, polished, praised in public — and unrecognisable behind closed doors. My father, the eldest son of a traditional Chinese family, carried duty like a weight. My mother, elegant and relentless, was obsessed with appearances. My siblings were golden. And I became the scapegoat — the one made to carry what the family would not name.
From early on, I struggled at school. I couldn’t grasp maths. At home and in the wider family system, that struggle was used against me: fat, stupid, defective. At nine, I begged my teacher not to fail me and showed her my bruised legs. Cane marks covered them. The class gasped. No one intervened. I failed anyway, and I was hit again at home — as if my pain were simply inconvenient.
Later came the labels: ADHD. Bipolar disorder. But there was no real understanding, no scaffolding, no care. Instead, I was ridiculed, isolated, and slowly edited out of family life. By twelve, I overheard my mother say, “Let’s just marry Vicky off and be done with her.”
I was punished for being different.
A Family Ill With Silence
Mental illness ran through our blood like a quiet curse. My grandfather jumped from a window. Fifty years later, my father did the same. Both had bipolar disorder. Both were failed by the people closest to them.
I have learned to hold two truths at once: biology matters — and so does environment. Genes can load the gun, but family dynamics can pull the trigger.
At twenty-five, while finishing my design degree in Sydney, I had my first breakdown: six months of mania, followed by three months of crushing depression. My father recognised it immediately; he had lived through the same torment at the same age, after his father’s death.
My mother flew to Sydney “to look after me,” but what I met was not compassion. She scolded me. “Don’t be like Elaine,” she snapped, referring to my aunt with schizophrenia. Mental illness, to her, was a threat to her perfect world. “I hate people like Elaine.”
I tried to name the abuse. Her response was chillingly tidy: “I’m sorry if I did that. I don’t remember any of it.”
And even in my depression, she used money as a weapon: “If you don’t get on with your siblings, you’re going to miss out on all the money!”
I wasn’t just unwell. I was inconvenient.
Erased From the Narrative
After my breakdown in 2000, I disappeared from family life. No birthday wishes. No gatherings. Nothing.
I existed only as a warning story, told at Sunday lunches I was never invited to. The message was consistent: I deserved nothing — not safety, not support, not dignity. I was told things like: “Let’s not give her a cent. Let’s make her homeless. She should live on the streets.” I later learned my siblings were urged to use their financial expertise to make that outcome possible.
My father tried, quietly, to counterbalance the cruelty. He promised he would look after me. “You don’t need to be rich,” he said once. “Just happy. That’s my definition of success. I’d rather have a happy daughter than a rich and miserable one.” He gave me permission to enjoy life — to breathe.
For fifteen years, my parents promised me the Happy Valley flat: a place of security, a future. But that promise died with my father.
The Breakdown That Was Buried
In 2012, when Dad turned seventy, he had a severe bipolar breakdown. He tied himself to a chair to stop himself from jumping. The next day, my mother dragged him onto a European group tour anyway. He begged for help; she ignored him.
Two weeks later, in Budapest, he called an ambulance. He was suicidal, delusional, shattered.
When they returned home, my mother blamed me. She complained to my uncle that I wasn’t “helping” enough — as if I were the maid — while I was trying not to collapse myself. Watching my father unravel was agony; it destabilised my own nervous system.
That same year, on a hike, I asked Dad why he was so depressed. His answer haunts me:
“I’m afraid I’ll have nothing left when I’m older.”
He was right to be afraid.
After his death, I learned from his childhood friend that he had been forced to pay off my brother’s mortgage, even as he had little left. My sister hinted at the pressure he was under, but was shushed.
Two days after his suicide, walking to a restaurant, my mother stopped me in the street and said — with a kind of spite that took years to fully register — “Your dad only gave me £100 a month. By the time he died, all of our family’s money was mine. He had nothing left in his account.”
It took five years for that sentence to land in my body.
My father didn’t “just jump.” He was pushed — financially, emotionally, systemically — to the brink.
Betrayal Runs Deep
After his suicide, I flew back from Barcelona. My mother stayed with my brother because Dad had jumped from their bedroom window. When my brother returned home, he kicked me out.
“You’re a disgrace to our family,” he said. “We don’t need you around. We have three maids here already.”
I was stunned. This was the same brother whose mortgage Dad had been pressured to pay. The same brother who had already inherited Dad’s clinic in 2000 — the same year I had my first breakdown. The same brother who spread rumours about me in Sydney. Over time, the pattern became unmistakable: I was framed as the problem so my share could be erased.
My nephew didn’t even know who I was. I had been cut out of gatherings for over a decade.
And I remembered something my mother said when I was five: “You deserve nothing, and your brother deserves everything.”
Only years later did I understand the full design: the isolation wasn’t accidental. It was engineered.
The Financial Bleed
Later, I realised our two Sydney houses were sold under my mother’s name. She invested under her own name. Over the years she boasted about the profits — money my father had earned — and used it as a tool of control.
Dad delayed selling the flat I lived in for two years, in case I wanted to return after graduation and travelling. I chose to travel — to widen my world — and later asked for help creating stable housing for my future.
My mother’s response was blunt: “No. That was it. You’ve missed the boat. You’re ungrateful. Go and get your own house.”
I tried to explain the mouldy basement flat was triggering asthma attacks. It was pointless. In that system, stability was reserved for the golden children; struggle was assigned to the scapegoat.
Gaslit by Family, Silenced by Professionals
My uncle Michael — a respected radiologist — once promised he would help me fight for a fair outcome and stand up for me. Later, he denied ever saying it, despite witnesses. He repeated my mother’s language: that if I ended up homeless, it would prove I was “useless”; that I hadn’t had breakdowns; that I didn’t need help because my food posts looked good online.
Yet he was also the one who urged me to see Dad’s psychiatrist in 2016 because he believed I had bipolar too. “You’ve got a safety net,” he said. “It runs in the family — what’s the big deal?”
I had been crying about the abuse for years. I had also suffered a chronic cough for over a decade, worsened by Hong Kong air pollution. Dad noticed I stopped coughing in Barcelona and was relieved I could breathe again. My uncle dismissed it entirely — and even dismissed the abuse — in a way that left me feeling unreal.
Dad’s love and protection were buried with him.
In 2018, Dad promised to help me move to Spain so I could breathe. He even persuaded my mother to write a cheque for the Golden Visa — but it was only half the amount required. After his death, I asked her to honour what he had started.
“What do you need a house for?” she snapped. “Ask your boyfriend. Ask your dad. I’m too old to help you now. You should be helping me. I gave you the best education. What more do you want? How old are you now? You should be ashamed for being so dependent.”
In her eyes, my needs were illegitimate by definition.
Inheritance of Abuse
My billionaire sister offered pennies for my “fair share” — and insisted I relinquish future legal rights. “Cash is king,” she smiled. I refused.
My mother’s reply to my plea for fairness?
“I will never be fair.”
Love, in that system, was transactional. Wealth was used as leverage, not care.
Healing as Rebellion
Western medicine failed me in crucial ways. I was prescribed statins that triggered fatty liver. I was given antidepressants as a sleeping pill — a risky approach for someone with bipolar vulnerability. I watched my father’s psychiatrist overmedicate him. I saw the same psychiatrist for two years; my mother saw him for four.
After Dad’s death, that psychiatrist then claimed he had never diagnosed either my mother or me. I had asked him for family therapy — education, boundaries, protection — because I was being demonised for ADHD and bipolar. Nothing changed, despite the fees. I reported his negligence. The system protected itself.
Meanwhile, I had grown up sick, placed on antibiotics repeatedly, and taught that medication was the only language of care. Doctors did not teach me how to be well. They did not teach prevention. I had to educate myself.
During lockdown in Barcelona, I decided to honour my father by choosing health inside a global crisis. I trained as a health and breath coach, and as a yoga and Pilates teacher. Grief and abandonment had ignited debilitating arthritis, and I built what I needed to survive:
The Vortex Vitality Method — a holistic, anti-inflammatory lifestyle anchored in mindset, detox, movement, and nutrition. Self-care became my self-love when my family refused love.
I said YES to myself.
Later, I trained in Emotion and Body Code — gentle approaches that help release trapped emotions and energetic imbalances without reliving every detail. Healing without retraumatising. My role is to remove obstacles; the unconscious does the deeper work.
I had to heal myself.
And now, I help others do the same.
Breaking the Three-Generation Pattern
My grandfather jumped. My father jumped. The cycle pointed straight at me.
If I had followed them, my family could have shrugged: “It runs in the family.” Convenient.
But the fuller truth is this: early trauma, chronic stress, and systemic emotional abuse shape the nervous system and the body. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are strongly linked to later physical and mental health outcomes. When fight-flight is switched on for years, the body pays — in inflammation, sleep disruption, mood instability, and disease vulnerability.
My father’s death wasn’t only about genetics. It was about betrayal, negligence, and financial abuse — the things I was told to ignore.
I refuse.
Healing starts with saying YES to yourself.
I did.
And you can, too.
Media: http://www.vickyvortex.com/
