This Book Triggered Me

 I saw Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander on display as I walked into the library. I was drawn not only to the interesting title but to the cat looking out the window with Meredith.  I looked at the back cover and read that it was “sweet”, “touching”, “funny”, “charming”, and “hopeful.” Just the ticket for me because I’d just read a sad book.

After I got home, I took a look at the inside cover and felt some concern. It mentioned the positive things in Meredith’s life but then said she was also suffering “treacherous memories of an unstable childhood.” Oh, dear, I thought. Me too. I decided to read the book anyway.

The book is sweet in many places. It has uplifting scenes of hope. It does have its charm. It touched me in a way I didn’t expect, triggering memories. I didn’t find it very funny at all.

From the very first page, I recognized why Meredith was alone. Anxiety and depression is prevalent on my dad’s side of the family; my mother suffered from an undiagnosed mood disorder.  I remember answering my phone just before my marriage to Rich.

One of my cousins was on the phone. Her voice was barely audible and husky. “I’m so sorry I can’t come to your wedding,” she whispered to me. “I can’t leave my apartment.”  She added she hadn’t left her apartment in over 5 years. I assured her that it was OK. I understood and wasn’t offended. She was grateful.

I didn’t know she had agoraphobia. I did know that I had panic attack disorder and so I did very much understand the need to avoid things that provoked anxiety.  About a year or so after our wedding, my cousin said proudly that she’d walked down to the corner grocer. I was delighted. She added, somewhat shamefacedly, that she was only able to get there by carrying a cane. It wasn’t for her protection she assured me. It was like her security blanket.  I didn’t care. The point was she could leave her apartment again.

So, Meredith and her older sister Fiona grew up in an unstable environment. Their dad left when they were very small. Their mother seemed to be uncaring and neglectful; perhaps she had a mood disorder similar to my mother’s. She would be a kind mom one moment and a violent or verbally cruel witch the next. That surely triggered me.

This is what really got me: how did the author know so well about these symptoms and issues? I wondered if she was disguising herself as Meredith. I can’t really tell from the articles and biographies I’ve read about her.  She is so spot-on about what it’s like to have these mental illnesses and yet still function.

Trauma can cause or exacerbate depression and anxiety. Meredith had one other trauma that I didn’t experience, and I thought it might be why she was too anxious to leave her home and I don’t give it a second thought. In spite of what I experienced as a child, I never became as reclusive and afraid to leave home as my cousin did.

The hopeful ideas in the book were that having a mental illness doesn’t and shouldn’t define you. The other idea is you can always get better.

I went back and forth between giving Meredith, Alone three stars (because it hit me so hard) or four stars because Claire Alexander made it all so real. I finally decided not to punish the book for triggering me.

I recommend this book with the caveat that it could trigger memories in the reader.

Day 22: Coping

We have had a week from Hell. I was driving us home from somewhere on Saturday. My husband usually drives, but Ted broke his ankle. Between his reverse shoulder replacement and this broken ankle, he was physically out of commission. During the week, we were also dealing with a family situation. As a solution, we decided to withdraw from Facebook and Messenger to give ourselves a breather and a chance to recover from these traumas.

My husband said, “I don’t understand how calm you seem. I think I’ve been having a breakdown.”

The stress of it all has been overwhelmingly intense. How did I seem so calm? I’d fallen back on a coping mechanism from childhood. It’s called detachment in the twelve-step programs. It means that I numb the feelings that would prevent me from functioning. It helps as the crisis is occurring, but is it really effective?

No. While I can stick my feelings of worry, anger, hurt, and betrayal in little compartments in my brain for the present, they won’t stay there forever. When a crisis begins to pass, these feelings hit me physically with exhaustion and intestinal upset. Even though this coping method isn’t the most beneficial for me, it’s ingrained in me no matter how many years of therapy I’ve had. I fall back on it whenever there’s a crisis.

I wrote about it some months ago during another crisis.

Trauma and Dissociation (Detaching)

I grew up in a dysfunctional home. I was the victim of and saw repeated domestic violence. As I grew older, I began to be aware of strange sensations. When there was a fight going on between my parents, I suddenly didn’t feel connected to myself. I felt like I was floating somewhere above, watching the scene—including myself. One minute I was trying to get between my battling parents and the next, I was frozen to the spot like a statue. One moment I was crying and hysterical; the next, I felt…nothing.

It was scary. My body was not in my control and weird things were happening to it. I believe that is about the time the panic attacks began. Those would come upon me without warning. Sometimes there was a pattern to them; they’d happen a lot in the afternoon. I would be sitting in my high school classroom, listening to a lecture, and suddenly I’d be hit with one. My heart began pounding and the room would start spinning. I had an urge to get up and run, to escape. That definitely was not normal, and I knew instinctively that I shouldn’t bolt out of the classroom. I remember gripping the edges of my desk as if I thought I had to hold onto it to keep myself from jumping up. I’m amazed I didn’t leave fingerprint impressions on the desk.

I was about 16 years old when I confided in my parents that something was wrong with me. I needed a psychiatrist. Well, they lost their minds. There was no way I was going to see a psychiatrist. What if the Deaf community found out? Gossip would spread and it would be so embarrassing! I was on my own struggling with the disturbances in my body. I was sure I was losing my mind.

I hid what was happening to me and confided in no one else until my senior year. I was taking a psychology class, and it occurred to me that my teacher might know what was wrong with me. Perhaps she would know what to do. One day I stayed after school to talk to her. She was open and very willing to listen as I struggled to explain what was happening. I told her when it happened, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was sure I was crazy.

The teacher became very reassuring. I must not have explained myself adequately because what she said was not to worry. All young people had moments when they wondered who they were. She assured me it was normal. I felt somewhat reassured but not entirely convinced.

After I graduated from high school and left home for the first time at age 19, I got a job with benefits. Some of those benefits covered mental health expenses. They didn’t cover very much but something was better than nothing. I was 21 and began going to a mental health clinic. There I described fully what was happening to me.

My therapist listened to me, asked questions, and then at the end of the session she said I was disassociating. I’d never heard the word before and her explanation of it scared me. This was a verification that I had a serious mental health issue. The therapist said I was going into what was called a “fugue” state, a hop, skip, and a jump from multiple personalities. It was 1975 and there was no information about PTSD or the effects of trauma. I had to control these weird feelings, or I might become someone else.

There was a soap I’d watch whenever I got home in time from work. It was called One Life to Live. Once there’d been a storyline where the heroine, whenever under stress, would become an entirely different person. Was this happening to me?

I was prescribed an anti-depressant called Tofranil. I couldn’t confide in anyone about this, not my family or my friends. There is a stigma to mental illness. That stigma continues to today.

The Tofranil helped control the panic attacks. The dissociating episodes became easier to deal with and their frequency decreased. Life was bearable.

The truth is: anytime I went off medication, the panic attacks and dissociation episodes would return with increasing frequency. I fought them for as long as I could and when I did go find another psychiatrist or therapist, I was very hard on myself. When I had to take pills, I felt like a failure. Why couldn’t I control it?

Over the years, I began to learn more and more information about what was happening to me. My education began shortly after I married Rich. He noticed I’d become angry when he had a beer or two, and he’d reassure me that he was not my parents. “Yeah, but you could be later,” I’d answer. One Sunday, we heard there was a twelve-step meeting that met at our church, and Rich encouraged me to go.

My parents never admitted to being alcoholics. If they were not, they were still problem drinkers. They still physically fought each other.

I didn’t know if the group would accept me, but I went.  They welcomed me warmly, and I listened. I felt annoyed that they were so at peace with the alcoholic in their family. They said they had no control over their alcoholics and that confused me. Weren’t they doing anything at all to stop the drinking? We weren’t supposed to challenge anyone, and I thought that was really too passive too.

I went back and I vented my rage about my parents and the problems I was having. Their gentle advice was to use the serenity prayer and the twelve steps to help me work through everything. They suggested a group that dealt specifically with adult children who’d grown up in alcoholic/dysfunctional homes.

I felt more connected and at home with that group. Others were angry, like me, and there were some members further along in their recovery. From them, I learned about a more specific therapy focusing on what I was going through.. I saw a therapist who was from a dysfunctional family like me. He showed me videos and gave me books to read, and I gained so much insight and understanding about growing up in an alcoholic family.

I was experiencing panic attacks as I continued to learn about why I was having these issues. My therapist referred me to a new psychiatrist and then I learned another astounding fact: my struggles with depression and panic were biologically based. My brain was not making the chemicals I needed. I had dysthymia, a chronic low-lying level of depression. Even when I was feeling upbeat, my mood was still lower than those of most other people. I would need to continue meds to stimulate or simulate those needed brain chemicals to lift my mood.

The therapist referred to my dissociative episodes as “detachment”. That’s a much more acceptable word, less stigmatizing and frightening. The reason I can remain calm and function through a crisis is because I detach my emotions from whatever is going on.  It’s why I was able to stay calm and read my book when that custodian went berserk during my psychology class and took a student hostage.

It's why I am not all twisted up in knots over my young family member returning to his abusive family. I am powerless in that situation because he’s 18 and an adult. I am detached so that I don’t worry or grieve for his situation.

There was a really good article about the different types of dissociation. There are four: Dissociative amnesia.

Dissociative fugue

Depersonalization disorder

Dissociative identity disorder

Mine would be depersonalization disorder. Quoting from the article, it sounds very familiar to me: “Depersonalization disorder is characterized by feeling detached from one’s life, thoughts, and feelings. People with this type of disorder say they feel distant and emotionally unconnected to themselves, as if they are watching a character in a boring movie. Other typical symptoms include problems with concentration and memory. The person may report feeling ‘spacey’ or out of control. Time may slow down. They may perceive their body to be a different shape or size than usual; in severe cases, they cannot recognize themselves in a mirror.” Well, I can recognize myself in a mirror and I don’t have problems with concentration or memory. It still happens in a crisis, but it doesn’t scare me anymore.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. I plan to make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

 

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for those currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here. 

 

Two Good Men

 

These are two honorable men in the news right now.

Former President Jimmy Carter is 98 and has had some health issues. The Jimmy Carter Foundation announced yesterday that he is entering hospice care and prefers to live out his days at home with family. There won’t be any more hospitalizations. I love Jimmy Carter and so I’m sad, even though he’s had a full life.

Jimmy Carter is the embodiment of what it means to be a Christian. He is a kind, loving man who helped broker peace during his presidency and afterward. He and his wife Rosalyn both volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. The organization builds homes alongside low-income people who want to buy a house but can’t afford it. He and Rosalyn both were actively involved in home building into their nineties. One of my favorite pictures of Carter was after he’d taken a fall (in his nineties) and still showed up to work, black eye, and all.

Even though he had some successes as President, he’s mainly seen as ineffective. I believe it’s because he wouldn’t play Washington politics. Members of Congress didn’t like that and so it was difficult for him to get his agenda passed.  I think he wasn’t effective because he was too much a Christian and unwilling to get into the dirt with political players.  The hostage crisis in Iran was the straw that broke the camel’s back, in my opinion. He made an attempt to rescue the hostages, but the plan blew up with helicopters that crashed. He was really bashed for that.

I remember the fallout when he admitted to a reporter that yes, even though a devout Christian and happily married, he’d still “lusted in his heart.” How the critics went bonkers over that. I remember thinking, what’s the big deal? We are all human. I’m sure we all have “lusted” in our hearts over someone or something. So what? You’d have thought he’d said something catastrophic.

Compare that to the behavior of today’s “christian” nationalists. They lie, cheat, threaten, bully, and promote violence. I don’t know who they think they’re following but it sure isn’t New Testament Jesus. NT Jesus was all about feeding & caring for the poor, sick, and homeless. He was all about protecting children. He was all about inclusion, welcoming and sheltering immigrants. These “christian” nationalists seem to be all about neglect, oppression, suppression, discrimination, and corruption. They cater to the 1% of the population who are very rich and powerful.

Jimmy Carter is one of my heroes.  I am sorry to lose him because there are so few heroes left these days.  I am very proud that my first vote in a presidential race went to Jimmy Carter. I am glad I was at the inauguration and saw Jimmy Carter, hand in hand with Rosalyn, walking down the street to the Capitol instead of riding in a limousine. I never met Jimmy Carter, but I am grateful he’s been a part of my life. God bless Jimmy Carter.

Speaking of how few heroes there are out there, I also wanted to acknowledge Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. I don’t know much about him other than the fact he had such a fun, colorful campaign last year despite suffering a stroke. Recently, he checked himself into Walter Reed Hospital on the advice of his physician. He is suffering from severe depression. He is a hero because of his courage in acknowledging his depression and need for treatment.

Depression is still stigmatizing. I have had low lying depression since my teen years. It used to be called dysthymia but now is called MDD. When I began to seek treatment back in the 1970s, I kept it all secret. There was (still is) a lot of misunderstanding about depression. In those days it seemed to mean “crazy”. I don’t know if anyone remembers Sen. Thomas Eagleton or former Gov. Mike Dukakis but both suffered depressive episodes. And when that became public, their political careers tanked.

When I was working as a unit secretary in the mid-1970s, I’d become friends with my bosses. One of them noticed my upper eyelids drooped. It was a side effect of the anti-depressant I was taking. I took her into my confidence and explained. I’ll never forget the look of horror she gave me. It was like she thought I was contagious. She said, “I don’t want to know about it!”

I didn’t confide in anyone else, not for years. It wasn’t until a psychiatrist explained that it was a biological problem, not a problem of character or behavior. My brain wasn’t producing enough serotonin, dopamine, or epinephrine and so even on my “good days” my mood wouldn’t match those of others whose brains did make enough of those feel-good hormones. I didn’t have to feel ashamed and hide my dark secret.

I am also not alone. There are so many of us with depression. Some are open about it and others are not. There’s still misunderstanding, and a stigma attached to depression.

John Fetterman is a hero because he chose to do what was best for his health and not be secretive about it. By being open about his depression, we can be educated further about what it is, the different types, symptoms, and treatments. People who have depression but are suffering in silence might feel encouraged to seek help.

I can say what untreated depression feels like: imagine being down a deep, dark well with slippery sides. You can get a purchase to try and climb out of the well, but you can look up and see the sun shining. But the sunshine doesn’t bring any light into that dark well. There’s no way out. It’s all hopeless. Self-harm thoughts are intrusive.

I have a cocktail of medications I take to boost all those hormones lacking in my brain. I haven’t been down that well in years. I will have to take these meds forever in order to stay out of the well.

If that ends up being the case for Senator Fetterman, so what? It doesn’t make him weak-willed or lacking in character.  He’s one of the good guys. We should all support him and wish him well. I think he can serve our country well. Good on you, Senator Fetterman!