Tag: psychiatrist

Never Forever

It was Winston Churchill who famously said: “When you are going through hell, keep going.” Hell is not usually a nurturing environment so there is a human tendency – forgive my obviousity – to get the hell out of there.

But that’s not an obvious choice for everyone. If indeed we are in hell trying to realize a goal, going through the hell of reaching it is an accepted part of the game. Give up the game and you give up the goal.

Many accept a life of hell as “normal.” They don’t see a way out of their present circumstances or the way out is too hard. So they live in hell until they die. I often think of junkies and alcoholics who can’t or won’t get sober as living in that terrible place.

When I was drinking, I remember I couldn’t imagine socializing without a drink. Part of that belief was cultural. There were people who didn’t trust anyone who wouldn’t take a drink. I also imagine others’ sobriety made problem drinkers highly uncomfortable.

In that weird projection thing that people do, sober people – alcoholics or simply the unafflicted – were deemed suspicious. They were often treated as having or being the problem. The problem was not the thirteenth glass of beer you’d had since arriving at the pub a couple of hours ago. That was “normal.”

I am in the belly of the beast in the house sort, purge and trash exercise. I am beyond tempted to quit. I can’t, of course. Part of going through all this is because I need to meet obligations to others and to myself. But it is decidedly unfun.

Human beings acclimate quickly. Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, we can adapt. It is part of our strength as a species.

Think of those “reality” TV shows about surviving in the wilderness alone. Participants are dropped in the middle of God knows where and their goal is to survive in order to make a lot of money. Their circumstances often overwhelm and defeat them.

But even in the face of medical advice and direction, many participants howl and protest about being taken out of that environment and losing the dream of “easy money.” Or can’t bear seeing themselves as failures or quitters.

So I am up and at ‘em again this morning. Bins to go through and contents to sort. Ancient bills and papers to let go of. Every day a little more is accomplished. Yesterday the full dumpster was taken away and replaced with an empty one. I hope to fill it before this is all over.

I’ve also learned that neither good times nor bad last forever. That is a simple truism that I’ve lived, so I’m electing to believe in that now.

This is hell for me. I will get through it. I don’t exactly know how yet but I realize the only choice is putting one foot in front of the other until I arrive at a better place. Hopefully much less cluttered and more organized.

Those may seem like simplistic goals. But offloading the accumulated detritus of a lifetime is as hard emotionally as it is physically. By organizing my insides, I am driven to get my outsides in order, too.

That reminds me of the insight and wisdom of a little boy trying to get his Dad’s attention.

On the coffee table, Dad saw a magazine with a picture of planet earth on the front cover. He said to his son, Do you see this picture of world, tearing the cover off the magazine? The little boy replied “yes”, thinking he finally had won, his Dad was going to now play with him!

Taking the little boy to the kitchen table and ripping the picture of the world into little pieces, mixing them up on the table and giving his son some “scotch tape” he said, “When you put the picture back together then we’ll play OK?”

The son said, “OK Daddy” and started to work on the puzzle. Dad went back to the living-room, sat on the couch getting comfortable and turning the “Big Game” back on, thinking to himself, it will take him all afternoon for him to figure that puzzle out.

Dad had no sooner started watching the game when his son came running into the living-room, shouting with glee, “I did it, I did it, look Daddy I did it, I taped the picture back together!” His Dad couldn’t believe his eyes saying, “How, how did you do it so fast?”

This little boy looked up at his daddy and said, “When you tore the cover off the magazine, I noticed a picture of a little boy on the back of it. I just knew if I pasted that little boy back together, the world would come together too.”

The full story is here.

The Little Boy who put the world back together: A story by Jim Quinn, Founder of the Lifestream Basic Seminar

Shite Sandwiches

“There is no love in your family.” The Turkish-born psychiatrist summarized my lived experience in a single sentence. I just didn’t know it yet.

It was both earth-shaking and yet felt a little nefarious. “No love?” I wondered wordlessly. “In MY family?” “Is that really what he said?”

I hashed that one line over and over in my head for years.

When the psychiatrist said that simple, explosive line during our biweekly session, I honestly had no idea what he meant. “No love?” “In MY family?” “But, but?” It somehow felt like someone pouring ice-cold mineral oil down my spine through the back of my shirt. I wasn’t sure what I was really feeling but I knew the feeling was foreign and confusing and cold. Ice cold.

I once saw a woman psychologist on the Canadian West Coast. I remember her well-groomed spotlessly clean white West Highland Terrier. I remember she had a long, beautiful green leather couch in her drawing room. I was envious of her beautiful living room and dapper dog.

She listened to my story with keen attention. I trotted out the “no love in my family” story. “A Turkish psychiatrist I once saw,” I told her, “said there was no love in my family. No love? Imagine that? My parents and siblings tell each other we love each other all the time!”

I was slightly frustrated and reluctant to let go of the fantasy that mine had been a happy, wonderful childhood. That I came away from it hurt and confused and beset by dark and difficult feelings was on me. Something was wrong with me. Because they loved me. They told me so all the time.

At one point, the kindly West Coast psychologist looked up from her notebook with reading glasses perched stereotypically on the end of her nose: “Your confusion is understandable,” she said. “If someone feeds you shit sandwiches all your life and tells you they are feeding you steak, you are bound to be confused.”

First, “No love in my family?” Now this. Shit sandwiches that were supposed to stand in for steak? Psychotherapy was nothing else if not extremely confusing and full of strange utterings.

It took many years to realize what these sage advisors actually meant. With time, their insights eventually touched and deeply impacted me. It was true that my childhood was filled with neglect and abuse – sexual, emotional, and psychological. But no one “wanted” to hurt us, I believed.

Caregivers so utterly wrapped up in their own personal problems who have unresolved trauma holding the reins of their own behaviors and being don’t necessarily realize what harm they are doing. Not to themselves and much less to others.

Parents who are intelligent enough to realize these deficits are bad things for a child want very much to cover them up. Or more likely, they are inclined to act as if they are not important. “That’s life,” I often heard my mother say. Along with, “Hand me that bottle of pills from beside my bed, will you sweetie?”

At other times, her head hung limply into the toilet bowl, Mom would retch thick black-green liquid that smelled terrible. She would quickly cover: “It’s only bile, dear. I’m throwing up bile because there’s nothing else in my stomach.” If there was medical import in that statement, it was lost on me as a ten-year-old.

Seeing my mother’s head in the toilet and knowing she was “sick” again was familiar and made more sense. Fluffernutters for supper again tonight.