by Restin Wells
Chapter 14
When there's nothing you can do to hurt someone back, to vent your resentment out on them as much as you need to, the only other recourse seems to be to annihilate them forever-- in your mind. That is a way of destroying someone. Make them a nothing even as they have made you! Abandon them! Don't let them feel superior by having any effect on you. Hope it insults and hurts them to be treated as if they don't matter. That's omnipotent denial.
I make myself omnipotent by denying that the other person is worth anything at all next to me. I began to see how that nth degree of rage had great relief in it, for a while anyway. But it hurt terribly to hate Dr. T at the beginning moments of it. It took all the faith I could muster to believe I would be okay if I leaped over the chasm of death, in sheer hope of landing on solid ground somewhere on the other side of it.
What made it especially hard was that there couldn't be a trace of ambivalence as I started into the siege of rejection hate. The slightest holding back had the same effect as when a rocket can't get up enough thrust to make escape velocity. I had to totally rid my mind of the very one I had just recently admitted I so desperately needed, to stay alive. But I would declare anew that I could be in a rage the rest of my life, if necessary, but I couldn't go on living with the weakness I felt as long as her unreliable leadership sat upon the throne of my soul. She was an Idol in the literal sense of the word, as much so as the idols of stone and gold of the Old Testament times. She was the graven image my deep soul clung to as life preserver in the place of God. And I knew that was the reason I was weak, and sick, and ungrown.
Whenever I could get Dr. T out of me it was like launching myself into a free-sailing orbit around my problems, which then seemed far below. I felt like a normal human being who could cope with the business of life. When cruising along on that track, I tried to make it last as long as possible. But eventually, the separation-anxiety would start seeping in around the edges. My rage, the great fuel tanks that had lifted me up, had fallen back as I got into the orbit of denial. I didn't need to be angry there, as I was above painful feelings of any kind. But the lack of that anger caused a spacey feeling of spinning almost out of control, like flying a helicopter through the Grand Canyon. But it felt good as long as I could keep from crashing, which ran as long as I could stay awake.
Needless to say, I would put bedtime off as long as possible, sometimes staying up for a couple of days. As you may suspect by now, I was beginning to take on a manic-depressive defense. And that was a stage I did go through. A mind does change its biochemistry, and also a diagnosis, as someone works through the stages. I've always liked the analogy of peeling an onion to describe how therapy works. You go through layer-by-layer of different types of defense until you get to the core. Then you will know that the cure is thorough and permanent, because you know the way.
About this time, I discovered another bump along the way. If I rejected Dr. T for too long, I would go into a place of inner deadness. Refusing to feel and care made it impossible to feel anything about any other areas of life too. There was no beauty. No fun. No joy. I would fall into a depression and begin to wonder what was the use of doing anything. What was the use of living. I would begin to tread on dangerous ground that way too. I dreaded that as much as the anxiety situation on the opposite pole. All this was new to me. I had everything to learn about how to deal with things mental. Yet, as I came to those issues, I had the hope I could figure them out, as I had done the hardest job... learning to use anger to fend off fear. If the right way could be found, things could change.
When the depression came, I would feel that everything was too hard to do. Life was a leaden, drowsy fog. My mind wasn't in tune to my hand while I was doing something. I didn't seem to really be there in any solid way. My thoughts weren't connected with my mouth when I tried to talk to anyone. If I were out shopping, it seemed I counted out money as if I were drunk. I felt people could take advantage of it and money could end up missing. But worse than that, it was a boring nowhere place where I would find myself crying for no apparent reason (because I had just repressed all the reasons).
After several weeks of that, I would admit my life had been in quite another place some weeks ago. Before that, I had been dealing with my love/hate for Dr. T and the fear of losing her. She was somebody then, as I recalled. I had been a valiant warrior-woman fighting my personal dragon in an opposite region of my brain, the primal hinterland domain where the fear was. So, I would deliberately, consciously, decide to go back to the front line of battle, where everything of ultimate value was, regardless of how stupid that seemed. I would return to my flock of true feelings, and help them again from where they were waiting for me. But, the most important thing that needs to be said is that all of it was important to go through.
Those alternations were absolutely essential to healing. It was important to reject Dr. T for a while, and it was also important to allow her back again, and work some more from there. I worked within one as long as I could endure the pain, then switched to the other as long as I could stand that. I listened and followed. I obeyed a leading. As I alternated between the positions, they began to moderate each other. It became easier to move from one to the other. I learned coping skills and techniques. The manic place became milder and I became better at managing it. The depression phase became shallower and easier to climb out of. Eventually they leveled out into mainly one way of being.
The sick little child inside me seemed to always listen in on my adult reasoning’s, and pointing that laser gun of fear about any thought that went a direction she didn't accept. It brought me to my knees over and over before I learned how to respond. Though the child had been stashed down in my amnesia most of its little life, she seemed to know what would work, or not work, in the real world outside. I couldn't fool her. Everything I offered had to be real and possible. If only I could have said we will just go over to Dr. T's house and live, that would have been great...but the child inside knew better. I then modified that by saying I would sell my house and go rent a place on the same street Dr. T lived, so we could see her come and go and know she is alive. That did help. I had to mean it..had to earnestly vow I would do that for the child.
I got real estate guides and learned about prices. I felt tremendous relief from that. I went through a lot of that kind of dialogue, and some bit of actual activity I could do ethically and legally. Yet, the important thing is that it had pervasive effect on the illness. It was not so much whether I actually fulfilled the promises, but that I really had respect for the child, and listened. I was mending the rift inside by cooperating instead of scolding.
I never did bother Dr. T, I'm glad to say. I dealt with it as my problem, and mine alone. I think that is very important for anyone dealing with such a diagnosis. And there are many out there... many more than people generally realize. More and more, children are being set up for this kind of inner division by growing up in homes where one or both parents are abusive or absent. That child learns early that feelings hurt too much, and separates him self from anger and fear, where they do not mature, and then begin to live a primal life of their own. That is how a child can seem to be bright and well mannered, outwardly, only to turn suddenly into a psychotic that frightens the hell out of everyone. If only such children could have some good therapy so that they can see their division between emotions and surface act. If the splitness into a Dr.jeckyl-Mr.Hyde could be treated early, there would be a chance that a child would be saved, and the world a better place.
When I was able to make myself the mediator between the splitness in my own self, I made a lot of progress. The primal, sick part also began to regard me as more of a friend and helper. Another thing I did that was very helpful was to imagine my child as a black sheep… a mean, stubborn, bad sheep, but specially noticed by the shepherd, Jesus, who picks her out as the one to hold in His arms. The sheep struggles and bleats to get down and go do some more mischief, but is loved anyway. She wouldn't be forced, but gradually learn to be more obedient as she could endure doing so.
One reason for doing this picturing was that I knew the child within sought someone stronger than me. I knew that God gradually replaces the parents as the ultimate, all-powerful Being in maturing Christians. A child starts with the parents, and matures to God. I don't want to be a religious zealot in this book, but I strongly recommend this for anyone who can accept it, or even hold it in a possible place up the road.
I had to be very diplomatic in how I presented that to my own self. But I have found that it wasn't any gimmick. As I've said, gimmicks and magic didn't work, and basically doesn't work for anyone involved in serious mental or physical illness. You only have time and energy to do what works. But I was greatly strengthened by this imagining Jesus with my child, in a way far deeper and steadfast than the time put into it. That is the main reason I began to turn back to my Christian faith. It is how I began to believe in God in a way that was real, not just following a cultural custom. I began to perceive how that made a difference in important areas of life. I gave up trying to mandate just how The Force must do in order for me to believe, and began to accept what it was already doing where I so earnestly needed its help.
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Restin Wells