by Restin Wells
Chapter Six
Even so, I was also able to see some of the twist in that picture. My problem was that I didn't trust that a therapist could handle my neurotic need of them. I felt the shame of someone who has done the worst sort of evil. I didn't fail to notice that whatever therapist I saw, they seemed to avoid the subject. Was that because they assumed everything would work out all right, or because they were afraid of it?I didn't realize then how much my distrust derived from problems I had with the caregivers in my childhood, who couldn't seem to cope with me, and sent me away repeatedly from one set of relatives to another. I was so protective of my therapists, for fear of being too much trouble, that I couldn't bring myself to pursue them on the matter.
In a turned-around-backward way, the worst thing anyone could say was that I was doing better, or would be well soon! I hoped upon hope that Dr. T would find it therapeutic to see me more often. Then, hopefully, my need for her would be cured as we talked about the problem. But, instead, she began to cancel appointments, and go on vacations, more often than any other doctor I had ever known. And she became steadily more silent. To me, the silence meant disapproval, and felt like abandonment. It pushed me hard against the precipice.
I got up the courage several times to inquire why, with either no response or some cryptic, sinister comment such as, "it would be feeding me" and "I was attempting to steal love from talk". I guess I regret being such a wimp, but that was where I was at, that stage of life. I forgive myself now that I've grown.
I had a dream about then, that I was being dragged across a stony desert by an airplane. I was tied to it by a long rope around my wrists held out in front of me, like the cowboys in the old west would drag a bad guy with their lasso behind a galloping horse. I realize now that I took a beating more from my own self-judgment than from any real opposition from anyone else.
But the doctor was putting the pressure on, too. I couldn't understand how Dr. T could do just what would make it harder, when my separation anxiety already ran like a beast without a bridle. The dreadful silence felt like a severe condemnation of my feelings, which compounded the threat. I was too sensitive and too prideful to object a lot to her neglect, or seeming lack of compassion. We had discussed my dependency on her in an intellectual way and I knew my problem was called a "transference neurosis", in psychiatric terms. But I had not yet been able to get a working connection between my dependency and my symptoms.
But, AS I KEPT ON WITH MY NEW WAY OF ASKING MYSELF WHAT I REALLY WANTED, I DARED TO APPROACH THE PROBLEM FROM A NEW ANGLE, INSTEAD OF MY CRITICAL METHOD OF BEFORE. I BEGAN TO ASK MYSELF THESE KINDS OF QUESTIONS:
What would happen if I took the side of my childishness just a little--just for a moment or two?
Do I really have to lose Dr. T, or anyone else, as totally as I assume? Is there any way to deal with grief other than to just lump it?
Is there such a thing as a compromise? Or might there be any little way I can sneak in more of her presence? Would I be killed if I did that?
Do I have to accept being alone just because someone says so? Is my dependency really so evil? And so what if it is? Do I have to be so perfect?
I had never dared to think that way before. I had dealt with that problem years ago by not dealing with it.. by just repressing it and pretending I didn't care. But that was not going to work anymore. I was being drafted into the role of Ambassador to an uprising within the hinterlands of my own self. And this time I would have to do it right, or die. As I continued to sit in the conference room of the psych ward, I thought: I may not be so helpless against all this as I think. If I tried, I could probably think up a lot of ways to make all this a little easier on me. I just didn't know where to start, before now.
When my mother died when I was a baby, I didn't have the experience and words to help myself reason about it in this way. So, my mind didn't know what else to do but repress it.. shove it down, refuse to feel or think about it, and clamp a tight lid on it. And now it comes up again, like a time capsule, just as raw and unadjusted as when I was one year old. I felt the very same panic now that I did as a baby, because the same emotion is tagged to the re-emergence. Only now, I'm an adult who has even prided myself on being able to think up ways to solve things.
So, in that new work on myself in the hospital, it felt good to take my own side for a moment, as if I were getting away with something. But I was breaking a lifelong internal law which dictated that nothing could save me but blocking all memories forever. I felt that panic too. I felt a wave of dire warning shimmer up the core of my spine, at the thought of what any disobedience to that law could bring. I was daring to crack open the door and meddle into long forbidden problems about love, death and loss, for which I had never learned the skills of emotional hardball. My unconscious mind, the directing center of it, had decided what was going to save me when I was a child, and it wasn't about to let any thing rock the boat! Its "laser gun" was the fear it made me feel.
I'm glad to say now that my case wasn't just "analysis paralysis" that cruel epithet the uninformed glibly enjoy putting upon others with long-term, tough problems. If only family members, and professionals too, could know how painful, and untrue, it is for mental patients to hear that said of them, they would think twice. People will be preoccupied with a life-threatening internal problem for just as long as it takes to get a handle on it. The panic in me would come to listen to reason and comforting. But I had a lot more to do, to earn that inner cooperation after a lifetime of alienation.
I came to realize that it was only a part of myself that was sick, not all of me. My main adult self was the leader, who could carry on with what seemed to be a fairly normal life at home. As a responsible, educated person, I had the task of re-uniting with an island, or primitive faction, that had split off the mainland of my selfhood. By unconsciously denying its existence, I had allowed it to fester until it grew too disruptive to ignore. It remained un-adapted to the growth of my main self into youth and adulthood. It kept its infantile assumptions about what is needed for security in life, such as a stronger, parent person, a hero person, not just to look up to in the normal way, but to keep me alive literally. That's why I was so afraid of losing the therapist. My inner child was walled off from me, hardly even knew me; so, I didn't count. And it held many other less grownup ideas, which I will bring out as I move along in how strength for life developed.
It was then that I realized that I had become divided, that there wasn't just me. I had a dissociative disorder, or some type of Multiple Personality Disorder. But I had always felt embarrassed by that overworked term. When anyone suggested it, I denied it could be so of me. If I had it, I seemed only to have one "other", not multiple. I saw myself as a basically normal, fairly sensible, individual who happened to have a problem in a specific area. I never seemed to switch unconsciously from an adult self into a childish self, although that could be debated, judging by some happenstances I would check out later. But, I was usually aware of what I was doing, because I had so much judgment against acting childish. I was more like a parent stuck with a problem child. And that could have been the reason for the great pain, the panic fear, and sick feeling.. If I had switched, the other self could have a turn to express. But as it was, the "other" or "others" were imprisoned and raising hell over it.
I was somehow able to look down into my problem from above and start working on it. But one thing I had to learn, which I didn't know how to do at first, was to jump myself out of the 'scared child' self into the adult self to get a few hours of relief from its agony and function in the real world a while. I will go into how I did that soon, as it's jumping a bit ahead. I often required time out to recover from the pain of contact. Though I knew that Dr. Tilden wasn't my mother, and could never be, I felt the panic of a lost child afraid she would starve to death and perish of heartbreak. I didn't know how to deal with that. My first efforts to comfort or reason fell on deaf ears. It was up to me to figure out how to reconcile an impossible situation. I knew the child expected me to make Dr. T available, or else. But by approaching that more primal part of myself, instead of beating it down, I was taking the first awkward steps. I would have to learn how to lay a new bridge of trust, brick by brick, that would make it safe. By taking that new problem-solving, diplomatic attitude, without losing adult values, I was taking hold of the Key, The Answer, that would spark my personal freedom train.
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Restin Wells