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dcnativegal · 8 years ago

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It is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -- and that it may take a very long time. (de Chardin)

My mind, my heart, is awake and brave.

I do not know my mind and heart as separated. I know myself, through a glass, darkly. Physician, heal thyself, applies to me, although I’m a mere social worker.

Today I am all about metaphors and clichés.

I have been about healing myself since I sought out psychotherapy in the 10th grade: I was the first self-referred adolescent anyone could remember at that public clinic in DC. I have been healing the betrayal of a limited and dangerous faith, Christian Science, since that morning I discovered that my grandmother was cold and stiff in her bed at the age of 65, dead from preventable causes. I went on to school that day, after telling my little sister to go tell Mom that Nana had died. I was 15. It was that year, 1975, that I called Bullshit on how I’d been raised. I started in earnest to separate the wheat of the many gifts and legacies I was given, from the chaff of illness, limitation, cruelty, which grew up right alongside.

Apparently, it’s a lifetime pursuit.

One thing about moving to so radically different a physical location (DC to Paisley) is that the usual thoughts and routines were stripped from my consciousness and I was plopped down as if by helicopter into a new world. I’m still learning where I am, physically. I’m still discerning the subtleties of Eastern Oregon etiquette. I am not known, yet, not very deeply, so I have settled into a now familiar loneliness. Nevermind “Question Authority”. I question everything. What I knew Before, without thinking a whole lot about it, floods in and fills up the spaces that had been stripped by the new environment, flooding in like the water does after an underwater earthquake. Past memories pull away, so strangely. And then flood back in a tsunami.

Which is why what I’ve been writing since I got to the Oregon Outback feels like memoir. My awareness is filled with the Before, alternating with The Brand New. It makes my brain full to overflowing. Some evenings, I go to bed at 7pm. I dream of cities.

For the past month or more, I have felt tears very close to the surface, multiple times a day, and they spill over if I let them.

Because…

· I have been living in this skin for almost six decades

· I am well trained and broadly experienced as a clinical social worker for three decades

· And I am familiar enough with my own experience as a client in psychotherapy…

I know that something is up. I am living in the midst of not knowing what it is. Which I can actually tolerate, although I do so hate crying at the beginning of a work day because part of my brain is just mush after that.

I had a big cry at the beginning of a work day recently. I noticed later in the day, that I was looser and more open with my clients, a bit braver with my questions of them, a bit more tuned in. I also had to monitor myself in a different way that the usual self-monitoring. I had to see if my inner turmoil was skewing the session, more than usual. A big part of being a psychotherapist is working to keep my shit from contaminating their shit. Or maybe I could pick a nicer metaphor. How about I keep my water colors inside myself, and let them paint their own picture with their water colors.

A recent Sunday morning’s tears came from the embarrassment and frustration of psyching myself up to go to the Catholic Church up the hill from my house for the first time here in Paisley, dressing up just a bit for the occasion, only to find that once again I have miscounted which Sunday it is. This parish meets 1st and 3rd Sundays. And it was Fourth Sunday. Dammit.

I deeply hunger for church. I feel guilty for feeling so needy about the comfort of church. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer puts it this way: “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.”

I hunger for all of it: solace, strength, pardon, AND renewal.

Valerie and I are beginning to be recognized at the Episcopal Church in Bend because we’ve been there more than once, and we are greeted with smiles of recognition. I’ve enjoyed the Episcopal flavor of Eucharist in Coos Bay, Reno, Nevada, Eugene, Salem, and Lakeview, who’s parishioners you can count on two hands. I’ve hung with the Lutherans, Quakers and the UUs in Klamath Falls and the Methodists in Fort Klamath.

I went to Paisley Community Church the weekend before my attempted Catholic crashing, for the first time in 4 months. It is such a lovely building, with the big bell that gets rung by a child at 9:30am every Sunday. I see familiar faces and they smile back at me. By now, I know half the congregation by name. I hear prayers and concerns, announcements. We sing songs with the words projected stage left from the altar, and some of them I recognize. How Great Thou Art made an appearance. Not a favorite, but I knew it.

What killed me was the sermon. It was preached in what Valerie explained to me is a typical evangelical style, not planned out, but extemporaneous, so the “Holy Spirit” can edge in there. How I received it was, well, negatively. I was not tuned into his channel. Especially when I hear the name Jezebel, and talk of watching out for the Devil, after weeks of #Metoo, as millions of women reveal they, too, have been sexually harassed or assaulted. I was not having it.

I’d much rather watch out for God than the Devil. I do not go to church to find God but to share God, as Alice Walker points out In the Color Purple. I couldn’t share. The sermon was a sincerely delivered, garbled mess, as far as I could discern. It left me bereft.

What I hunger for is a story. Tell me a story.

I also hunger for familiarity, because familiarity triggers the epic mystery of ritual. After 40 years of the Collect for Purity, I weep from the missing of it:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

I feel better just reading this aloud.

I am trying to remain as open as I can to the spiritual gift of new challenges, including evangelical preaching. Among my questions: how to remain open without pulling a muscle? I seek spiritual nourishment and I am starving. I’m going to seek out the Catholics. At least the liturgy is familiar.

I’m met with a brand spanking new psychotherapist for the first time in October, in Bend. I’ve decided that a monthly, rigorous archeological expedition of my psyche would be good. I miss my former therapist, The Wizard, who never failed to leave me feeling better and more functional after 50 minutes with her. But the three phone calls we’ve had since my move west are just not enough. I need the in-person three-dimensional interaction.

It always feels a little scary to see a new therapist. I can relate even better to my clients’ experience when they first see me: they must wonder who the hell this woman is who wants to know such personal stuff. I was going to be picky in selecting a new therapist, and I asked for recommendations. Then I checked what’s covered by my insurance, and looked to see if LGBT is on their list of interests. Not that being queer is an issue for me now, but I so don’t want it to be an issue for my therapist because if it is, her water colors will most definitely smear into mine. I don’t have time for that. Seriously. You don’t have to know much about what it is like to be gay, but I do not want to sense on any level that you think it is a bad thing, some sort of disability, something freakish. I mean, I’ve gone through a spell of crying daily, for god/ess’ sake. Your homophobia will not help me.

Turns out there is such demand and so few therapists that I had to get on several waiting lists. Finally, this one gal called me back. I saw her for 80 minutes on a Wednesday on the way to a training in Portland. I like her. She seems smart, kind, experienced. I impressed her; I was trying to. I want her to like me, so that when she hears the stories of my ruined parts, she will hold them in context. I will see her once a month.

I am reminded of Anne Lamott:

I asked a friend of mine who practices a spiritual path called Diamond Heart to explain the name recently, because I instinctively know that Sam and I both have, or are, diamond hearts. My friend said our hearts are like diamonds because they have the capacity to express divine light, which is love; we are not only portals for this love, but are actually made of it. She says we are made of light, our hearts faceted and shining, and I absolutely believe this, to a point: Where I disagree is when she says we are beings of light wrapped in bodies that only seem dense and ponderous, but are actually made of atoms and molecules, with infinite space and light in between them. It must be easy for her to believe this, as she is thin, and does not have children. But I can meet her halfway: I think we are diamond hearts, wrapped in meatballs.

Anne Lamott, Plan B

There are lots of metaphors and explanations for psychological distress, and for the prospect of trying to grow and change out of patterns of behavior or thought that do not serve me or help me serve others. I spent much of social work school trying to diagnose my mother. It was the side gig of my Master’s Degree.

Apparently, sometimes, the brain inherits traits and characteristics in the DNA, and genes get flipped on or off depending on environment. Sometimes the in-utero environment makes an impact. Did you know that when a family has a series of boys, one of the younger ones might be gay? I know of three families in which this is true, including my own.

I read somewhere that when a mother is anxious, the fetus will be bathed in cortisol, the stress hormone, and then once born, they are more likely to be anxious as a child. It certainly seems intuitive that an anxious child picks up anxiety when the mama is anxious. In childhood, the child does everything within its power to capture the attention and love of the mother.

“The key role of the 'good enough' mother [is] adaptation to the baby, thus giving it a sense of control, 'omnipotence' and the comfort of being connected with the mother. This 'holding environment' allows the infant to transition at its own rate to a more autonomous position. The good-enough mother...starts off with an almost complete adaptation to her infant's needs, and as time proceeds she adapts less and less completely, gradually, according to the infant's growing ability to deal with her failure." (Winnicott, 1953)

“Failure” sounds harsh, but it is inevitable that a mother fails her child because it is impossible to meet every need, in fact it is not a good thing to have every need met. However, there is a basic minimum, the Good Enough, and my mother could not meet it. Although she did the best she could.

My sister and I both survived our mother, and when we look back to our ancestors, we’ve concluded that we are pretty darn high functioning, given the heritage.

I do wonder at the trauma my clients have survived, and how lucky I was. Of the highest possible score of ten in the test, “Adverse Childhood Experiences,” most of my clients score a 5 or more. I do realize that having a troubled childhood is not a competitive sport: I must deal with what I was dealt and take responsibility from there. (I scored a 3: https://www.ncjfcj.org/sites/default/files/Finding%20Your%20ACE%20Score.pdf) As my first therapist once told me, it is okay to acknowledge our own deprivation. Perhaps an early step of self-care is this acknowledgement, and the beginning of healthy self-soothing.

Unhealthy self-soothing is rampant: for me it’s over eating and over spending. I don’t feel that there is ENOUGH for me. I need MORE. And yet I have plenty.

There is

Always

Enough

And

Enough

Plenty

Guillermo in Simply Living: The Spirit of Indigenous People by Shirley Jones

Although I KNOW I have enough, somehow, I don’t feel it. I don’t act like I have enough.

All kinds of behaviors and ideas about myself came from being an anxious child in an anxious, chaotic household. Without psychotherapy, I slowly return to my default position: anxiety and self-doubt. Psychotherapy is like physical therapy, for me. Without it, I tend to deteriorate. Ongoing therapy taps into my strengths and I get stronger, again, over and over. Depression and anxiety are the default positions, but not my fate. It’s like diabetes: it cannot be cured, but it can be managed.

I do realize how much I use the word HUNGER as a metaphor. Or maybe it is reality. We can hunger for love.

***

The triumvirate of healing for me is, talk therapy, psychotropics, and self-awareness. Oh and church.

After finding a therapist, I also saw my family nurse practitioner. I did not intend to go in there looking for a new antidepressant, but as we discussed my chronic illnesses, and my discouragement, I cried pretty much the entire time. Tears have a way of sending up an emergency flare, don’t they? Within the hour, I had a new antidepressant. It is my third one. Prior to starting each of the three, I had daily crying jags that I could not stop.

The very next day: no tears. Either I’d cried myself out, or the subtle shift of chemicals stopped up the leaky tearducts. Either way, I’m grateful. New psychotropics? Check.

***

Self-awareness is risky because it can fall so easily into self-absorption or self-pity. The worst is self-delusion. Tell the truth to yourself, if to nobody else. Self-awareness means I notice my thoughts, moods, what comes out of my mouth, to make adjustments, to query myself, what’s going on? Why such caustic cynicism? Why so many f-bombs?

Depression can express itself in irritability, in the lack of pleasure in usual things, in the over estimation of some things and under estimation of others. My former fiancé once said, life is a shit sandwich, and every day a bigger bite. Depression is the glass half empty. And it lies.

Sometimes, when I am in a darker place, it has meant that too much is going on at one time and I am simply overwhelmed because of stressors that are not my fault. What got me into therapy with The Wizard back in 1999 was what we both eventually referred to as an emotional multi-car pile-up. Many external stressors were wearing me down and my internal leaning is to anxiety and self-doubt. I leaned so far, I fell over.

Is that’s what’s going on now?

Some very old emotional stuff got stirred up in September. My ongoing and mostly unsuccessful struggle with pancreatitis makes me feel bad and is wearing. My work is challenging and it’s not just the pain of the clients I see. I am deeply disappointed in my failure to get my shit together in one important area (that would be my finances) and the self-beration is corrosive, not to mention the stressor of the consequences (poverty). Wouldn’t it just be easier to change my behavior instead of berating myself for behaving in the old, familiar ways?

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Behavior change is not easy. Insight helps but it is not enough.

Like many people, part of my sadness comes from the dying of the light, as fall turns to winter in the northern hemisphere. I share this with millions. (It’s called Seasonal Affective Disorder.)

I listened recently to a podcast on managing money called Bad With Money. The host is a ‘creative’ who happens to have bipolar disorder. Her guest on that episode also had bipolar, and she spoke about spending money wildly when she’s manic. She’s built in some safeguards in her life to prevent her from doing this. She also has friends give her feedback if she’s getting too ‘weird.’ How wonderful is that. People who gently say, hon, I think you’re getting a little wound up here…And this creative woman can say, oh shit, thanks for pointing this out! And she goes into radical self-care mode, and maybe adjusts her medications.

Yeah, it would be helpful to have friends like that. My gentle, totally unneurotic partner picks up a number of my craziness clues. Mostly, I observe myself. I am the turd around which the world revolves, after all. (Once again, Anne Lamott.)

Ever heard of Maria Bamford? She has struggled with OCD, bipolar disorder and a bunch of other things, and she is on top of all of that, mostly through ‘better living through chemistry’, which is to say she finally found the right drug for her. Depakote, as it turns out. She is an actress and comedian and quite wonderful. She has had to spend her entire adult life figuring out how to survive (literally, to not kill herself) and then, finally, thrive. It is hard work! She is well worth watching to see how she does the thriving thing: her art is standup comedy. An inspiration for wee neurotic me.

So.

I am aware that something is a bit more stirred up, a bit looser, a bit more aware of the echo of old pain, than usual. I am not sure what to do with this awareness beyond what I am doing, which is, a bit of bibliotherapy (writing about it), seeking out a new therapist on this side of the continental divide (done), switching antidepressants (done), and looking for church (ongoing.) I am also lucky to be going on a weeklong retreat that my incredibly loving and generous only sibling is paying for, in mid-November. I will have the luxury to concentrate on me and only me for a bit. (Warning: the following is metaphor frappe.) I go in the hope the part of me that is the observing ego can revisit some old tender places, cast an eye, and an ear, to listen to the echo of the old pain, and practice self-healing, self-forgiveness, to be whole for a minute, to allow the pain to wash over me. I would like to orchestrate the old pain, the long ago deprivation, into a cleansing bath, like the conductor does in the video I’m of late obsessed with: a concert in Verona Italy, with Peter Gabriel singing a haunting version of David Bowie’s Heroes. Watch the YouTube video and see this lithe man swing his arms so that all the violins will conjure up the sweet agony of the music. (Google

Peter Gabriel - Heroes (Live in Verona 2010) - YouTube

and watch him yourself.)

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightment: chop wood, carry water.

Before mental health is re-established: show up for work, show up for the people who love me, practice self-care, and crochet. After mental health is re-established: show up for work, show up for the people who love me, practice self-care, and crochet.

Here is one of the most comforting bits of writing I’ve ever found, for times like these. The thing is, the unformed unknowing never ends. But that’s okay. It has to be okay. I am trying, always to “accept… the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense, and incomplete.”

Trust in the slow work of God.

We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new,

and yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through

some stages of instability -- and that it may take a very long time.

Your ideas mature gradually --

let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make them tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,

and accepting the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense, and incomplete.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

depression anxiety de Chardin therapy

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