This morning, after hearing Frank Bruno publicize http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/ and his campaign to end the stigma of mental health problems, I used the site to pledge to be more vocal about my issues in order to help and encourage others. I’ll recount experiences that I believed contributed greatly to my behaving differently to what you might expect of people, especially here in England.
When I was a junior in high school (third of four years for those who don’t know the American system) I took a history class entitled “Advanced Placement European History.” The coursework for the class consisted entirely of a 10-page (circa 2500-3000 words) paper due every 4th week, on the topic in history we discussed. At the end of the year students took a test graded 1-5, 5 being the highest. A score of 4 or 5 got you out of taking a semester of History in University. I scored a 3.
I enjoyed the class but in those days I had no real parenting so no structure. My father worked days and mostly went out drinking at night - there was a bar in our apartment complex so no hassle getting home for him, just a short walk indoors to get home. My father prevented contact with my mother after she was hospitalized around 10 years before.
I lacked any pro-activity whatsoever. I also digested material very fast and wrote well (I wanted to be a journalist back then, so as a point of pride slavishly followed rules of grammar and punctuation and attempted writing in active voice).
So I wrote and researched almost in one go, thanks to the invention of erasable bond typing paper. This is in 1982 folks and already my father said no to my having a computer, on account of being a girl or something similar. I wanted an Atari back then, but would have settled for a TRS-80. I used to dream of word processing! The closest thing I had to a computer was weekly trips down to Wilbur Wright Community College to use their PLATO.
I always waited until the last minute. I went to the high school library and checked out as many books about European history as I could. I brought them home and arranged them in a semi-circle on the living-room floor and lay in the middle, skimming and making notes, bookmarking the pages I wanted to quote. Remember folks, it’s nothing without attribution.
When I was satisfied that I knew the “story” of that particular epoch of European history, I put my little typing table, and my little Smith-Corona electric typewriter (so small they told you to use an “l” as a 1 and had no “1″ key). I typed a flurry of fact in narrative form, stopping periodically to kneel down by the books on the floor to find the quote I needed to back up my version.
Around about 10 p.m., give or take an hour, I’d hear keys jingling in time with a slow gate. Then the sound that shot panic through my core - the sound of keys in the front door.
When not doing homework those sounds sent me into a flash of activity - turn off the lights and television and hide behind my bedroom door before the door opened. But even if I disappeared there was no way my books did, which meant an angry pound on the door. I waited for it instead.
“It” was my dad issuing a long diatribe about my making a mess of the living room, complete with shouting, swearing and an inability to stop once he’d made his point. I’d eventually start shouting back, trying to explain he should be proud of me, I was staying up late doing homework, wasn’t what good kids did? Remember my father was Indian - grades mean everything. Mostly As weren’t good enough.
After a while of this I’d end up in tears, begging for support. I cried for two reasons, an incomprehensible but strong sense of arbitrary injustice, and a desperate need for love and support, a need that was never, ever met. Not once. Seriously. Not once in my teenage years do I remember my dad saying a single encouraging or supportive word. Unless you count the day I told him I decided to get my degree in Journalism. He said, “That’s a good field for a girl.” My brother studied electrical engineering and became even more of a hero to my father.
When I broke down I cried hard, begging, “Why are you doing this to me?” “Why can’t you be proud of me?” I wanted support. Here was the person I depended on to be my entire family, my provider of food and shelter and he was generally just a stranger shouting at me. I became increasingly desperate for support and increasingly depressed not to get any. I started self injuring, struggling with suicidal ideation and para-suicide.
I still find myself, more than two decades later, still wanting love and support and never finding it. I cling to people desperately and offer them everything and then some, just for giving me a modicum of support. The irony here is that I most need support when I suffer a rejection of some sort. Rejection triggers in me such intense feelings of insecurity I regress way further than those teen years, those first few years of depression. I go back to being needy as a small child, maybe 4 or 5 years old — the last time my dad showed me any love and support — before my parents separated.
The scene usually ended the same way. I couldn’t stop crying and my dad would start shouting, “Stop crying!” Eventually he’d put his hand on the phone and tell me I was crazy, and he was going to call the hospital and have me put away like he did my mother. I just kept crying or begging him to leave me alone, and he’d take a bottle, a glass and a box of Marlboro reds into his bedroom. Or sometimes I’d go into my room, slam the door and he’d drink and smoke and watch TV for a while. I’d wait in my room and when he’d gone to sleep I’d get up and finish my paper. I usually finished in the small hours of the night, which was fine; it gave a certain amount of bragging rights amongst the brighter kids.
How do I still, so often, end up in situations where I’m being rejected, where I find myself crying and begging for love and support (usually right after the person I’m begging has rejected me)? Oh all sorts of ways. I just do. It’s called repetition compulsion and is common with people suffering with post-traumatic stress.
We subconsciously recreate the situation hoping for a different outcome. According to current thinking, repetition with a different outcome does actually normalize a more positive experience:
The patient, in order to be helped, must undergo a corrective emotional experience suitable to repair the traumatic influence of previous experiences. It is of secondary importance whether this corrective experience takes place during treatment in the transference relationship, or parallel with the treatment in the daily life of the patient. — The corrective emotional experience (1946)
Franz Alexander
I’ve never managed to recreate the pattern in therapeutic situations, because I’ve never managed to get to a point of “transference.” I’ve only gotten that sort of emotional dependency from personal relationships, and sadly I’ve never changed the outcome.
Instead I often recreate the old scene in personal relationships. I cry and beg and berate myself. I become suicidal and self injure. Well not actually self injure, more just hammer myself with drink and drugs until I can cope better. I become more and more desperate for the love and support I still crave. I fail with people 99% of the time. I faired better with dogs - they do give you unconditional support. But there’s no conflict with dogs, and no praise or even reassurance. Just doggie affection. It’s lovely but not enough to change my deepest, darkest fear - that someone I depend on emotionally will stick around and support me when I hurt, and praise me when I do something worthy.
True to form, I recreate the same pattern. None of the praise I seek; rejection followed by me melting down, begging for support (and begging to undo being spurned); when I get desperate I generally get labels - “crazy” “psycho” (or the ever popular “psycho bitch.”) or any of a number of references to my mental state and nearly as many reminders “I need professional help.”
I equate that, on many levels, with that old scene with my father.
I keep hoping to someday find a partner who will give me enough love and support and patience to help me learn not to panic, but so far I’ve only found the same old scene. And as I grow older, I lose hope and grow weary of hoping.