My light-bulb moment for the month

It is May. I have survived my first term back at school and it has been very challenging, but in a good way. I thought that once I would be back at school undertaking a counseling course, I would have plenty of material to write about on here. Instead I find myself reluctant to share my experiences as I feel I am not where I am “supposed” to be. I am not doing as well as I think I should be doing.

And for the life of me, I could not figure out why. I was in a really good space by the middle of 2010. I had decided to stop trying for a baby for now. I signed up for my counseling course and passed the admission’s interview. I got a job working with children in an after school care program. Yet I have regressed so much over the last few months.

I know part of it was due to Jay being very sick and having to cancel most of our sessions between September 2010 and February 2011. I might have seen him a total of five times during those six months. But since February we have been having our normal two sessions a week, so why am I still so all over the place? I am so clingy one moment and so withdrawn the next. Therapy is beginning to feel like a waste of time. Ever since I was first forced into this minefield of mental health treatment I seem to make progress only to lose it again after a few months. Perhaps I am meant to stay insane.

Jay has also noticed that I seem to be doing therapy halfheartedly. He calls it me “not showing up” for our sessions, in the sense that I am there but not really willing to engage in deeper level stuff. He has been trying to get me to have a think about wanting to do therapy for me, not for him, not for my family, but doing it because I want to. Otherwise it will never work.

He asked me to have a think about this and email him my thoughts. An extract from that email (edited only to hide identifying details or leave out irrelevant stuff):

“[…] I was thinking about how you said I should want to do the work for me, not for you, not for other people, but for me. And how I just don't seem to want to. I can work on stopping self-harm, because I don't want to get thrown out of my course, I don't want the parents of the kids I look after to find out, and because I know it is expected of me. But really, if I had a choice, I'd like to have that option available to me. I don't mind self-harming every once in a while.

And I was thinking about how for most of my life I have looked to other people for cues on how to behave, what expectations to meet, what not to do. Even now, I will sit in the lunchroom at school and watch other people make small talk and laugh at jokes, and I’ll make mental notes on how to behave. How to engage in small-talk, when to laugh at jokes that I just don't find funny.

[…]

It sometimes seems like I don't really have that sense of self. I am always looking up to other people to see what they expect of me and how I should behave. I do therapy the way I think you want me to. I am a wife to my husband, always trying to please him and anticipate his needs, and forever assuming that every unhappiness in him is caused by me […].

Am I doing therapy for me? I don't know. I want to stop self-harming because it is expected of me. I want to stop acting out coz I risk hurting those I care about. I want to "get better" so everyone gets off my back. But do I want it for me? In an ideal world where no-one would care whether I was sane or crazy, I'd probably prefer to stay crazy.

The only time where I kind of felt like I was doing it for me was when we were trying for a baby. […] But it seems Mother Nature has already figured out I'd be the crappiest mum ever, so then what's the point.

I know you've often said I have to do the work because I want to do it for me. And I just don't think there's a "me" underneath all this. Of course there's a G.I. that experiences awful feelings and she hates feeling like that. But even that can feel like something "foreign" sometimes, that has to be gotten rid of, by either self-harming or acting out in other ways. And then she's back to feeling like this shell of a person. I imagine my body almost to be like a shell. And there's this huge emptiness inside. No organs or bones or anything. Just emptiness. So I go from person to person trying to fill that up. And I know there's certain ways in which I should behave to get the love and care that I seem to forever lack. So I do all the right things, behave in all the right ways, and most of the time that means someone will look after me or love me or care for me or laugh with me. So I can kind of "do the work" to get my needs met. But if there had been easier ways to fill up my empty shell, I sure would have grabbed a hold of them. So in a way I don't feel like I am doing all this work for me. I am doing it because that is how I get other people to respond to me and give me what I want. But it's not how I would prefer to behave.”

As I wrote this to him I felt utter hopelessness. Why, after all these years of treatment, am I still not “better”?

Jay had a very different perspective. He found it enlightening to read about how I view myself as this empty shell without a real sense of self. He explained that children form that sense of self during their first few years by having their caregivers respond to them attentively and by reflecting to the child what they are feeling. An angry, young toddler, does not know they are angry. An adult has to tell them “I can see you are very angry right now”, before they learn to connect the upset that they are experiencing to being angry. They also need adults to teach them that these feelings are temporary and that the upset they are experiencing will eventually subside. Jay explained that this did not happen during my early years and he was struck by how I described this emptiness inside me now. He believes that during our fourth year of therapy (2010) I slowly trusted him with more and more of the disintegrated parts that make up me. And by him kind of “holding” all those parts and integrating them little by little, I was slowly creating that sense of self, which is often much harder to do as an adult, than had it gone right the first time around when I was younger. Nevertheless, we were making progress. But then he got sick, and this process got interrupted. Even though most of me says “oh well, I dealt with it, no big deal”, it most probably scared the hell out of the younger part of me. And that is why it seems we are back at square one. Unconsciously I have decided not to bring my vulnerability to Jay as he has proven to be unreliable. And that is probably also why I feel so “all over the place” at the moment.

It was such a relief to hear him explain my craziness like this. It was my light-bulb moment for the month. He gave a name to all these things that I had been experiencing and that had been making me feel like I was destined to stay crazy forever. But in fact I had been making good progress and had he not fallen ill, I would probably still be doing really well right now. But the disruption to our sessions caused my “holding environment” to fall apart and in doing so, it disintegrated that fragile sense of self I was developing.

So that now leaves the hard work of me slowly allowing myself to bring my vulnerability into the therapy room, rather than to withdraw and/or act out. Easier said than done, but I do really believe that understanding is the first step toward becoming a whole person again. (Or perhaps to becoming a whole person, full stop, as it seems it was never really there to begin with, for me.)

This week is the first time in months I felt like there might just be some hope for me. To be continued…

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

G.I.

Therapy Crisis

It is almost Christmas, and I notice that yet again I have not written for a while.

When all goes well, when life happens according to neat schedules and routines, when the people around me are there for me, I can pretend, I can even genuinely believe, that I am "better". That I have well and truly left behind the angry, confused and defiant 17 year-old I once was. That I am almost 25 now, a real adult, and that, with age, maturity and resiliency have naturally developed.

Indeed, when looking from the outside in, I am doing well. I am coming up to my three year wedding anniversary and could not be happier. I am gearing up to go back to university next year and I am looking forward to the challenges I will face there. I have been in my new part-time job as an after school care supervisor for just over two months now and I am loving it. After having looked after babies and toddlers for years, it has been interesting to learn how to interact with primary school aged children. Of the three supervisors, the children have dubbed me their favorite, and I would be lying if I did not say that that really stroked my ego.

But if you looked closer, you would see that I am spending most of my mornings in bed. Getting up at 12 or 1pm, just in time to get ready for my job at 2.30pm. And the days I do not have to work, I spend in bed or on the couch. I am trying to avoid having to socialize with friends, even though I would love some friendly company. Simple things, like getting groceries or returning library books, seem so insurmountable that they require days of planning and procrastinating. After having so bravely handed over my stockpile of pills to Jay, the only thing stopping me from seeing my GP for some tranquilizers, is the half an hour drive I would have to make to get there.

The catalyst for all this?

Jay has been quite unwell for the last three months. I have seen him once since September and I will not be seeing him until February next year, provided he is feeling up to it. This makes one session in 4.5 months (where I normally see him twice a week). Over the last three months Jay and I have scheduled session after session, only to be canceled mere days beforehand, because he was not well yet.

I was taken aback by how upsetting this was for the little girl inside me.

The first criterion cited by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for Borderline Personality Disorder is "Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment." These days words like "abandonment issues", "depression" and the likes, are thrown about so lightly that they can lose their meaning. People use the word depression when they actually mean sadness or having an off-day. In the same way "fear of abandonment" doesn't even come close to describing the absolute terror I experience when someone leaves me or when someone is absent.

It is almost as if therapy, and by extension the therapist, provides a kind of "holding" environment for all the parts and bits that make up me. The scared little girl, the angry and confused teen, the anxious and needy adult. I can be all of these within the therapy room and know that I am still okay. I can be disproportionately angry, knowing that Jay will not retaliate. I can be the abused adolescent that learned she could make men do what she wants by using her body, without Jay ever taking advantage of me. I can be the sulky young girl who is too scared to show her vulnerability, knowing Jay will treat her with great care and respect.

And when therapy temporarily stops, it is as if there is no "holding" environment for all of me. I literally feel like I am disintegrating and falling to pieces. Swinging back and forth between being desperately needy and scared Jay will die (even though I know that is highly unlikely), and being defiant to mask that fear and neediness. Acting out for the mere sake of acting out and taking revenge. Wanting to cause him as much anguish as he is causing me, by refusing any interim help from him, hoping it will make him worry about my safety. And I know full well how childish these games are and how Jay deserves better and more of me, yet I can't seem to stop myself.

Jay is finding this disruption to our work as frustrating as I do and has offered to have regular phone contact. He has arranged a locum for me and he has told me I can email him as often as I like. And a small part of me desperately wants to hold on to that, while the rest of me thinks "it hurts so much not to have all of you, that I will make sure you cannot hurt me anymore, by pushing you as far away as I can". And I guess it is this part of the borderline behavior that often drives loved ones mad. The constant clinging onto and pushing away. The ever present “I hate you, don’t leave me”.

So there you go. When life throws me a curve ball, I do not seem all that different from the six year old girl I looked after at work today. She threw the biggest tantrum because she thought I was giving her older sister more attention than her. She stomped her feet and yelled at me, when what she really wanted was to sit down with me and play a game of “Agitation”. I guess in the same way I give Jay the silent treatment, when what I really want is for him to make the sad and the missing go away.

Today, though, I swallowed my pride and gave the locum Jay arranged for me a call. We have set an appointment for next week and I will try my hardest to give the guy a real chance. Hopefully seeing another professional will help reintegrate and soothe part of me, until I can resume therapy with Jay next year.

Wishing you all happy holidays.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

The Makings of a Borderliner

I have to admit I do not consider myself a regular borderliner. I do not know whether there is any truth to this or whether this is simply grandiosity on my side. When I read forums and message boards aimed at people with BPD I am disgusted by all the self pity and unaccountability. People blaming their BPD for them cheating on their spouses. Posting messages to the tune of “I went ballistic last night and I could see I was hurting my partner, but I just could not stop. That darn borderline.”

Of course I have those impulses. If things do not go my way, my first instinct is to stomp my feet, to throw things around the room and to hurtle insults at my husband, until he concedes and does as I say, if only to keep the peace. But, I choose not to act on that. I choose to talk to my husband and tell him I feel like throwing a tantrum. I choose to go out and take my car for a spin. I choose to ring Jay and tell him I feel like acting out. Anything, as long as it helps me get through the next few hours.

This has taken a lot of practice and a lot of hours spent in therapy. But I pride myself on having put so much effort into changing those behaviors that were problematic in my marriage. My husband and I are coming up to our three year anniversary and I cannot even remember the last time I threw a full scale tantrum. There is still some sulking every now and then. Still some extreme clinginess when I am sad or scared. But these emotions are so much easier to work with.

I have often wondered what “made” me borderline. Because I think we can all agree that borderliners are not born. I have yet to meet a borderliner that has had a carefree, stable, loving childhood free from any trauma, abuse and/or neglect.

When I started nannying and looking after babies and toddlers I was surprised by how similar my responses were to theirs. I often think that I am so good with children, not because of my nurturing and caring personality, but because I am so similar to them in my thinking and acting. I have their constant need for reassurance, for touch, for acknowledgment. When I get anxious I get the compulsive need to see and touch/cuddle my husband every few minutes, much like a toddler experimenting with her autonomy. Wanting to explore the world, yet needing to know her caregiver is still there. When I have had a rough day, I await the return of my husband anxiously, and need to be close to him for a good one to two hours, meaning literally being within a 2-3 meter proximity of him. I had previously attributed these things to just being part of my craziness, but noticed that these behaviors were very similar to the behaviors displayed by the 8 month old baby and the 26 month old toddler I was looking after.

This made me wonder, if rather than being crazy, there was a part of me that had not properly grown up yet.

I find it hard to consider this possibility as it automatically makes me feel ungrateful towards my parents. As if I would be blaming them for my acting out. It was always easier to say “that is just GI, she is crazy like that.”

But over the past year Jay and I have looked into my early childhood experiences. It has been scary, as well as kind of liberating.

Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder consists mostly of Linehan Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectal Behavioral Therapy (DBT). These therapies are centered around identifying irrational thoughts and dysfunctional behavior patterns. Recognizing that rather than these feelings, thoughts and urges coming “from nowhere” (as it always felt like to me) there is a chain of thoughts, feelings and events that precipitates the urge to act out. Once you can identify these links, therapy tries to teach you to intervene earlier on in the chain rather than later. In DBT they also teach you self-soothing techniques, distress tolerance strategies and emotion regulation.

These therapies go hand in hand with endless forms to fill out, analyses to write out whenever you have engaged in self-destructive behavior, diary cards to complete at the end of every day, etc. All the rules, forms and homework made me feel very controlled and in turn made me rebel. Jay can bear testament to me dragging my feet at every step, until we finally decided (after two years of fruitless DBT) that this was not working for me.

I do not think DBT and CBT do not work. I think they definitely have their place in the treatment of BPD, however, I think they are over-prescribed, and that not everyone fits these therapy models. I learned all the skills, all the strategies, and I knew exactly what to do when I felt like acting out. But this was not enough for me. I did not just want an action plan for the times I felt like hurting myself, I wanted the urges to go away completely. After three or four years of feeling like hurting myself more often than not, I felt very discouraged with DBT. If this was what my life was going to amount to, wanting to hurt myself most days, and then spending all of my energy trying to postpone that moment until it would eventually go away, only to have to repeat the whole process the very next day, then I would rather be a chronic self-harmer.

I can see how CBT and DBT can work for some people, but I wanted, I needed, to know why I was feeling these things. Why did I react so strongly to rejection and abandonment? Why could someone cancelling a meeting with me, send me into suicidal despair? Why did I rarely yell or express anger, but instead felt like tearing myself apart, wanting to feel the pain soar across my skin? Why did I sulk, much like a toddler, even though I was now a grown twenty-something year old woman?

I needed to know why. I did not need to know what to do once the feeling was there, I needed to know how it got there in the first place.

So over the last year or so, Jay and I have been looking at my early childhood.

I was a baby born six weeks early. I then spent the first two weeks of my life in an incubator, after which my mum signed me out of hospital against doctors’ recommendation. She was tired of driving up and down between home and the hospital (this was before mums were allowed to stay overnight if their baby was in hospital). I was home for four weeks, after which I was put in daycare, full-time. When I turned four, I started primary school. I was dropped off with a babysitter in the morning, who fed me breakfast and got me ready for school, picked me up again at the end of the day and looked after me until my mum picked me up around 6pm. I do not have very fond memories of this babysitter, nor are they overly negative. Over the next few years my younger sister and I went through a dozen or so babysitters, until, at eight years old, my parents deemed me old enough to walk myself home after school, let myself in, fix myself a snack and entertain myself until my dad came home around 6pm.

Do I remember this time as particularly lonely or scary? In short, no. I remember being proud that I was considered mature enough to have my own house-key. Could it be interpreted as neglect? Perhaps. But again, I want to stress this was not something I experienced as frightening or lonely.

It did mean that throughout my early childhood, I possibly could have suffered an attachment disorder, where I never properly bonded with one primary caregiver. I am all for daycare, but I consider a six week old baby too young to go into daycare for 50hours a week. I also don’t know how daycares were run in the eighties, but the daycare that I volunteered for three years ago, had one adult looking after six babies. No matter how loving and caring you are, the reality of looking after six babies is that, for most of the day, you are meeting their basic needs. You are changing nappies, preparing bottles, feeding, burping, putting to bed, and that leaves very little time for one-on-one bonding.

I was a high achiever all throughout primary school, middle school and junior high school. I scored top marks in most subjects, but rather than thriving on this success, my sense of self was tied up in my achievements. Therefore, a slightly less than perfect mark could shatter my self-esteem so completely, as I felt it rendered me a complete failure as a person.

Babies need to be able to form trust in their primary caregiver that their wants and needs will be met, that their distress will be comforted, and their pains will be soothed. Only by forming that trusting relationship, does the toddler learn to trust in herself. I cannot help think that this step was somehow missed in my development, as my sense of self has been very shaky ever since I can remember.

Of course there were other factors that added to this as well. I choose not to go into detail about that out of respect for my parents, as I believe they did the best they could with what they had.

But the realization that there was not something bad or crazy inside of me marked a turning point for me in therapy. Rather than literally wanting to cut and bleed the crazy badness out of me, I was able to feel compassion for the toddler I had once been. When I felt sad and was scared that the feeling would consume me, I was able to recognize that the part of me that thinks the sadness will never end, is a very young part. And that the adult inside me knows the sadness will go away eventually, and I will not fall apart or disintegrate because of it.
I think this was a vital step for me that was missed during my years of DBT and CBT. With all their forms and steps and techniques, nobody had ever sat down with me to look at why I constantly felt like hurting myself. Why were these urges there in the first place?

This is not to say that my urges to act out disappeared overnight. It is still hard sometimes and it still takes a lot of effort to resist the urge to hurt myself. But rather than it feeling like a never-ending battle, it feels like I am slowly allowing the young part of me to grow up and integrate with the rest of me. I can envision a time where I will be self-harm free. And most importantly, I can be gentle with myself. It is much easier to put effort into looking after myself, if I know it is merely the young part of me that needs nurturing, rather than putting effort into not hurting myself day after day after day without end in sight.

And over these last few weeks I have had to soothe that younger part of me a lot. Jay has had to cancel quite a few sessions over the last month or so due to illness, and I notice that a part of me feels like she’s falling apart. She’s scared Jay will never return, and that like many other people in her past, he will simply walk out of her life and vanish. This in turn makes me want to act out. (The borderliner in me is screaming “I will leave you before you leave me. You hurt me by cancelling sessions, so I will hurt you by hurting myself.”) But I’m trying hard to comfort the little girl inside me, and to keep myself from acting out. Instead I try to look after myself, I am enjoying my new job as an after school care supervisor, and I am hoping with all my might that Jay will have been restored to full health next week.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

I chose life

Writing seems to come easier to me when I am “up”, or happy, or angry, or defiant. Anything, but sad. And the last few weeks have been sad, although I would not be able to tell you quite why. The past few months have been spent trying to find ways of filling my days.

In a way it is easier to gain acceptance when you are crazy. When I was at the height of my depression and suicidality, all that people expected of me was to stay alive. I did not have to perform well at school, in fact, I did not have to attend school at all. I did not have to look for a job and I did not have to have a plan for the future. All that people wanted from me was to not kill myself. And seeing as I am sitting here writing, I succeeded.

But in a way it is almost harder to gain social acceptance now. People are okay with you not having a life when you are experiencing mental illness. But now that I am doing better and appear “cured” to the outside world, I can feel the pressure to be “normal”. To study, to have a job, to have a career, to have kids, to at least have some sort of a life plan. And every month that I stay home, not studying, not working, not being pregnant, I feel more and more inadequate. Almost wishing I could go back to being depressed and hurting myself, so that people would say “good on you for still even being here”.

It is not that I have not tried. I have attempted to find work as a nanny or babysitter. I have tried to fall pregnant, so that people would be okay with me staying home full-time and I have explored study options, but it all seemed too overwhelming. So instead I spent the last few months at home, sometimes only leaving the house to see Jay.

But somehow, between Jay, my husband and my close friends, I pulled through, and when I found out I was still not pregnant after almost a year of trying to conceive, I chose to explore other options for next year.

After a lot of talking and thinking, I decided to apply for the Diploma in Counselling – Children & Young People. I received the application pack last week and I have started gathering all the required documents and references. If everything goes well, I will hand in my application this Friday and I will then have to wait to be called for an interview.

But there was one thing nagging at the back of my mind. The contents of the bottom drawer of my nightstand. In that drawer was at least four years of careful collecting, stashed safely in empty coffee jars. My emergency exit, should I feel the need to.

In those coffee jars were 401 capsules of Efexor (an antidepressant), 268 pills of Quetiapine (an antipsychotic), 31 pills of Amitriptylene (a highly toxic trycyclic antidepressant) and a whole assortment of other antidepressants and tranquilizers.

Like a true borderliner, I was a master at manipulation. I knew just which symptoms to fake, what stories to tell, how long to wait before asking for something stronger as the current drugs were not working. I knew how to walk in to a doctor’s surgery, telling him I was new in town and looking for a new GP, but that I would like an introduction consult first, before enrolling in his practice (which of course, I never ended up doing). You would be surprised how many GPs are willing to prescribe you powerful psychiatric drugs, without knowing any of your mental health history and without having looked in your file, as long as you play the part of depressed young female well.

And even though I had not added pills to my stockpile for over a year, I found it almost impossible to part with my security blanket.

This posed a moral dilemma for me. How could I sign up for a Counselling course, while still holding on to my self-destructive past? How can I encourage young people while I refuse to let go of my emergency exit?

And I am aware that no-one at my course would know I have all these pills at home and there is no reason why anyone should ever find out. But I would know. And the closer I got to finishing my application forms, the more deceitful I felt.

Jay is very aware of my stockpile. But he has never pushed the issue. Every once in a while he might bring up that subject, but for the most part he leaves it up to me. Over the last four years he has said a few times he would like me to get to a point where I feel I can give my pills to him, or hand them over at a pharmacy.

And over the last week I have slowly come to the decision that it is time. That I am ready for a new chapter in my life and that that also means I will have to give up hanging on to this emergency exit. Because I have not been truly suicidal for years, yet knowing I had a way out, should I want to, felt comforting. But it is no longer needed as I chose life.

I chose life when returning to school two years ago. I chose life when I said “I do” to my husband. I chose life when we decided to start trying for a baby.

I chose life.

So on Monday night I gathered every stashed pill bottle in the house and emptied them all on the living room floor. As I saw my four years of hard work and hundreds of dollars spent on prescription fees and doctor’s visits, I felt sad.

I felt sad for the young girl that once felt so hopeless she thought she would never live to see 21. I felt sad for the young woman that felt so powerless that the only times she felt in control was when she was conning the medical profession into prescribing her drugs that she never planned on taking. I felt sad for the young wife that, despite her great life, still felt she had to hang on to her carefully collected stockpile of pills.

After reminiscing for a while and taking one last photo of my stash, I put them all in a bag, ready to take in to Jay the next morning.

As I made the one hour drive to Jay’s house in early morning traffic, I went back and forth between feeling ready to hand my pills over to him, and being very aware that once I do that, there is no going back. It would take years and years to get prescriptions for all those drugs.

I think Jay was pleasantly surprised by my gesture. We had not discussed my stockpile for months, so he had not expected this. As the session wore on we explored what my stockpile meant to me, symbolically. How this really feels like a new chapter in my life. This was also the first time I heard Jay express real concern about my stash of pills. That there had been a few times where he had been really worried about my safety, as I had left his office crying or stomping my feet. He knew I was not suicidal anymore, but he was scared what harm I might do to myself on impulse. I had never really considered this. That I might cause someone I care about worry or concern by hanging on to my security blanket.

I held on to my pills until the last possible moment. As I got ready to leave at the end of the session, I finally handed Jay my full bag of pills. He thanked me.

As I walked out, I felt a tiny twinge of regret. There was no going back now. I spent my drive home in silence, not wanting to hear the happy chatter of the radio. I felt slightly more grown-up. I felt like I was slowly letting go of that rebellious, defiant and deeply unhappy teenage girl.

And coincidentally, a few hours after my session with Jay, I got a call back from a lady who interviewed me for a position as an after school care program supervisor. It is a new program, with only five kids at present, but they are hoping to get more children in soon. The lady told me she called to offer me the job. She said that as soon as I had left after my interview, the kids had run up to her to tell her to pick me, because they liked me best. I accepted the job with a huge grin on my face and I will be starting next month.

It was as if the universe understood how hard letting go is for me and that in return I now have a part-time job, doing what I love best, working with children.

Yes, I choose life.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

Little Loons

I recently found a semi love letter when cleaning out my cupboards. Two pieces of cardboard, folded in half:


DONT SHOW ANY STAFF OR DONT READ

[On the inside of the first piece of cardboard:]

Dear Grasefuly Insane,

Sorry if ive might of freaked you out a bit but I really like you. I know that I might of been a bit worried about u, but only cause I really like you. And how you said your mum said you're not worth it, well if I were your family/father I would be so proud of you for attempting to try and help yourself. But im not the father so I can just think about you & me. I really like you and think your sexy, cool, intelegent and so COOL

P.S.
Write back, put it in my door tonight.

Like/love u

DONT SHOW ANYONE


[On the second piece of cardboard:]


SORRY WRITTEN IN DARK PEN BUT MEANINGS ARE THERE

DONT SHOW ANYONE

WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME

O YES O NO


It was sent by a hormonal 14 year old boy, Noah, second door across the hall from me. Both of us were prisoners of Little Loons. As our county's hospital only had an adult acute psychiatric ward, the local Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service preferred not to put their youngsters there. So if at all possible, we were sent to Little Loons, a kind of safe house for the more disturbed among us.

From the outside, Little Loons looked like a normal house, in a normal street. Its only give-away being the many cars that constantly drove in and out as staff members changed shifts, children were driven to their therapy appointments and parents arrived to see their sons and daughters. It catered to a maximum of five children at any one time and they made sure children with similar diagnostics were never housed together. (Druggie + anorexic = okay. Self-harmer + self harmer = not so okay.)

I was 18 when I was offered (forcibly made) a stay in there. I was quite ready to leave this life for the next and in trying to prevent this, my parents had become exhausted from monitoring me 24/7. As this was an acute admission, they only had a bed available for the next three days. Being the borderliner I am, I was furious for being locked up. As soon as I got out I tried, quite dramatically, to jump off a bridge. Very Hollywood-like. Three passersby saw me and called the police. After a bit of a chase (note to self: you cannot outrun a police car) I was grabbed by a police woman and taken into "protective custody". This remains my one and only trip in the back of a police car.

Needless to say, the very next day I was back at Little Loons.

My stay came complete with supervised showers, the handing in of all my belts, shoe laces and earrings, as well as the 15 min checks at night, where you are told to go to sleep and then get woken up by a night staff member entering your room every 15 minutes to make sure you are asleep.

When I was at Little Loons, Noah quickly formed a crush on me. I was flattered, but told him I was not his type. He assured me I was, as probably anything with two tits and an ass would be. Apart from sliding notes under my door, which staff had strictly forbidden him, he made sure we had our daily dose of in-house entertainment by pulling pranks on the poor students that had to take us out during the day.

During my stay I befriended Hot Girl. She was 16, anorexic and had the most gorgeous body. I could see why she might object to having to gain weight. Hot Girl had been admitted to Little Loons on and off for two years now, she told me. Every time she was below her minimum weight she was sent here to fatten up (there were no eating disorder clinics in our part of the country). As soon as her weight was back up she got released, only to be readmitted a few months later when she had lost all the weight.

Hot Girl was slightly wary of me until she learned I was 18 and could buy cigarettes and alcohol. I was soon regarded as "cool". As the only two girl inmates, we gravitated towards each other and quickly worked out a system where she would throw the biggest tantrum at dinner about not being hungry so I could self-harm in peace and quiet. And in return I would show staff one of my hidden razorblades and then refuse to hand it over if Hot Girl wanted to give in to her bulimic tendencies in the bathroom.

When checking in to Little Loons they searched my bags for razor blades and forbidden items (like knives, lighters, alcohol and cigarettes, but also things like spray on deodorants and perfumes, go figure). I had hidden razorblades in CD cases between the pages of the lyrics booklet, in between the double lining of my panties (obviously not the ones I was wearing) and in the battery compartment of my cell phone.

I took great pleasure in hurting myself at night, proudly showing the morning staff my handiwork, and then sit back and watch them turn my room upside down, while I had to wait in the living room...with my blades securely taped to the soles of my feet.

To pass time, Hot Girl and I would hold competitions to see which one of us could rack up the most incident reports in any one day. I think our record was four. In hindsight I can see we were a pain in the butt, yet I remember my time at Little Loons as "fun" mostly. A place where I could act out my craziness without repercussions. Where I could be angry and sad without feeling guilty towards my family that they had to endure yet another one of my tantrums.

At Little Loons we had two night shift guys. Creepy and Sleepy. They rotated on a weekly basis, so that one week we'd have Creepy supervise us from 10.30PM until 7AM, and the following week we'd have Sleepy to keep us company at night. Sleepy was by far our favorite. He was supposed to stay awake all night, but consistently fell asleep in front of the television between 2AM and 3AM. This was about the time I'd get out of bed, have a rummage through the kitchen, self-harm for a little while and have a cuddle with Puss-Puss the housecat, before returning to my room. Creepy was harder to trick, and neither I nor Hot Girl liked being around him.

During the day the house was staffed with two people at any one time, one male and one female. Sometimes these were qualified social workers, most of the time, though, they were third year psychology students. The latter were my favorite as they were more gullible. Quite idealistic still, and therefore more prone to believing you when telling them you would just like to take an unsupervised shower and you promise you will not get up to no good.

After three weeks I was sent home again, with the threat of a planned longer stay so my shrink could work more intensely with me. As my family and I moved three days after my release, this never happened.

The lessons I learned at Little Loons?

Blue-top milk contains more calories than orange-top milk. And no matter how hard an anorexic patient will try to convince the staff that orange-top milk contains extra vitamins, they will still make you drink blue-top milk.

Getting Night Shift Guy in trouble by telling the day shift you really did not mean to hurt yourself, that you even tried to talk to Night Shift Guy for support but he was asleep, is surprisingly satisfying.

I learned that cats like no other beings on earth, can make you feel at home in a strange bed.

The cactus plant in the kitchen windowsill is not all that well suited for self-harm purposes.

But most of all I learned that, despite my preconceived notions, it was nice and almost familiar to hang out with other people "like me". For once not having to feel like the odd one out.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

The Interview

HGL: Hi, I am here for the home-educator interview. My name is Happy-Go-Lucky. I have one year of part-time experience looking after under 5's. I am able to look after your son five days a week, although on Tuesdays and Fridays I am not available until after 10AM. Why, you ask? I go to physiotherapy twice a week for an hour. I had a nasty fall a few weeks back and my lower back is not yet quite what it is supposed to be. Aaw, is this three year old Jason? What a cutie, I know we will get along great.

FFH: Hi, I am here for the home-educator interview. My name is Fresh-From-High school. I am new to babysitting and therefore unavailable on Tuesday and Friday mornings, as I do my Early Childhood Education training on those mornings. But other than that I am available five days a week and I am really looking forward to caring for your son. Is this three year old Jason? What a cutie, I am sure we will get along just great.

Me: Hi, I am here for the home-educator interview. My name is Gracefully Insane. I have four years of part-time as well as full-time babysitting experience with under 5's. I am available five days a week, although on Tuesdays and Fridays I am not available until after 10AM. Why, you ask? I see a private psychotherapist twice a week for an hour. Oh, you would like to have a think about this? Of course, shall I ring you tomorrow to have a chat? Ok, of course I can wait until your call. Thanks for taking the time to meet with me.

Of these three fictional characters, I am the one least likely to get this job, which always poses a moral dilemma for me. Do I tell them why I am unavailable? Do I lie? Do I say "physiotherapy" and later on, when they have been able to see how great a nanny I am, I tell them I see a psychotherapist and that they must have misunderstood me to think I am seeing a physiotherapist. Am I deliberately vague and say I see a health practitioner those mornings but I would prefer not to go into detail?

Apparently you can be a great nanny or babysitter while also being diabetic, or having only one arm, or speaking close to no English at all. Yet having any form of mental health concerns almost always excludes me from the game. The parents whose kids I have looked after will tell you I was great. They will recount stories of me taking their kids to the beach, to the park, doing arts projects with them, as well as practicing manners and self-sufficiency. They will tell you how much their kids loved me and how sad our goodbyes were. They would be able to show you numerous drawings and paintings bearing testament to me once having been an important part of these kids' lives. But to get these jobs I have always had to talk my way around my mental health issues. I have had to cover up my arms with long sleeves for at least the first six weeks of any new nanny job and I have had to make up stories or be deliberately vague about the hours spent at Jay's office every week.

Because no matter how politically correct we think we are and no matter how accepting we are of those with mental health issues, we would still rather they stick to their own kind, especially when it concerns our children. I am not debating the fact we should be careful about who we allow to be in charge of our kids, but it seems that seeing a shrink or having scars on my arms that are quite clearly the result of self-inflicted cuts automatically makes me an unfit babysitter. After people find out I am in therapy, it suddenly does not matter anymore that I have great teaching skills, or that I am caring, loving and consistent, or that I just have a real affinity for kids. Nor does my experience as a babysitter and after-school care nanny matter. After all, a person so deranged she injures herself deliberately (and clearly she has not been cured yet, seeing as she is still in treatment with a shrink, twice a week even!) cannot ever be a good caregiver or make sound judgments when it comes to providing quality care for babies and toddlers.

I had an interview last week with a family who is looking for care for their three year old son, five afternoons a week. So there were no issues about whether I can or cannot provide care during the morning hours when I see Jay. I was careful to wear a long-sleeved shirt and put on my happiest smile. Hopefully they will give me a chance to prove myself and if, along the way, they find out I see Jay, or their son comes home telling them about GI's "stripes" on her arm, they will by then have judged me to be a competent babysitter and it will not be as important. Because really, there is so much more to me than just being a borderliner, if only I am given half a chance.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

Today I cried

[...]I'm not crying
It's just been raining, on my face
And if you think you see some tear tracks down my cheeks
Please. Please, don't tell my mates
I'm not crying
No, I'm not crying
And if I am crying
It's not because of you [...]

"I'm not crying" by Flight Of The Conchords

Today felt like a significant day. After more than three years with Jay (and probably well over 200 sessions), I cried with him for the first time. I have struggled so hard to keep myself from losing it. To keep myself from falling apart. Yet today the little girl inside me curled up in the waiting room, with her Pooh Bear clutched close to her chest, barricading herself in the corner with two chairs, refusing to get up and enter the therapy room.

And I cried.

And cried.

And Jay bore with me.

He sat down on the remaining chair and respectfully allowed me my space by not looking directly at me and staying well away from my line of vision. We talked and we were quiet, and as the tears subsided I could feel myself slowly being reformed. I had dreaded this moment for months, years even, for fear of falling apart and not being put back together.

It is hard to explain the disintegration I so dread. A feeling unlike any other. As if someone picked up an eraser and started to slowly wipe me out of existence. They start at my feet, disconnecting me from the world around me. I can feel myself floating and I know that I have to stop them from erasing me entirely, for if I am erased completely I will never be able to come back. I will not be able to reform and people will never be able to connect to me again. From the time they have erased my feet, the anxiety mounts and starts to rapidly rise to an unmanageable level. I have to keep them from erasing me fully, thus panic starts setting in. I have to stop them, I need to stop them. I frantically search for my razorblades, my fingers trembling as I try to unwrap a fresh blade. I press it into my skin and drag the blade across. And only then, when I feel the sharp, stabbing pain and see the red crimson bubble up from my newly made incision, can I feel myself being put back together. I can feel my feet on the ground, I notice my surroundings, and the panic slowly subsides with every new cut.

For this reason I only ever cry when I am by myself (so I can self-harm to ground myself) or when my partner is home (so he can ground me). I do not allow other people to see me cry because I'm scared I won't be able to put myself back together in time. My partner knows how to contain me, knows when to let me throw things around the room, when to let me hit him, when to let me bang my head against the wall. And he also knows exactly when to hug me, when to wrap his arms around me so I can't move, how long to hold me for before he lets go, in short, how to put me back together.

Neither of these two options can be used when I'm with Jay. He obviously won't let me hurt myself and professional boundaries prevent him from holding me and hugging me. This is what I feared most. That if I would start to fall apart during a session, I would disappear, for Jay wouldn't be able to glue the pieces back together in time for me to leave in one piece.

And yet today, this is exactly what seems to have happened.

While I was waiting in his waiting room (and at times like these I count myself lucky Jay has a private practice at his house, so there is no-one else but me sitting there) I could feel myself starting to fall apart. I could feel the tears in my eyes, could feel my pulse rise and my breathing quicken. I tried hard to push back the tears, but today my body would not listen. I tried to hold my breath and tense every muscle in my body to keep the tears in, but today my tried and tested method failed me.

As the tears started falling, I could feel myself grow smaller. In wanting to protect the little me, I slid off my chair, onto the floor. Dragged the heater across from me, and barricaded myself behind two chairs and one coffee table, safely shielded from view, where my quiet sobs would neither be ridiculed, nor punished. And when Jay walked in to get me for my session, he just sat down and was gentle with the little girl sobbing on the floor and "held" her as much as he could, from one chair away.

Today, I cried.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

World War III

After my rather unfortunate experiences at high school, followed by some minimum wage factory work, I decided it was time to exercise the old brain. Last July I signed up for a Certificate in Social Services, which should eventually lead me into a Diploma in Counselling.

Cliché, I know. The patient wanting to become the helper. I have no intention though, of working with people “like me”. I’d love to become a child psychotherapist one day, and work with young kids with behavioral problems. This interest has sprung forth from my part-time work as an after-school care nanny. But that is a blog for another time.

On my very first day at school, I was grouped together with 24 other students. We were all doing the certificate in hopes of either gaining entry into a Social Work qualification or a Counselling qualification. So these were all people wanting to “help” people. I could already see which of them were a walking God-complex in the making. Those that talk about the mentally ill as “them”. Then there was the group of people that just didn’t know what to do with their lives, and this certificate was a short-term commitment, so not too much of a risk. There were those that were well into their adulthood and had decided to make a 180 degree career change. And then there was me. A bit of an outsider. Wearing long sleeves to hide my disturbing personality, and trying my hardest just to blend in.

On these first days they always try to make the group “bond” with exercises that force us to “meaningfully” interact. The exercise we got stuck with was called the “Bomb Shelter Exercise”. The gist of the exercise was this:

World War III is raging all around you. Nuclear bombs are detonated left, right and center. You are a high official and are safely tucked away in a bomb shelter along with other important people (your group members). A group of 10 survivors knocks on your door. They all want to take refuge in your shelter. The problem is, there is only enough space, food and water for another 6 people. These 10 people leave it up to you, the high officials, to decide who these 6 will be. So in your groups you must decide which 6 people you will take on, and which 4 you will basically leave to die. Keeping in mind that these 6 people might be the ones that have to repopulate the whole earth.

This is all you know of the 10 people waiting impatiently outside your shelter:

* 16-year-old pregnant girl, low IQ

* 75-year-old clergyman

* 28-year-old ex-policeperson. Kicked out of police force for aggressive behavior. Not willing to give up their gun

* 42-year-old female physician, can no longer have children

* 36-year-old violinist, served 8 months in jail for drug related charges

* 38-year-old prostitute, has been retired for five years.

* 22-year old black militant

* 25-year old lawyer, married, refuses to be separated from his wife.

* 26-year old wife of lawyer, spent last 10 months in a mental hospital, heavily sedated, refuses to separate from her husband

* 52-year old architect

So the whole point of this exercise was to show us how we stereotype. How everyone would probably think that the militant was a man, the violinist was a woman, etc.

But something far more interesting emerged. For me it was obvious we would at least take on the pregnant girl, the doctor, and the young couple that seems very committed to each other and are young enough to still have tons of kids. But I was very alone in that opinion. My group was very opposed to taking on the “loony”. “She’s fresh from the loony bin, probably psychotic, she might kill us all.” “Yeah, she’s too much of a liability.” “What if she gets aggressive?” “If she is sedated she probably came from the isolation cell.”

I was taken aback by how much opposition arose from the simple fact that this woman has spent 10 months in a mental hospital. People end up there for numerous reasons. And if you take a closer look, most of them are not aggressive and won’t be psychotic. But I was soon outvoted by all my group members and just like that, the lawyer and the loony died during World War III.

When we came back into the classroom, every group got to read out whom they had decided to let into their shelter. I was gobsmacked to find out every single group had voted lawyer and loony out. They were letting a young couple that obviously love each other very much, die, because they were scared the wife might go bananas. When this was discussed everyone was very much in agreement she was just too much of a risk.

As a borderliner undercover, I felt very uneasy. I should have said something, but didn’t, not wanting to give away my cover. I am ashamed to say that the prejudices my classmates were holding up of people like me, were the same prejudices that stopped me from speaking up about how ridiculous it is that this class full of social science students is scared of people suffering from a mental illness. I was scared that, like the lawyer’s wife, I too would be shunned and left to die.

In that classroom was the next generation of mental health professionals. And they had already bagged, labeled and thrown out our future loonies.

What is to become of the next generation of borderliners when tomorrow’s mental health professionals have already written them off?

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

My Jay

Jay is my shrink.

I have to admit, he is ok as far as therapists go. He doesn’t seem to suffer as much from the God-complex as most shrinks do. It is a disorder very prominent in medical and psychiatric practitioners, which causes the sufferer to believe he or she is inherently superior to most other people. Not unlike people suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, these practitioners believe they are “special” and unique, and that they can only be understood by other “special” people, namely, other shrinks and docs.

Although Jay has his moments where I can feel him slipping into his God-mode, he is usually able to maintain a fairly equal relationship with me, which is quite refreshing after my last dozen or so shrinks.

We met at a seminar.

Jay is a self-proclaimed expert when it comes to patients with BPD and self-harm behavior. I had never met any professional that has a good understanding of what it feels like to be a cutter, so I was going along for the ride. One thing I love (and that I get away with, since any obnoxious, provoking or society-deemed-unacceptable behavior is subscribed to me being a borderliner, and therefore I “can’t help myself”) is putting mental health professionals on the spot. Outsmarting them. Beating them at their own game.

As soon as I walked into the room, I took one look at him and I knew he was no match for me. He looked late thirties, blonde, and, well, tiny. Like too many thought-provoking questions might just blow him over. He didn’t smile. In fact, he had an air of arrogance about him. I thought, “Here we go. A therapist with a dozen or so degrees, masters and what not, thinks he is going to teach us, the layman, about his area of expertise”. I was wearing a sleeveless top. On purpose. To expose what he would surely recognize as my borderline acting out.

But as he started talking, I was genuinely surprised. He kind of did know what he was talking about, although it was still from a “I am the therapist and I am discussing a patient” point of view. But he wasn’t as patronizing and belittling when it came to discussing borderliners as most shrinks are.

Since I was getting bored with my then-therapist (we must have had over eight sessions, so time to move on), I stayed back after the seminar, and chatted with Jay. We made an agreement to catch up after the Christmas holidays, somewhere in February 2007.

And that was how it was settled.

For two whole years I have allowed him to have a look into my head on a weekly basis, and we are about to start our third year. Before Jay, my longest therapeutic relationship had been about six months, and it ended horribly with both the therapist and I unable to let go of each other. So after that had ended I had resolved to never let myself get that attached to a shrink ever again.

I do not know what changed. I guess in my file it would say that I am getting better, although I don’t see being a borderliner as an illness, and therefore feel no need to recover from it.

The reason I am writing about Jay is that he is on holiday for six weeks. I see him twice a week, so that adds up to twelve sessions he is making me miss.

The borderliner in me knows exactly what to do.

I refuse to have any contact with him at all. I will not write him and I will not accept any post cards from him. I will not make use of any crisis numbers and I refuse to do any kind of therapeutic work during his break (such as keeping track of “my emotions”). If I want to make him feel the full brunt of my wrath, I will make sure that I end the last session before his break, prematurely. I will be silent for the first half of the session, which will be followed by a full-scale tantrum, after which I will walk out. This should have him worried about my mental stability while he is sipping cocktails on some tropical beach. During his break I will indulge in any form of self-destruction I please. When he comes back I will give him a detailed report on how much, how often, and how badly I hurt myself, after which I will say I don’t feel like talking about it. I will then spend about three or four sessions in silence, making him work for his money. By this time he should feel inadequate, incompetent and defeated. Self-doubt is slowly creeping into his thoughts about whether he handled saying goodbye to me for six weeks right, and he is starting to get desperate. All the while, I will be enjoying watching him try and try again, and fail miserably every time.

Yet it seems I can’t do this to him anymore (I have done this to him numerous times over the last two years). Nobody has ever stuck by me for this long, so he deserves a little credit for that.

Shrinks are always trying to sell you this idea, that the perfect revenge for therapeutic abandonment is showing your therapist you don’t need him at all, by spending breaks completely self-harm free. They try to make you feel as if that would be the worst thing you could do to them, because it would show them you don’t need them.

Every borderliner knows this is crap.

They want you not to hurt yourself, and they’ll try to achieve it by any means possible. Real revenge is ending up in hospital while your shrink is away, or the ultimate, killing yourself.

I know all this, but despite that, I am into the third week of his leave, and I haven’t done a single self-destructive thing yet. I have thought about it. Fantasized about it. Maybe I should cut myself twelve times, once for every session he missed. Or maybe once for the first session, then twice for the second session, three cuts for the third session, etc. Or I could cut it back to six times (no pun intended), once for every week he missed.

But there is something stopping me, and I haven’t quite figured out what. Some days I swing back and forth between hating him and missing him.

I think one of the hardest emotions to feel is sadness. I have tried everything over the years to numb feeling sad. I hang on to anger, because if you are angry you don’t have to feel sad. Sadness is such a passive emotion, it kind of just washes over you to a point where I sometimes feel it will consume me. Anger, on the other hand, is very active, you are in control. To avoid feeling sad, I have also hurt myself so I could get high on my natural opiates, which pretty much block out anything I was feeling before that. I have tried my hand at drugs, party pills, and concocting dangerous cocktails consisting of tranquillizers, sleep meds, painkillers, and whatever else was in my cupboard. All this in an effort to avoid feeling the one emotion that scares me. Sadness.

I don’t know what it is about being sad that I hate. It seems like such a weak emotion. You are all over the place, it is icky with all the crying and tears, and it shows how vulnerable you are. And when you are vulnerable, people can take advantage of you. Perhaps it is that fear that makes me scared of being sad. The feeling that people will take advantage of me once they see me at my weakest.

In the two years I have known Jay, I have tried so hard not to ever cry during our sessions. Sometimes I make him leave the room and wait in the waiting room, so I can compose myself. Even though I know he knows I have been crying, I can at least hang on to the fact he didn’t actually see me crying.

And even now, in the comfort of my own home, I find myself fighting to hang on to anger instead of allowing myself to say “I miss Jay and I look forward to seeing him again in a few weeks”.

So I still haven’t got that one quite figured out yet. To be angry or sad. To be emotional or depressed. To act or to experience.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI