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 I am so clingy one moment and so withdrawn the next.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.

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