GETTING RELEIF

We have friends and neighbors whose children died from overdoses at home, turning the home into a crime scene. Another friend’s son shot himself, so the parents were unable to view the body. The three examples in the paper that I listed yesterday encapsulated some of my worst fears for Andrew and me while he was alive.

That he might end up in prison, that he might accidentally injure another person. Once, the police arrested Andrew for driving the wrong way down a busy highway after medicating himself for sleeplessness.

           I was so thankful that he was not injured and that no one else had been hurt, but very anxious that this might happen again. Talking to Andrew after this incident,  I knew that he would not intentionally take such a risk. I was also aware that with the severity of Andrew’s symptoms, sometimes getting relief was the only priority.  

LIFE BY MISADVENTURE

      I did not think it would be possible to feel lucky in relationship to Andrew’s death. After reading about the horrors of other people’s stories, I feel grateful and relieved that Andrew was never violent except in the end to himself.

      Andrew’s method of suicide seemed more thoughtful of himself and of us. His death was not even ruled a suicide because at the time of initial investigation no note had been found.

      The police report read death by misadventure. On the other hand, was it life by misadventure?

WHY DO PEOPLE COMMIT SUICIDE?

IN THE NEWSPAPER

     On the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer of July 28, 2011 there was an article about three schizophrenic men. A 46 year old was in prison for responding violently to taunting, actions that he does not remember the next day. His 75-year-old father is the first to admit that his son did wrong but says he needs to be in a hospital and not a prison.  A 23-year-old man fatally stabbed his parents and twin brother. The third, a 17 year old, attacked his policeman father with a hunting knife and after a struggle, the father shot him with his service revolver.

     I was so sad for these families and so grateful that Andrew’s disease did not take these paths.

HEARING IS HEALING.

I guess it is not really doing less. It is more about being available to others, to notice things, to speak with them and to myself.

 It is a stretch to search for resonance with others’ feelings and to have patience, and to appreciate how they are different from me. Because this is not my default setting, it often requires great discipline of me.

I am encouraged to keep practicing by my increasing awareness of how wonderful it feels to have more options for myself. My normal reaction is to listen long enough to offer a response that has more to do with me than them. It is often about what I know and what I can tell others.

My dream personality is to be comfortable enough with my own frailty to allow others theirs without having to fix it. Not to have to say everything that comes into my head, not having to move quickly, to be able to be still and really hear my complete self and others. Hearing is healing

THE VALUE OF PRODUCTIVITY

       I am tracking my accomplishments mentally and judging my productivity automatically much as I have my entire life. 

      The difference is now I am wondering if a better choice might be is to see if I can be still and without a production schedule. Will I still have value to people if I am not doing or producing?   

        I suspect the answer is that my value to others and myself may actually decline in response to my need to be doing and conversely rise as I am able to find peace just being, without looking to how productive I am.

A GOOD USE OF MY TIME

I know that for much of the last two and a half years I have not felt much of anything except a growing desire to leave my job. I had no interest in pursuing clients, no interest in dealing with the daily rejection of a sales job. Really, no energy or enthusiasm for discovering the next client or the next job and feeling terrorized by having to go in to work every day with people I loved being with and not being able to do my job well.

         The only real peace I felt was when I was away from work and with my grandchildren who are completely distracting. Even physically overwhelming at times.  Now that I am out of work and home with time to think, read, and write all this down, it turns my contemplation to the question,  what is a valuable or good use of my time?

AT HOME IN MY BODY

     How does the body heal? While I sometimes feel anguish in my body as aches or pains, usually it is more allusive. Like right now, I have a pain in my left arm and an off and on tightness in my chest. Just how is the body/mind complex working in me?      
     How much of what I am experiencing is the result of habits learned and refined over a lifetime of living and defending myself against real and perceived threats? How much of it is aging –a body that is less able to withstand the chronic stress and punishment that my coping mechanisms require?

      How much is directly the result of Andrew’s life, his suffering, his death. The knowledge that I will never see him again and all that will never be; these things that I am often not conscious of but of course my body is always unconsciously dealing with and trying to keep me well. 

     Is my main physical thrust healing, growing,surviving or being overwhelmed or transcending ? I cannot even tell you that. 

A STEP TOWARD HEALING

I told John about seeing Andrew jump from the train trestle in my dream. His face grimaced and he said, “That’s horrible. “  We sat together for a while not talking and then he said he could not get the image out of his mind.

          I asked him if he remembered Jan telling us about not being able to get the image of her husband out of her mind until she owned each detail. He did not remember but it seemed to give him some relief.  

         He said, “Maybe this is a step toward healing”.  

ANOTHER DREAM

I had another short dream that I was watching Andrew jump off the train trestle, landing with full impact, feet first, and crumpling. His great height compacted by the impact of his fall but otherwise he was not disfigured.

In the dream, I wanted to turn away but I did not. I recalled when I went to my first Survivors of Suicide meeting, our leader, Jan, described finding her husband who had hung himself in their home. She said that when she closed her eyes she always saw him hanging in front of her, forcing her to open her eyes. 

   

     After her husband  had been dead for a while, she decided to continue looking at his image until she could own every detail of it and then it seemed to lose its terror for her. I felt this way in my dream today.

            I felt that I could look at Andrew’s fall and see it in a detail I was never able to conjure up before. I hoped that he did not feel anything, that the force of the ground caused him to sever his spinal cord and leave him instantly pain free. I hope that is what happened. 

ASKING FOR A DREAM

 I had requested a dream the last time I spoke with Andrew at his tree.  I asked to know where he was and how he was doing. Not long after I made this request I dreamed that Andrew and I were at a juncture on a beach path. Andrew was walking away from the beach and I was about to turn toward the beach. He looked at me and seemed to be saying with his body, “what are you doing here? I can’t hang out with you”.

I just stood there staring at him. A day or so later I was reviewing this dream and realized that  Andrew is going in a different direction than me, he away from the water, or feeling and me toward it. 

MORE OPTIONS

Andrew’s dying has made me question anew all my assumptions about life and death. I believe it has made me question what I do not have control over and what I do.

 In some ways, it seems I have more options when it comes to reacting  to my physical aches and pains and to my feelings and less understanding of why I feel the way I do in the first place.

Since Andrew died,  I have become much more aware of the tension that I hold in my body. I have learned that some deep breathing will center me and ease some of the tension I feel. I am also aware of greater toleration for what others are saying or doing. I have not learned how to give my body a much needed break by limiting the amount of anxiety that I somatize in many different ways

 I seem to have less of a need to react verbally. I am sometimes more able to just be with others and have as much compassion as I can muster for them and myself.

     Any increase in self-awareness and anxiety management is great. I hate to think that it came at the cost of Andrew’s death. 

NO TIGER AT THE WATERING HOLE

At one point, I thought that everything is a choice. Now I wonder if much of what feels like a conscious choice is really a rationalization that occurs a nanosecond after our unconscious physiology reacts to the incredibly complex information coming at us at unfathomable speed, intricacy, and diversity.

 The unconscious allows me to take it all in, processing at lightning speed, and often leaves me with the feeling that I am in control, in charge.

     When I feel angry or annoyed over a problem, am I already angry and the problem situation  gives me a place to go with my anger, my defensive energy. 

     
     This life force challenges me constantly. I cannot live without it but I often do not know what to do with it now that there is no a tiger at the watering hole. 

DO WE HAVE CHOICES

We know for sure that we may never know for sure. Maybe that is good. It leaves us with an unknown to be curious about and the freedom to learn and change, as we grow old with this loss.

     I used to believe that we are what we believe. I still believe that is true, but what we believe may not be so simply the result of our rational conscious neural interactions but may be determined largely by our inborn neurochemistry. What neurotransmitter dominates in our unique physiology and why does it dominate.         

      Do we have a choice or are we more at the mercy of our neurochemical heritage. It feels like we have choices. 

THE HORSE WHISPERER

John and I saw a movie last night called Buck. This was the life story of the original horse whisperer who describes his brutally abusive young life with his alcoholic father. He talks about using his knowledge of how he felt living in terror to understand how horses feel when humans try to break them. He felt that he had a true sense of the horse’s feelings and reactions because of his own suffering.

In one particularly moving scene a women brings a young colt to one of Bucks clinics because he bites and kicks anyone who comes near him. This colt was orphaned during a difficult birth during which he was deprived of oxygen. He was eventually revived and hand raised by his owner. In the end, Buck recommends that the young horse be put down because he is so volatile and unpredictable.

In the movie, he scolds his audience with his view that the problem horse always has problem human handler (s).  I thought, “maybe the horse was not able to tolerate contact due to altered brain chemistry caused by his birth hypoxia”.

I found myself thinking defensively and with compassion about the owners in this movie, much as I do about my parents and myself.  Did we pass along bad genes and make bad decisions unconsciously that allowed us to replicate our family of origin or did Andrew’s suffering come from a prenatal injury related to maternal rejection syndrome or both or neither. For that matter, what causes the Maternal Fetal Rejection Syndrome and who thought up that name? 

OUTSIDE HELP

     I certainly can see the possibility that, in some ways, I may have been  duplicating unconsciously, my parent’s tragic loss of a son who spent years suffering with drug and alcohol abuse and in the end died alone in a hospital at 32. 

   When I was younger I sometimes blamed my parents for not getting Mike help, seeing him as delinquent rather than sick. 

     Now I am unsure if there is always help or a treatment that works. Or if there is something someone else can do for us, outside our readiness to be helped.



    

WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT?

     These days I am definitely coming down on the side of abilities/disabilities and these two cases may illustrate my question. Said another way, “How much credit can we take for both the good and bad that we experience. 

     There is so much we do not know about the mind and how it works. What is driving our behavior, our choices, and the outcome of these? 

     How much of who we are and who we are to become is a result of our careful decision making? How much of it is driven by our unconscious selves and our inherited genes, resources,biases, innate health, wellness, disabilities and capabilities? 

ANOTHER SUICIDE

The second story is of the Madoff family. According to Diane Henrique’s, The Wizard of Lies, for much of his sons lives Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme that allowed them to live and work in a prestigious environment. When Bernie was forced to tell his sons that his business was failing and that it had all been a fraud, the two sons reacted quite differently in the immediate aftermath and in the years that followed.

Andrew Madoff, the youngest son sat on the floor and cried when he first heard from his father that their entire business was a fraud; Mark the eldest raged at his father. While both sons consulted an attorney about how they should proceed with the knowledge of their father’s crime, Andrew was able to hug his father after his tears. Mark just continued with his anger. While neither son was ever indicted or even the official target of an investigation, they lived different lives after the arrest and imprisonment of their dad.

Both men complied with their attorney’s advice to sever all ties with their parents. Andrew continued to use the name Madoff and he his fiancé formed an organization to help others respond to crisis. Mark, on the other hand, changed his name, as did his wife and children. He continually struggled with the guilt by association and felt that no one believed that he had no previous knowledge of his father’s crimes and took no part in them. He eventually committed suicide.

 Here are two brothers who had similar upbringings, and worked in the same family business, had access to the same family resources and yet one is able to move on with his life and the other ended his. Is this because we each have different innate abilities/disabilities, or different experiences, relationships?  

WHO WE BECOME CON'T.

 Just recently a couple of stories have caught my eye because of the different paths peoples lives have taken despite having a lot in common. The first is the story of two baseball players, both left handed pitchers, who played on the same team, who were roommates and fraternity brothers.  Frank Fitzpatrick writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer tells their story. Here is my condensed version.

Steve Gardner was offered $50,000 to play for the Chicago White Sox while still in high school. He was the starting pitcher on USC varsity team and the 1960 college player of the year. After graduation, he went directly to triple A ball for the Dodgers. Pat Gillick was also a good player but always played second string to Steve. Pat’s forte was his mind trap for anything baseball—a whiz at studying and knowing competitive statistics. Pat was good enough to get a major league contract playing for the Baltimore Orioles.

Both men were injured and could not continue playing. Steve’s injury occurred while he was in the army and Pat’s while playing in triple A ball.  After the injuries, these men’s lives took dramatically different paths.

          Pat was quickly promoted to the front office, first as a scout and then as General Manager, leading three different teams to the World Series and finally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Garner struggled after his injury and was never able to perform at a star level and eventually the Dodgers dropped him from the team. 

         Not playing baseball he grew more and more miserable and finally took his life in the USC stadium. He shot himself surrounded by his diploma and his All American Award. 

WHO WE BECOME

I was listening to a book on tape called the Social Animal and I had a strong reaction to the way the author, David Brooks, described the formation of a new human being, particularly the mind.

His impression, after surveying the existing research and literature was more of a Tableau Rosa.

He gives voice to the fact that we are largely our unconscious selves made manifest. His belief seems to stem from the fact that life is simply too complex and coming at us too fast to rely solely on our conscious minds. 

Is there more to who we become. How much say do we have in who we become. It seems to me a mysterious combination of  genes, choice, chance, cultural memes, the historical period into which we are born and the people and events of our lives. 

What role does mental illness play?

SO UNLIKE ANDREW

     I mentioned before the essay that Andrew wrote for his college application. It was candid and heartfelt. 

     He once wrote a short story for school about how ants became ants. It was such a clever creation myth that the teacher had accused him of plagiarizing it. John and I had watched him write it so we knew it was his work. 

     I actually understood the teacher’s reaction a bit because I was so impressed with his originality. When he came home from school with the teachers note, I assured him he had nothing to worry about—we would go to bat for him. 

     We said, “Look at it this way-your teacher must have been really impressed to have come to her conclusions.” Andrew was able to shrug it off. 

     His temperament was so easy going and understanding. That is why his delusions were so hard. His voices were primarily belittling and degrading as well as relentless. 
So unlike Andrew. 

A VERY GOOD WRITER

     I have been reading a memoir about the death of someone’s young wife. The author has been spending the last two years going through her papers and discovering her anew. 
     It made me jealous that I do not have more of Andrew in a computer or a box somewhere that I can go to and try to know him better as Andrew was a very good writer.

WE ARE ALL IN ADEQUATE IN THE FACE OF SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESS

When people close to Andrew including Marnie and Eileen found out Andrew’s diagnosis, they were furious with me for not telling them. 

I guess I thought they knew what I meant when I used the word delusional to describe Andrew’s illness. 

They had been around him enough to know that he was not his old self, at least some of the time. 

My neighbor Lynn was also upset with me and said how inadequate she felt. “Me too, I said, when it comes right down to it we are all inadequate in the face of serious mental illness.” 

ANDREW FELT LIKE HE WAS HEARD.

After Andrew received that new diagnosis, he did not want us to talk about it. We respected that and never told anyone. 

I assumed he told Marnie and Eileen but it turns out he never did. In the last six months of his life, when he was living with Eileen and Rich, he was telling them what was happening at work and they thought that what Andrew was describing were his real experiences. They had no idea that he was describing his delusions.

Rich and Eileen were trying to coach him on how to handle tough bosses. Of course, to Andrew it was what was happening to him, it was real. 

He often told me he learned a lot from Rich and Eileen. They took him at his word because they had no other frame of reference. 

Andrew felt like he was heard by Rich and Eileen

NOT GETTING IT

Andrew had no ability to moderate his delusions. Perhaps he was never able to see them as "not real", as something generated by the disease within his own mind.  He did not feel he had any control over the voices.

Both John and I tried to discuss with him  some skills he may be able to learn to modify the voices.  Andrew immediately dismissed the idea that he had any control over the voices and again accused of us of not “getting it”.

I am sure now how little we really understood about what he was withstanding day in and day out. We offered Andrew only what we knew and it was not a good fit for him regarding how he dealt with the delusions.