I did not have a good sleep last night. Sheba has a phobia of bees and flies and there is a big noisy fly in our house. Early last night she panicked, ran to the back door and I let her out. She would not come back in the house, but I had to get her in when I went to bed, and all night she was pacing and keeping me awake with worry. Sigh. But we all slept in late thank goodness. I slept until 5:00.
There was very good news for me, though. Pinecone Park got through all the recent storms and weather alerts without a power failure. I’m so glad of that because I always feel ill at ease when the power is off, and I don’t like cooking on the barbeque when it is cold and wet outside.
I Sent Dr. Shoja my diary that I began when I had the first violent seizure on Oct. 22, so she’d have it to read when our Zoom meeting yesterday began at 9:00. It was a very meaningful and helpful session! The four days of absolute hell I experienced, she called it depression. That’s a first for me, and she saw it as progress!!!
She believes that depression indicates that finally, FINALLY, I was in touch with the horror of my trauma. I have always felt happy and I’ve been proud of that. I’m always up, but not manically up. Dr. Shoja calls my eternal sense of happiness a cover, a coping mechanism. She praised me. She said I’m a hard-working patient and that my depression is a sign of that work. This was not what I was expecting.
I used to have a recurring dream that I’ve written about here before. In it, crowds of people arrive at the foot of a hill that I am standing on at its summit, and thousands of come up the hill from every direction and surround me. And then the people closest to me join hands, then slowly all the other people join the circle of hand-holders until the entire mob is hand in hand in a giant circle all around mem and I’m in the centre all alone and unconnected.
Dr. Shoja brought up that dream and then and tied it to my sense of ‘instant intimacy’ between me and my fellow stutterers at the event on Oct. 17th in Vancouver. She posited that those strong, strong feelings of connection with my fellow stutterers who were strangers to me until that day, was instrumental in bringing on the seizures and depression.
We’re talking about emotions; we’re talking about sub-conscious cause and effect. She thinks my emotional experience with several people, all dysfluent, had me experience exactly what I was missing: belonging.
First, she warned me that I might be surprised by her response to my Richter 10 seizure, and then she said that she saw my depression, after the seizure, as progress with ‘getting in touch’ (whatever that means) with my trauma. She has never been wrong; she has never to assuage my pains and sorrows.
She said that she was very happy for me and that she saw it as a sign of growth. I take ‘growth’ to refer to the process of working on understanding the operational nature of my psychiatric diagnoses and understanding the impact of neglect on my thinking and personality.
Yes, I was surprised. I’m also not the doctor, so I tend to take her lead. We will be talking more about this in future settings. My agenda is loaded now, every session.
When I had my breakdown ten years ago, the first thing I wanted was to know what happened and what was going on. I have a writer’s mind. It’s not enough, to put into your life story that you had a breakdown and leave it at that. I want to know why because I value the life story that is in my head, and I want the details.
Like my friend Beth, who also has a writer’s soul, I was a diarist, commencing in adolescence. The details, to a point, go in there. It’s very practical, because when my doctor wants to know something about my recent medical history, it’s here. My first question, therefore, yesterday, was to ask why.
And now, I have a lot of questions piling up in the separate diary I keep for Dr. S. For example: If depression signals growth, are you (Dr. S.) hoping I experience more depression?
I’ve never written about depression on this blog until today. I’ve had deep sorrow at appropriate times in my life, but never depression. I was a wreck! I’ve been using the term today in my thoughts and here because Dr. S. said that’s what my four days of hell was.
I liked her explanation. I appreciated her praise. I valued the authentic vocabulary she provides. And wow. Now I know how I experience depression. I have a new understanding of a word I thought I understood. Until you feel it, you don’t understand it. I promise.
I realise now, that I will be seeing Dr. S. forever. She offered me life-long access to her when we first met. My breakdown wasn’t ten years ago, it began ten years ago, and it’s going to go on forever.
It’s interesting to note, to be clear: I have a psycho-neurological impairment; my four days in hell were my first experience with mental-illness. Technical writer: these distinctions are important to me.
I had an interesting insight while talking to Dr. S. I wonder if my (financial) success as a technical writer isn’t linked to my highly empathic soul. Perhaps my success came from my ability to emotionally understand our customers. When I was writing for my paradise client, I was not speaking for my client. I was serving my client by instigating me as a voice in their advertising, and I wrote to them and for them. They were not customers to me. They were my people—creative people.
Dr. S praised the conscientiousness of my work with her.
I came out of the session feeling much, much better about the present. She labled a dreadful experience as ‘growth.’ She turned a negative into a positive. She gave me a psychiatric lifejacket that lasts for thirty days.
So, to sum up: Born, short period of time with mother number one, two and a half years in an orphanage, nine years with mother number two, independent life from age fourteen: My life in one sentence. Oh, forgot one: I have ten years as a nervous wreck, but that period will go on until the final countdown, so I can be specific about the number of years.
Our medical system handed me to Dr. S, and she offered me a relationship for life. It was an arranged marriage, and I lucked out. I need the words for my story, but I earn them. She truly is my lifejacket.
I asked to see her again in two weeks, but she’s fully booked because of being away for a conference (about Complex PTSD!) for a long time, but she’ll be in touch if there’s a cancellation. Otherwise, I shall see her on Dec. 8th, and then again two weeks after that, and I’ll stay seeing her more often until I feel stable again. It was a truly great session. I learned a great deal about myself and C-PTSD.
Keeping the story accurate: I currently attribute my triggers to C-PTSD, and I consider my speech and seizures to be my neurological reactions to the triggers. I told Dr. S. that our session may have been the most impactful yet.
Not long after my session, we all had lunch and then I read until it was time for us to go to Bonnie and Sue’s new home. It’s a palace. It’s just the most beautiful home for them! Greenhouse, guest house with heat pump, studio for Bonnie with heat pump, extraordinary landscaping, a built-in office for Sue, and the open plan kitchen/dining/living room is spectacular. It’s all glass.
I roared home, stopping for a short walk with Sheba, and lit the fire. It’s been so mild, I have only needed a morning fire to stay warm all day, but I wanted an evening fire to celebrate my day. Dr. Shoja made me feel proud and content.
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Dr. S. seems to want to feel the pain. Another question on my Shoja diary is to ask: Pain because of what, exactly? Another: If those four days were growth, why would I want to grow anymore? Another: Explain ‘growth.’
Did I cause the growth? I’m confused because the depression wasn’t my choice. It came from my subconscious or somewhere. Am I expected to participate in this ‘growth,’ or does it just happen?
Maybe the ‘work’ is our ten years of sessions.
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A significant memory, bubbled into my mind, unbidden, as I like to say. I didn’t consciously recall it. It was deeply sad when first coming consciously to mind. I had to take a break. It was, I reckon, the key to understanding why I grew up feeling unattached to Conie and Don and their families.
Connie would routinely explain to people that I was adopted. That modifier made me feel a lot of feelings with names that begin with ‘un----.’
I have no memory of being told I was adopted. It was just there. I knew it, but I have no idea where that knowledge came from. I’ve just always known it. I believe I learned it from hearing her tell others. I was six or seven when I told the mother of a good friend that I was adopted, and she asked me if I knew what it meant. I didn’t, and she told me.
It was getting dark, as I walked the trail through a playground between our two houses to go home. I stopped on a swing in the playground and pondered my new understanding.
So, the label that kills me—adopted—was made known to me from the dawn of my consciousness, by Connie, indirectly, and without any explanation or query.
I should be angry, but I don’t want to be angry. It does me no good. It makes me feel disappointed because I think of what I might have been had I been nourished.
I focused on liking Mrs. Downey, who told the whole truth. She’s one of many angels who made me feel worthy. That’s the word, I think, that best describes how honesty, which is kind, and implies respect or trust, feels good in my heart/soul/brain. My angels are always present. It feels good to miss them, because it reminds me that I was loved.
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| Fuck Netanyahu! |
