Good days.

I have good days, and I have bad days.  Good days, I'm happy, I like me, and I feel perfectly entitled to the good life that I have.  On bad days, I fear that when the people who know me really find out how useless, stupid, what have you, that I am, I'll lose it all. 

This week, I've had good days.  I attribute this, possibly, to the increased workout schedule.  It's helped in the past.  I'm takin bupoprion, but therapeutic levels aren't generally reached for several weeks. I was a little shaky on Monday, but nothing since then.  I worked out hard for nearly two hours on Wednesday, and did a nice little workout this morning.

I like good days.  I like days that are good.

Choice.

She sat across from me, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.  She'd been doing that almost continuously throughout the interview.  Not long after selecting the chair in the office that was furthest from her parents, she'd pulled up her knees and hugged them as she talked. 

I asked her questions.  Lots of questions.  What do you do for fun...what do you do to make yourself feel better...what do you do when you're mad, angry, or sad?

"Get high."

I asked her who she talked to when she felt like she needed to talk.  She said that she used to call her best friend, or her aunt, but then her mother took her phone away, and when she complained, her mother said, "You can talk to me."

Her mother, for the record, disagreed with anything anyone in the room said. The girl said she was closest to her father, mom said, "No, you're not, you're closest to me".  When the kid said, "Dad understands me more" and Mom said, "No, I do."  Mom always made these assertions loudly, and stridently, frequently interrupted everyone in the room, talked over people, and answered questions were weren't asked of her. 

At one point I turned to mom, and said in a gentle, friendly tone, Do you see what you just did there?  Just now?  I asked your daughter a question, and you answered it.

Mom looked surprised.  "I thought you asked me."

Nope, I said, smiling.  I said your daughter's name, and looked away from you, to her, and you answered. 

Mom was recalcitrant.  "Well, I thought you were talking to me," she mumbled.  Then she pouted a little. 

I asked mom what she thought would help this problem, and she launched into a lengthy description of how bereaved she was when her mother died, 7 years ago.  I waited patiently, and then asked the same question again.  Same answer.  Finally, I said, I'm not really hearing how you think this problem can be solved.  Mom finally said that she had learned to solve her problems, so she thought her family should solve theirs the same way.

Later, I told daughter, in private, that her screen was positive for depression.  She dabbed at her eyes.  "I didn't think I was depressed," she said.  I also told her that results of another screening showed that she was in danger of developing a substance abuse disorder, based on her feelings and attitudes.  I asked her, You've been crying the entire time you've been in here.  Does it surprise you to hear that you were depressed?

"No, I just thought that, you know, I was reacting like we all do--trying to get over living with my insane mother."

I think, based on what I've learned, and the results of your screening, that you would benefit from residential treatment here...just to have a chance to get out of the house, to think, maybe to learn to make good decisions, but I want to know what you think.

"What difference does it make?  It's not like I have a choice."

It makes a huge difference, and you do have a choice.  In our state, at your age, you have the right to refuse, unless your life is in immediate danger.  I recommend it, just for you to have a chance to get away, but we also have a day treatment option, which doesn't involve living here. 

She stopped crying for a second, and started at me, astonished.  "I get to choose?  I never get to choose anything."

Well, you get to choose this.

Mom, for the record, was furious.  In the waiting room, she said, "I thought that if I told you to lock her up, you'd do that.  Why does she get to choose? I know what's best for my daughter."  Daughter lifted her head up, and walked out of the room.  She was going to come to day treatment.  We'd shook on it.  Or banged knuckles, whatever that's called. 
Dad looked relieved, and walked out with his daughter, his hand on her shoulder . He didn't really think his daughter needed to be locked up either. 

Mom, well, she's still pissed. 

I hope she's able to get some help managing that.

,..

Anxiety.

All throughout my adulthood anxiety has found some way to poke its head out.  Generalized anxiety is when anxiety from an event, or a cause, spreads out, like a thick, black fog, until the person is anxious about lots of things.

As soon as I figure out what's going on, it finds another way to get at me.

For a while in the 90s, it was just a feeling of unworthiness, and fear that people would figure that out.  Lots of education later, I was able to talk myself out of that feeling.

Then came a time when I would look in the mirror and see a hideous troll.  Gross.  How could anyone love me? Look at that mishapen face.  Look at that stomach, those legs.  Then one day I realized what was happening, and started the self-talk, the logic.  It worked.  Mishapen me went away.

Then the muscle spasms started.  In my neck, in my legs, for no reason.  I'm working on those.  But meanwhile, now I have panic attacks.  Joy.

Hopefully, before it can turn into something else, I'll be getting some therapy.  There's this cognitive behavior place in town.  I'm hoping that someone there can use something called "Prolonged Exposure Therapy".  It is THE thing for PTSD.  Here's hoping.

~~~

Just Today.

Just today, he was brought in because he was hitting himself in the head, and wouldn't stop. He wasn't screaming, or yelling, or being disruptive--according to his teachers, he's actually a sweetheart, but in the past couple weeks his performance had been declining, and then today, he started hitting himself in the head.  When his teacher grabbed his hand, he looked her straight in the eye and said, "I need to make the mumbling go away."

The voices had been getting louder over the past couple weeks, and it's like, really hard to learn Algebra when someone is constantly mumbling at you. Try it. So he got the idea to hit himself in the head. He figured that would do it. He's right, actually. Hit yourself in the head enough times, and everything stops.

Also, there were shadows following him. That is to say, he could see menacing shadows out of the corner of his eye--

--How did you know they were menacing?

"I just do."

So he's being followed by menacing shadows. That he knows are trying to hurt him. He walks very, very fast, so they can't catch him, to get away, to be safe. Same reason he hits himself in the head. To be safe.

The olanzapine helps a little.  I asked him if the voices say anything to him in particular.

"Not really. I mean, it's like I can almost just make out what they're saying...but if I stop, they stop. They only talk when I'm doing stuff."

Insight is what is used to describe whether someone with a psychotic disorder understands that the voices aren't real. I once had a client tell me that the entire time she was in therapy with me, voices would tell you to stop listening, and yell "NO!" and sometimes, they'd say, "she's lying to you." However, she knew they weren't real, so she just ignored them. Maybe this kid will reach that point and realize that none of it is real--the shadows, the voices, the belief he was being followed.

But today....

Today he's doped up on all sorts of stuff, so that he won't hit himself in the head, and he thinks the voices are real, and he can make them stop.

Today, he also thinks that if he tries hard enough to make out what it is they're saying to him, then he can do what they want and maybe then they'll stop.

Today, he's only thirteen, and he just wants the voices to stop.

....

It all began

Way back in my twenties. I think. I mean, I think that's when some things that happened to me, things that were not good things, things that should, ideally, happen to no one. I'm using this place to journal and vent a little and for parts of this. I'm disabling comments, because my only reason for writing them is to get them out of my head, not discuss them. Discussion is the for the therapist.

I'm from stoic people. We don't how our emotions. We joke and intellectualize. We don't experience them, and if they're really, really unpleasant, and threatening, we push them away, kind of like that closet that some houses have, when you toss things in there and then shut the door really fast, before anything can fall back out.

The problem, though, is that those closets get full. And each time I peak in, I have to slam the door really fast, before something falls out. It's getting harder and harder to peek. I keep the door shut all the time now, because if by some silly impulse I were to fling the door wide open, there would be this avalanche falling out, burying me with these feelings, experiences and panic.

So. What is in the closet?

The closet includes all the times when my first husband, unexpectedly, would suddenly put his hand against the small of my back and push as hard as he could, propelling me across the room and over a piece of furniture.  I never knew why.  Sometimes he's just push me into a wall.  It'd hit so hard I'd bounce off the wall and fall backwards.

Sometimes he punched me in the face, or in the arm...sometimes he'd hold me down and force me to do whatever he felt like doing to me at that point in time, in whatever part of me he wanted to do it, regardless of whether I wanted to.  Even when pregnant.  It didn't matter.  Whatever he wanted, he got; he was bigger than me, so there you go.

And.  Of course, his family said that if I had better been a better wife, that would have never happened.

Well, the closet includes the time that my first husband forced me to strip, held me down and tried to strangle me to death. I did believe I was dying. I wondered who would take care of my son. He was interrupted when a friend of ours, who had the annoying tendency to walk in without knocking, did just that.

Also in the closet is the time, several months later, that he hid my keys when I came over to argue with him about child support. My choices that day for getting my clothes back were to strip, leave my clothes, and drive home naked, or have sex with him. I don't remember what happened. I know that I reluctantly chose the latter, but I can't remember what actually happened.

There are other things in that closet, I'm sure, but like said, I haven't been in there for a while, because whenever I looked in there, those two incidents were staring me right in the face. SLAM! 

I got busy, raising kids and living life.  I was fine.

I was fine.

Sometimes a person can put things away just out of sheer business of living their lives. Sometimes they stay put away. Other times, for whatever reason, memories are triggered by some event or reminder, or perhaps they suddenly find themselves less busy. It was the former that got me in the 90s. It was the latter that got me in 2010.

I remember where I was standing when they aquitted OJ Simpson. I remember my mouth falling open, and saying to myself, well fuck me. At about the same time there was a local case about a woman named Tammy Haas which has never been resolved, and the most likely suspect was set free.
Within days, I found myself crying for no reason. I thought about things briefly, carefully not too deeply, but not experiencing them, because whenever I've tried to do that, I feel this rising panic. I didn't deal with it then. It passed. Not long after, I took a serious of tests, one of them being the MMPI . The results were read to me and I remember a brief mention of something like, “residual PTSD symptoms”.   The report was lost, and I never saw it again.

Most of the time after that, I was busy. Really busy. I went to graduate school, taught high school, moved several times, remarried, and finished raising my kids. It wasn't until 2010 that several factors converged, and the door to the closet, which was bulging, to burst open.

First, the last kid left the nest, leaving me free to be in my own head - not the best place to be sometimes - Second, I got a new job, which involved reading casefiles of abuse. These casefiles included graphic descriptions of abuse, and I found myself feeling a little pensive as I drove home each day.
Third, my usual drug—running--was thrwarted when we had the longest coldest winter in nearly a decade. It was dark when I drove to work, and dark when I drove home, and it was too cold to run in the dark. My mood began to deteriorate until one weekend, I woke up crying. It was crazy. I had no reason to be crying. I loved my job more than any job I'd ever had. I have a great marriage. We' just moved into a dream home. And I couldn't stop crying all day. I went for a run, and felt a little better. It was a Saturday, so I could run.

The following week I had a series of panic attacks that kept me awake all night, and then the next day while I tried to do my weekly long run. I felt this horrible feeling that I needed to get away, now, but home was 6 miles away, so I was trapped--trapped out in the open. I made deals with myself, moving from bench to bench, sitting down each time, my arms over my head, closing my eyes, trying to calm down. Self talk wasn't working.

• You're not having a panic attack.
• Your heart rate is rising because you're running, and you've been up all night.
• You're not having a panic attack.

I went to my family doc, who prescribed Wellbutrin, to get me through the rest of winter, and Xanax, for the panic attacks. I made an apppointment to see a Cognitive Behavior Therapist to try to empty out my closet.

And so here I am.

~~~

Bullies.

At age 6, he killed a cat by trying to twist its head off.    Then he burned down a neighbor's fence.

At age 12, he was beating on his younger brothers.  He stripped one naked and beat him with a belt.  He told a teacher, "I'm going to kill you, bitch."  He got a gun from an uncle, and went after his father.

The police intervened, but didn't arrest him.
His mother took him to treatment, but then pulled him out because he said that the counselor were "mean".

At age 14, she brought him back to treatment again.   He was willing to see a doctor, who prescribed medication, which he promptly refused to take.  He refused therapy.  He was still beating on his younger brothers, but she didn't know that.  he'd started ditching school to get high, and putting holes in walls.  Her landlord told her they couldn't live there any  more.
He talked her out of putting him in residential treatment.
He ran away.  The police brought him back.

-----------------------------------------------
At age 15, he mugged his first victim, and started huffing.
At age 16, he started stealing cars.  By now he told his mother that if she reported him, he was going to beat the crap out of her.  The police didn't catch him.

At age 17, she asked for him to be put in treatment.  He begged her to reconsider.  She changed her mind.  Then months later, he was finally arrested.  His JPO told him that to get off probation, it would look good if he got treatment.  That's when he came in, and I met him.  He sat across from me, and told me that he thought that his family needed to learn to communicate better, and that he considered himself a "people person".  WTF?  He showed no remorse, just reiterated what his JPO told him.

That's when I got to know him, through his history.  I read through it all.  And I started wondering, while mom is fucking around, rescuing her baby from the police and treatment therapists, who is protecting those three younger brothers?  I gave the kid some instruments to see if maybe, just maybe, he had a cognitive deficit, or maybe he's traumatized, or severely depressed, or anxious.

Nope.  nothing like that.  He has a real high opinion of himself, too.  He's never been abused.  He has no internal controls to stop him from violating the rights of others.  The only thing that seems to work, it appears, is a probation officer, and the threat of jail.  For now.

Mom isn't sure how long he's been beating on his brothers; she just found out about it recently.  We're now treating one of them, who sleeps most of the time and cries every day.  The kid, the younger brother, is showing signs of trauma from living with this animal.

So, I turned the kid away and recommended another facility.  I won't subject an abused child to his abuser day after day.  I also called child protective services, since Mom is so busy protecting her baby from consequences that she's willing to let three other kids suffer.
I'm furious nobody has ever done this.  We are required to call CPS whenever a crime is committed against a child, even if it's by another child.  What bullshit.

Listen.  If you don't have the stones to consequence your kid, at least protect your other kids.

Mom helped create a monster. She should live with it.  Her other kids shouldn't. 
...

The right to parent.

This week I saw a kid who was just the biggest liar ever. Holy cow, he was fun. I interviewed him for about an hour before he finally started to relax and actually cracked a smile.

He has a bad temper, but still tells his mother that he loves her, for no reason at all. His mother, who'd taken them both across the country away from a life of physical abuse and neglect, figuring he'd heal on his own. He'd recently begun to turn his anger outward, until his school sent him home because they couldn't handle him any more.

He wanted so desperately for me to see how dangerous he was, but he's only ten, so he hasn't quite gotten that bravado down yet. He alternated between malingering and socially-desirable response sets. He stopped once to let me know there was an earring under my desk, and then told me that he likes being viewed as "scary". He brightened when I told him about the sports he'd get to play as part of recreational therapy.

He told me how he'd done every drug (he hadn't) and how he'd killed many, many animals (he hadn't). I guess, if you aren't sure you can make people like you, maybe you can get them to respect you and be afraid of you. If you're ten, and watch a lot of movies, that must look like a viable option.

How lonely he is. How devastating is abuse. We got him early. We can help him.

Meanwhile.

If you can't love your kid and raise them properly, fucking give them to somone who can.

...