I've been in therapy since I was 22 years old. I am now 60 years old. For those doing the math, that is 32 years of therapy. Yes, that's a long time. In that time, I have also been hospitalized 15 times, and attempted suicide 6 times. I suppose some people will think I didn't have the right therapists or the right medications. I did and I didn't. That's the cruel nature of mental illness. You have to have the right medications and the right therapists at the same time for things to go right.
I have had some top quality therapists. Some of them held my hand, and others let me discover things on my own. I owe a lot to those who held my hand and comforted me during some of the most horrible times in my life. I needed them. I needed to be "held" and told everything will be okay. Those therapists got me strong enough to stand on my own 2 feet so I could face the really hard part of therapy. The Great Unlearning.
What is that? That is the term I use when describing undoing all of the mental and emotional habits I learned along the way. Some of them were methods of survival. Others were the result of the tapes of the voices I constantly heard in my head from the time I was 5 yrs old. My mind was quite strong and convinced me from a very young age that all that was wrong in the world was my fault.
My mother was a paranoid schizophrenic. She had many years of stability, but every once in a while she would have a break and things spiraled out of control very very quickly. No one explained to me what was happening. I didn't know my mom had a illness. I didn't know what depression was. I just knew my mom was very unhappy and it was my job to cheer her up. Most people don't recognize the fact that little kids are very self-centered. Not in a negative way, but in a way that everything in their world revolves around them. All they know is in a very tight circle. They recognize very early that if they do something bad, mom and dad are unhappy with them. If they do something great or funny, mom and dad are very pleased with them. To a child, whatever she does has a direct impact on the world around her. Hence, if my mom was unhappy and crying, it must have been something I had done.
So, because I was a child with a child's perception, I thought that I was charged with the task of making my mom well. I had to keep her happy. I had to make her want to stay. You see good girl's moms didn't try to kill themselves and go away. A good girl's mom wanted to stay with her daughter and love her, play with her, and make cookies. I really thought that my mom didn't love me enough to want to stay alive. If she died, it would be my fault and everyone would be mad at me.
So, my mind started recording these "truths" as I knew them. The tapes recorded every negative feeling about myself. I was too stupid, too ugly, too fat, too dirty, just too much of everything that was bad. Since there was no one to contradict these "truths", I believed my mind and became convinced that everything I thought was true. That's not to say that I didn't have a loving family surrounding me, because I did. I just never verbalized these thoughts and feelings, so no one told me anything different.
So, until about 5 years ago, at the ripe old age of 55 years old, those tapes have been playing in my head non-stop. I tried to pretend that I was okay, and that I was a lovable person, but I didn't really believe it. I was in the hospital when one of the therapist talked to us about the "wiring" in our heads. When I got out, I read up on it. I mentioned it to my current therapist, who explained it to me in detail. My mind was wired to react in certain ways not just behaviorally, but chemically. When I was feeling a certain way, this particular chemical was released causing my body to behave a certain way. The best example is the fight or flight response. When you are in danger, your body releases a chemical that triggers you nervous system to release adrenalin which will enable you to either run away or fight the threat. I was one of the unfortunates who always felt in danger, so I was constantly in fight or flight mode. I lived in a constant state on anxiety ready to run or fight. You can imagine what a told that takes on your body.
At any rate, I had to learn to re-wire my brain to reset my chemical pathways. It's taken a very long time. I'm not done. 55 years of loathing yourself doesn't end one day and everything is peachy keen. No, it takes a lot of effort and sometimes a great deal of pain to unlearn all of those negative reactions. I had to face a lot of truths about my family and about myself. It hurt, a lot. Then in the middle of my unlearning and reprogramming my parents died. All of the old tapes started playing again. It became an internal battle of wits. I had to practice a lot of positive self talk to convince myself that my mind was lying to me.
Every once in a while, my brain will fire up the old stereo and blast a tape of self hatred, but it doesn't last long anymore. I can pretty much shut it down whenever it happens. But, there are times when I'm feeling particularly vunerable and it's a little hard to shut them down. However, I have unlearned a great deal, and I know who I am now. I'm finally a functioning adult. It took a long time, but I realize that while I am a powerful person, I am not so powerful that I can control the world. I can only affect my little corner. That's cool with me. It's peaceful. I've earned this peace. No one can take it from me. I am me. If you like me, great. If not, that's cool too. I'm okay with who I am. I've learned a lot, and unlearned a lot too.
Peace, Joy Love- B
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