Chapters 3,4,5

Lynda was not bi-polar all her life. As a very small child, youngest of four, she was a happy, active child. She loved to dance and sing and play house and paint and draw. She loved to admire herself in the mirror. When she was five she encountered her first school experience: summer kindergarten in Phoenix, Arizona. The play ground was so hot the monkey bars and slide burned her hands and legs, and the teacher seemed cross, so a new pain ingrams traced and the message might be interpreted, "teachers are a pain."
Sitting in dance class one day the five year old was told: "you can't be on the TV show, you don't know the dance well enough. If you had spent as much time watching me as you did looking in the mirrors you might have learned the dance." So sister Emily got the pretty costume and danced on the TV show, and Lynda traced a message on her brain: loving myself is not good. I should not admire myself in the mirror. I am only worth something when I perform well." This message she perceived in her emotional pain of disappointment, shame, jealousy.
In the same setting, on a different day Emily's first grade report card was read aloud and praised for the positive comment written by the teacher. "I bet Lynda never gets comments like that on her report card when she starts school. ha ha." Another message was traced: "I am not a good person. Sister is good. I am bad." The scripts were written, engraved forever in her brain. So on to school she went, carrying her scripts with her in her subconscious, totally unaware of their content, but following them obediently.
She thought of herself as unattractive, untalented, and capable of winning attention only by being disruptive, which she knew was ok as long as it was funny. Although she was not conscious of these scripts, they served as her road map for her actions every day of the first 30 years of her life.



Teachers were to be punished to even the score for kindergarten and dance class, and what a better way than to misbehave in their class while still making honor roll grades. She couldn't make top grades because she knew that was her sister's role. Lynda's dress, her walk her behavior all reflected the deeply engraved scripts she had perceived and recorded as a small child. I grieved for the loss of the small beautiful child she had been; I felt the loss; the world would feel the loss if I could not get her help. Somehow, we had to retrieve that small child and nurture her soul into Lynda’s consciousness Psychologists disagree on the reasons some children record the messages and others seem to ignore them or choose more positive messages to record. It may be that the chemical imbalance is congenital and because of this there is a predisposition to perceive and record negative messages. There seems to be evidence that experiencing pain while receiving the verbal messages makes it more likely that the pain and the message will be indelibly recorded, so a child in constant pain from congenital malfunction would be more ripe for receiving pain messages than a healthy child.
Following the script Lynda attended school faithfully, either feeling loved or hated, with nothing in between; worthwhile or not worth a thing. The constant black or white, all or nothing concept of her self worth gained strength with each experience she encountered, even the mildest rebuke for poor penmanship. Every feeling of worth came from outside herself.
At age seven dance lessons were resumed in a different town, a new home and a new life, but the same script ruled her decisions:
"If I do not get chosen for the lead part, I am no good at all."
"I am only worth what I perform."
"Sister is the good one. She is valuable, she is capable, she is loveable. I am the bad one.
I can only get recognition by negative behavior, because I cannot compete with Emily."




Chapter 7: REGRESSION
A man they called Kelly was living with the family and helping out with maintenance and cooking for the Motel they now managed. Kelly showed an interest in Lynda and Emily. As he cooked for the family or worked on the buildings, he allowed them to watch and chat with him. All her life those memories were frequent occurring memories, along with the time he had shouted at her for touching the yeast rolls rising on the stove. She remembered clearly she had patted the rolls whispering, "pat the baby's bottom". Kelly had shouted and that was all she remembered, but she remembered it often along with several other distinct instances from the short year and a half the family spent as managers of that motel. Other memories of that year at the motel were sharp and clear though brief with little detail. Like a flash of a slide on a screen Lynda would experience a brief upsetting memory of shame and overwhelming guilt. The day she refused to play in the sprinklers without her shirt. She shuddered often at the sudden overwhelming need for secrecy when dressing or bathing. Mostly she experienced the feeling of shame, without a picture, without a slide.
Thirty two years later, out of curiosity, she was regressed in a light hypnotic state to relive that one year of haunting memories. The memory came back clearly of the kitchen, the yeast rolls rising and Kelly shouting. Then the picture in her mind went black. The therapist encouraged her to go on, asking, “What happened next, what did Kelly do next?”
Through tears and heartbreak she became the little eight year old girl being exposed to a threatening, angry man forcing his erected penis into her face. "You want to touch a baby's bottom?" he shouted in her face, "touch this, take this and.... "
Lynda broke the trance herself to get out of the vision of the memory. Later she went back into regression to seek healing and nurturing that had not been available on that one day of her life. Where was Mother? Mother was always there when Lynda and Emily came home from school. She

made it a matter of commitment to always be there. But this one day, she had to run an errand at the last minute and asked Kelly to tell the girls she would be right back. Emily had stayed behind to play with a friend. Kelly took advantage of Lynda in the one minute she was left alone, telling her that Mom had put him in charge and he had to do what he said. Then, he threatened her if she said anything that she would be in terrible trouble, because she had been such a bad girl.
This entire story fit with her script, so when mom came home there was Lynda sitting on the cold cement floor of the laundry room sobbing. "Where were you, why weren't you home when I got here?” But not once did she betray herself by telling what Kelly had done to her. She did not want to be punished as she thought she deserved to be.
Where was I, her guardian angel? you might ask. I was there, and managed to create enough disturbances that Kelly startled and ran before raping Lynda, but not enough to protect her from the assault. You see, by that age, the wise old age of eight, she had shut down her perception so much that I could not penetrate her conscious with warnings or preventative steps, nor with nurturing self loving thoughts about her value.
Lynda kept this story so deeply buried in her mind that she herself did not recall it until she was regressed in hypnosis. But the frequent flashes of memory of the kitchen, the rolls on the stove, the laundry room, of crying, "Mother Where are You" haunted her steadily throughout the years.
Her subconscious perception was that mother was never there when she was needed, although her mother had been the one consistent presence in her life, so Lynda did not try to talk about things that bothered her, her diary entries repeatedly state, "I wish I had someone to talk to."
Lynda got more resourceful at manipulating teachers and friends to give her attention. She found that when she was ill, hurt or depressed, she got attention, and was not being bad. She did not pretend illness or pain, but managed to have enough of it to get the attention she needed. Her script gradually modified to include I can get attention by disturbing, and by hurting.

Fifth grade for Lynda was an island in the hurricane of self hate. Her teacher, Mr. Gordan Wallace was jovial and fun loving, yet firm with rules of behavior. Lynda spent many hours in the hall for talking or carrying on, but she got attention as well for her poetry and stories. Mr. Wallace had a discipline plan that called for name on the board for first warning, then each mark in a day after the name went up required a 25 word essay for the first mark, then double thereafter. Lynda happily wrote one to five hundred word essays nearly every day. This brought recognition and attention, but what she hadn't figured out was that she didn't have to disturb the class to get the assignment. She could have been writing for the joy of writing. Her reasoning was determined by her script. "I can only be valuable if I misbehave."
Mr. Wallace encouraged her writing and discouraged the misbehavior. I was right at her side suggesting to her that her writing was a valuable part of her and she could write without it being a punishment. By the end of the year she was writing poems and stories for fun, and had settled down in her class work.
Sixth grade was a disaster. Into the class Emily was in the year before, and bombarded with, "you can't be Emily's sister. . .she was so quiet, so well behaved, such a good student.”
All our work through fifth grade was lost within the first week of sixth. Lynda dug in and if there was a punishment given in that class in a day, Lynda was on the list. She was in control of her life; she could choose to the minute when the teacher would strike, and she could control her attitude toward the punishment. As with the essays in Fifth grade, she got recognition for her amused attitude toward punishment in sixth. Standing in line in the hot Arizona sun for an extra time before lunch.. . . marching with the other offenders to a late lunch and short recess. Writing, counting, staying after school were all turned into a game to be enjoyed for the recognition she received from her peers and teachers. I didn't give up, I thought maybe she would settle in after the first few weeks of setting

boundaries, but, unfortunately, a fourth sixth grade teacher was hired and each of the three old ones submitted a list of students to be taken out of their class into the new one. Lynda, along with all the other difficult students were united into one new class, with one totally ineffective teacher. If I could have sabotaged that list I would have, but all I could do was follow her through the year of undisciplined performances.
“Lynda! Lynda!” I moaned, “Let me help you. Let me help you see how brilliant you are, how fun loving and enjoyable you could be if you would use your talents for positive activities. She firmly followed her deeply engraved script. I am a bad person; I am not valuable; I am not capable; I am not loveable. I can get attention only by misbehaving or depressing. The teacher was too distracted by 25 unruled sixth graders to even notice the pattern that Lynda's behavior had begun to follow. Highly active and talkative, laughing and creating art projects, science projects, school newspaper, you name it, anything that took her out of class, she signed up for. Then a period of shut down. Barely completing assignments, lashing out at friends, family and teacher, Lynda appeared to be an angry vicious young Woman at the age of 12. By 14 she wrote in her diary using her vocabulary words: I obtained a pocket knife to cut into an old golf ball I confiscated. I wondered what was inside; I tried to imagine. It sprang anxiously from my hands. Energized by the propelling bands the ball sprang to life and spent the captive energy in seconds, unbridled by walls or bounds. When powered by expert skill the energy within the hard white shell flies straight and true, but unbridled spends its life's breath bouncing and spinning here and there with unproductive energy. That’s the way I feel all the time now, peaceful only if I am contained in a shell.


Chapter 9: ROLLER COASTER RIDE
By junior high the roller coaster ride had begun. With the onset of puberty it was "fasten your seat belt, here we go." The sudden shift in moods, outbursts of anger, blaming, crying, did not go unnoticed. Lynda herself was desperately crying for help, but had not been trained to recognize what she wanted. She was incapable of directly asking for someone to help her. I tried to get the message through to her that she only had to ask someone for help, but by then she had shut down the communication line between us even more firmly and I could seldom get her attention. Only in her early childhood and during her level phases I could manage a word or two of caution or advice.
Finally, in the eighth grade she managed to get a degree of help by following her script and disrupting the social studies class to the point she was spending nearly every day after school for discipline. Deeply depressed, and acting out in anger she had not only interrupted but she had been insubordinate and hostile. But alone with the teacher after school crying and arguing she finally ran out of the anger which was shielding her from recognizing the fears she had of what was happening to her.
"I am different from other kids, I don't seem to be in control of what I do. It is so frightening I have to stand back and watch. Am I going crazy?" Lynda was able to communicate her feelings to her teacher through her story writing. Through this medium of therapy was able to express her need to explore these feelings and fears. The teacher was not trained in psychology; even if he had been childhood depression was not recognized or diagnosed at that time. What Lynda needed most now was someone to listen and he filled that need.
I let out the breath I seemed to have been holding for several years as I realized my young charge had taken her first step to mental health. I wouldn't lose her to insanity after all. Because of


her strong will and tenacity, I knew that once she set her foot on a path to understanding and conquering this enemy, conquer we would. Little did we know it was to be a lifetime quest.

A Bi Polar Life
I am blue, I am yellow.
In this lies all the extremes of human emotion.
Doctors call me bi-polar and treat illness with drugs.
Drugs channel the moods narrow the channels.
Oral chemical creates in me
Peace which others self produce.
This my cross, my burden to bare.
My weakness has come strength.
My eyes I have seen the world in
sun lit color and toneless shades of grey.
Faces are reflected rainbows,
and smiling friendships
or I feel cruel dull and senseless,lost in a fog.
To some I am manic depressive.
through time and space
Kites, blown windward fly in a sun lit sky,
plunge to earth when freed by the broken string,
in terror to all who watch to control or lend a hand.

I grope to know myself.
Those who surround me fear my change
My children love me in spite of fears.
Medication binds me to the earth
holds my soul within my body.



The spirit tugs to be free to soar,
the depths of hell gape to destroy my light.

When moving in the comfort range
the flood gate opens.
Torrent carries me to a new channel.
within the channel is a learned response.
Choosing feelings, choosing thoughts;
Then I have little choice.
Only choice of thoughts determine the course I will take,
I can no more choose the gate
than choose the shape of the clouds.
Drugs control the gate and
bring me down from my rainbow.
I resent the ties, but have learned gratitude.
I know beyond the rainbow lies unbridled euphoria,
flight into fantasy escape from the bounds of earth,
to crash like the kite, in terrifying free fall
through blinding light to crushing darkness.
Those who live daily a ten point scale of emotion,
spend most of your days at four to seven,
never comprehend a twelve or
a plunge to sub zero of utter despair.
Joy of rainbows and laughter sensuous pleasures
are only heightened the contrasting grays of death.
in sun lit color time exists no grays,
Nor can color and brightness in the grey time.
this is my cross, my laughter, burden, my joy
and faith and study of self
bring me closer to the center line.
Meds will control the swings while I learn the talent it takes
to control my brain chemicals
I will depend on the arm of flesh,
chemicals given by the Lord to man for my protection.