The Guardian Angel
By LoLyn
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© 1999
Chapter 1: Monuments to Eternity
If I were a sculptor, and I wanted to capture
the beauty of an idea to last eternally
I would be most careful in selecting the media I would use.
My children have some silly putty that is very soft and pliable.
It is easy to mold and erase and change,
but soon after it is set aside it returns to a smooth blob,
none of the impressions made on it remain for very long.
It is pliable and soft, offers little resistance to the artist,
neither does it offer any lasting value as a piece of art.
The sand stone grave markers in the cemeteries stand
year after year in the wind and rain,
and the names and etchings are all but gone.
Yet there in the same places stand monuments of granite and marble
on which the imprints put there with great effort
against much resistance still shine brightly and
reflect the artistic abilities of the original artist.
We are artists building monuments for eternity.
If we build our lives against little or no resistance,
we will make an imprint on eternity that will soon melt away and be unreadable.
But if we put the effort out against marble or granite for our monument
it will be a beautiful and lasting contribution to our eternal family circle.
To chip away at granite takes great strength and perseverance;
one must take very small chips and be willing for the statue
to look unfinished for a very long time.
Keeping in mind the words of one famous sculpture,
"it is not what I take away but that which remains
that makes the statue beautiful.
Onlookers in our lives will stand back and say,
'"See I am finished with my clay statue,
it is shiny and it is beautiful.
Your rock has not taken any shape.
In fact I can see no changes in it since I last saw it.
It is still rough and grey," and that may tempt us
to trade the granite for soft clay, or to give up entirely,
because of the contrast we seem to see
between our own work and our neighbors' visible efforts.
But you must look at that granite rock and the very small chips
you have taken, see in it the image that it holds for you
and continue to take more small chips with your chisel,
always letting the Lord guide your hand,
and be content to know that you and God can see the marks you have made.
Let your critics enjoy their clay statues while they last.
It isn't a contest between your granite sculpture and
your neighbor's statue of clay; it is only a matter of
continuing to make an effort against the very resistant granite,
and when you have done all you can, and the time comes to face our Lord,
he will take the chisel from your hand
and finish the sculpture in the form you and he envisioned before the world began.
Assignment to myself
Bind oh my heart,
the tempter's power.
No place in my life may he share.
See that I fall not again to sin,
and conquer with spirit my flesh.
Bind evermore the tempter's snares
That weaken my strength and destroy
Make my heart pure from sin.
My personal millennium.
IDENTITY
Who are you?
And
What makes you so good?
You're nothing but a
blue rose
wilting
in the
desert
sun
dying
for lack
of water.
a leaf
early morning sun
lighted a small leaf
bursting the newly pressed road
of gravel and black tar
to make its way
to light and life.
"Awake oh, my soul"
Are you not stronger
than a leaf?
Chapter 2: MY MIRICLES a letter from Lynda
January 1, 1988 I became aware that I was in intensive care in LDS hospital. From what I heard I had been there for over a week and was likely to be there longer. As I investigated my prospects from the position I was in I was tied to life support systems from about every part of my body. I could not talk because of a respirator hose down my throat into my lungs, so my communications had to be written notes or hand signals from flat on my back.
In the next week I learned that I had died twice according to the monitors, and that the doctors had not expected me to live so my family had been called in. The presence of my children made the difference in my life. Though I did not remember them being there, it was at that moment that I made the decision to live for them.
I remember bits of conversations and priesthood blessings pleading with me to live, to share my talents, to teach and write and share wisdom. I did not understand the intensity of it all, until I learned that I was not expected to live, if I did live it would probably be in a convalescent home, or at least in a wheel chair, and that I would not have much to offer as a mother and teacher.
The day came when I demanded that the respirator hose be taken out. The doctor prescribed a trial of 30 minutes at a time throughout the day with the respirator turned off, with the monitors checking to see if I was processing oxygen. I was determined to pass those tests, and I did.
They took out the tube, and each day other tubes were removed. But I could not talk. I could only whisper. I was told it would take time to get my voice back as the larynx had to heal. Gradually some vibrations came to my voice, but
I still do not have full control of range or volume. Finally I was told by my doctor that it might not get any better, probably not.
The first step I took from the bed to the chair I crumpled. Each day the doctors told me to take one or two steps, so I would take three or four with assistance. They said walk to the door and back at least once so I did a few times that day with help, and within the week I walked around the hall with my oxygen tank and the aid of a nurse; I was totally exhausted by the effort.
I left the hospital Jan 13 without the assistance of oxygen.
Since the day I was told I was going to live for a short while longer I decided to live it fully. I could have collapsed into a chair and lived with my mother as a cripple, but I have instead lead life to my fullest capabilities. My children live with their father, and I take them as often as I am able, giving them and sharing all I can with them against the day that I could no longer be a part of their lives. I guess I wanted them to at least have memories of a mother who loved them dearly.
January 13, 1989, I was released from the hospital, and two weeks later drove myself to the Navajo reservation to fill my position as Special Ed. Coordinator at Many Farms Arizona. This was a job prepared by the Lord to fit my needs. They specifically did not want me to interfere with the Indian aids who had been running the program, but they did need a certified body in the room to qualify for funding. I was not under pressure to teach, but the teaching I did do had to be done one on one, very close to the students as I still had to whisper. Mostly I did paper work and reports and prepared skills review packets, organized the parent interviews and the staffing meetings for IEP's and acted as a low key coordinator between the classrooms.
When I got to my school in January I walked with a cane; I could not easily climb the three stairs to my room. I was tempted to get a wheel chair, but I
decided I had to face the challenge and learn to walk so I pushed myself against tremendous weakness of muscles and overwhelming pain that 12mg Motrin three times daily did little to ease.
By February I was walking the two blocks to my school from my apartment, by April I was walking to the post office in town about l l/2 miles, resting, and walking home. I tried an aerobics class, but I realized it was too much. I recognized my limitations, but I pushed to the limit, against agonizing pain.
I passed the summer in Utah with my children, living out a basement apartment near my family. Using the stairs several times a day, applying for teaching jobs in Arizona. The answer to my prayers for a job I could handle was always the same, "You will grow to meet your needs; your talents will be restored as they are needed if you continue to work to cultivate them."
I was horrified to realize as I began my job at Many Farms, that I could not comprehend what I was reading as I scanned "Psychology today" for an article listed on the cover. I tried the Ensign and it was the same. I started reading to fill the time at school,I read the third and fourth grade novels in the classroom library, and as I read at school and in the evenings, my comprehension increased and was restored to the level that I got A's in two graduate classes in research and behavior management the next summer at NAU.
In mid July of 1989, I interviewed with and was hired to tutor reading at Taylor, Arizona, to design a program that would fit the schools needs to bring students up to or nearer to grade level in reading. My voice was still weak and I had a job that I did not need a classroom voice for. It was a true miracle and I snatched it up. I studied elementary teaching materials and catalogues for information and supplies to help me make the program. I concentrated on the needs of the children and on their needs for self esteem and motivation; I used
every skill I had as I worked with the children in my care. And miracles happened. Changes in attitudes brought about successes in reading, and we celebrated life together in the spring.
I wanted so badly to have my voice return; I depended on the promises that my talents would be restored as I needed them. I volunteered one day in Relief Society to lead the singing, then remembered I could not sing. I stood up to lead and had no voice above a whisper so I just mouthed the words and led with my hand. I was asked several times after that to substitute and some days I could sing a note or two of the tenor part. The Sunday School asked me to do the opening exercises, so I lead the Sunday School congregation each Sunday. More and more notes are coming within my range, and some days I can sing the entire alto or tenor part, some days I have to switch back and forth. But I get up there and I sing and I give the pep talk that goes with it. I am rising to the challenge, and my voice is returning.
I have finally after nearly two years tapered off the prescription steroids that I was put on in the hospital. The doses were extremely high and the withdrawal symptoms each time I tapered the dosage were painfully uncomfortable, but the side effects of the drug were so devastating that the withdrawal was an absolute necessity. I was told my bloated deformed body would possibly never regain its normal look and weight, so I thank the Lord continuously that forty pounds and a large part of the swelling is gone, that my muscles work, even if they cramp up and that I am able to live a pretty normal healthy life, work a full day on my feet, and still have some strength left at the end of each day. I may not look great to other people, but to me and the Lord, I look terrific.
I've learned to value life for living. In December 1989, l year after my near death experience, I was declared free of the disease for which I was being
treated; I was told my condition would not deteriorate, nor would my life be shortened by the disease that still lingered. I would live with pain that cannot
be relieved, but I would live. So I had to start living to live, rather than preparing to die.
It took several months to rise to the challenge of looking forward to life and preparing for that life. I had to change my way of thinking, my way of spending, my way of dealing with people.
This year I teach in classrooms part of the day, and most days my voice is strong enough to talk to the whole class. When it is not I have them sit in a close group for our discussions, and it works for us.
I have new challenges this year. I challenged myself to fill every minute of my day with teaching, so my schedule is a tight one. I have to organize to have the materials I need with me as I change classes quikly and I cannot just pull out materials from the shelf to fill in if my plans don't cover the time.
I have documentation to organize and complete on each child I work with or test, and individual lesson plans to file. Can this be more challenging or painful than walking out of the hospital? I will rise to the challenge. Is anything too great for the Lord?"
Miraculously, Lynda
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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.
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.
Chapters 7,8,9
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.
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.
Chapter 10 to End
Chapter 10: New Therapies
Keep in mind this was the 1960's experimentation with mind altering drugs was just in early stages. There was much abuse of them even within the medical profession. Valium was over prescribed to the point of creating a zombie generation, of women. Not only were new drugs being tried but new psychotherapy theories were being proposed all over the world. In the 40's, Sigmund Freud had proposed that all behavior in adult neurotics was based on sexual incidents in their early years to which they responded by making a decision.
Adler and others based their theories on this idea, but expanded the idea to include the family interaction, and many other psychologists branched off to expound their own theories of why disturbed individuals behave differently from the rest of the population.
Information was coming, but we were along ways from getting the help we needed for Lynda. By the next decade, Lynda was married and had discovered to her great surprise that she was in an abusive marriage, as well as becoming an abusive mother. At the time of her marriage she had completed junior college and had taken two psychology courses. These had fanned the flame of interest in mental health, mainly hers, and she studied far beyond the requirements of the class, and had several visits with the psychology professor, hoping to discover the key to unlocking the source of her fears, and strange feelings she had.
Still she was unable to put into words that which she could not recognize from her sub-conscious, so advice to stop doing a behavior fell short because what she needed to know was how to stop, and what behavior to substitute, but until she could recognize that need, she could not ask for it.
By freshman year in college Lynda went to her psychology 101 professor, Dr. James Scoresby , who was more aggressive in his approach to therapy and gave her an assignment to attend the next college dance and talk to the young men that danced with her as if she were really interested. What resulted was a whirlwind relationship and engagement, a whole new chapter of guilt and evidence that she was evil, and this imprinted with the pain of separation as he left for the Navy, followed a week later by a letter to him, breaking off not only the engagement but the entire relationship. A few months and many young men later, following that same line of advice, came the man of her dreams: Strong willed, righteous, perusing a business profession and dominant enough to bring her up to his expectations.
Even though she acknowledged my communications, none of the red flags I desperately pointed out to her mattered, because Lynda was sure when they were married he would change as easily as she would to fit the expectations each had of the other, and they would live in bliss forever. The guilt would be washed away in the ecstasy and she would be loved for herself.
Immediately recognizing the dream to be only a fantasy Lynda built another wall of protection around her. Communication was breaking down between us. “Oh, Lynda, don't shut me out now, you need me more than ever.”
Continuing in college Lynda suggested to her husband that they take advantage of the free counseling center on campus. But he would have nothing to do with counseling. His advice was to let him be her counselor, which interpreted became, let him demand the changes he wanted and let her make the changes or else. She approached a church leader with no good results. After he had listened to her and listened to her husband nothing more was said, no advice, no help offered. Her husband threatened her and demanded that she never again talk to anyone about their personal life: A demand with which she complied for more than five years. She never even mentioned it to her own family. She held all of the frustration, anger and abuse inside until I thought for sure she was going to lose her
mind. The verbal and emotional and sexual abuse was far worse than the physical, at least she was able to strike back when being hit, although she knew it didn't hurt him or help her. And yet, that inward script of disrupting and hurting to gain attention was so strongly a driving force that her life appeared to her to be working.
Her own perception of reality being challenged, Lynda found it easier to accept her husband’s alien thinking patterns, and she began to protect and even espouse his thinking. When she finally did break her oath of silence, it was met with more abuse. She was told to go home and be an obedient wife and things would be just fine. On the verge of breaking she demanded that they get her help. In hopes of "fixing Lynda", hubby agreed to see the professor clinician whom Lynda had known in college. Dr. James Scoresby and hubby had met. His diagnosis: "You have a very sick wife." Just what hubby had wanted to hear. "I am ok, she is not ok." Lab tests were arranged and Lithium prescribed to halt the tremendous mood swings both described. Nothing was prescribed for hubby, so the abuse continued, and with medication, Lynda felt more and more panicked.
She was the identified patient. She was the problem. True to her script, she was no good. “I'm not OK. Everyone else is OK. I only get hit and shoved when I am misbehaving; abuse is better than no attention at all. If I wasn't so bad, I wouldn't get the abuse. So I deserve it. Even our church leader has said so. This arrangement certainly satisfied her husband, and the spiral of domestic violence and emotional abuse was in full force.
In spite of the walls, in spite of the scripts, Lynda was stubborn and strong willed. Rather than lie down and die she fought, she fought her husband, she fought the church she fought the schools and anyone who contradicted her. Deep within, the scripts I had worked so hard to instill in her were demanding recognition. "Lynda, you are important, you are capable, you are lovable. Even without performing you are a child of God. Don't let the world tell you anything else". To others, Lynda’s
behavior was seen as erratic, defensive, impulsive and neurotic. I was thrilled. As long as that spark of self esteem was still burning, Lynda would fight to live. As her behavior was perceived as deteriorating by mortals, she was referred to the counseling center in her town, interviewed by a psychiatrist and assigned a psychologist to meet with her on a regular basis. Between the lithium and counseling sessions she felt like there was some control in her life again.
Meg, the psychologist listened and listened for weeks and weeks. Lynda spilled out a litany of abuse and hurt, and fears. Meg questioned and listened patiently encouraged hubby to come in for counseling which he did a few times, then quit on the excuse that he was being abused by having to listen to such accusations. Meg had made suggestions to him which were rejected, so what was left was to help Lynda cope with and deal with the situation, while she learned to change herself and not create abusive situations to occur. For the first time since birth, Lynda perceived unconditional acceptance. She still didn't accept herself as valuable at this point, but she was in there fighting.
Getting a glimmer of recognition that her perception was not as defective hubby would have her believe, and gaining strength through the counseling process, she took her kids and left the marriage home. She had money from inheritance and used it to settle in another town and buy a home. Once settled she made an appointment with a counselor, Stewart Smith, LCSW Licensed Clinical Social worker. His was a teaching approach.
That was OK. Lynda had talked herself dry to Meg. They had talked about everything, but accomplished little. Lynda was unsure if she was headed in the right direction because of Meg's unconditional acceptance and active listening, she felt that everything she said was acceptable; only occasionally had Meg raised her eyebrows or given any indication that Lynda's statements were neurotic. Mr. Smith was all business. His job, he declared, was to teach Lynda how to think and act and even feel. Her job was to listen and to practice what he preached. This was different. This was strange. This was scary, but I encouraged her to hang in there and learn. As she worked, small pin holes opened up through which I could communicate with her once again. We both sensed that this was the only chance she had at this point to stabilize her life. Besides it was a chance to sit back and listen and not go through the painful process of dredging up past history with the attached emotions. Sit and listen we did, week after week, 45 dollars after 45 dollars, and though nothing made sense, it all seemed like it should. Somehow it all had to fit together, and somehow Lynda was determined to comprehend it all no matter what the price.
Stone Cold Rock Wall
I would have written
"Something there is
that doesn't love a wall,
that wants it down,"
but Robert Frost took my words
years before my birth
and pre wrote my thoughts.
That's ok so long as I have the
words to use and I can say
what I need with his well written verse.
Walls between you and me.
were just not meant to be
and words are not sufficient to
build or to tear them down.
Years of actions misunderstood
cemented into place by rock hard hurt
and stone cold criticisms
built these walls of shabby black rock.
Perhaps no wrecker in the world
could break the mortar and stone that divides us,
but we could sit astride the wall
and visit on the top.
Chapter 12: New Therapies
Mr. Smith had Lynda write on a 3 X 5 card to carry in her purse or pocket. "I do not like the way I feel but I can control the way I think and act." This might as well have been in a foreign language. Susan could not comprehend the meaning of this sentence, much less the idea that it could be true, or that it could become a part of her thinking.
Nevertheless going purely on my encouragement she continued to pursue this strange line of counseling. Then one day, as the truth of the statement came in just a flicker to her conscious mind, Mr. Smith hit her with a new idea. Not only could she control her thoughts and actions, but her emotions too. This was too much to internalize and she nearly quit going to therapy because of it. Still not following most of the sessions, she continued to go, because of a pinging in her subconscious to her conscious: "this man speaks the truth. Listen and learn." At least she was hearing me.
Over the course of a year she continued to go and be disturbed by the messages she could neither explain or internalize, but her life was changing, she could recognize that. Finally as a closure gesture, since Lynda was leaving the area, Mr. Smith invited her to a seminar called "Life Power," which she attended for three days. The concepts were the same as he had been presenting, but they were presented in work groups and discussion groups, and the ideas started to come together and make sense. She signed up to be a facilitator for the company that presented the seminars and was able to teach it twice in her new town through the junior college. Each time she taught the seminars the concepts made more sense and became more realistic to her. But it was not until she began taking graduate counseling courses in college that the real comprehension began.
RET (rational emotive thinking) was presented as a new psychotherapy by Albert Ellis in the early 70's. Discouraged with the poor results of listening therapies, which made up most of psychological practice at that time, Ellis wanted a more direct approach. The idea was a neurotic patient doesn't need to rehash his life story in detailed accounts over months and months; he needs relief from his psychic pain, and the only way to get relief is to learn a new way of thinking and acting. The hallmark saying of RET is: "It's not what happens but what you think about what happens that creates an emotion." In other words, Lynda learned in her seminars and classes, it is not the traffic that causes you stress, but what you think about the traffic. It is not the final exam that's making you
sweat, but what you are thinking about the exam. If you took the exam out of context, it would not cause stress, but because of what you think about the exam in connection with the class you become stressed. When Lynda decided to check out this theory, after she finally comprehended it, she left a type writer out with paper in so she could rapidly record her thought process that led to an anger outburst or depression.
Quickly she noticed the similarity of the spiraling thoughts. Something happened, the event (a) her (b) thoughts about it began: "He said . . .” That means I am wrong about. . . that means I am no good. I am a terrible person. I don't deserve to live. I am a terrible mother too. . . Everything he has ever said bad about me is true. Everything any one has said bad about me is true. I am the scum of the earth. Lower than a lowly worm. I could sit on a dime and my feet would dangle." And this she noticed, for some reason, led her directly into a depression. The thoughts that led to anger included these same thoughts, but triggered a defense reaction that escalated to:
"I can't be wrong. If he is right I must be wrong and that cannot be. I must prove him wrong. If I am wrong I cease to have value, to be lovable or capable." And the explosive outburst of anger and hostility shields her from the thought that she might be wrong, no matter how irrational the argument might be.
Lynda read and studied all she could get a hold of about RET. She attended a seminar with a personal appearance of Albert Ellis, and bought books and posters that clearly demonstrated this approach. The book and workbook "Feeling Good; the New Mood Therapy," by David Burns became her bible. The more she taught and demonstrated this approach the more it helped her until she came to the point that it became an automatic approach to analyzing her thinking process.
Feeling confident and capable of dealing with life Lynda remarried her children’s father. So confident that she could live all she had learned she gave up her new home and moved back to Arizona to begin a new life with her husband and children, to try to heal the wounds and nightmares of the past.
FREE AGENCY
One step towards the darkness
is all I'm asked to take,
one reach toward the unknown
I'm just encouraged to make.
The walls of life surround me
encircling my soul
the walls screen out the future,
protect me from the whole.
One step without knowing
what my future brings
is all that I can manage
this gives my spirit wings.-
Step by step I progress
pushing back the walls.
In faith I venture forward
Love softening the falls.
This life is grand and awesome.
Great triumphs can I win.
What I now see as challenges,
are the stumbling blocks within.
Our Savior said, "Just trust me,
I'll do for you what's best."
One step into darkness,
to God I'll leave the rest.
Stepping into darkness
pushing back the walls,
stretching toward eternal life,
frees me to choose the calls. Alien
Where is my world?
Where is my galaxy?
An alien to this planet,
Lost and hungry
For a place to call home.
trying to be loved,
to love again,
as in my inner memories
of eternal worlds
I was once allowed to do.
Is there among all the species
Of this planet called earth
A soul compatible to mine?
“Worlds without end”
Where is mine?
Chapter 13: Reality Therapy
Lynda continued to study and read. Further searching brought her to books by William Glasser. Glasser is an educator who wrote a book named, "Schools without Failure." And later "Reality Therapy" and a more recently, "Control Theory", each of which are based on the theory that any behavior a person does is based on a need which is present at the time the behavior begins, but when the need is no longer there and the behavior continues, serving no purpose, the behavior is neurotic. This therapy consists of helping the client recognize the behavior, recognize that it is no longer serving a purposes and extinguish the behavior, substituting a more appropriate or acceptable behavior. In his work in reform schools for girls the therapy was very successful. Lynda worked with this therapy on her own after reading Glasser's books and talking with fellow students she was able to recognize, analyze and extinguish some of her inappropriate behaviors.
A new environment, new beginning of her marriage, and all this knowledge and Lynda was still having problems with her life. A new counselor, Glen was able to help her in this respect also. Anger outbursts toward her children became one point of focus. Glenn suggested that she call him at home or work at any time she lost her temper. She called three times during the following
week, each time waiting until she had cooled off, and each time being told he was not available, so she left a message, "Lynda called." This had not been Glen's intent, he told her, but it certainly made Susan more aware of the outbursts and the inappropriateness of them. Recognizing that the old patterns from her script demanding anger, hostility were the pattern of her life, she recognized they as non helpful, even hurtful to her and her family. Working with Glen to find a Reality cure, she decided upon a soup can on her right arm. She cut out both ends and taped the openings and slipped it on her arm to be worn until she broke the habit of shouting and threatening her children. After two weeks of constant wear she felt like the habit was under control. The soup can served as a minute by minute reminder to deal appropriately with the behavior, as well as a crisis intervention when she raised her hand to strike a child.
I was proud of Lynda. She worked toward her goals like an athlete in training, and met each one as she recognized and focused on her behaviors. It seemed like this would surely be the turning point. Unfortunately others did not recognize her successes, and Lynda’s self image was built on the opinions of the significant others in her life, especially hubby. As Glen put it, "you make changes that seem like biggies to you and me, but hubby only sees them as littlies." But Glen was quick to notice and discuss this new angle with her.
It was becoming more and more apparent that Lynda did not like herself or respect herself as a human being. She was quick to deny it and to profess self love, but her words and actions spoke louder than denials. Now came the greatest obstacle yet, the climb to self esteem.
TO LENGTHEN MY STRIDE
Run, oh my soul,
. Run , til my heart pounds
and my lungs burn
Run til my legs beg
to be freed.
Run on, to the top of the hill
cease not til I reach the mark
til my race is run.
Then push on
for in running comes
strength anew
and distance yet undreamed.
Chapter 14: Recovery, 12 steps:
A year before her hospitalization Lynda recognized that she was dying.
The stress of the second divorce proceedings, trying to manage her family, school and a job were overwhelming to her. The stress took its toll on her immune system and chronic respiratory infections began to drain her physical health. In the last stages of the months of continuances and psychological evaluations and unending interrogatories she recognized how weak physically she had become.
In one desperate attempt to protect her children and her life, she wrote a custody agreement in which she would take the traditional weekend holiday father's role and allow the children's father to have primary custody during the school year. She realized that to keep them during the school days when she was expending all her energy teaching, and to have them gone on the weekends and holidays when she had time and energy to spend on them would be counterproductive, and since it was not a matter of all or nothing in this setting, she settled for taking them during the times she could be most available to them. They were together alternate weekends and holidays and summer for a year, then the tragedy struck and the long separation occurred.
Lynda went through feelings of helplessness during her recovery, and the years that followed were difficult to balance her desire to be with the children full time and her need to rest and recover and learn to undo the co-dependent behaviors she had learned through a life time. She learned that the bi-polar disorder had created a great deal of grief and confusion for her older children, and she watched as the co-dependent behaviors of the family continued even in her absence.
Lynda allowed the co-dependency and helpless feelings to spiral into depression more than once in the following years. The disappointment of falling into a depression with all her education, and her spiritual knowledge about the purpose of life and her purpose on earth spiraled into deeper self disgust. She came to a point when she had given up her job after a serious auto accident, that she realized she had hit bottom. Her best friend and neighbor, an alcoholic, encouraged her to take a
drink, Lynda was very aware of the neighborhood crack dealer, and the temptation to give into drugs and alcohol, after 43 years of abstinence became an obsession.
Gathering all her courage and determination not to be dragged under by such temptation, overcoming her deep physical and mental depression enough to organize herself she presented herself to a mental health facility in another town for inpatient therapy.
The feeling of disgrace and failure were overcome by learning about filling her needs from a new point of view. AA and Alanon, and the 12 step programs became an integral part of her therapy. At first she felt out of place because she had never drank, but she was assured that the only criteria for membership was a desire to not drink, and she certainly qualified on that. The fear of beginning to drink with her understanding of her own compulsive nature lead her to believe that one drink or one snort of drugs would permanently addict her. She knew well enough that had been complicated enough without it to take such a bizarre risk. Through the 12 step program Lynda reached a deeper understanding of self acceptance and forgiveness. Increasing her capacity to love herself gave her more tolerance and forgiveness for those she had dealt with throughout her life.
Step by step as she progressed through the program, the things I had taught her in that few minutes of out of body experience in the hospital years before began to move into her conscious understanding and she was more able to comprehend her purpose in life, her own needs, her value and capabilities. It was as if I were watching a blossom unfold, knowing all the time the bud had the potential and the parts to become a fully developed flower, I had assisted it by adding nourishment a sunlight, but the natural process of unfolding and maturing takes time. Lynda had not just sat idly by accepting this nourishment, but had actively pursued the courses in her life that added understanding and comprehension to her intuitive sense of purpose and value.
Epiloge: Lynda is not cured.
There is not a cure for bi-polar illness. The process of learning, exploring, growing will continue as long as she puts forth the effort. That effort against the illness is little compared to the prejudice of society. Discrimination because of having had psychiatric help will continue to occur. Gossip and rumors about mental illness, and superstitions among those who believe mental illness is caused by sin and evil. The constant effort is fatiguing. It is difficult for Lynda to continually work at pushing back the walls. If she lets go for a moment, the idea that she must constantly work at this may prompt her to question her self worth. But through all the years of work Lynda also has gained the most important gift that I could offer her, she began to love herself and accept herself and her limitations.
At this time Lynda has been working with me using a 30 year new form of therapy, or rather an acquisition of the best techniques from all strands of therapy. Neurolinguistic Programming was developed in the 1970’s by two men seeking for techniques to teach better communication skills. In doing so John Bandler and Richard Grinder observed three of the finest therapists of their times, Virginia Sytir, Milton Erickson, and Fritz Perls, to get insight into the techniques and skills they used in making their clients feel rapport, comfort, safety and understood. The techniques they unveiled are now being taught around the world in NLP Seminars. It has been proven in all areas of coaching, teaching, salesmanship and especially counseling, by directing the subconscious mind to exciting changes in beliefs and behaviors.
Lynda’s self esteem came from within her own soul. The seed planted deep within her eternal soul, that came with her at birth has blossomed into a beautiful flower. Lynda has learned to bloom where she planted, and make her own world pleasant and content in spite of what goes on around. She truly believes she is loveable, capable and valuable. She has recognized there is no one in the world that can take that away without her consent, and after all the work, she will never give her consent again.
Keep in mind this was the 1960's experimentation with mind altering drugs was just in early stages. There was much abuse of them even within the medical profession. Valium was over prescribed to the point of creating a zombie generation, of women. Not only were new drugs being tried but new psychotherapy theories were being proposed all over the world. In the 40's, Sigmund Freud had proposed that all behavior in adult neurotics was based on sexual incidents in their early years to which they responded by making a decision.
Adler and others based their theories on this idea, but expanded the idea to include the family interaction, and many other psychologists branched off to expound their own theories of why disturbed individuals behave differently from the rest of the population.
Information was coming, but we were along ways from getting the help we needed for Lynda. By the next decade, Lynda was married and had discovered to her great surprise that she was in an abusive marriage, as well as becoming an abusive mother. At the time of her marriage she had completed junior college and had taken two psychology courses. These had fanned the flame of interest in mental health, mainly hers, and she studied far beyond the requirements of the class, and had several visits with the psychology professor, hoping to discover the key to unlocking the source of her fears, and strange feelings she had.
Still she was unable to put into words that which she could not recognize from her sub-conscious, so advice to stop doing a behavior fell short because what she needed to know was how to stop, and what behavior to substitute, but until she could recognize that need, she could not ask for it.
By freshman year in college Lynda went to her psychology 101 professor, Dr. James Scoresby , who was more aggressive in his approach to therapy and gave her an assignment to attend the next college dance and talk to the young men that danced with her as if she were really interested. What resulted was a whirlwind relationship and engagement, a whole new chapter of guilt and evidence that she was evil, and this imprinted with the pain of separation as he left for the Navy, followed a week later by a letter to him, breaking off not only the engagement but the entire relationship. A few months and many young men later, following that same line of advice, came the man of her dreams: Strong willed, righteous, perusing a business profession and dominant enough to bring her up to his expectations.
Even though she acknowledged my communications, none of the red flags I desperately pointed out to her mattered, because Lynda was sure when they were married he would change as easily as she would to fit the expectations each had of the other, and they would live in bliss forever. The guilt would be washed away in the ecstasy and she would be loved for herself.
Immediately recognizing the dream to be only a fantasy Lynda built another wall of protection around her. Communication was breaking down between us. “Oh, Lynda, don't shut me out now, you need me more than ever.”
Continuing in college Lynda suggested to her husband that they take advantage of the free counseling center on campus. But he would have nothing to do with counseling. His advice was to let him be her counselor, which interpreted became, let him demand the changes he wanted and let her make the changes or else. She approached a church leader with no good results. After he had listened to her and listened to her husband nothing more was said, no advice, no help offered. Her husband threatened her and demanded that she never again talk to anyone about their personal life: A demand with which she complied for more than five years. She never even mentioned it to her own family. She held all of the frustration, anger and abuse inside until I thought for sure she was going to lose her
mind. The verbal and emotional and sexual abuse was far worse than the physical, at least she was able to strike back when being hit, although she knew it didn't hurt him or help her. And yet, that inward script of disrupting and hurting to gain attention was so strongly a driving force that her life appeared to her to be working.
Her own perception of reality being challenged, Lynda found it easier to accept her husband’s alien thinking patterns, and she began to protect and even espouse his thinking. When she finally did break her oath of silence, it was met with more abuse. She was told to go home and be an obedient wife and things would be just fine. On the verge of breaking she demanded that they get her help. In hopes of "fixing Lynda", hubby agreed to see the professor clinician whom Lynda had known in college. Dr. James Scoresby and hubby had met. His diagnosis: "You have a very sick wife." Just what hubby had wanted to hear. "I am ok, she is not ok." Lab tests were arranged and Lithium prescribed to halt the tremendous mood swings both described. Nothing was prescribed for hubby, so the abuse continued, and with medication, Lynda felt more and more panicked.
She was the identified patient. She was the problem. True to her script, she was no good. “I'm not OK. Everyone else is OK. I only get hit and shoved when I am misbehaving; abuse is better than no attention at all. If I wasn't so bad, I wouldn't get the abuse. So I deserve it. Even our church leader has said so. This arrangement certainly satisfied her husband, and the spiral of domestic violence and emotional abuse was in full force.
In spite of the walls, in spite of the scripts, Lynda was stubborn and strong willed. Rather than lie down and die she fought, she fought her husband, she fought the church she fought the schools and anyone who contradicted her. Deep within, the scripts I had worked so hard to instill in her were demanding recognition. "Lynda, you are important, you are capable, you are lovable. Even without performing you are a child of God. Don't let the world tell you anything else". To others, Lynda’s
behavior was seen as erratic, defensive, impulsive and neurotic. I was thrilled. As long as that spark of self esteem was still burning, Lynda would fight to live. As her behavior was perceived as deteriorating by mortals, she was referred to the counseling center in her town, interviewed by a psychiatrist and assigned a psychologist to meet with her on a regular basis. Between the lithium and counseling sessions she felt like there was some control in her life again.
Meg, the psychologist listened and listened for weeks and weeks. Lynda spilled out a litany of abuse and hurt, and fears. Meg questioned and listened patiently encouraged hubby to come in for counseling which he did a few times, then quit on the excuse that he was being abused by having to listen to such accusations. Meg had made suggestions to him which were rejected, so what was left was to help Lynda cope with and deal with the situation, while she learned to change herself and not create abusive situations to occur. For the first time since birth, Lynda perceived unconditional acceptance. She still didn't accept herself as valuable at this point, but she was in there fighting.
Getting a glimmer of recognition that her perception was not as defective hubby would have her believe, and gaining strength through the counseling process, she took her kids and left the marriage home. She had money from inheritance and used it to settle in another town and buy a home. Once settled she made an appointment with a counselor, Stewart Smith, LCSW Licensed Clinical Social worker. His was a teaching approach.
That was OK. Lynda had talked herself dry to Meg. They had talked about everything, but accomplished little. Lynda was unsure if she was headed in the right direction because of Meg's unconditional acceptance and active listening, she felt that everything she said was acceptable; only occasionally had Meg raised her eyebrows or given any indication that Lynda's statements were neurotic. Mr. Smith was all business. His job, he declared, was to teach Lynda how to think and act and even feel. Her job was to listen and to practice what he preached. This was different. This was strange. This was scary, but I encouraged her to hang in there and learn. As she worked, small pin holes opened up through which I could communicate with her once again. We both sensed that this was the only chance she had at this point to stabilize her life. Besides it was a chance to sit back and listen and not go through the painful process of dredging up past history with the attached emotions. Sit and listen we did, week after week, 45 dollars after 45 dollars, and though nothing made sense, it all seemed like it should. Somehow it all had to fit together, and somehow Lynda was determined to comprehend it all no matter what the price.
Stone Cold Rock Wall
I would have written
"Something there is
that doesn't love a wall,
that wants it down,"
but Robert Frost took my words
years before my birth
and pre wrote my thoughts.
That's ok so long as I have the
words to use and I can say
what I need with his well written verse.
Walls between you and me.
were just not meant to be
and words are not sufficient to
build or to tear them down.
Years of actions misunderstood
cemented into place by rock hard hurt
and stone cold criticisms
built these walls of shabby black rock.
Perhaps no wrecker in the world
could break the mortar and stone that divides us,
but we could sit astride the wall
and visit on the top.
Chapter 12: New Therapies
Mr. Smith had Lynda write on a 3 X 5 card to carry in her purse or pocket. "I do not like the way I feel but I can control the way I think and act." This might as well have been in a foreign language. Susan could not comprehend the meaning of this sentence, much less the idea that it could be true, or that it could become a part of her thinking.
Nevertheless going purely on my encouragement she continued to pursue this strange line of counseling. Then one day, as the truth of the statement came in just a flicker to her conscious mind, Mr. Smith hit her with a new idea. Not only could she control her thoughts and actions, but her emotions too. This was too much to internalize and she nearly quit going to therapy because of it. Still not following most of the sessions, she continued to go, because of a pinging in her subconscious to her conscious: "this man speaks the truth. Listen and learn." At least she was hearing me.
Over the course of a year she continued to go and be disturbed by the messages she could neither explain or internalize, but her life was changing, she could recognize that. Finally as a closure gesture, since Lynda was leaving the area, Mr. Smith invited her to a seminar called "Life Power," which she attended for three days. The concepts were the same as he had been presenting, but they were presented in work groups and discussion groups, and the ideas started to come together and make sense. She signed up to be a facilitator for the company that presented the seminars and was able to teach it twice in her new town through the junior college. Each time she taught the seminars the concepts made more sense and became more realistic to her. But it was not until she began taking graduate counseling courses in college that the real comprehension began.
RET (rational emotive thinking) was presented as a new psychotherapy by Albert Ellis in the early 70's. Discouraged with the poor results of listening therapies, which made up most of psychological practice at that time, Ellis wanted a more direct approach. The idea was a neurotic patient doesn't need to rehash his life story in detailed accounts over months and months; he needs relief from his psychic pain, and the only way to get relief is to learn a new way of thinking and acting. The hallmark saying of RET is: "It's not what happens but what you think about what happens that creates an emotion." In other words, Lynda learned in her seminars and classes, it is not the traffic that causes you stress, but what you think about the traffic. It is not the final exam that's making you
sweat, but what you are thinking about the exam. If you took the exam out of context, it would not cause stress, but because of what you think about the exam in connection with the class you become stressed. When Lynda decided to check out this theory, after she finally comprehended it, she left a type writer out with paper in so she could rapidly record her thought process that led to an anger outburst or depression.
Quickly she noticed the similarity of the spiraling thoughts. Something happened, the event (a) her (b) thoughts about it began: "He said . . .” That means I am wrong about. . . that means I am no good. I am a terrible person. I don't deserve to live. I am a terrible mother too. . . Everything he has ever said bad about me is true. Everything any one has said bad about me is true. I am the scum of the earth. Lower than a lowly worm. I could sit on a dime and my feet would dangle." And this she noticed, for some reason, led her directly into a depression. The thoughts that led to anger included these same thoughts, but triggered a defense reaction that escalated to:
"I can't be wrong. If he is right I must be wrong and that cannot be. I must prove him wrong. If I am wrong I cease to have value, to be lovable or capable." And the explosive outburst of anger and hostility shields her from the thought that she might be wrong, no matter how irrational the argument might be.
Lynda read and studied all she could get a hold of about RET. She attended a seminar with a personal appearance of Albert Ellis, and bought books and posters that clearly demonstrated this approach. The book and workbook "Feeling Good; the New Mood Therapy," by David Burns became her bible. The more she taught and demonstrated this approach the more it helped her until she came to the point that it became an automatic approach to analyzing her thinking process.
Feeling confident and capable of dealing with life Lynda remarried her children’s father. So confident that she could live all she had learned she gave up her new home and moved back to Arizona to begin a new life with her husband and children, to try to heal the wounds and nightmares of the past.
FREE AGENCY
One step towards the darkness
is all I'm asked to take,
one reach toward the unknown
I'm just encouraged to make.
The walls of life surround me
encircling my soul
the walls screen out the future,
protect me from the whole.
One step without knowing
what my future brings
is all that I can manage
this gives my spirit wings.-
Step by step I progress
pushing back the walls.
In faith I venture forward
Love softening the falls.
This life is grand and awesome.
Great triumphs can I win.
What I now see as challenges,
are the stumbling blocks within.
Our Savior said, "Just trust me,
I'll do for you what's best."
One step into darkness,
to God I'll leave the rest.
Stepping into darkness
pushing back the walls,
stretching toward eternal life,
frees me to choose the calls. Alien
Where is my world?
Where is my galaxy?
An alien to this planet,
Lost and hungry
For a place to call home.
trying to be loved,
to love again,
as in my inner memories
of eternal worlds
I was once allowed to do.
Is there among all the species
Of this planet called earth
A soul compatible to mine?
“Worlds without end”
Where is mine?
Chapter 13: Reality Therapy
Lynda continued to study and read. Further searching brought her to books by William Glasser. Glasser is an educator who wrote a book named, "Schools without Failure." And later "Reality Therapy" and a more recently, "Control Theory", each of which are based on the theory that any behavior a person does is based on a need which is present at the time the behavior begins, but when the need is no longer there and the behavior continues, serving no purpose, the behavior is neurotic. This therapy consists of helping the client recognize the behavior, recognize that it is no longer serving a purposes and extinguish the behavior, substituting a more appropriate or acceptable behavior. In his work in reform schools for girls the therapy was very successful. Lynda worked with this therapy on her own after reading Glasser's books and talking with fellow students she was able to recognize, analyze and extinguish some of her inappropriate behaviors.
A new environment, new beginning of her marriage, and all this knowledge and Lynda was still having problems with her life. A new counselor, Glen was able to help her in this respect also. Anger outbursts toward her children became one point of focus. Glenn suggested that she call him at home or work at any time she lost her temper. She called three times during the following
week, each time waiting until she had cooled off, and each time being told he was not available, so she left a message, "Lynda called." This had not been Glen's intent, he told her, but it certainly made Susan more aware of the outbursts and the inappropriateness of them. Recognizing that the old patterns from her script demanding anger, hostility were the pattern of her life, she recognized they as non helpful, even hurtful to her and her family. Working with Glen to find a Reality cure, she decided upon a soup can on her right arm. She cut out both ends and taped the openings and slipped it on her arm to be worn until she broke the habit of shouting and threatening her children. After two weeks of constant wear she felt like the habit was under control. The soup can served as a minute by minute reminder to deal appropriately with the behavior, as well as a crisis intervention when she raised her hand to strike a child.
I was proud of Lynda. She worked toward her goals like an athlete in training, and met each one as she recognized and focused on her behaviors. It seemed like this would surely be the turning point. Unfortunately others did not recognize her successes, and Lynda’s self image was built on the opinions of the significant others in her life, especially hubby. As Glen put it, "you make changes that seem like biggies to you and me, but hubby only sees them as littlies." But Glen was quick to notice and discuss this new angle with her.
It was becoming more and more apparent that Lynda did not like herself or respect herself as a human being. She was quick to deny it and to profess self love, but her words and actions spoke louder than denials. Now came the greatest obstacle yet, the climb to self esteem.
TO LENGTHEN MY STRIDE
Run, oh my soul,
. Run , til my heart pounds
and my lungs burn
Run til my legs beg
to be freed.
Run on, to the top of the hill
cease not til I reach the mark
til my race is run.
Then push on
for in running comes
strength anew
and distance yet undreamed.
Chapter 14: Recovery, 12 steps:
A year before her hospitalization Lynda recognized that she was dying.
The stress of the second divorce proceedings, trying to manage her family, school and a job were overwhelming to her. The stress took its toll on her immune system and chronic respiratory infections began to drain her physical health. In the last stages of the months of continuances and psychological evaluations and unending interrogatories she recognized how weak physically she had become.
In one desperate attempt to protect her children and her life, she wrote a custody agreement in which she would take the traditional weekend holiday father's role and allow the children's father to have primary custody during the school year. She realized that to keep them during the school days when she was expending all her energy teaching, and to have them gone on the weekends and holidays when she had time and energy to spend on them would be counterproductive, and since it was not a matter of all or nothing in this setting, she settled for taking them during the times she could be most available to them. They were together alternate weekends and holidays and summer for a year, then the tragedy struck and the long separation occurred.
Lynda went through feelings of helplessness during her recovery, and the years that followed were difficult to balance her desire to be with the children full time and her need to rest and recover and learn to undo the co-dependent behaviors she had learned through a life time. She learned that the bi-polar disorder had created a great deal of grief and confusion for her older children, and she watched as the co-dependent behaviors of the family continued even in her absence.
Lynda allowed the co-dependency and helpless feelings to spiral into depression more than once in the following years. The disappointment of falling into a depression with all her education, and her spiritual knowledge about the purpose of life and her purpose on earth spiraled into deeper self disgust. She came to a point when she had given up her job after a serious auto accident, that she realized she had hit bottom. Her best friend and neighbor, an alcoholic, encouraged her to take a
drink, Lynda was very aware of the neighborhood crack dealer, and the temptation to give into drugs and alcohol, after 43 years of abstinence became an obsession.
Gathering all her courage and determination not to be dragged under by such temptation, overcoming her deep physical and mental depression enough to organize herself she presented herself to a mental health facility in another town for inpatient therapy.
The feeling of disgrace and failure were overcome by learning about filling her needs from a new point of view. AA and Alanon, and the 12 step programs became an integral part of her therapy. At first she felt out of place because she had never drank, but she was assured that the only criteria for membership was a desire to not drink, and she certainly qualified on that. The fear of beginning to drink with her understanding of her own compulsive nature lead her to believe that one drink or one snort of drugs would permanently addict her. She knew well enough that had been complicated enough without it to take such a bizarre risk. Through the 12 step program Lynda reached a deeper understanding of self acceptance and forgiveness. Increasing her capacity to love herself gave her more tolerance and forgiveness for those she had dealt with throughout her life.
Step by step as she progressed through the program, the things I had taught her in that few minutes of out of body experience in the hospital years before began to move into her conscious understanding and she was more able to comprehend her purpose in life, her own needs, her value and capabilities. It was as if I were watching a blossom unfold, knowing all the time the bud had the potential and the parts to become a fully developed flower, I had assisted it by adding nourishment a sunlight, but the natural process of unfolding and maturing takes time. Lynda had not just sat idly by accepting this nourishment, but had actively pursued the courses in her life that added understanding and comprehension to her intuitive sense of purpose and value.
Epiloge: Lynda is not cured.
There is not a cure for bi-polar illness. The process of learning, exploring, growing will continue as long as she puts forth the effort. That effort against the illness is little compared to the prejudice of society. Discrimination because of having had psychiatric help will continue to occur. Gossip and rumors about mental illness, and superstitions among those who believe mental illness is caused by sin and evil. The constant effort is fatiguing. It is difficult for Lynda to continually work at pushing back the walls. If she lets go for a moment, the idea that she must constantly work at this may prompt her to question her self worth. But through all the years of work Lynda also has gained the most important gift that I could offer her, she began to love herself and accept herself and her limitations.
At this time Lynda has been working with me using a 30 year new form of therapy, or rather an acquisition of the best techniques from all strands of therapy. Neurolinguistic Programming was developed in the 1970’s by two men seeking for techniques to teach better communication skills. In doing so John Bandler and Richard Grinder observed three of the finest therapists of their times, Virginia Sytir, Milton Erickson, and Fritz Perls, to get insight into the techniques and skills they used in making their clients feel rapport, comfort, safety and understood. The techniques they unveiled are now being taught around the world in NLP Seminars. It has been proven in all areas of coaching, teaching, salesmanship and especially counseling, by directing the subconscious mind to exciting changes in beliefs and behaviors.
Lynda’s self esteem came from within her own soul. The seed planted deep within her eternal soul, that came with her at birth has blossomed into a beautiful flower. Lynda has learned to bloom where she planted, and make her own world pleasant and content in spite of what goes on around. She truly believes she is loveable, capable and valuable. She has recognized there is no one in the world that can take that away without her consent, and after all the work, she will never give her consent again.
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