The Essence of Integration

Frau Wolleh with Children by Gerhard Richter

I recently visited the Art Institute of Chicago. The collection is largely Impressionist, most famous for their sole ownership of Seurat's Sunday Afternoon de la Grande Jatte. I was excited to revisit this Seurat and indeed spent a good amount of time admiring it. However, I was most captivated by this piece by Richter. I stopped, I stared, I wept. It is the perfect depiction of my struggle with fragmentation this past year.

Each time I was subject to an abuse event, I left my body so that I wouldn't feel and could pretend it wasn't happening. Now that I am revisiting and processing these memories one by one, I have a mental image of my dissociation. It feels like each time I dissociated, a part of me left and did not come back. They are each floating up above my head in ether-space like white, wispy smoke. Those parts of me are frozen in time (age, appearance, maturity level) and chose not to come back into my body. It's not safe in here. Each time this happened I became a little less myself, a little more fractured, a lot less whole.

Those lost pieces of me are my true essence. This is why I feel fragmented, damaged, and unwhole. As more and more of my essence gathered and lingered outside, I became less Me. A shell of my former self. At the point of mass fracture - The Terrible Awful (about which I have yet to write) - my frozen inner self curled up into a ball, a small and tight 13 year old version of me. Adult Me has grown up around her: hiding, pretending, shielding, overachieving. But she remains unloved, abandoned, closed off, and alone.

My essence continued to escape, one white wisp at a time. All the times I subjected myself to unhealthy situations. All the times I failed to erect healthy boundaries. All the times I entered and stayed in unhealthy relationships (I will discuss this more in a later post called Married to Crazy.) And each time I was revictimized, as it turns out that survivors of childhood sexual abuse are 2-5 times (sources vary) more likely to be subjected to sexual assaults later in life.

The boundary-less situation with my mother only served to perpetuate the escape of my essence. Last fall when I realized the true nature of that relationship and finally acknowledged that I had lost her many years ago, the last of my essence escaped. Adult Me wound up small and tight like a perfect mirror shell of small and tight Little Me inside.

This past year I've been trying to unwind. Stand up. Be erect. Move around. Let go. Loosen up. Be real. Face the truth. Reconnect Little Me and Adult Me. It's painful. Muscles have atrophied. We are stiff. Robotic. Unpracticed. Vulnerable. Rigid. But we are standing! Except now we realize we are empty. Upright, but utterly hollow. The essence of Real Me still floats above, outside. Not in. Not integrated. Not full. Not whole. Not real. Not really living.

I wish so badly to reconnect with those parts of me which were forced out because it was not safe. I can't live without my essence any longer. I won't survive. Being and feeling whole are integral to being me - the whole me, the Real Me. And so much of my efforts this past year have been to show my essence that indeed it is safe to come back in. I will care for each of these lost parts, protect them, name them (discussed in a later post called A Bouquet of Me), accept them, love them, allow them to be playful. Entice them to come home.

The Richter painting is me, Adult Me standing with pieces of lost Little Me just outside. Within my grasp but not inside. It pained me greatly to see an artful representation of what I felt. It still hurts when I look at this painting. Sometimes, maybe even often times, pain is necessary to produce change. I am on a journey towards integration and every little step that gets me there is critically important.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), though Wolleh is a proper German name it is strikingly similar to the verb wollen which means "to want." I desperately want to integrate all of the lost pieces of myself. I venture to say it is vital to my overall healing.

If ever there were a song to describe the message I am sending to my lost Essence, it is best articulated in Drifting by Sarah McLachlan....

Please come home.



Goodbye Panda

I'm not sure from where or when, but there is a story that has been stuck in my head for years about using a panda as a way to distract foolish onlookers. "Hey, kids, look at the panda!" is a phrase that has repeated itself in my inner monologue countless times. This typically comes up in situations where quick, slight-of-hand shenanigans would provide a momentary lapse in concentration thereby allowing some simultaneous shady act to go unnoticed. Perhaps it was the punchline of a joke. Whatever this was made a lasting enough impression on me that it has now become synonymous with my mind's coping mechanism of using the trauma with my mother as a distraction to keep me from acknowledging, dealing with, and healing from the darker truths that laid dormant far beneath.

I spent over two decades of my life living my mother's story instead of my own. I was overly obsessed with helping her, assuring the care she needed, understanding her illness, finding a diagnosis that made sense, and later assuming care and becoming financially responsible for her. I also venture to say that much of my hyperdrive overachievement in life has to do with my desire to get to a place where I could care for her. In some ways I became a mother at age 12 and had to procure and ensure safety and prosperity for both of us. (See earlier post on Growing up with Schizophrenic Mother for more details.)

At times I recognized the relative unhealth of this behavior and indeed I had many hypotheses for it. That I needed to fix her. That I needed to relieve my guilt of not preventing her suicide attempts. That I needed to pay penance for not being able to keep her well. That maybe someday I could even regain her love. It saddens me to write this now because, at 38, I see how very much of my time and energy was lavished on these needless and fruitless activities.

When I first began meeting with Em we used drawing therapy to extract and articulate the pain I was experiencing before I recognized it as The Breakthrough Crisis. At the time I only knew that my life was in disarray and my mother seemed to be the cause of that pain - or so I had assumed for many years. All of my drawing therapy centered around mother. Em asked prompting questions to which I drew out the answers. It went something like this...

• How do you feel right now? My artful representation was of me with lightning bolts for hair, drowning in plane tickets and work documents, surrounded by piles of money that I could neither reach nor spend, with all of the things I longed for (community, social life, free time, family) far off in the distance.
• What is your biggest problem? This one shows me on  my knees begging for my mother to love me while she sits silent and ignoring me while smoking cigarettes. In the background are all of the things I've done and bought for her and, ironically, a pile of money that I later recognized was a mirror image from my first drawing.
• What will it look like when your biggest problem is solved? I went numb. I sat and stared. My throat grew hot and then closed up; I began to cough. I had to run to the bathroom for a glass of water. We were at Zi's house (Em's friend) who was visiting in Bali for the month and the pipes had frozen so there was no water. I was able to calm myself with deep breathing before returning to our therapy room.

The body has a funny way of telling us things if only we will listen. I wasn't ready to hear what my body had to say, but I was being prepared. I was able to complete the drawing after thinking about it for awhile. At first I saw no solution. I divided the paper in half and drew a picture of mom and I holding hands and smiling, then immediately put a big black X through it. I then drew what I understood to be the real (and only possible) solution which is a picture of myself in meditative position feeling happy, healthy, and well all by myself. This icon became a theme in my mind's eye and in my journals for months.

It wasn't until the appearance of The Black Oil that I began to understand my mother was only the surface issue.  After many months of therapy, EMDR, and recovered memories (see The Theatre and On Shame) I now understand what and why I was hiding. What an amazing and resilient little brain I must've had in order to cover my trauma truth for so long. This charade parade made me incredibly functional but also inordinately fragmented. To not have access to my full self, to divert my focus onto a decoy for so many years, to treat my mind-body like a machine - always demanding and never recognizing limitations - all of this came at a cost. 

Now that I am acknowledging and confronting the layers of my trauma onion, I am paying myself back bit by bit for what was lost. I can never regain it all; some things are gone forever. And for that I am deeply grievous. But I am now able to take care of myself in a way I could or would not before. I am kind to myself. I have oodles of self-compassion and grace when I fall short. I look for signs of fatigue and depletion, and I restore and rebuild when needed. I surround myself with things and people who give me energy and add to my life. I no longer force myself to do things I "should" when they are things that make me feel bad. This includes discontinuing the charade with my mother (fully elaborated in Healthy Boundaries.)

Em and I did a second drawing therapy session many months later and I was mesmerized by the stark contrast. First, I noticed that in my second set I was clothed where I had been exposed in all of the first drawings. Mother was no longer in any of my drawings; upon this revelation I was not upset, I merely accepted. Perhaps most interesting was the change in my viewpoint. The first drawings were myopic, situation specific. The later drawings were teaming with ideas, people, places and included a variety of settings. The multilayered complexity and beauty of my life without charades was being revealed. And unlike my first set where I was off to the side, my later drawings showcase me at the center: calm and radiant.

And so it is with great pleasure that I bid adieu to the decoy, to the distraction, but ultimately to my pretending and fragmented self once and for all. "Say goodbye, panda!"

Anniversary

It has been almost exactly one year since the onset of my Breakthrough Crisis. Celebrating or at least recognizing milestones is an important rite of passage in any culture. I often find that looking back on where I was helps me to appreciate where I am. It's why I journal so much. How else am I supposed to gauge progress?

Unstuck includes a number of journaling exercises at the end of each chapter. The book views depression as a call to change. An initial exercise is to outline the specifics of your call and how you can respond to it. These are my answers from one year ago.

1. What's going on right now?

I am extremely dissatisfied with the level of busy-ness in my life due to my demanding, hectic, and travel filled job. I've figured out that I am a person who needs a great deal of stillness, downtime, and routine in order to thrive. On top of this I am trying to deal with the fallout of realizations and changes in my relationship with my mother. Feelings of guilt, resentment, anger, and mostly depression are near consuming me.

Underneath both of these issues is a deep sense of loneliness because I have few friends and little time to build a personal life due to my job. I've spent all of my life's energy, time, and money in fixing my mother instead of investing in myself and my future.

2. Where do I want to be headed and what changes are necessary?

I want friends I can call to have dinner, watch movies, and see the city with. I want to sleep in my own bed most nights. I don't want to feel tired, rushed, behind schedule, and out of control all of the time. I want to enjoy my free time instead of feeling like I'm merely recovering in between times of intense work. 

I want to feel energized and hopeful about life again. I want to regain my sense of wonder in nature, God, people, and animals. I want free time and space to do good for others which makes me feel expansive. I want to express the full range of human emotion, to inspire and be inspired. I want to express Who I Really Am and feel I am making a difference in the world by doing so.

3. What are my first steps for getting where I am going?

- Make an appointment with my doctor to discuss depression and rule out any possible physical causes such as thyroid, hormones, or adrenal abnormalities.
- Find a therapist and stick with it, at least until my major symptoms subside. 
- Talk to friends. Stay connected.
- Pursue closeness with key family members; they are more important than friends.
- Make some modifications in my diet to support health and well-being: more beans, oatmeal, eggs, salmon and water; less coffee, cookies, chips, and crackers.
- Pursue a job change. 
- Set up my mother's care in a way that minimizes my involvement. 
- Integrate things into my life that I know support Who I Really Am: yoga, volunteering, running, hiking, nature, time with my dog, family, reading, traveling for pleasure.

Looking back at this is quite helpful, and I can almost not believe the progress I have made. I was able to make all of the changes I wanted in less than 12 months.

I found not one but two wonderful therapists; the work I've done with Dee and Em has been life altering. I went on two international trips for pleasure. I have a new job that I enjoy which requires little travel. I moved back to a city where I had an immediate circle of supportive friends. I set my mother up in a new living arrangement that no longer requires monthly oversight from me. I bought a lake house surrounded by nature and a peacefulness that allows plenty of time for stillness and introspection. This has enticed my family to come visit which has allowed us to grow closer than we've been in a long time.

When I started this post I thought I was going to lament the passage of time. A year sounds so long. And yet, seeing my own progress laid out in this way I now feel differently than when I began. I am incredibly fortunate to be able to integrate such massive change in a relatively short amount of time! But I believe it was necessary. I could not focus on my healing in the midst of near-constant travel to perform in an overly demanding job, nor when I was consumed with the care and well-being of my mother. I had to identify the barriers and then remove them one by one in order to create a safe place for me to process, reconnect, and integrate.

Most of all, I am amazed that my inner wisdom knew exactly what I needed and precisely how to guide me here. The universe responded to my call. I am forever grateful.

Word Art

Much of the time I don't know how I feel. I know something is wrong, I don't feel quite right. I'm "upset" - that often seems to be the most specific word I can come up with to describe the turmoil inside. Because I spend most of the time outside my body, I simply cannot get in touch with what is going on inside. How could I? I'm not in there enough to understand the lay of the land. I'm a visitor at best.

For many years I have been using collage technique to get in touch with my feelings. I flip through magazines and clip out whatever words speak to me on a page. Not every page, just ones that resonate at first sight. I try not to think about it too much or for too long so as to get to my essence, the inner wisdom that lies somewhere down deep and wants to communicate with Real Me.

Here is one that I put together right in the middle of the Breakdown Crisis. Often times my collage will have 2 sides - the hopeless and the hopeful, both of which speak volumes. Looking back at this now it is easy to notice the theme of having a shameful secret, a dark horse lurking beneath the surface...

Don't Tell
Fake
The Secret Battle
Hide
Protect
Risk
Imagine less pain - that's my favorite in this set

Here's another I did a few months later. This time I was in a phase where music was speaking directly to my soul, so I incorporated a maze full of lyrics around my art. Again, the theme of secrecy is abundant...

Protect - that word alone appears 3 times in this set

Secrets

Frozen 

Blame

Warning

Defense

It could happen to you

That fellow on the left is Thom Yorke, the lead singer of my favorite band Radiohead. We shall dive more deeply into my longstanding fascination with dissociative music in a later post called Playlist.