... for they shall get their children in the same car!
Dear Companion,
today was our daughter's last day in Nashville and it was drenched in tears. And then she and her brother got in a big fight via texting and then they were both texting me. She was saying, please don't make me drive with him and he was saying talk to yr daughter or she'll be making this trip by herself! Our son was, as best as I can figure it out, in a very testy mood and, when he learned she would be an hour late being ready to leave was cross with her and it went downhill from there. I called her and she was crying her heart out. Couldn't hardly breathe and everything. It was a while before I could get her calm enough to understand what was going on. She said she was exhausted and she didn't want to leave that night, the weather was bad and she just wanted to go to bed and make the trip by herself in the morning. I told her she didn't have to have him drive her and that calmed her down some. Then explained how to examine any situation like this in terms of power. By crying and getting hysterical, she was giving him all the power in the situation. Instead, now knowing that she could make the trip on her own, she could retake her personal power in the situation and tell him that she could not be there until 9:00. She would like for him to go with her, but if he didn't want to, then that was fine, she would drive up on her own the next day. I told her that we wouldn't want her on the road at night, so she'd have to be prepared to stop at hotels on the way up here and that I thought it was better for her if she did come up with her brother. That he had been very testy to her, which we were used to, but we just hadn't seen him be like this for a long time and it was the straw on her back which was why she had gotten so upset by it. Then I got off the phone with her and called our son, but he was working and couldn't talk but said he could text. So I texted him that it sneed like he had been harsh with her, did he feel like he had been? And that she was terribly upset and crying so hard she couldn't get her breath. He texted back saying that she had been rude to him, etc. I said that it didn't do any good for me to go through a discussion of who said what to who, but it sounded like they had each been sharp with the other and each of them were on edge and so took everything worse. Could he consider texting her and saying he hadn't meant to upset her and just to try to get there as soon as he could, that way he didn't have to admit fault, but could smooth things out with her. To my surprise he asked me to text her, he was at work after all, and tell her he was sorry and that they'd leave when she got there. So I called her and she was still crying pretty bad, but she agreed. I had some good news for her from her father about a person in a very incredible business who wanted her to come see him for interviewing help and then was going to send her to some people in his business to see if they had a place for her. If I told you what the company was, you'd be thrilled for her! She was excited/terrified. I told her that was the thing. Stay in Tennessee and work at Wal-Mart, or come to New York and have a shot at something like this. She definitely doesn't want to stay in Tennessee if it means working some low-level job. I'm watching them on the AT&T family map and they are getting close to being across Tennessee now. She just needs to find a job, soon! That will help her out so much in this big transition. And, hopefully our son will like what he sees up here and think about moving up here, too.
So, my visit with my therapist yesterday was pretty important. We talked about the huge panic attack. I'm not sure that I have this all straight, but I'll try to put it together as best as I understand it at this point. I told her that the understanding that I was trying to say my mother was only this occasionally very nice person, and all the other stuff was just her mental illness, not her was distorting who she was. And that she actually is ALL the moms I experience. She was the nice, companionable, kind mother, but she was also the terrifying, raging person who could change on a dime and suddenly attack. And that I thought that that realization made the fact that I am no longer calling her every day put me in a place of real danger from her. That I was, in her terms, no longer "placating the beast" and it became slowly overwhelming to the point that I was so afraid I could not even stay in a chair. That it brought back the feelings in the past of being terrified out of my mind about how she was going to react to some perceived slight to the point of being completely unable to function. And that's what happened last Saturday. I became unable to function. She asked how long the whole thing had taken. I think it grew on me for about three hours, just the increasing sense of dis-ease fore I was on the floor. And I was on the floor for maybe 30 minutes. I told her what my doctor said about taking a Xanax and she asked me why I hadn't. I said that I had wanted to be able to deal with it without a medicine and just push my way through it. And that it just would have out me to sleep. So she asked me if I had been able to get much work done while I was in that distress and I said no. It was too intense. So she pointed out that I could have taken a Xanax and fallen asleep for three hours which would have been healthier for me and wouldn't have made a big difference in how much work I got done. I told her how, once the horrible feeling began to ease up some, I started making detailed plans for what I would do. I would get the piece of packing paper I was lying on and put it in the box it had come out of. Then I would wash my face and get my makeup, go downstairs and get some gluten-free chocolate cookies and a Coke Zero and watch a Glee (she totally gets Glee, which was nice). And I rehearsed that in my mind until I felt I could pull it off. She said that was all very good.
In talking though all of this, I rally liked something she said. She said it was her fault. That's not something you here anyone say very often, much less a psychologist. But she said it was her fault because she "unveiled" a truth about my mother too quickly and I wasn't prepared for it and was left vulnerable to it which wa what caused the anxiety. That she should have done what they call "inoculation" where they prepare someone for something before they help the to see it. She said that I have been calling her regularly and seeing her regularly not because I want to, but because it was my way of placating her and keeping her acting like that nice person. So as long as I was doing that, I was experiencing this "nice" mother. By showing me that I was distorting who she was by saying that nice person was the real person caused me to see that she is, also, the terrible, horrible person who I have moved away from and am no longer keeping her nice by constant contact. So my psyche suddenly perceived itself to be in grave danger. She didn't say that last thing, but that's my understanding of the gist of what she said. There was more to all of this, but that's all I was able to hand on to. At one point I was frustrated and asked why I couldn't keep this together? Why I couldn't understand it all and hold on to that understanding and keep it all in a nice little ball. She said it is because I am left with terror in me and terror is ... what did she say? Terror creates disorganized thinking, so you can't get yr thinking about something of which you are terrified nicely organized and chronicled and indexed and keep it that way, because the terror itself is unstructured and destructures your ability to understand it. Wow. That was hard to out in words. I'm not sure I've got it right even now, and then she laughed and said, "were not going to try to get it into a ball anyway". I said, "oh ... then I don't need my metaphorical ball?" And she said no, I didn't. That we are going to try to out it into a narrative. That that is the goal. Okeydoke, then. A narrative it shall be. I really ... oh wait. She said something else that I don't think I completely grasped. I said something about being broken ... and she said something about how I was not broken. My psyche was damaged, but I was not broken by that damage.
So, that the news from my little spot in the universe.
Cheers!
Lisa
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