The SuperWoman Drama Queen's Demise...

we all have super powers...right? Me...the consummate drama queen super woman has met her match...LIFE smacked me upside the head and may have caused the demise of the drama queen that was moi!!!

Your Personality Is

Idealist (NF) You are a passionate, caring, and unique person. You are good at expressing yourself and sharing your ideals. You are the most compassionate of all types and connect with others easily. Your heart tends to rule you. You can't make decisions without considering feelings. You seek out other empathetic people to befriend. Truth and authenticity matters in your friendships. In love, you give everything you have to relationships. You fall in love easily. At work, you crave personal expression and meaning in your career. With others, you communicate well. You can spend all night talking with someone. As far as your looks go, you've likely taken the time to develop your own personal style. On weekends, you like to be with others. Charity work is also a favorite pastime of yours.

The Three Question Personality Test

i am not sure i will ever be the same again...there seems no normal...no place to find peace of mind...i am sad and crying one moment...angry the next...scared out  of my wits the next...all my emotional nerve endings are exposed and raw...i have lost the ability to cope...and i am in pain...

at some point during the 2 weeks i was on suicide watch...i tried to pick my loved one up in a chaise lounge...i broke the chaise...and i broke me...i have a torn ligament in my pelvis and caused a hernia...when it became impossible for me to take even a few steps without excruciating pain...i went to the emergency room...and i have been ordered to bed rest...the pain pills are not working on the pain, but they do allow me to sleep...the anti inflammatory seems to work better...

this is what the idealist does when control is out of her capabilities...and the idealist drama queen crashes into a giant pity party...weeping endlessly...wildly angry...and finally falling into a restless, fitful sleep...

tomorrow is the family meeting with my loved one and his therapists...i am supposed to speak my truth...for, i am assured,  that will be the only way to begin the healing process...i am angry that he decided to check out of our life...i am sad about the same thing...and terrified about what the future holds or even if there is a future...his abstract negativity and hopelessness seem to suck the air out of the world...i find it very difficult to breathe...

i know that after a very dark, difficult time there is some large transition planned for you...we must trust God, even when engulfed in darkness and doubt....that trust thing again...how bad do things have to get for me to begin to trust??? is that my lesson??? 

"We must live", says the pastor in Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light to a man contemplating suicide. "WHY must we live?" retorts the man. This question occupies a central place in Bergman's art and life, as indeed it should in the life of every human being. In answer to this question, the pastor in Winter Light says nothing and lowers his eyes, indicating in this way the impotence of faith to supply the answer to this most important question. *

this disquieting question, which demands introspection and self-examination, is what i have been struggling with for some time...the complete impotence one feels when you love someone contemplating their own suicide...the inability to reach them and make them give a damn...the realization that loving them is not enough...and loving you is not a reason for them to live...

In Bergman's "The Hour of the Wolf" there is a remarkable scene, in which a few moments from Mozart's "Magic Flute" are depicted on the stage of a miniature theater. The opera's main character, in the course of his quest, finds himself engulfed in complete darkness and cries out:

"Eternal night,
when willst thou flee?
When will mine eyes
The daylight see?"

After a moment of desperate silence, he receives the answer from afar: "Soon, soon...or never."

these harsh explorations have become part and parcel of my life this year...i bring them here for people to understand that mental illness should be spoken of...these are not bad people...just very sick people...and if you let them they can make you sick also...when will my eyes daylight see???

Don't forget to visit my other blog,The Artist as a Spiritual Explorer here...there is a lot of art and good stuff there...



* http://www.hal-pc.org/~questers/bergman.html

Our deepest fear continued...

i am writing this to help myself make sense of this journey and for all those many people who have expressed to me how my voicing the topic of mental illness has helped them...

on wednesday of this week, my family normal changed forever...my loved one drove to another state, parked his car on a bridge, and wrote a suicide letter...he did one other thing before he was going to jump...he called me to say goodbye...

i have hidden the car keys for two weeks now...so i could keep an eye on him every minute...he had an appointment with a psychiatrist wednesday at noon...he left a little early saying he was going to get a hamburger...when he was not home by 2:30...i knew that something was wrong...

about 3:35...the call came on my cell phone...he wanted me to know about the life insurance policy and that he had written a letter for his family...i did not know what to do...i ran to my neighbor's hoping to get her to call the police...she was not home...

so i dialed our daughter (in atlanta) at work on the land line and held my cell close so she could hear what he was saying...she was as panicked as I was...she hung up and called the local police...within a few minutes my land line rang and it was the sheriff's dispatcher...peggy...i laid my cell down and told her what i knew...he was not on the island any more...had a suicide note...his cell number to trace the signal...his car make and model...and that i had him on the phone...she told me to keep him talking and try to find out where he was...

i talked, pleaded, begged him to tell me for over 2 hours...by this time there were police at the house...robertson...and searching for the car...and peggy was listening with me to mike...after 2 hours he told me where he was...on the top of a bridge...

in what seemed like an eternity...peggy told me that the police were closing the bridge and paramedics would be with him in seconds...and they were...officers chase and elliott...

the joyful news is that he was taken to a wonderful treatment facility where the staff actually seems to care about his life...unlike the psych wards in jacksonville who kept him 3 days, released him with a handfull of pills and made him sign a paper that he would not harm himself or others...that didn't work...

i was assured that he will not be released from this facility until he is no longer suicidal...the administrator has taken an interest in his case and i can finally take a sigh of relief for now...his wonderful brothers also came down to help me and to visit him...a gift for us both......there is so much to attend to...and he is so angry with us for stopping him...

and. of course, his diagnosis was wrong...they believe that he is manic depressive...i believe that the meds he was on precipitated this suicidal situation...he was not this way before taking them...

i am barely able to function at the moment...i called my doctor who told me to rest and do something i love...could there be paint in my near future??? 

although i am releived for the time being...we are far from a return to safe and calm place...it is just the beginning...but it is a beginning...i am thankful that we have a beginning...i am hopeful that he has found the place that cares about the person he is...the beautiful shattered spirit...so fragile...that i have loved for over 25 years now...please continue to pray for my family...

Don't forget to visit my other blog,The Artist as a Spiritual Explorer here...there is a lot of art and good stuff there...

photos:
http://www.citynoise.org/article/2794
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?ID=s0000929

manic depression... enabling...boundaries...

this has been a very difficult week for me...i am a creature of habit...change can be disruptive...the majority of us do not change until we are very uncomfortable or in much pain...in Twelve Step programs they call it the bottom...and reaching the bottom is the start of change....

Logo of The Bipolar-Manic Depression WebRing
someone very close to me had to be hospitalized for what we now know is manic depression...we reached a collective bottom this week...he to the crazies and me to the end of my rope... it came as desperation with much pain and discomfort for us both...i am not an expert on this disease, but i can relay from my experience the chaos and heartbreak that an undiagnosed and untreated soul brings with them...

nothing is peaceful in a life with them...it is either fast and furious or the end of the world...there is no middle ground and no calm relaxing time...to love them is to be swept up in the chaos that is their life...and, eventually if you do not get help, you are so focused on them that you can lose yourself...

the normal that becomes your life together is not normal to anyone watching...a friend related a recent incident at a restaurant where he was singing puff the magic dragon one minute and ten minutes later cursing the entire state because he could not find a job...she was convinced that he was on drugs...and that i as in denial...

Photo from ecademy.com
for me, i tried to create a normal life for us...make a home and a safe haven...but days, months and years of this roller coaster existence eventually became my normal also...you begin to think that singing one minute and cursing the next and laying in bed for months is normal...so it took his doctor to tell me that i was enabling him...to shake me out of my stupor...

enabling...it became crystal clear to me at that moment...almost...

but how do i un-enable...when providing and care taking and loving until it is better is such a part of who i am...i am a fixer by nature...a real idea person...let's try this or this...i come from a place where this negative behaviour would never have been tolerated, even a little...my mother was a "pick yourself up and dust yourself off" and a "dry your eyes and put on some lipstick" fake it till you make it kind of person...you could not wallow in the depths for too long...self-pity was unheard of in my mother's world...which was such a pain for my drama queen self...

consummate researcher that i am, i took to google to find out what enabling is exactly...defined as giving someone the means, resources or authority to make something possible....well, this sounds positive to me...except when applied to a manic depressive because it means giving them the resources or authority to stay sick...it also is doing for someone what they can and should be doing for themselves....this gets trickier in a relationship because things like buying food and paying the bills keeps me well fed and comfortably sheltered, but it also keeps him from getting the help he needs...i thought i was helping...

so what is the difference between helping and enabling?

-enabling is providing an atmosphere within which another person does not have to take personal responsibility...it is parenting someone who is old enough to parent themselves and who is not a child of yours anyway...it is an over-stepping of what would be considered healthy boundaries...instead it is a lack of boundaries...thus, enabling is doing anything for someone else that they 'should' be able to do (and need to do) for themselves....

-helping someone consists of giving assistance or lending an ear, after having been asked...and doing so without giving direction or advice...and without having any stakes in the outcome of the choices a person makes....thus, helping someone is rendering assistance after having been asked...

the difference is what the outcome is for the person receiving the help...is it a one time help or is it something that teaches them to rely on me....enabling prevents them from hitting the bottom or getting the help they need...

my copy of van gogh self-portrait...article on van gogh md is here...
These may be the most productive questions i ever asked myself:

1. Can my loved one do this for himself?
   
2. Are my actions effectively shielding him from the (full) consequences of his behaviors

If the answer is “yes,” you are enabling...and i am enabling!!!

here is the tricky part...i found this very interesting article that slammed my face right into the mirror of looking at myself..."The core root of the problem of enabling rests with one's own inability and or refusal to help him/herself....what many are seeking to do in the 'helping' of someone else is to avoid their own problems, issues and or avoid meeting their own needs." the article continues, "So firstly, it is important to make sure that you are meeting your own needs and taking personal responsibility for yourself. In order to meet your own needs and to be responsible for yourself you will need to develop boundaries. As one begins to develop boundaries and a healthy sense of the difference between self and others then and only then can one begin to truly learn the difference between helping and enabling".

photo from here...
that boundary thing again...it has come up in my life before...i have never been good at making them or maintaining them...when we enable, we put other people's needs before our own....this was a very meaningful statement for me...checking in with my myself and my motives is helping me discover why i am enabling...is it my need to feel in control and is there some part of me that likes the chaos...i am still working on this one...

enabling gives us a false sense of control...we do what society tells us a 'good' father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter or friend should do...but when we are not getting the results we desire...we feel frustrated and resentful...when the persons' behavior does not change, we think we have failed...our actions, done with the best of intentions, have created or contributed to exactly what we don't want...

herein lies the circle of enmeshment...if you are in this situation with someone else..and you do not have healthy boundaries...nor does the other person...it is a recipe for a lot of pain...as two people try to live through each other instead of living their own lives....wow!

there is a saying that we change not when we see the light, but when we feel the heat...having to face the consequences of our behaviors is 'the heat', the motivator to make a change...so when i enable, i effectively turn down the heat and deny him and myself the learning associated with the consequences... hummmmmmmmmmm...

tomorrow i begin the process of learning to distinguish between helping someone and enabling them with the help of a therapist...realizing and admitting that i have a problem is not easy for me, but it is a step toward my own healing...and i am willing to step out on the path to where i will no longer feel the need to enable or to be enabled....

when taking responsibility for our own behavior...each one of us must find our own path...so my path may not be your path...experience teaches us that it is useless to lay out a path for someone else to follow...and i am not doing that...i am just trying to help enable share my journey with you....

Don't forget to visit my other blog,The Artist as a Spiritual Explorer here...

my research led me here...
www.jewishaddictionservices.org
http://www.co-anon.org/enable.html
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/borderline_personality/57270
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/11/van_gogh_manic_depression.php
http://t.webring.com/hub?ring=bipolarmanicdep1

http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=78656