Something has occurred to me repeatedly, over the past month, as my sleeping habits have improved. Namely, that many of the “mental health” issues I’ve been experiencing over the past several years, have had a distinctly physiological component to them. In fact, at the risk of sounding radical, presumptuous, and heretical – though I’m seldom reluctant to be just that 😉 – I suspect that a ton of my “psychological” issues have actually been physical ones.
I’m sure I’m going to really piss off some of the psychotherapists in the room by saying this, but I have to say that catching up on my sleep and figuring out how to get a full night’s sleep more than one night in a row, has done more for my mental health than two years of therapy.
And no, I did not have a bad therapist. They were great – awesome – and they really helped me a great deal, if only by sitting there and not making fun of me when I talked about this and that.
But let me tell you – as a TBI survivor who had/has a whole raft of physical ailments (chronic pain, insomnia, sensory hypersensitivities, weight fluctuations, heart palpitations, vertigo, tinnitus, and more…), just living with all those issues can really mess with your head. And as long as only the symptoms of my physical distress were being addressed, not much moved.
I did get in touch with my feelings. That’s for sure. I figured out that I actually mattered, and that it was important for me to take care of my own health and well-being, not constantly do the martyr-hero thing and sacrifice my own safety for the sake of others. I had space to learn to look at myself and my life through a less negatively critical eye and consider that maybe, just maybe, I had a right to do more that survive in life. I had/have a right to thrive.
But one of the things I really got in touch with was the fact that my physical well-being is a huge contributor to (and predictor of) how well my mental well-being holds up. When I’m tired and in pain and weak, my ears are ringing like the dickens, and my head spins wildly and I feel like I’m going to fall over every time I move, it’s pretty damned difficult to maintain a positive mental outlook and count my blessings. When I’m not feeling well physically, the chances of me feeling well mentally and emotionally decrease exponentially.
There are some people who manage to keep a cheery, chipper outlook, despite significant physical issues. I’m usually one of those people, and I usually manage to not let my physical problems bother me. But when I haven’t had enough sleep for weeks and months on end, chances are pretty good that I’m going to feel depressed, anxious, irritable, low — and show other signs of clinical depression.
Okay, so here’s the thing — when I was in therapy with my prior therapist, they repeatedly came back to the suspicion that I was depressed. They asked me a number of times if I thought I was depressed, and if I’d said “Yes,” I’m sure they would have followed up on that, however a therapist does that. And they probably would have plumbed the depths, looking for what it was that made me depressed — some repressed past trauma, some childhood violation, some incident that I’d blocked out to keep from being unhappy.
And lots of talk would probably have ensued. Talk, talk, and more talk.
Now, talking is all very well and good, but as Belleruth Naparstek said at a conference I once attended (and I believe she’s said in her book “Invisible Heroes”), sometimes talking does more harm than good, by dredging up old traumas and forcing you to relive them. That can be very unpleasant, as I’m sure everyone is aware. And for me it’s really problematic, because I prefer to dwell on problems with a solution in mind, and if I’m dwelling on a past incident which cannot be changed (it’s already over and done), I get even more agitated and irate over it.
Some people might say that I’m just not willing to deal with the emotional fallout of misfortune, but I say I’m a solutions-oriented individual and the main reason I think about things, is so that I can change them, so why in the hell would I spend all this time thinking about stuff that cannot be changed? The therapists in the room who would say I’m emotionally “blocked” would probably try to treat me… with more talking about shit that makes no sense for me to talk about.
Make no mistake — I’m not at all reluctant to discuss misfortunes I’ve experienced in the past. But any discussion that takes place with me, has to be about devising solutions and coping mechanisms for the problems I have as a result. I’ve had some really shitty things happen to me, but you know what? It’s over, and I’ve managed to forgive just about everybody in my past for their shortcomings… even myself. The problem is not that I’m represssed. It’s that people want to process the wrong type of stuff with me — problems, problems, and more problems — and my reluctance to discuss stuff I’ve already been through a thousand times in my head is interpreted as repression or avoidance or some other psychological/emotional impairment.
What’s more, when pressed to explore the nether regions of my soul with talk therapy, I tend to get turned around. As good as I am at writing, I’m can be kind of pathetic when it comes to spoken conversation. I have an intensely visual mind, which follows conversations and spoken communication with series’ of images that are like an associational, disjointed movie in my head. I literally see pictures of what people are talking about, and when people start talking about things for which I have no picture — or I have several of them to choose from — it takes me a while to catch up and keep up. It’s not that I’m stupid. Or that I’m slow. I’m just incredibly visual in my own mind, when it comes to spoken language, and visual processing doesn’t lend itself as well to spontaneous conversation.
So, when I’m talking to someone about what’s going on with me, and they start talking about things that aren’t immediately famliar to me — or that I’m not expecting them to talk about — it’s really easy for me to get agitated and introveted. I need time to catch up. I need time to keep up. I need time to translate their words into pictures and process the information visually, so that I can make sense of what they’re saying to me. But I don’t always have that much time, and over the course of my life, I’ve gotten into the bad-but-pragmatic habit of just pretending I know what’s going on, while making mental notes in the back of my mind about what was just said, so I can go back to it later and rethink it all and hopefully make sense of things.
The problem is, in a therapeutic situation where I’m supposed to be making some sort of progress and addressing issues, this really works against me. It tends to make me look reticent and/or like I’m deliberately withholding. I’m not — I’m just trying to process the information and make sense of it. Believe me, if I could answer immediately like other people, I would. But my brain just doesn’t work that way.
I also tend to get really frustrated with myself and get agitated, which looks like I’m uncomfortable talking about certain things. It’s not that I don’t want to let other people in. I do — more than I can say. But I get so turned around in my head, and I get so upset with myself for not being able to follow, that I start to flail and spin and then shut down. I feel like I’m getting backed into a corner, and I get revved… and by the end of the session, I look like a totally basket case who needs to spend years sitting across the room from someone, before I can get in touch with my feelings.
This sucks on so many levels, I can’t even begin to tell you. The worst thing of all is having someone who is supposedly trained and experienced in these matters misunderstanding, miscalculating, misdiagnosing, and mis-treating conditions which don’t even exist the way they think they do. On the surface, you’re exhibiting classic signs of clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but underneath it all you’re struggling for words that will explain exactly what is going on with you, and why you’re acting the way you do. And the bitch of it is, because you’re the (sick) client and they are the (trained, experienced, licensed) therapist, you’re not in a position to be taken totally seriously when you do manage to tell them a little bit about what’s up with you. ‘Cause they think you’re seriously mentally ill and you can’t possibly know what your real problems are.
After all, you probably have no recollection of what that nasty-ass uncle did to you as a toddler when your mother’s back was turned.
It’s a problem. I hear plenty of stories about therapists who don’t know what they’re doing… as well as those who know very well what they’re up to but have no scruples or morals. I hear plenty of tales about over-prescription of medications, as well as misdiagnosis of mental health issues that have more to do with fundamental differences of information processing, than pathology. The mental health profession has been pathologizing the diversity of human experience for as long as it’s been around — perhaps that’s a hallmark of any helping/caring profession that’s trying to get on its feet. Applying labels like “hysterical” or “deviant” or “sick” to people who are just different from the norm is a time-honored tradition in the mental health field, so there are no surprises there. But it’s a problem that’s been shifting and changing over the past 30 years, and that’s a good thing.
Now, if I can figure out a way to explain to my new therapist the nature and degree of my physical issues, so they can see my issues in light of my insomnia, pain, and physical sensitivities… and not spend an inordinate amount of time focusing exclusively on my past emotional trauma, that will be a good thing.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 