Thursday, September 4, 2014

The Second Psychiatrist in Dayton


As you know, I had three sessions with the first Dayton psychiatrist. Really only two because I began the third session by telling him that his Catholic bias was destructive. Then I walked out. 
        I do not remember whether someone recommended the second psychiatrist—Dr. C.—whom I saw from May 1967 to July 1969 or whether his was a random name I found in the yellow pages.
         However the name came to me, it proved fortunate because he helped me take the first tentative steps into adulthood. You may wonder what I mean by that. I hope to begin an explanation with this posting.
         This second psychiatrist was a large man. Broad of chest. Tall. Groomed. He never wore casual clothes. Always a suit and tie. His hair always neatly combed. His face clean-shaven.
         When I first entered his office and he rose to greet me, I thought he looked sturdy. Assured. Stable. As time has passed, I realized he looked like a CEO of a vast empire. An executive who’d been financially and professionally successful.
         I do not know how much money or fame he amassed, but he surely had his share of wisdom. In our two years of twice monthly sessions—I couldn't afford weekly—I found him straightforward. Perceptive. Discerning. He listened in a way that made me feel as if he’d roamed the world and found me its most interesting inhabitant. Never glancing at his watch. Never yawning. Never fidgeting.
          In that room, for those fifty minutes, he patiently helped me sift the patterns of my life and decide which I wanted to retain and which I was ready to relinquish.
         What he didn’t do was react to my being an ex-nun. That I’d been in the convent was simply one fact about me. That fact didn’t define the entirety of me. I was more that just one definition. As the poet Walt Whitman said back in the nineteenth century, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Walt Whitman

         Dr. C helped me realize that and realize also that these “multitudes” jarred up against one another. Contradicted one another. Tormented me. Pained me. I needed to find the source of that pain, forgive it, and perhaps even be grateful for some gift it had given me. I needed, as Joseph Campbell has so famously said, "To find my bliss." 
         That was the task on which we collaberated. Of course, in those two years, I didn’t accomplish that. In fact, nearly fifty years have slipped away as I've examined those multitudes and come to peace with most of them.
          Nearly fifty sometimes difficult years have arced my life as one by one I've embraced those fears. As you've seen in this on-line memoir, I've come at length to embrace the whole of my life. Fifty years. Half a century.
          But with Dr. C's help, in Dayton's summer heat and winter cold, the journey began.
        A few years later, I realized that I'd never told him about the three personalities I hallucinated. Nor did I tell him about my adult neighbor molesting me for three months when I was ten. I’ve asked myself why I didn’t talk about those two things. I don’t think I purposely held them back.
         What happened, I think now, is that I was intent on one thing: blaming my parents for my insecurities and for my needing to please everyone because if I didn’t they’d cast me aside like flotsam.


My dad on a fishing trip with friends in the early 1930s.

         And yet, that was another thing I never told him—that my parents had moved to Parsons, Kansas, when I five and that my grandmother told me they’d deserted me. That they’d never come back for me.
         The truth is that I had blocked that episode in my life, just as I had blocked the molestation. Remembrance came only later. And perhaps there is a further truth—that I was too ashamed of hallucinating and being molested and seemingly 
abandoned. I don't know if that's true, but it may be so.
         What I blamed them for and what I talked about with Dr. C. was Dad’s drinking, his violence when he drank whiskey, and Mom’s unwillingness to leave him, despite all my begging. I faulted my mother for enabling my dad. She’d chosen him over her children.

Mom and I feeding the heifers on Grandma O'Mara's farm.

         Please understand—I was young. Callow. I’d never truly considered her life. Her needs. Fears. Regrets. Expectations. Dreams. I’d never tried to understand her. Only later did I begin to step into her shoes and view her perspective from the depths of her having lived through the Depression, of her having been raised a devout Roman Catholic, of her undeniable love for my father.
          Only later did I appreciate how much she loved me.
         At thirty-one I didn’t realize that. I placed more blame on my mother than my father. I think now that I truly believed she had betrayed my brother and me.
         I was young. Is that excuse or explanation? Perhaps both.


54 comments:

  1. When I read your posts, I am always struck by your introspection, and this is no exception :)

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    1. Dear OE, on the television show "Monk" the main character says that his ability to see so much at a crime scene was both a curse and a blessing. And that's what introspection has been, I think, for me. Peace.

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  2. Many, many troubled childhoods, so many troubles to shed and go on. How we function at one point in our lives may not suit at another time, as both circumstances and understanding change.
    I cannot venture an opinion on your second psychiatrist; now your story too closely resembles that of my father, and cousins in the large Irish Catholic family he came from, and now, in the present, my own grandchildren.
    I've decided we do the best we can with what we have.

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    1. Dear Joanne, yes, I've truly found that what once worked didn't any more. So letting go, letting go, letting go has been a part of aging. In reading your comment I get the feeling that you have come to peace with the truth of your last sentence. I have also. Peace.

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  3. It is always frightening to search one's soul!!

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    1. Dear Fishducky, Yes, that's true. Like peeling back the layers of a onion. Peace.

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  4. I suspect that you buried some aspects of your life as a form of self preservation. You had more than enough on your plate already. To uncover everything, all at once, might have been completely overwhelming.
    And I love that this man was first and foremost a listener rather than a judge.

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    1. Dear Sue, yes, he knew how to listen and I think that frustration and fear and many other emotions just poured out of me. Peace.

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  5. My initial thought is that your mother did, in a sense, betray you. Parents are supposed to protect their children. I betrayed my children. But then we take into account all the mitigating factors. What was she going to do if she divorced your father? For a very long time, I feared I was going to be out on the streets if I were without my husband. I don't tell my psychiatrist very much. If I say it, then it's real. I can cope this way. If I make it real, then I don't know what will happen. I don't think you were callow, and yes, you were young. That's no mere excuse. It's an explanation. We have reasons for the things we do, and we don't always know what they are.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. Dear Janie, so many mitigating factors. I learned after Mom's death that she had spoken to one of my aunts and said that she would have left my father if she thought she could support my brother and me. But she said she had no skills and didn't think she could earn enough as a sales clerk to pay rent, food, and all the others things two young children and herself would need. Women had so few options at that time. Peace.

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    2. Many women still have few options.

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    3. Dear Janie, thank you for reminding me that the problem is still with us. Peace.

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  6. Finding oneself and embracing the whole of one's life happens in many stages and layers of feelings and experiences. You didn't bring up the molestation and the dissociative experiences because you weren't ready to remember and face these yourself when you were seeing your wise second psychiatrist. It's interesting, isn't it, how time and experience and insights give us a different perspective on our parents and other significant people in our lives.

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    1. Dear Kathy, I'm so glad that you came and read this posting and gave me your professional opinion on it. For myself, I'm grateful that I've lived long enough to see the overarching patterns of my life and to appreciate that all that has happened has worked out unto good. And yes, I truly needed time to appreciate the beauty of spirit of my mom and the weakness of my father who had a mother who emasculated him. Peace.

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  7. Life takes a long time. It's so good you had someone kind to help you start this part of your journey.

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    1. Dear Deanna, yes, life is in the living of it. And the journey is long but I am so grateful that it's taught me so much and given me peace. Peace.

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  8. Coming to grips and searching through life can sure take a life itself to get through. We tend to jump to conclusions quicker when younger too.

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    1. Dear Pat, it's so true that we jump to conclusions when young and I have to watch myself even now that I don't leap to judgments. Peace.

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  9. I am so relieved that you finally found a solid post to lean on after that nightmare of the first psychiatrist. Someone to really listen and help you find yourself. He must have been like a life preserver at that time in your life. It might have helped if your had been able to tell him all but I understand why you weren't ready then.

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    1. Dear Arkansas Patti, I guess that's it--I wasn't ready. It's hard to face the dark places within ourselves. Peace.

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  10. It has taken a long time to get to where you are today, but you are here, and processing it all through this blog. It's wonderful to see that you are still growing and changing. I like this second guy very much. :-)

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    1. Dear DJan, yes, I'm here and sometimes the journey has felt long and I've been desperate, but now I seem to be sailing in calm waters and I am knowing contentment. That growing and changing seems to me to be essential if we are to become wholly human. I've thought that about becoming "whole" since I first read the epistles of St. Paul while in the convent. He helped me realize what becoming human means and what it means to realize within ourselves the wholeness of humanity. That probably takes the living of many lives I've come to believe. Peace.

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  11. We know so much more today about how abusive behavior, both emotional and physical, towards the mother can affect the child. In the time of your mother, women put up with such because of their religion and also because they had no place to go. Divorce was not an option. Did you ever consider that you joined the convent in order to escape the fate of your mother?

    The sexual abuse you suffered sickens me. Too many women and children are victims and live with that pain all their days. It is unforgivable.

    I look at all you have done with your life and all the people you have touched and know that you are not only a survivor, but also a truly wonderful person.

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    1. Dear Arleen, thank you for this most helpful comment. I've truly never thought that I might have entered to escape my mother's fate. But I have thought that perhaps I entered so that I wouldn't have to be around Dad's drinking any more. All of that reasoning is of course lost in the midst of times. For whatever reason I entered, I stayed eight and a half years and then left. But those years taught me so much about living graciously. So I don't regret them. And I've come to peace with Mom and Dad. They both loved me and they were doing the best they could. And out of all that happened--even the molestation, I've learned many things that have helped me be more understanding with students in the classroom and with friends and even with strangers whom I've met on trains and planes and buses.

      Thank you for your kind words about my being a wonderful person. I truly believe we all are after we strip away the walls we build around ourselves for protection. Peace.

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  12. We love our Mother's with ever fiber of our beings...when they die we suddenly feel cut off...like a balloon floating into the vast open sky. I think it is easy to blame our Mothers because of that connection...being inside for nine months living off her and creating ourselves. It's also to love our Mother's so much that we want them to fix our lives (they did...for nine months). I think it is normal to blame. I think it is normal to love. I think it is growing old that helps us embrace their frailties--even at the expense of ourselves. We are all human...you made the growth step and that was good. For you. And when we make our own growth steps...then we also understand good.


    Linda
    http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com

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    1. Dear Linda, I so agree with you that most of us need to grow older to really appreciate our parents. To appreciate not only their love for us but all the difficulties they may have faced. It's because we age that we experience, perhaps, similar difficulties and then realize what we might have done in their situation. Your last sentence could be the foundation for a book. Peace.

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  13. Dee, I'm so glad you found a psychiatrist who had the gift of being a true listener. He started a process in you which over the years enabled you to recover and listen to your own memories, good and bad, and gradually integrate them. You write so well of these things.

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    1. Dear Perpetua, I was so fortunate to somehow find Dr. C--. Thank you for saying you think I write well about these things. When I read the comments and see what readers took from the posting I'm always almost stunned by the fact that somehow I wrote in such a way that the feelings got across. I'm so fortunate, also, to have readers like you. Peace.

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  14. All you can really do now is forgive yourself for who you were in the past and try to understand the young woman you were and your mother for being a young women too.

    It takes us years to come to terms with ourselves and our parents. We can all only do our best, whatever that may be.

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    1. Dear Friko, I think that by going to see three psychiatrists (Ohio, New Hampshire, Minnesota) and one counselor (Missouri) and two spiritual directors (Minnesota) and by writing this on-line memoir, I have forgiven both my mom and myself. That has been one of the great gifts from this blog. That my mother has truly been returned to me. Peace.

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  15. I have seen a number of counsellors over the years and none did much good one told me to change my life in ways that were not me and another said if I just want to sit and talk about things I could sit and talk to my mum instead

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    1. Dear Jo-Anne, I feel a frisson of anger that those two psychiatrists so ignored and dismissed what you were saying. They sound like the one whom I first went to in Dayton. I hope you ultimately got the help you must have felt you needed. Peace.

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  16. "I was more that just one definition" I think we all are more than one, Dee, and it takes us our lifetime, however long or short that it may be, to define ourselves.

    As I read, then re-read this entry, I was grateful for you that Dr. C came into your life. It doesn't so much matter that pivotal experiences were blocked out, but, that you began the process of understanding and forgiving through your sessions with him. I know that I have come to understand my own other, and grandmothers, and others more as I've gotten older, and, like you, this business of blogging has been a wonderful way to explore the past and anticipate the future, and know oneself a bit better in the doing.

    For a woman of your mother's generation with such a devout faith, I think it would have been very difficult for her to leave your father, not to mention the financial burden of this. We have not been fair to women, throughout time, it seems. Still aren't.

    Just got back from MN - and needed to catch up, starting with you. :)

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    1. Dear Penny, it took me a while to truly realize that I was more than one definition, that I was like a diamond with some facets still uncut but many already cut and waiting for the light to gleam through them.

      Yes, I did come to understand why Mom couldn't leave Dad. Partly for financial reasons, partly religious, and partly because she truly understood him and his weaknesses and loved him deeply.

      Thanks so much for visiting this blog so soon after getting back from Minnesota. I wonder if you found a William Kent Krueger book and if so, where! Peace.

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    2. Sorry to say, I did not find a William Kent Krueger book, Dee. We spent only about an hour in a Barnes and Noble for a birthday treat for our grandson, Ezra, and spent most of the time in the children's section. I do have Mr. Krueger's name on my TBR list, though, Dee, and will find him sooner or later.

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    3. Dear Penny, the next time you're in Stillwater, check out the small bookstore on Main Street that's on the river side. It carries all of Krueger's books in paperback. Of course, I've been gone now for five years, but I hope that welcoming little bookstore is still there. The people who work there love books and are always so helpful. Peace.

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  17. Amazing how things in our past can help 'form' us....I was sexually abused by my older brother --and I think it affected me in my first marriage and in my struggle for weight for many, many years. I finally did get counseling which helped tremendously... I am truly like a different person on the inside (and on the outside) than I was years ago.... Wish I had have had counseling sooner... Oh Well--tis life...
    Hugs,
    Betsy

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    1. Dear Betsy, I truly would never have last until now without the help of three psychiatrists and a counselor and two spiritual directors. I am so fortunate that I had the money and the time to take advantage of their help. So many people cannot afford help. But for me it came to this: I couldn't afford not to get help.

      Your early life sounds so hard to me. I am glad for you that you got the counseling that helped you become the exuberant woman you are today. Peace.

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  18. We are all so much more than just one thing.

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    1. Dear LadyFi, that is so true. All of us are multitudes of identities. Peace.

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  19. I do believe that the pain of your lengthy separation from your parents and the absolutely cruel words your grandmother spoke in telling you they would not return must have left scars so deep you couldn't even say the words out loud . And as much as it might have been very helpful to emotional healing to have had the benefit of your psychiatrist's help in working through the pain of the past, what comes to my mind in your admission that you didn't share it all with him is that you must have always had the inclination to reach for something new and to leave the past behind and move forward in good emotional health. You are truly a seeker, Dee, and I'm sure that Dr. C really responded to your eagerness to learn more about yourself. I am so glad you're sharing about this aspect of your life. I am so glad you eventually forgave your mother. I think she must have suffered a lot in her own way You are such a strong storyteller. I will look forward to the next installment this coming Thursday! :-) Debra

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    1. Dear Debra, I really didn't begin to "forgive" my mother until after she'd died--in May 1968. In fact, I didn't forgive until I'd gone to graduate school and then taught a year in Dayton and then taught in Claremont, New Hampshire for a year. It was in December 1972 that I began seeing a psychiatrist at Dartmouth and she helped me get out all my suppressed anger. Then I was free to embrace my mother and to recognize her love for me and how she'd always tried to protect me. Peace.

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  20. You gave a marvelous account of your life and I love those old pictures.
    That was a very difficult period for our country. The depression didn't really end until after the war and with all the service people returning, many didn't have a job until the 50's. Especially during the 30's people scrounged for food and shelter where ever they could find it. Without those 2 creature comforts, it's difficult for humans to express emotion or find joy. I was a child during that time too and was given to my grandparents to raise until I was 5 because they lived on a farm and could grow their own food. Being a child of the depression is bad in one way because we always have to clean our plate....I still can never see food wasted. (Could present a weight problem..Ha) There were a lot of alcoholics during the depression. When life is bleak, people drink to escape reality. Of course your mother couldn't leave. She was right when she said she couldn't support the 3 of you. Even in the 50's I stayed with a flawed husband for 25 years because I had no skills to support myself and 4 kids. So Dee, there is no one to blame as it was the economy, the times, the depression. It was simply a fact and nothing much anyone could do about it.

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    1. Dear Manzanita, thank you for expressing all this so well. It's true what you say that it was the economy and the times and the Great Depression that accounted for so much of what happened to us as we grew up. I hate to think of your being raised by your grandparents instead of your dad and mom. I'm hoping they were good to you and I'm wondering how long you spent with them.

      You've really helped me see how hard it would have been for Mom to leave Dad when she felt she had no skills. And yet looking back, I see what an intelligent, gifted, creative woman she was. And I feel sorrow for her and for so many women at that time whose talents weren't recognized and whose lives were bounded by the culture in which they lived. And for many women that is still the same. Peace.

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  21. What a valuable thing it is to find someone who doesn't attach what you've done, what's been done to you, or who you come from to your identity. And even better, one who listens fully. Sometimes that is the best healing of all. What a tremendous recounting. I'm so glad you so freely share.

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    1. Dear Shelly, Dr. C was a true blessing in my life. He taught me a lot about listening. I'll be writing another posting about some of the things he said to me after listening to my recounting of my life. Peace.

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  22. So many painful ghosts in those closets! Now you are throwing them out, one by one. You are very brave, have been very brave, to keep confronting those issues and experiences. Thank you for sharing those "ghosts", as this helps me and others to face our own.

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    1. Dear Susan, thank you for your kind words of support as I wort through all these memories. Peace.

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  23. I have been busy reading and researching the liberation of Paris, but I am almost finished now. I was eager to go back and read all the posts you wrote. I enjoy reading about your life and experiences – you write so well, with so much honesty, about yourself and the world. Not many people can be so objective about themselves. It was so good for you to find that second psychiatrist – the first one should not have been in that line of business. It is with pain, understanding and love that we attain maturity and wisdom I think – you have been there and your wisdom shows.

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    1. Dear Vegabonde, and I'm so glad you have been doing that researching and reading. Everything you're reported is fascinating. When I think of someone who is wise, I think of my mother. She died at fifty-eight, which was forty-six years ago. I often wonder what she would say if she read these postings. I'd so like to hear her thoughts on these musings by her daughter. She was such a nonjudgmental woman. I learned egalitarianism from her. Peace.

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  24. I am happy that you now can share the pain you experienced then with all of us. I too had problems with my dad and saw a psychologist when I was in my 30s. When I finally was able to see that he too was only human and then able to forgive him, I was free. Forgiving him changed my life.

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    1. Dear Inger, you are so right about how forgiveness can change our lives. I finally forgave my mother in 1973 and my father probably in around 1970. Once I was able to see, as you say, that they were only humans and like all humans they unwittingly and unintentionally made mistake, then I was able to forgive and I was free of bitterness and anger. Peace.

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  25. We humans are such complicate creatures with so many things forming our personalities! I'm so glad you found Dr. C......he had the wisdom you needed!

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  26. Dear Nancy, you are so right about his wisdom. He helped me greatly. Peace.

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