WillSpirit

Just an hour or so ago I participated in a video taped conversation about mental health. When the show gets edited and completed I will post it here on my blog. Tom Wootton invited me to participate as a ‘client’ of his Bipolar Advantage program. Peter Forster, MD, the medical director of Bipolar Advantage, took a seat at the table. Our moderator was Barbara Meyers, who tapes a regular show on mental health, which I highly recommend.

Whew! I got all those links in place for those three!! I respect them all, by the way. They each do unique, good work for the mental health community.

The taping went by fast. Having thought through my answers (I knew the questions in advance), I was shocked when the show came to a close before the end of my question list. I took too long to answer the first three questions, so the last one or two got dropped. Predictably, I ended up feeling bad. Fact is, I’ve never liked cameras. I love to write, am OK on a stage, but feel quite uncomfortable on film. Even though that has always been true, I did not expect to feel nervous this time, since my general stage fright has reduced so much since my eighteen months of working as a public speaker. No such luck. I ended up feeling just as self-conscious as the first time a stranger shoved a video camera in my face after a movie, and asked for my reaction to the film.

In fact, my point for writing tonight is the jumpiness of my response, my incredibly high reactivity. In one of my answers on the show I said (I think) something to the effect that sensitive moods can be an advantage (an idea that is a pillar of the Bipolar Advantage concept), giving us a wide range of experience of the human condition. Yet it is hard to believe anything very advantageous comes out of having a gas pedal that gets shoved to the floor at the slightest challenge. Much as I tried to remember breathing, staying relaxed, and visualizing calm scenery, the instant I started talking my mind went into the stratosphere, and I was on autopilot. My emotions have always had hair-triggers, but my moods have gotten even more touchy since my breakdown, followed by nine years of powerful drugs, punctuated by a series of failed enterprises. So tonight ended up a reminder that I still have the same old issues, waiting to lift their irritating little heads when I reach beyond my comfort zone.

Much of my jumpiness, I am sure, comes from the trauma of my upbringing. One major source of over-reactivity was my stepmother’s habit of sneaking up on me in my bed at night, and shaking me awake with her hands clenched around my neck. Yes, she really did that. Fairly often, actually. As a variation she would clamp her palm over my mouth. After a while, I learned not to make a noise when she came to get me, and she gradually quit the histrionics of mock suffocation. (After she woke me, the next step was for us to go out back where she could hit me or abuse me however she wanted without my dad awakening–kind of like going to the second location with a serial killer.) Even though I learned silence then, now that I am an adult it is impossible, apparently, for me to keep from shouting if someone wakes me up at night. Even at age fifty, I still awake in full screaming terror if my wife just taps on the door to the guest room (Sometimes I go to sleep in that room while she reads in bed, and then she comes to get me when she turns out the light.) Thanks, Della (that was the name of my late stepmother), for leaving me with nerves of glass.

So now I contend with this high-voltage response to the equivalent of turning on a AAA penlight. Back in my days as a surgeon (pretty hard to imagine doing that kind of thing now), I had very measured responses to acute situations in the operating room. I think it was because my attention was on high-alert already when I was operating, so there was none of that pounding acceleration from zero to one-hundred-and-ninety that leaves me so disoriented. In the O.R., everything moved at a speed that made sense, and I was able to remain focused and calm come what may (except for one dreadful day that I will no doubt write about eventually, when I ended up quite agitated after a big mistake on a small procedure.) The night after a tough case I might lay awake replaying whatever happened. Or the night before I might be sleepless in anticipation of a challenging case. But during the time of the actual work, I stayed in a centered zone.

There is no situation like that now, and I would never dream of trying anything as stressful as surgery again. But despite that caution, I still find ways to demonstrate my limitations to myself, and then feel bad about them. I share this because it may be someone else out there is hard on themselves. Maybe someone else gets embarrassed about their nervousness. Maybe someone else can understand.

Sometimes, I am fine with where I am in life. Happy with what sometimes seems like a lot of gained wisdom. Lately, that has not been so. Maybe now that I am writing more, I can find my way back to that place of spiritual acceptance that works so well. The place that is the only worthwhile destination. That is my goal. Not performance. Not looking good on TV. Not making a living again, even. Just finding connection with whatever it is that finds me when I finally let all the expectations go.