Borderline Families

I like new beginnings. Fresh starts and clean slates are exciting but also daunting when I don’t know what to expect. It has been very hard to be silent during the last month. Even though it was necessary to step away for personal reasons, a month is a long time to hold your tongue when you are as passionate as I am.

Every single day the barrage of pharmaceutical mishaps, law enforcement misjudgments concerning the rights of those with mental health issues, and the simple lack of humane treatment of individuals threatened to send me back to my keyboard. I would think I will write about that or post it on my facebook page and the next day there would be more and the following day, even more.

The year before last, I spent writing a book about my daughter’s search for help throughout our country’s psychiatric system. It was a long and sad year.

Last year I devoted myself to my blog, borderlinefamilies.com.

Then, in May I read Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. During the next few months, I began to question everything I had been taught about mental health by the psychiatric community. After years of following the doctors’ orders, a voice inside began screaming, “I knew it!”. It was all a sham. Our family had attached ourselves to an industry built in the marketing departments of the pharmaceutical industry with little science to back up their claims.

I still gasp when I hear the most common misconception – that there is a “chemical imbalance” in the brain which needs to be treated with psychotropic drugs in order to live a meaningful life. This singular myth created by psychiatrists and perpetrated by Big Pharma is accepted without question by publishers of every kind in our country. It is so pervasive and beyond doubt that novelists use “it must be chemical” as a plot device. Newspapers and nationally distributed magazines treat the “chemical imbalance” as a given, not a red flag as it has become for me.

When I learned that no chemical imbalance exists prior to the introduction of psych meds, I stepped into the alternative movement.

The burden of lifelong “illness” was lifted from my daughter and our family began the difficult job of rebuilding.

Unfortunately, my daughter cannot so easily step away; she is a product of years of abuse by the system. We will never know if, by using alternative methods – diet, meditation, acupuncture, etc., the emotional distress she experiences today would be less. I do know that the drugs made it worse.

So, as I look to this New Year, I want to start something, make some waves, see change. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, “Don’t listen to the doctor telling your loved-one to take another dose! Don’t add an anti-psychotic to your anti-depressant! Don’t step onto the slippery slope Big Pharma has groomed.”

I want to unite the loved ones of psychiatric survivors and give them a platform to voice their unhappiness, outrage, and, yes, even guilt at having been duped. When my daughter entered the psychiatric system, an impenetrable door slammed shut between her and the rest of the family. This is the industry’s way of seizing control – by telling the families that they cannot manage the degree of “illness” demonstrated and then translating the behavior of our loved ones into baffling, complex psychobabble.

I was completely taken in by the industry; I handed my daughter over with trusting hands. I have written in the blog about my shame at having encouraged my daughter to stick with program even when it clearly wasn’t working. I want to regain what we lost.

There are legions of us – those who experienced the deception personally and parents, siblings, spouses and friends who watched, hands tied and mouths silenced, as their loved ones were lead away.

This year I am going to devote my energy to uniting the loved ones of psychiatric survivors. We can make a difference! If each of us can stop even one unsuspecting family from entering into the system, it will be well worth the effort.

NAMI stands, arms out and gathers in the newly-minted diagnosed and their families. Let’s be the alternative. Let’s be loud and clear and give people entering the system hope for a life without diagnoses and drugs.

Let’s complain about the unavailability of options offered when people seek help.

Let’s tackle the language problem and ensure that all conversation about emotional and cognitive distress is NOT filtered through what the industry has “normalized” through advertising. The very word “illness” is a misnomer.

Let’s do away with involuntary psychiatric intervention.

Let’s force doctors to reveal the side effects of drug therapy before they write a prescription.

I could go on and on. I am open to ideas on how to develop a counterpunch to the efforts of NAMI. I am sick and tired of seeing them throw their Big Pharma- backed weight around.

The science is on our side. With authors like Robert Whitaker publishing accessible, critical views of the psychiatric industry, I sense a groundswell of dissension. More articles are are making it into mainstream media exposing the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry. This is where I want to devote my energy next year.

In the meantime we have today, the last of 2010, and I want to take the time to thank all my new facebook/blogosphere friends for joining me on this journey. I have struggled and this community has held my hand through it all with patience and kind guidance. Thank you.

As we step into 2011, let’s unite and create meaningful change!

Kris Uncategorized Anatomy of an Epidemic, Robert Whitaker

This is the second part of my final post for Borderline Families. In the post A Scented Memory, I talked about my guilt over encouraging my daughter to believe in the psychiatric system and in On the Move, I wrote about getting lost in the system. With these final two, I wanted to deal with what it feels like to see the problem but how impossible it was to fathom that the PROBLEM was the institution we had trusted to help our daughter. In this final two-part post, I wanted to write about my experience as a caregiver.

Part one: A Charade ended with me returning my daughter to Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a brief month after her first four-month stay.

A caretaker is expected to be wholly involved and unemotional. I had reached the point where I had nothing to give. I left my daughter in her room, caught a bus and checked into a rundown hotel in mid-town Manhattan.

I sat on the end of the bed in the room for days. A strange buzzing in my ears both blocked sounds and amplified them. I heard faint wisps of laughter from down the hall. Car horns sounded like they were bleating in my head. I watched taxis splash through slush and sleet seven floors below. I sat, not moving a muscle, as if I might break. At some point that first night, I climbed into the bed. I felt coiled up like a snake ready to strike.

All my senses were firing random signals. A loud steady stream of recriminations told me to get back to my job, to take care of my daughter. I didn’t sleep. I was tense, my muscles twitched. I wondered if my heart was irreparably broken.

My cell phone rang early, just as the sun was breaking the horizon sending delicate shafts of winter light through the streets below. My daughter had not slept either and she wanted EVERYTHING. NOW. CALL THE NURSES!

I took up my post at the end of the bed. I watched the day pass but saw nothing. I did not call the nurses. My initial anger at their lack of compassion was dissolved by the apathy that engulfed me. I didn’t call anyone. I sat. I looked out the window. I felt nothing as long as I kept my mind blank. At times a thought or a memory would drift in and piercing pain ripped through me. I waited it out.

Living for so long at constant readiness had left me unable to let my guard down. I felt outmaneuvered, mowed down by this once familiar situation. I knew how to take care of my daughter. What was wrong with me? Save her! I felt paralyzed.

I tried to heal myself. I eventually got up and took long walks, visited a chiropractor/healer, ate with friends but the fact that I had left my daughter in such a precarious state made me sick and I felt newly traumatized each time that she came to mind. Which was all day, every day.

It was hard to convince myself to honor that I had done everything in my power to help my daughter.

I returned to Austen Riggs a couple of times during the next two weeks. Each time she was worse, miserable and mad. Each time my daughter had developed new twitches and each time the nurses dismissed them. I stayed up into the early morning hours researching drug combinations. I paced the floors of the Red Lion Inn waiting for a reasonable hour to visit and ask my questions.

“Her right arm is flinging out into space. How much Haldol do you have her on?”

“She was started on Cogentin. Those symptoms should subside.”

When I returned to Minnesota, I reviewed our bills from Austen Riggs and pulled out the statements from the pharmacy. This is the “premier facility in the country for the treatment-resistant patient” and they were drugging the life out of my daughter.

Their reliance on pharmaceuticals was the backbone of their “success”. They should have said,

“We drug our clients into submission.”

My guess is that one hundred years from now the sedation techniques and useless attempts to corral my daughter’s mind with locked doors and rules will be viewed to have been as barbaric and innocuous as attaching a leach to cure a fever.

Psychiatry has lost its way. Poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications, coupled with talk therapy that did not promote coping strategies, help with sorting out her reasoning skills or hone her ability to manage relationships had all failed.

For a couple of months during her first stay, it looked like they were tapering off the drug regimen, clearing her system, but when she returned, there was a startling increase in medications being administered. More importantly, my daughter’s discomfort continued through every drug recommended. Didn’t anybody notice?

My daughter rebelled. She entered into a two-week reevaluation phase. They were weighing two questions – could they keep her safe and could anyone create an alliance with my daughter that would hold? My daughter was too aware of the drug-pusher’s motives and probably not going to drop her dislike for them. But, I was hopeful. I still believed in the system.

Emily, the social worker who was assigned to be our liaison suggested a back-up plan – a long-term facility called Windhorse. Rural, farm, horses. I couldn’t picture it working for my very urban daughter. Emily gently told me that she didn’t think that my daughter would be able to live independently, certainly not in the near future and if the committee did feel that she couldn’t stay at Austen Riggs, we needed to be ready to formulate another plan for her.

My world spun out of control. This is not the future I envisioned. I had a different plan for my daughter – one where she survives and prospers. She leaves Austen Riggs healthier than when she entered. PLEASE.

During a conference call a couple of months into her second stay, my daughter insisted that the community of Austen Riggs was bringing her down. She didn’t think that she belonged there anymore. She also wanted to make it clear that she had been asking for help and not getting any.

“Maybe I want to be kicked out. Day in and day out – no end in sight. I want to go live in a shack by the ocean and drink myself to death. I do not want to live a mediocre life like you, mom. I can’t imagine it. I would die of boredom. I want to leave here. Basically, I feel like you are ruining my life by making me stay.”

“Drinking is the only reliable thing in her life right now,” Dr. Stevens, her therapist, sounded measured as she went on carefully. “She doesn’t believe that there is a human relationship that could be helpful. No one is trustworthy enough.”

My daughter broke in, “I don’t understand how you expect someone to live here. Everyone is obsessed with themselves, living “an examined life”. Look at how hard I have tried to survive. I would have been dead years ago if I wasn’t trying so hard. Right now I hate myself too much to stay here and scrutinize every little thing. I want to be alone. I don’t want to bother with anyone. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I like. The floor is shifting under me. My heart doesn’t know what it wants.”

My daughter was worked up and crying hard. She took a deep breath as she asked in a quivering voice, “What are you going to do?” She was sobbing and I barely made out, “It is not worth it. I want to start my life now. Again. Leave everything behind and start again, new, today.”

Our fifty-five minutes was up. I felt like we had followed my daughter to hell. Emily said that they would get her back to her room and alert the nursing staff that she had had a difficult meeting.

I didn’t want to hang up. I wanted to rip through the phone lines and hold onto my daughter. I would have torn off my skin if she could have used it. Instead, I was absolutely powerless.

I had arrived home from New York a couple of months before on empty and my husband had tenderly, painstakingly filled the emptiness. He’d let me ramble on about how I wanted to help her and he’d nod when I remembered that I couldn’t. He knew that I was coming to grips with just this conundrum.

It was my daughter’s life and we had run out of possibilities.

And, then she fled the system.

Within a week of the conference call, she had packed up her jeep and was living in Brooklyn.

The saying goes that you carry your problems along wherever you go. Yet my daughter was able to quickly reinvent herself, or she might have said, she found herself, and fell into syncopated rhythm with the city. The wild pulse, the endless hustle and commotion concealed, even seemed to absorb some of the tumult in her head.

When she loses her composure less people are apt to notice. That’s good and bad, but mostly, it is what she wanted when she asked for a shack on the beach where she could seal herself away. In Minneapolis, her dress and her off-kilter energy stuck out like a disco ball in a chapel. In treatment, everyone was always trying to discourage her individuality. My daughter feels that New York City lets her be herself, no questions asked.

My husband and I try to be supportive without getting into her day-to-day life. We continue to pay her health insurance and know that her anxiety is too unpredictable so that holding a job is out of the question for right now. We send money weekly. She has friends. I don’t know if they know my daughter’s past or if they are aware of the long and painful journey that got her back to New York where she was born, but they are there if she’ll let them in.

As for me, I joined her but it took time. I wasn’t as sure as my daughter was that turning our backs on the one and only system that had offered us help was a good thing.

Yes, the system had failed her repeatedly. I faltered because my daughter was going through withdrawal from the tons of meds Austen Riggs had her on when she left and I read her behavior as uncontrolled “mental illness”. I did. I am sorry but she was in excruciating pain for months, sobbing in cabs, hallways, having angry tirades while walking across the Williamsburg Bridge, holed up in her apartment for days. She was always reeling me into the chaos, demanding I do something to relieve the pain. Mostly, I just listened.

For nearly a year after she left Massachusetts, the withdrawal took its toll. Suicidal and irrational, sick and scared, she swung into moods that couldn’t be washed away with alcohol.

I went to New York to hold up the edges of her world when the calls were hushed/suppressed. Those are still the calls I pay attention to. The quiet ones, the calls for help.

As time has passes, my daughter’s brain is healing. Without the psychotropic drugs, the downs are still very black, but they do not last as long. And, the ups are still rather wild, but the middle ground is much more stable and, with time, I think she will find herself there more often.

I am not alone. I know that there are many devoted parents, spouses, and friends just like me who have watched a very similar story unfold. When we first sought help, we looked were everyone looks first – to the professionals.

We followed the doctors orders for years but we discovered that they do not have the answers. I set out to learn more. I read Robert Whitaker’s books, Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America. I read Breggin, Moncrieff and Szasz. I read Gianni Kali’s blog, Beyond Meds and Susan Kingsley-Smith’s blog, A Journey.  I haven’t stop reading.

I tracked down the “movement” which had been there all along, right under my nose. And, I joined up because I thought that if I could help one family just entering the system from losing their footing and giving away their power like we did, my involvement would have been worth the exposure.

I opened our doors and talked very candidly about my guilt at having been complicit in my daughter’s involvement with the psychiatric industry. I was transparent, thinking that by being honest, telling the whole truth, that I could bypass the naysayers and win over skeptics.

There are some very damaged souls who are part of this movement. I wasn’t prepared for their manipulation. I find that their anger and abusive nature are undermining to my message which is simply:

You are not alone.

There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people who are directly affected by the psychiatric system through friends and family members. These people who have stood next to their loved-ones want what is best for long term physical and mental well-being.

We want our loved-ones to be presented options to drug therapy which seems to be the first and, too often, only option presented when seeking help.

We want that the issues presented as problems be filtered through life experience – economic, family dynamics, and other common causes of stress which should not be translated into an “illness” and added to the DSM (shyness, shopping, etc.). Empower healing through outreach programs, job training, parenting classes, etc.

We want to change the language associated with emotional and cognitive distress.

We want safe and affordable care for times of acute distress which are not hospital based (peer-run and drug free when possible).

We want our loved-ones to be presented with affordable options covered by insurance, including acupuncture, nutrition guidance, membership to exercise facilities. And, we want these options to be presented as a First Line of Defense in the place of a prescription for a quick-fix with pharmaceuticals.

We want that the prescribing doctor be honest about the side effects of drug therapy and the change in the brain AFTER drugs are introduced (the creation of chronic need).

We want that when psychotropics are prescribed, that the side effects, including the predicted loss of years to their lifespan, be discussed at length.

We want every doctor practicing to read Anatomy of an Epidemic. Everyone – from  psychiatrists to General Practitioners and all “specialists” in between.

We oppose any kind of involuntary psychiatric intervention on behalf of our loved-ones.

We also oppose the “voluntary” treatment that supports the notion that the normal human condition can be solved by psychiatric/medical means.

“Caretaker” is a pejorative word, really. But, in changing the language I have to make some concessions so that people understand what I am talking about. Although I have been taking care that my daughter is safe and has a roof over her head every night, I am not a caretaker. She does a very good job at taking care of herself. I step in when she stumbles. I am a woman with so much love her daughter, I could burst. I am a mom. Lately, I have been a mom on a mission.

As I step away from this blog, I am not abandoning the movement. I think we need the transparency I have used. I think we need to keep telling our families’ stories and I know that in doing so, we will draw in people like me who are sitting on the fence wondering if they should jump into the unknown.

I am here to say, the other side of the fence is far less scary than the fraudulent world of the psychiatric industry. Our family was intimidated and shamed and my daughter’s life was altered forever when we gave away our power to the psychiatric industry.

Alternative approaches are available in every community. Start with a healthy diet, a little exercise. Add mindfulness training, meditation. Most alternative methods of healing can be added to existing medication. Take your time getting off of prescription meds. The key is to feel better and hopefully, eventually, not be dependent on pharmaceuticals.

Thank you for spending time with me as I came to grips with this drastic change in our lives; we abandoned one system but were greeted with open arms by the online community. I am very thankful for your support. I gave weight to each of your heartfelt comments and appreciated that you took the time to pass on your ideas.

I will begin another project after the first of the year. Until then, I will keep the Borderline Families blog online.

Kris Uncategorized A Journey, Anatomy of an Epidemic, Austen Riggs Center, Beyond Meds, Breggin, Cogentin, Haldol., Mad in America, Moncrieff, Robert Whitaker, Szasz

I have removed my earlier posts which were written when I was a believer in the psychiatric system.

I had kept them because they were a chronicle of my change from believer to skeptic to knowledgeable advocate for change in the psychiatric industry.

But, unfortunately, some people read only my first posts and never got to my current contributions on alternative methods of healing, the wildly unethical pharmaceutical industry and my desire to change the language society uses to define mental and cognitive distress.

Where my earlier posts used my daughter’s search through the psychiatric industry looking for relief as a backdrop, my recent posts are focused on my role as caretaker and the difficulties we face caring for and creating a safe and nurturing environment unsupported by the “professionals” who once were in control of our loved-one’s live.

Many of us, without the support of the online community, are not secure in our belief that the psychiatric industry is a huge contributor to the problems our loved-ones have faced. Without the years of psychotropic drugs clouding my daughter’s perceptions, clogging her motivation and stalling her maturation, I am sure that we would have, as a family, learned other, healthier ways to deal with her emotional and cognitive distress.

I am thankful for the online community which fosters thinking outside the box and has offered support and ideas and every kind of encouragement that I needed to form my own voice.

Looking over the past five years through the lens of  the cynic I have become, I have grown to be vehemently anti psychotropic drugging and skeptical of many therapies my daughter took part in. Now, I want to focus on being a part of the change that can take place when I focus forward.

As my daughter heals, our family looks for ways to rethink our relationship with her. One way to refresh my outlook is to lose the ties with the past and to start fresh.

I am going to publish my last blog post for Borderline Families soon and with that put to rest this part of my process.

My daughter’s progress is like what I read recently by Ken Braiterman. I don’t think he’ll mind if I paraphrase – he said, heading towards healing is two steps forward and one step back and then a couple of sideways slides where, he said, he is learning patience. And, I hope, self-love and acceptance. My daughter is an amazing individual – strong and resilient. She will find her way.

Our lives are never what we think they are going to be when we set out from home. I left home young, but street smart and disciplined. I have never settled for anything, always eyeing an opportunity to learn something I didn’t know. Kids, careers, husbands and friends all wove into a solid core. And then, all at once, I felt that my life had been hijacked by “mental illness”. I devoted myself to slaying that dragon and to finding relief for my daughter and I ended up here, today. Still searching, but at a better place.

My daughter shook off the labels and our family lifted the burden of “illness” off our shoulders. Thank you for your support and friendship.

Kris Uncategorized

From 2006 through 2009, we searched. My daughter was a pawn, becoming a non-entity, the problem that needed to be solved which we shuttled from hospital to residential facility, never home, always where a “professional” could monitor her. As she got further into the system, she was more divorced from our family.

There were 72 hour holds. There were fights with staff and even more frightening self-inflicted abuse. We listen to the descriptions holding our breath, afraid and confused. This cannot be the same girl who didn’t drink in high school, read like a librarian and had compassion for every living thing.

The mental healthcare model in use today forces this relationship. The “patient” is channeled one way and the family and loved-ones are set on a slightly different path. We were parallel, never allowed too close. “Professionals” stood guard at my daughter’s gate. Once she entered the system, we were conditioned to believe that we couldn’t handle her, that we were not equipped to be supportive or trustworthy. We might say the wrong thing, give my daughter the wrong impression – perhaps one of hope, or maybe it was as simple as they didn’t want us saying to her directly that we didn’t think the meds were helping.

The system fosters dread. We were constantly told of the dire consequences of not following the doctor’s orders. “Keep her on her meds!” The system also nurtures confusion. We never really understood the process. We knew that while in treatment, our daughter did hours of therapy and self-awareness exercises, DBT, AA meetings. We understood that pharmacology was a HUGE part of the equation, having been told repeatedly that the “chemical imbalance” was critical.

But, what, we kept asking, will happen next? What is the outcome? When will she be better?

Nothing happens next. But we didn’t know then what we know now – my daughter was trapped. She had developed a chronic need for medication that would keep her captive long after she eventually fled the system. The system had her with the first benzo Dr. Lesli Kramer, a psychiatrist in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, administered to this young anxious woman.

There were endless hospitals and residential facilities. She moved to Chicago. She had hopes of finding a job and getting her life going. Her boyfriend started calling asking me to distract her so that he could get out the door in the morning. She wasn’t doing well. Her current therapist was trying the same drugs she had already been on. Again. Her brain was dislodged. This experiment of independent living ended badly with my daughter and her boyfriend on different floors of the local hospital’s psych ward.

They moved to Minnesota to wait for an opening at THE hospital where everything was going to be sorted out and our daughter would, after an extended stay, be able to live a long and happy life. The Austen Riggs Center, In Stockbridge, Massachusetts, calls themselves the preeminent medical center for the “treatment resistant patient”.

We believed everything they promised. Four hours of psychotherapy a week, art therapy and a work program all sounded wonderful. AND, they had access to the “finest psychopharmacologists” in the field. Weren’t we lucky when she got the call that a slot had open for her!

Four months later, believing she was ship-shape, my daughter was back in Minnesota. She and Zac, the boyfriend who had been staying with us while she was at Austen Riggs, set out to make a life in an apartment about a mile away.

Within a week, her life had crumbled around un-emptied boxes, where she laid curled up in a dark bedroom.

Once or twice a week for the next month I scooped up my daughter and drove the short distance on the highway between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Often she couldn’t handle the session on her own and Dr. Stagner, a psychiatrist recommended by Austen Riggs, would come out to the waiting room, open the door and wordlessly usher me in. At the beginning she had wanted me in the room to help with the timeline of treatment and to assist in remembering the drugs she had been on and in what combination.

Dr. Stagner’s office felt like the calm space of an old friendship. Couches and roomy armchairs were clustered around a coffee table which held kleenex boxes, pens, scraps of paper. Nick-knacks lined the window sill. Everything was muted in tone and shape, a little frumpy, but not shabby, just homey. Dr. Stagner sat in a corner next to the wall of windows, surrounded by stacks of papers and files, a computer and tea paraphernalia, rumpled and comfortable, soft around the edges and kind. He didn’t have any affectations. No furrowed brow, steepled fingers, pregnant thoughtful pauses. He reacted to my daughter’s pain honestly; he was concerned, immediate and forth-coming with answers.

“I am not surprised at what is happening to you. It was too much, too soon,” he said to my daughter who had pulled herself into a fetal position, high-heeled boots, coat and all. Her head was resting on the arm of the chair. Her eyes were closed, her face streaked with mascara when I settled into the chair at her side.

“I lived in a bubble. Residential treatment is stupid. How was I supposed to know that it was going to be like this? It is not fair. I thought I was better. I really did. But, I am not.”

“The real world is unrelenting,” Dr. Stagner said. “People need things, decisions have to be made, cooking and cleaning for yourself is hard. It sounds like you bit off more than you can handle. Back off and give yourself a break. If it is too hard to get dressed, don’t. Tell your boyfriend that you can’t. Take your time, work yourself slowly into taking on responsibilities.” Dr. Stagner’s face was full of concern.

“But, Zac doesn’t understand. He wants me to be with him. Go out. Do stuff. I can’t. I just can’t do it.”

“You have to tell him that. But, my guess is that he is getting the picture. I am going to give you Zyprexa. Use it to get to sleep at night. Try to get on a schedule of being up during the day, sleeping at night.”

“How about my panic attacks?” her voice was muffled.

“Yes, you can use it when you feel one coming on.”

“But, I get them all the time. Everyday.” She lifted her head up. It came out like a whimper.

“Lessen the stress and you will have fewer panic attacks. I think you should think about returning to Austen Riggs. You need to get stable again and work at introducing yourself into the real world slowly, maybe in a step-down program.”

“No, I can’t go back!” There was fear in her voice.

“Okay. Well, we will go slowly here, then. But, you have to take the pressure off of yourself. Have your mom tell Zac how important it is for him to give you the space to get better.”

“Mom, tell him. Zac will just get mad at me if I try to tell him. Everything I say to him makes him mad these days.”

“I don’t think that is the case. I think Zac is disappointed that you are not better. He’s not mad at you. He was expecting someone different. You have to see the situation from his point of view. Girlfriend calls from Massachusetts sounding great, comes home and within a week she falls apart. It was unexpected. I will talk with him. But, Zac is far from being mad. He is disappointed. But, he loves you and from what I have seen, he will stick by you for as long as it takes for you to get back on your feet.”

They didn’t work it out. Zyprexa and benzos and a smattering of anti-this-and-that littered her bedside table. Eventually, Austen Riggs was called and re-admittance was offered.

Packing this time around was complicated. Zac had left in a rush and his things were mixed into hers and they had barely unpacked and my daughter was in a psychotropic drug fog.

~

She was curled up on the bathroom floor when I rushed in. Glass was shattered all over the floor of her bedroom and hallway. She was crying.

“Why didn’t you come? Why weren’t you here to stop me? I needed you. Now, you ruined everything. It’s all broken. A mess.”

“I’ll clean it up. It’s ok.”

“NO. It is not OK. Stop it. Get out of here!”

I cleaned up the glass in the bedroom and looked around. She had barely started packing for her return to Austen Riggs. One earring was on her dresser. I’d seen the other one in the kitchen. The whole packing job was going to be like that, a scavenger hunt. She was anticipating a long stay this time and wanted to bring everything – different seasons of clothing, her books and magazines, videos, lamps, bed linens, etc.

“We could send things,” I suggested, “Just pack the essentials.” No, she had to bring it all with her.

I passed the bathroom. She started throwing things at me.

“Why the *^#*  did you do this to me?” She was screaming and sobbing again at the top of her lungs. “You are terrible. Didn’t you know I needed you?” Bottles and jars were shattering against the hallway wall across from the bathroom door.

“Please stop throwing things!”

“No! You are really a bad mother, you know. Anyone else would know not to leave me alone. You are so selfish.” I stuck my head around the corner of the door. A soap dish whizzed past. She was picking up speed. Double fisted. She was bawling.

I stepped into the line of fire and threw myself over her like a blanket. We laid there on the bathroom floor for a full minute, maybe two. She whimpered a couple of times, struggled against my weight, about the same as hers since she had started packing on the Zyprexa pounds, and finally gave up.

“You’re hurting me,” she said. I rolled over and we sat up. She started laughing. “Nice tackle. Bathroom football! Good job, mom.”

The drive across the northern half of the country in a blizzard and below freezing temperatures was terrifying. Black ice, black mood. My daughter was hitting herself, sighing and jerking around with a keyed-up force that was unpredictable. I drove most of the way with my hand hovering above her, lest she reach for the door handle and fling herself out of the speeding car.

My daughter and I went through the same process as we had a couple of months earlier the first time we arrived at Austen Riggs. Sitting in the lobby after a miserable night riddled with angry outbursts and little sleep, we met with the same line-up of doctors and staff. She was performing in public spaces but by mid-afternoon when we got to Dr. Stevens’, her therapist from her first stay, her performance was inadequate. Her face kept slipping into despair, her shoulders slumped inside her coat, she stumbled along behind me, devoid of energy and the will to get through the day. She couldn’t sit. Her clothes were bothering her – the seam on her tee shirt, the sleeve of her coat, the strap on her shoe. She’d been plucking and pinching everything away from her body, twitchy and obsessively repeating movements. We walked into Dr. Stevens’ office and took the same chairs that we had six months earlier. My daughter perched on the edge of hers for a couple of seconds and burst into tears. She had reached the end. Her body and mind caved in. She couldn’t pretend to be OK for another second.

“I can’t.” My daughter hung her head and sobbed.

“I see that you are exhausted.” Dr. Stevens’ voice was soothing and full of concern. “It’s been pretty rough? Maybe you took on too much,” she went on.

“I am such a mess. You don’t understand. I am not like I was when you saw me last.” She was pleading with Dr. Stevens to really see her, the young woman sitting there now, not the one who left six weeks earlier full of hope and enthusiasm.

“I am happy that you decided to come back. In the past you have had impenetrable walls built around you. I imagine it is scary when they aren’t there. I see that you feel very vulnerable right now but you know you are safe with us. It takes courage to come back and face it all again. I am glad that you did.”

A small grin broke on her tear-stained face.

“You know that I am not OK? That it hurts so much? Everything. My head feels like it is going to shatter. My knees ache. My back hurts. I feel like I am going to throw up. I have a terrible headache. All the time. I don’t know what happened. I thought I was all right.”

“We never know what is going to happen when a client leaves. We always hope that they will move on with ease. But, we did caution you that you were not ready. Stress is going to be your enemy. We need to help you manage it. You still have many unresolved issues. But, we will get there. Settle in and try to relax. Like I said, you are safe here. We want to help.”

“I am so lost. It’s scary to feel like this.”

“I can only imagine. We are going to try to make you as comfortable as possible.”

My daughter left the office and headed down the stairs before me. Dr. Stevens and I looked at each other.

“This was the right thing, bringing her back,” she assured me, “Her coping skills fell apart and she was left with no other way of dealing with all the pain. Her emotions have overwhelmed her. The pain in her body is real – it’s as if she has no skin. She has no protection from anything – physical or mental.” Dr. Stevens offered a weak smile and I hurried to join my daughter.

As I heaved the bookcases out of the rolling laundry cart I used to get everything from the car to her room, my daughter came back from her final meeting of the day. My arms and legs were shaking with exhaustion but she looked more tired. Bone weary, like for the last six weeks she had been racing at full speed and she had just run out of gas. She fell onto her side on the small bed.

“You know that I won’t be able to sleep, right?” her eyes were at half-mast.

“You look like you could drop off by just closing your eyes all the way. Try it.”

“The room is too much of a mess.”

“You can put things away tomorrow. Just try to sleep. I’ll be back in the morning. I love you.”

“Yeah, right. That’s what the nurse just said. She said that she likes me better like this, all f**ked up.”

“Did she say it like that?”

“No. But she said this is finally what they all were expecting. She said now the work can begin. Yeah, now that I feel like shit, I can dig in. That’s f**kin’ sick, if you ask me. What is everyone so proud about? This sucks. I feel awful.”

“I know, sweetie. I wish there was an easy way through this. A magic pill or a gate you could just walk through. But, unfortunately, I guess it is a process, working through and understanding the illness. Building from that knowledge with tools..”

She cut me off. “You don’t have a f**kin’ clue what you are talking about. This hurts. I don’t want to be here. We have made a terrible mistake. I want to go home.”

I sat down next to her. She shrank from my touch.

“I am sorry. I really am. I am going back to the hotel. I’ll see you in the morning. I hope you can sleep.” I leaned in to give her a kiss but she turned away.

“Just take me home, mom. I remember now that I hate it here.”

I got up and walked away from my daughter with my heart in my throat.

Half way down the hall I stopped and leaned over, bent in half with my hip against the wall, and tried to breathe. My daughter needed me and I left her alone. She was in pain and I turned my back. She was hopeless and pleading with me to help her and I closed her door behind me. I felt empty. I was too tired to think. Emotions swarmed over me – guilt, anger, resentment, obligation, terror, foreboding. I couldn’t find my balance. I stumbled from the building and braced myself against the cold wind and made my way toward the people singing Christmas carols on the porch of the Red Lion Inn.

I woke up on the morning of December 20, 2008 at loose ends. Should I go down to New York City as I had planned? Or should I stay here with with my daughter? I didn’t know what more I could do for her. She needed to settle in. I might be a distraction. A bus left at noon. By late afternoon, I’d be in New York City. It was my home for so many years, it felt like a refuge waiting. I yearned for the anonymous bustle. I wanted to lose myself in the perpetual motion, be one in a million and not answer to anyone.

I stood in the winter wind for half an hour, unflinching, numb. I climbed onto the bus to the city as the snow began to fall heavily. The normally three and a half hour trip took seven hours but I barely registered the time.

I felt like I had run over the family dog and kept driving.

I left the ruins behind but my heart, too, felt smashed and battered beyond recognition. I couldn’t look back.

This is the first part of the final post I wanted to write about my experience as a caregiver. I talked about my guilt at encouraging my daughter to believe in the psychiatric system in the post A Scented Memory and about getting lost in the system in On the Move and with these final two, I wanted to talk about what it feels like to see the problem but how impossible it was to fathom that the PROBLEM was the institution we had trusted to help our daughter.

We said for years that the drugs weren’t working.

We said for years that she seemed to be getting worse with each new treatment proposal.

We said for years that she might not make it, preparing ourselves for what seemed inevitable.

Our daughter fled the system not long after this but not before they nearly killed her with pharmaceuticals.

Kris Uncategorized Austen Riggs Center, Lesli Kramer

My daughter is struggling. She is trying her damnedest to be a young adult out in the world but life is complicated and overwhelming and scary for her. She went back to New York to try to work it out with her “boyfriend”. They aren’t succeeding because, as she says, she “doesn’t belong anywhere”. (Yes, this does sound like a red flag to me.)

We will welcome her home with open arms. I am relieved that she feels safe enough to return here. Home was once THE triggering place but now it has become a refuge. Before she left – only a week ago – the tension had dissipated and living with our daughter, which once seem unfathomable, was starting to feel normal and surprisingly pleasant. She had been with us for three months, had surgery on her foot and was starting to find a group of friends. Maybe she can recapture some of the momentum but I am afraid that she burned some bridges as she left town with her ultra hip NY boyfriend.

Transitions are hard. When she returns we can expect some rocky days. I will give up chunks of my life to caring for her but I don’t mind. It makes me sad. I makes me mad, though not at her.

I mourn what she is missing. The easy twenty-something laissez-faire approach to everything. I watch her peers who are happily careening through life, hanging out with ease and stumbling through jobs or already on the corporate ladder. Foreign territory.

A social engagement requires so much consideration as to what she will wear that she often doesn’t embark on it, stewing instead for hours over which shoes to wear. She hates her hair and body so much that when we hear the litany of offenses her body is capable of we have to fight our instincts to not shut down. Heads hung in defeat, we are completely unable to help. There isn’t an easy fix to tattoos made with poor-quality ink that cannot be lasered off. Or hair that she keeps cutting cannot be miraculously restored.

So, my husband and I wrap her in hugs that she too often hates and invite her to eat with us or join us at the movies or any number of things that might make her feel like she belongs. But, she fights us and abuses me with horrific language. She takes to her bed, threatening suicide or, in fact, takes too many pills or just stares at the walls. Some days no amount of cajoling will dislodge her; other days if I don’t try she feels abandoned.

I have often written about how smart and funny my daughter can be. I just wish I knew how to tap into her strengths and muzzle the rest. I wish SHE knew how to navigate out of the depths of despair.

In the post Let Go, Let God, I wrote about letting a higher power take over. Where exactly is that higher power these days? Where was it yesterday when her “boyfriend” called to ask me how to deal with my daughter dissociating. Or later, when my daughter called and said she was both numb and felt so tender that she might faint. Why does my daughter have to struggle, feel so much pain, be so constantly undone?

When I wrote the post about letting go, many people wrote comments about how God would never dole out more than my daughter could handle. I also read responses that indicated that pain is in God’s plan. I still don’t get it. I need more help understanding just how dark it needs to get.

I do not know how other parents interact with their communities. What is the protocol when a beloved child is in the throws of benzodiazepine withdraw, calling, crying, demanding an answer as to if risking a emergency room visit for a weeks-worth of Klonopin should be undertaken. The hospital is a terrifying place but where else could she go?  The “boyfriend” is mumbling in the background of these calls, angry and alarmed, and there we were last weekend – on a tour bus with my husband’s graduating college class, on our way to a lovely little art colony outside of Tucson. We felt protective of our family and disjointed and we lied and smiled and broke away to find shade on dusty benches and sat shell-shocked. And, then life goes on and we climbed back on the bus and complimented people on their purchases.

I am wondering whether other parents feel like I do? I feel like I will run out of fingers to plug the dike, and the flood of pain is about to sweep all of us under.

Kris Uncategorized