Dear Prudence: Meet My Hidden Personality

DEAR PRUDENCE: MEET MY HIDDEN PERSONALITY

You haven’t met Prudence. A few years ago, I introduced you to my multiple personalities — the confused and frightened kids who live inside me and with whom I have largely made peace. Occasionally, their fears still knock me off-center and cause me to lose my inner calm. My therapist has taught me to ask myself, “What part of me is afraid?” and then I can soothe that particular aspect of my being.

I won’t tell you all of my coping skills because I suspect you already think I’m flaky enough, but for instance, if “Sport” is afraid, I can work in the garden. She likes to be outside and get dirty. She likes earthworms and roly-poly bugs. She’s seven.

If “Whisper” is afraid, I can play the piano or sit down and listen to classical music. She learned to play the piano loud when dysfunctional family chaos upset my eleven year-old self.

My teenage self, “Cat,” is the hardest to soothe because she is tough and she’d rather die than admit she is afraid and you can’t teach her anything anyway. Driving really fast makes her feel better, but this is not ideal. She likes banging on the drum.

Careful of the cat

At the time I revealed my inner children to you, I was not aware of Prudence. That’s the thing about her. She is secretive. She is mistrustful and extraordinarily protective of “ourselves.” I think that she directs some of the other kids, though I’m not certain. She’s very strong.

I’ll never forget when I discovered Prudence. I was with my therapist, who asked,

“What part of you is driving that behavior?”

That’s usually fairly simple to figure out, but after a long while, I was still baffled. “I’m not sure who it is. It’s different energy.”

And she said, “Is there another one?” I nodded. She said, “Does she have secrets?” I nodded again. “What’s her name?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

But the moment I walked out of the office and into the flowering courtyard, the song “Dear Prudence” came to me in its entirety, and I knew that was her name.

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play

Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue

It’s beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play

♥ ♥ ♥ 

Dear Prudence open up your eyes

Dear Prudence see the sunny skies

The wind is low the birds will sing

That you are part of everything

Dear Prudence won’t you open up your eyes?

♥ ♥ ♥

Dear Prudence let me see you smile

Dear Prudence like a little child

The clouds will be a daisy chain

So let me see you smile again

Dear Prudence won’t you let me see you smile?

Prudence doesn’t smile. She doesn’t come out to play. She mistrusts sun and birdsong and daisy chains. She doesn’t want to be “part of everything.” Life is a serious, treacherous business for Prudence because someone has to be the cautious, watchful one. The prudent one.

Prudence knows that at any moment your perfectly loving father can have one too many glasses of brown stuff and turn into a monster. One day your mother will defend you, one day she will not.

Stay hidden. Trust no one.

The election of President Tweet traumatized all of my inner children. It caught the whole world off-guard. But not Prudence. She could have told you. She always knew a mentally unstable, dangerous man might become president and threaten the future of our country and the planet.

Prudence doesn’t want to be comforted. She has work to do.

♦ ♦ ♦

** Please read this disclaimer about Dissociative Personality Disorder (DID) which I do not have.

** Thanks for the writing prompt: prudent.

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Warning: You May Find This Disturbing

This week I’m sharing a (very) personal essay I’ve just had published on the blog of So to Speak, a feminist journal of language and art. I’m giving you fair warning that it’s not a very pleasant story.

Secrets in the Dark

The woman has been roughed up. There’s a bruise on her cheek, and her blouse is ripped. Her long brown hair has been hacked off with a pair of scissors, and several of her teeth have just been brutally yanked out. A crowd of filthy men and women taunt her, shoving her along a darkened street. Her voice breaks into a raw, bitter wail. “There was a time when men were kind, when their voices were soft and their words inviting.”

If you’ve ever seen Les Misérables, you probably recognize this gut-wrenching scene. Fantine, a factory worker who has just lost her job, has sold her hair and teeth to pay for her young daughter’s room and board.

Anne Hathaway plays the role in the latest film version of Victor Hugo’s story of love and hate in the French Revolution. She’s painfully beautiful in this scene, bruises dark on her pale skin, eyes sunken and hopeless as she’s pressured into prostitution to save her daughter.

A French army officer has just finished doing his business on top of her. She’s belting out this song, and I can hear people all around me sniffling in the dark of the movie theater.

“I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I’m living.

So different now from what it seemed

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

Even the guy behind me with the annoying belching issue seems to be crying. He starts breathing badly, and I wonder if he’s having a heart attack or something. I’m considering turning around to ask if he’s OK, but I don’t want to embarrass him if he’s crying.

His labored breathing suddenly evens out, and I hear the sound of a zipper being closed. Apparently he’s successfully put himself in the French officer’s place and has had his way with Anne Hathaway in the dark.

♦ ♦ ♦

“Why didn’t you move?” My therapist’s face had that inscrutable look she gets, and her question seemed as impenetrable as her expression.

“Move?” I echoed. “Why didn’t I move?” An irrational shame nudged a blush up my neck as I tried to remember: Did I even think of moving?

Doctor Z nodded and leaned forward in her chair, elbows perched on her knees and fingers pressed together in a teepee under her chin as if trying to keep her mouth from dropping open.

“Well, I thought about it for a minute, but — I know it sounds stupid — at first I couldn’t believe it was happening. Like, I must be wrong. Then I thought that he was obviously a mess, sick, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” I paused, and my therapist raised her eyebrows. “Wow,” I said.

“Yeah, wow,” she said.

“But I felt trapped. Moving didn’t really seem like an option.”

“Why don’t you journal about this? Writing always helps you. I’ve heard you use those words before, feeling trapped, not trusting your own experience, not being able to take care of yourself because you were worried how it might make someone else feel.”

Doctor Z pulled some papers out of her black bag, the signal that our time was up. I wrote her a check and drove home with only half my mind on the road. “Why didn’t I move?” I kept hearing the question.

♦ ♦ ♦

Journal entry:

Tough therapy session. Why didn’t I move away from that guy in the theater? Why did I feel so powerless? The other thing I can’t figure out is why I was afraid to tell anyone, even my friends. Like I had done something wrong, or the whole thing was so disgusting and ugly that I had to hold it in, protect the world from it. Not pollute other people’s lives with my pain. Just like when I was a kid. Don’t tell anyone what’s going on in the house; don’t tell the neighbors about Daddy passing out. Put the vodka bottles at the bottom of the trash bag. It’s all a secret I have to keep. What a burden for a little girl!

My mom. The queen of denial. She’s the one who taught me how to keep a secret. When she caught me on the couch with my ninth-grade boyfriend’s hand down my pants, she said, “I know I didn’t see what I just saw,” and she never said another word about it. Mom didn’t even want to tell the doctor that Daddy was an alcoholic when he was lying on life support in the hospital! As if they couldn’t tell. I broke the secrecy code and told the nurse our shameful secret. Daddy died anyway.

Now that I think of it, Mom’s was the voice in my head at the movie theater saying, “That couldn’t have happened. I must be wrong.”

♦ ♦ ♦

“Good work,” said Doctor Z when I finished reading my journal entry. “What else?”

“Well, I guess my family was so focused on our shame and secrecy that what I needed didn’t matter much. It’s like I learned that I’m not worth taking care of — I don’t believe I have any rights. Mom never took care of her own needs either — trying not to upset my father always came first. That’s why I was more worried about how that guy might feel if I moved than I was about my own feelings.”

I picked up the cushion on the sofa and began messing with the stitching. “Have I ever told you about when I lost my virginity?” I asked, though I knew I hadn’t. It all came out in a rush. “I was sixteen and I was at a party in an upstairs room with an older guy, kind of a friend. We were messing around and he got really aggressive. I said no to him, told him to stop. I said I didn’t want to, but he went ahead and I thought, ‘Oh well.’ I wanted him to like me, and I guess I figured it wouldn’t be worth the fight. I’ve always felt ashamed of that.”

There was a silence while we sat with my shame and I continued to unravel her cushion.

“You were sixteen, Melanie. Just sixteen.”

“Yes.” More silence. I couldn’t look at her.

“You’re an adult now. You can take care of yourself. You don’t have to be a victim . . . you have choices.”

“Yes, I have choices.” I did not sound like an adult. I sounded like a little girl parroting her mother’s directions. I waited for further instruction.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” Doctor Z reminded me, as she often must.

I exhaled a laugh, set the cushion down, and looked her in the face. “Yes, I do have choices.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Journal Entry:

I am going back to the theater tonight. It’s been nearly two months since Les Mis, and I was telling Dr. Z how mad I was at that asshole cause I felt like he had stolen my theater from me. I usually go every week, but the thought’s been making me nauseated.  “I can’t imagine sitting in that seat again,” I told her.

“Well,” she said, “you could sit in a different seat.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, laughing at this obvious solution. “I have choices.”

So I’ve been planning on choosing a new seat. But that’s still making me mad. He stole my spot and I feel l like a victim. So I think I’ll march right down that aisle and sit in my regular seat, twelve rows back on the left. If somebody sits behind me, I can always move.

………

You can visit the So to Speak journal here.

 

The Power of Names: Meet My Multiple Personalities

I discovered my multiple personalities about five years ago while working with my therapist. I am going to introduce you to “my kids,” but first I want to make it clear that I do not have certifiable Multiple Personality Disorder, properly called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

True DID personalities would fight mightily against being introduced to you — it has been called “a disorder of hiddenness” — and they would likely have the power to stop this blog from happening. While my kids are shy and not sure that you’ll like them, they are nevertheless ready to reveal themselves.

I am not making light of DID when I speak of my kids. I know people who have DID, and it is a painful and debilitating disorder involving mistrust and secrecy that can isolate you from others. Many people don’t even know they have DID and have instead been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, or bipolar disorder.

There’s a whole spectrum of dissociative disorders, with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder being the “mildest” (ha!) and full-blown DID being the most severe. DID is not a dysfunction, per se, it’s actually a remarkable coping mechanism for people who have experienced traumatic events. In essence, the “parts” of the self that have been traumatized “split off” in order for the psyche to survive.  They keep the painful memories isolated.

This becomes a dysfunction later in life when the trauma has passed, but the self and its dissociated parts remain separate and act as if they are still threatened. Hence, the separate parts are usually mistrustful, somewhat paranoid, and protective.

Psychology lesson over. To learn more, check here and here and here.

The Birth of My Personalities

Like a lot of people who grew up in chaotic, unpredictable homes, I experienced some dissociation when I was a kid. When confronted with painful and confusing situations, like my gentle and loving Daddy suddenly becoming an aggressive and nasty person after tossing back a few tumblers of Gallo sherry, my brain compartmentalized the chaos. Distancing from the craziness made it bearable.

My brother told me that when I was thirteen, I walked into the dining room and my father slammed down his glass and said, “So, are you pregnant yet?” I have no conscious memory of this. But the shock and confusion is in there somewhere.

You may be able to relate. Perhaps you’ve reacted to a situation irrationally and then in retrospect wondered why you were so bent out of shape . . . or since it’s easier to judge others than yourself, you may have noticed such inappropriate overreactions in friends, family, or coworkers. Often, the reason for this behavior is that our brains have made a subconscious connection to a similar upsetting situation from childhood and we are literally reacting with a child’s mentality. We have disassociated from our adult identity.

In short, I have some kids in my head, and they sometimes govern my reactions to life events. I can now recognize them and give them their due. It’s like being a parent to a passel of children. You need to listen to them, reassure them, and meet their emotional needs.

The cool thing is, these little characters are part of my identity — I am reintegrating them into my adult self and find that they are creative, funny, and inspirational. And they like to express themselves through poetry. Their poems help me understand myself.

This week marks twelve weeks since my brother Biff passed away. The kids honored the event by expressing their feelings through poetry. The poems are Blackjack Poems, three lines of seven syllables each for a total of twenty-one. So without further ado, here are my kids and their poems.

Marnie and Biff

Characterization through Poetry

Marnie

Marnie is what I called myself when I was too small to say Melanie, and the nickname stuck. Mom always called me Marnie when she was feeling mushy. Marnie is about four. She likes to laugh and have fun and play and is easily frightened by anger or confrontation. I have an image of her in a puffy party dress, hiding behind the couch waiting for an argument to blow over. She’s the reason I avoid tense situations. She writes:

The house is very quiet

I don’t know what happens next.

Nobody’s laughing. He’s gone.

Sport

Sport is a nickname my brother gave me when I was seven or eight. Sport is a fun kid with short hair, freckles, and a gap between her front teeth. She’s an animal lover and likes to be active outside. In the early sixties, she would flee whatever madness was going on in the house and escape into nature, which she found to be a healing balm, almost mystical. She’s probably the reason I became a vegetarian and devoted my career to environmental protection, and she’s definitely the reason I get so pissed off when people say they don’t believe in climate change. She knows that honoring nature is a matter of survival on many levels. She writes:

No, that’s silly. He’s hiding.

There’s no sun if he’s not here.

He’s the one that makes us laugh.

Whisper

Whisper didn’t show herself until well after the others had come out and named themselves. Whisper is intensely shy and prefers to be invisible because it’s less painful than being ignored or neglected. She feels responsible for bad stuff happening and carries a lot of shame — another reason for hiding. Whisper spent the late sixties sitting in front of the TV watching sitcoms and eating bologna sandwiches and chips, in the hopes that chubby layers would keep her hidden.

She’s a creative little soul, ten or eleven years old, who finds peace and joy in music and other artistic pursuits. When I decided to face my fear of computers and create a blog, it was to Whisper I turned. I gave her permission to be heard. I think she’s the one who helps me write from the gut. Her poem:

If I am very quiet

And don’t cause any upset,

Maybe he will come back home.

Cat

Cat. Dear Cat. Her name says it all. She is a teenager and powerful in a way that only teenagers can be. She strode in, dressed in patched blue jeans, a paisley t-shirt, and a bandana and stood between my father and the cowering Whisper. We were silent no more, though we could be sullen, surly, and snarky. Passive-aggressive and bitingly sarcastic, Cat was done with my father. (Now that I think of it, she learned those behaviors from her beloved big brother, Biff.)

Cat’s clever and brims with false self-confidence. Underneath, she’s just as fearful as Marnie and Whisper, but you would never know it. I love Cat — she took control and took no prisoners. She’s impulsive and spontaneous and is the one who still occasionally tears down the Beltway at eighty five miles-per-hour in pursuit of some idiot who cut her off. Sometimes she drinks too much and it took me several tries to get her to quit smoking. She cusses a lot. Cat is dismissive of poetry but offers this nonetheless:

How could he do this to me??

What the fuck! This can’t happen.

I gotta get out of here.

 Mel

Mel is a miracle. Mel totally rocks. She is my young adult, twenty or so. She’s the one who started asking, “Why not?” and “What if?” She is smart, capable, determined, and gets things done. Mel worked from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. every day and held a weekend job as well so she could pay her way through college in night school. When she didn’t find the major she wanted at university, she designed her own Environmental Studies degree. She nagged the folks at the Sierra Club until they hired her in 1982. I think she deserves most of the credit for the Masters in Nonfiction I just received from Hopkins. I need her to get me out of bed during this period of grieving. I’m sure she will step up, she always does. She writes:

I guess I’ll try to do this.

What is an executor?

I’ll ask the lawyer; he’ll know.

Melanie

Finally, there’s Melanie; adult Melanie. Me. Through spiritual disciplines, recovery support groups, and therapy, I’m learning to integrate my kids and am becoming a whole and healthy adult. I seek to appreciate and learn from all my parts — the whimsical joy of Marnie, the outdoor girl in Sport, the creativity of Whisper, the fearlessness of Cat, and the go-getter spirit in Mel. Here’s where I am:

On good days now, I can laugh.

Some days I stay home and cry.

My friends laugh and cry with me.

 ♥♥♥♥♥

This post was written in response to the WordPress Writing Challenge: Power of Names. I’ve found it empowering and enlightening to name and claim the kids inside of me. Who’s inside of you?

Hey Girl, You’re Bald!

Trichotillomania (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Hey girl, you’re bald!” My friend pretended not to hear, as our escalator descended, leaving the boys’ laughter behind. I heard well enough, and my stomach lurched as if we were on a carnival ride. Those cruel words were called out decades ago, but I can still hear them.

I’ve lived most of my life with the shame and embarrassment of having large bald patches on my head, and oftentimes no eyebrows or lashes. My condition made me sit in the back of the classroom all my life, when I’m naturally a front-row kind of gal. It’s kept me from going swimming, from spending the night with friends, from ever going to a hair stylist.

Once I told a boyfriend that I had been in a car accident and they had needed to shave my head, and the hair never grew back because of anxiety. Turns out his father was a medical doctor and told my boyfriend that he didn’t know what my issue was, but I was a liar.

Once Dear Abby told a girl who had written in that it was a throw-back to the monkeys who pick lice off each other. Oh. My. God. She should have been horribly punished. You can imagine how this helped a teenager who already thought she was a freak.

I suffer from Trichotillomania, “the hair-pulling disease.” It’s one of a spectrum of disorders classified as “impulse control disorders.” There’s a lot of discussion about how it should be classified – it resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder, and they are now researching a family of disorders called “body-focused repetitive behaviors.” One in fifty people have it to some extent.

I know the classification and science are important, as far as getting research dollars and insurance coverage and such. But for me, it’s a personal issue. I don’t really care what they call it.

I never intended to tell you about it, blog friends, but I’m sharing this because I just found out that this is Trichotillomania and Skin-picking Awareness Week. I wish there had been such a thing when I was growing up. I’ve been hiding long enough, and if I can help just one person suffering in shameful solitude, I thought it would be worth it to speak up. Here’s a link to an organization that can help you, or your loved one, if you have this disorder.

The Trichotillomania Learning Center, TLC: http://www.trich.org/

In the meantime, if you have a child that does this, please don’t slap their hands away. It won’t help. If you know someone with bald patches, don’t ask them, “What happened to your hair?” They’ll tell you if they want to. And while I’m making suggestions, if you’re prone to saying, “It just made me want to pull my hair out,” well, maybe you could stop. That phrase makes 1 in 50 cringe.

I want to add my happy and miraculous ending. I’m eternally grateful to my therapist, Joanne, for introducing me to the practice of “tapping,” or Emotional Freedom Technique, which has given me three years, two months and seven days of pull-free living. If you’re curious, check it out:   http://eft.mercola.com/   I don’t understand how it works, but it does, using the same energy meridians as acupuncture, but without the needles. (Yay!) My fine, straight hair has grown back thick and curly, as if I had been through chemo. It is without a doubt the most beautiful head of hair on the planet.

Thanks for listening. Back to my regular rambling posts later this week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichotillomania