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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
[email protected]Shown: posts 1 to 10 of 10. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Abby on May 16, 2000, at 0:15:48
MOTHER'S Day.
I don't know how much I've written about my mother, but I'll try to give you the short version. I know that the Nature vs. Nurture debate is pretty much a moot point, but even without any genetic vulnerability (and I've got it on a couple of counts) I think that the environment I grew up in could induce depression in almost anyone.
My mother was pathologically disorganized. (Noa, your apartment could never have been as bad as our house was.) Most annoying was not what she didn't do in the way of cleaning, but what she couldn't restrain herself from doing e.g. putting away dirty dishes or dumping plates in the dishwasher which still had food on them, so that the drain would clog and overflow. Or my personal favorite. We had a cleaning woman from whom I learned as much as I could. She would tease me sometimes about the state of my drawers. So, I got into the habit of keeping them tidy. I took great pride in having my bed made neatly. I always felt better if I could get it done before I left for school. Often enough, I would come home to find that she had napped in it, and there would usually be an empty coffee cup on my night stand leaving a ring of liquid coffee on the furniture. Returning from camp late in the evening I would find my room a disaster zone. (Martin Seligman--here's your learned helplessness.)
When I was 15, she dropped a step in her progressive deterioration. (We had moved.) She turned back to Roman Catholicism and used to argue bizarre Catholic theology (none of it orthodox) in an attempt to convert him. She started to get grandiose ideas in a kind of grim determination to save the world. Our phone bill to Washington was enormous. She knew we hated those calls. So, she always waited until everyone else was out of the house before phoning. She took to watching TV late at night and was particularly partial to the 700 Club. (This really embarrassed me and my father, and it was a complete about face from the social environment in which she was raised.)
Then, while I was in college my parents moved essentially down the street from my dorm so that my father could go to divinity school. That October my maternal grandmother died. My mother then got extremely paranoid; she was unhappy about some aspects of how my grandmother's estate was handled, both in terms of substance and style. She was partially right, but she continued to harp on it, and she became convinced that the lawyer had murdered my grandmother. She also saw the Episcopal church being taken over by lesbians, and everyone of them was hitting on her.
We tried to get her into treatment. She tried to turn it into marriage counseling and was foiled, because her obsessions came out much more easily. (She'd been playing those kinds of games for years. My father has a lot of problems himself--from ADD irritability etc. Then she went into overdrive, went up to see a house we had bought on an island, which was still in the progress of getting structural work done and decided to stay, but she couldn't run away. When my father got sick, the island doctor asked him about stress (not answerable) and then if his wife was OK. She had stopped going to doctors long before. He started talking to her, called a psychiatrist, and then suggested she might have a treatable medical condition at which point she hit him. That and the fact that people were worried she was going to cause an explosion the way she would leave the gas on before lighting it allowed us to get her committed for 5 days. In the end she only spent one day. We got her to see a psychiatrist, but she did manage to manipulate her way out of that. To get a quicker appointment my father went with one, and the guy was a real bozo. All he did on his own was prescribe Ativan, and he was completely uninterested in the diagnoses made by hospital doctors.
My parents went to a small island in the Caribbean for the winter. (My Dad's schooling had gone part-time and then there were some leaves). The islands offered pleasant weather and a lower cost of living with the possibility of servants. Then some of the ideas that she had been holding in let loose. She also transferred all of her money from a discount brokerage account which my father had been managing to a full service broker who is now churning her account. (This despite the fact that we could never get her to pay a professional lawyer to write a will---see the aforementioned paranoia.) My father took some money and left to go back to school, because the stress was just killing him. We're living together in Maine right now in a house owned by a friend.
This past fall, my mother showed up in Massachusetts declaring her intention of taking some courses as a spouse etc. and completely derailing my father's plans. She stayed in a hotel and then switched to some sort of weekly B&B accommodation. Her new theory was that all of her illness was caused by her being raped when she was 17. The supposed rapist was her favorite Catholic priest in the Eastern Caribbean who had probably never been to the northern U.S. or Canada. She found our telephone number and knows the address. She used to send a lot of letters and she gives our address as her U.S. address.
SO with all this history, on Saturday I got a call from the B&B network saying that her credit card hadn't gone through properly. I'm sure that my mother didn't mean to stiff the people, but she is very bad about paying her credit card bills. She used to let all her bills go and then overpay the phone bill, and even in the best mood we could never get her to understand why this was bad. Intellectually, I had dissociated myself from this, reconciled myself to the fact that I had done all I could.
I told the woman that I was not in contact with her. The woman was very irritated and said "well this is a lot of money, about $400, what are we supposed to do just not get paid?" I said I was sorry, and that she might try writing to her care of General delivery...X island. Then the woman kept saying that her husband (my father) was legally responsible, which he isn't--- Massachusetts not being a community property state among other things. So I hung up.
It was a small thing, really. Her sudden arrival in the States could do far more harm to us, and she's now safely out of the country. The woman had no power over me or my father, but I was overwhelmed with sadness at the lost promise of my mother and the lack of appropriate treatment when she was a girl and my own lost childhood. From about the age of five I didn't really have a mother, but the existence of my Mother prevented the kind of attention a girl whose mother had died might receive. In later years there were a couple of older women who became good friends, but nobody stepped in to act as a mother when I was young, and I mothered my younger sister as best I could. And of course it was Mother's day.
Posted by medlib on May 16, 2000, at 2:45:20
In reply to Overwhelmed by another's illness, and OH GOD, it's, posted by Abby on May 16, 2000, at 0:15:48
> MOTHER'S Day.
-------------Abby--
I am so sorry for the truly horrific experiences you have had and continue to have with your mother. It sounds like an unending nightmare.
That you are still alive and sane is a tribute to your strength. Maybe, next Mother's Day, you could celebrate yourself! You did the only real mothering in your household and you should honor your and your sister's survival.Your post was not "up" before I composed mine, and I was appalled to see my tongue-in-cheek subject line right below yours. The juxtaposition was accidental; no slight was intended.
"Well" wishes--medlib
Posted by boBB on May 16, 2000, at 2:49:33
In reply to Overwhelmed by another's illness, and OH GOD, it's, posted by Abby on May 16, 2000, at 0:15:48
Abby wrote: The islands offered pleasant weather and a lower cost of living with the possibility of servants.
boBB asks: Who said you are entitled to servitude? Maybe you are simply trying to keep your mother from divesting you of your share your inheritance.
Posted by tina on May 16, 2000, at 10:00:47
In reply to Inappropriate sense of entitlement, posted by boBB on May 16, 2000, at 2:49:33
Oh my god, I so want to send you a huge hug right now. Please don't take boBB's comment to heart, I'm sure he's having troubles of his own right now. I feel so bad for you. Your story made me cry. Please don't assume this is pity, I just want you to know that you've been heard and you have all the support I can give you via e-mails. Medlib is right though, your survival is a real testament to your strength. You definately deserve credit for that and for being a mother to not just your sisters but also taking care of your father. I'm sure you were his support as much as he was yours. You are an inspiration to me. Thank-you for having the courage to share your story with us.
> Abby wrote: The islands offered pleasant weather and a lower cost of living with the possibility of servants.
>
> boBB asks: Who said you are entitled to servitude? Maybe you are simply trying to keep your mother from divesting you of your share your inheritance.
Posted by Noa on May 16, 2000, at 10:59:47
In reply to Re: To Abby, posted by tina on May 16, 2000, at 10:00:47
Abby, thanks for the post. I have to tell you I am so ENRAGED at boBB for harassing you, that the thoughts I would have expressed to you now about the content of your post will have to wait until later. But your post was very moving. More later......
Posted by Abby on May 16, 2000, at 17:29:11
In reply to Inappropriate sense of entitlement, posted by boBB on May 16, 2000, at 2:49:33
> Abby wrote: The islands offered pleasant weather and a lower cost of living with the possibility of servants.
>
> boBB asks: Who said you are entitled to servitude? Maybe you are simply trying to keep your mother from divesting you of your share your inheritance.There were a couple of things I didn't mention, because, since Babbleland is generally a supportive place, I assumed that I would be given the benefit of the doubt.
1.) I probably do feel entitled to the money at some point, though I won't get it. My mother's family always helped out the next generation and in retirement, my grandfather lived below his income so that there would be more money to leave to his children. My mother is eating at both troughs. Even if she had decided to leave all her money to somebody else, I would be happier for her to have an orderly estate than to have all the money go to the IRS. Indeed one of the things she was upset about was that some paintings which had been given to my great-grandmother by the artist were by 1995 quite valuable increasing the size of the estate my grandmother personally left to the grandchildren for education. The paintings had to be sold, because otherwise almost all of the money would have gone to paying the taxes. I wanted to help her get her things in order, to avoid that sort of thing, but she is terrified of the words trust and lawyer.
2.) When my mother ran up huge phone bills,my grandmother was still alive, and although my grandmother would pay for my summer trips my mother's income was only about $28,000. My father had to give up working to take care of my younger sister who was getting creamed, and to try to mitigate some of my mother's damage. So we really didn't have the money to spare.
3.) I don't believe that we are entitled to servitude, but my mother is not competent and does need care. A hundred years ago she would have been placed in an asylum, which, if it had been a nice place, could have been a good thing. Since those don't really exist anymore, something like a cajoling maid was the best alternative---thus the Caribbean.
Finally, boBB, your basic point makes no logical sense. I wasn't looking for servants of my own but a nursemaid for my mother. So, I would be trying to spend money on her and during her lifetime, meaning that there would be less of it available to me. If I only cared about money, I would have encouraged my mother's confused night-time walks in dark clothes. I could have killed her off that way.I don't mean to be bitter in my reply,and I'm not going to be drawn into a heated discussion, but your remarks were not only rude but also mostly inaccurate.
Posted by bob on May 16, 2000, at 18:55:04
In reply to Overwhelmed by another's illness, and OH GOD, it's, posted by Abby on May 16, 2000, at 0:15:48
> (Martin Seligman--here's your learned helplessness.)
Sorry, but Marty's not into that anymore. He's into "learned optimism" (well, from a social cognitive standpoint, just about everything is learned) and, with Mike (it's so much easier to say than Mihaly) Csikszentmihalyi, is a proponent of "positive psychology".
I prefer to refer to it as blowing sunshine up your butt, but it *does* work.
Repeat after me:
I, state your name, have a Cheerful and Sunny Disposition!Now, keep saying that until you really MEAN it.
cheers,
bob
Posted by Abby on May 16, 2000, at 20:20:13
In reply to Re: Overwhelmed ... a social cognitive aside, posted by bob on May 16, 2000, at 18:55:04
> > (Martin Seligman--here's your learned helplessness.)
>
> Sorry, but Marty's not into that anymore. He's into "learned optimism" (well, from a social cognitive standpoint, just about everything is learned) and, with Mike (it's so much easier to say than Mihaly) Csikszentmihalyi, is a proponent of "positive psychology".
I know that that research is about 25 years old or so, but learned optimism is just the flip side of [the treatment response to] depression---the learned helplessness part.--Abby
Posted by bob on May 16, 2000, at 20:51:24
In reply to Re: learned--optimism vs. helplessness, posted by Abby on May 16, 2000, at 20:20:13
> I know that that research is about 25 years old or so, but learned optimism is just the flip side of [the treatment response to] depression---the learned helplessness part.--Abby
I know, but to address the issue more seriously, Seligman and Csikzsentmihalyi's point is that psychology as a whole has focused more on disfunction than on optimal function. I honestly haven't seen anything by Seligman on "learned optimism", but it may not be a simple "flip side" of LH. If I remember correctly, he originally came out of a behavioral/animal studies paradigm to come up with the concept, then reformulated it to fit into Causal Attribution Theory. Given the formulaic account for how LH develops, it is rather simple to change the directions or "signs" (negative to positive) to come up with LO. But bringing Csikzsentmihalyi's views on optimal experience and flow into the mix moves it away, I think, from an attributional model towards a more intrinsic viewof how it may occur.
Course, this is all just speculation on my part now ... but if any of this is zipping over the heads of anyone interested in hearing more, let me know and I'll be a bit more verbose in describing this stuff above.
cheers,
bob
Posted by boBB on May 16, 2000, at 23:06:46
In reply to Re: learned--optimism vs. helplessness, posted by bob on May 16, 2000, at 20:51:24
The statement about servants was not clear, as to who was being served. The word servant raises flags with me. Housekeeper, caregiver, cook, these words reflect the merit of their effort rather than reinforce a social hierarchy.
Anyway, I can't endict your mother based on your testimony. I would need to hear her side of the story. Insults are not in style here in Bobbleland today, but your text seemed to emphasise your wholeness and worthiness while minimizing your mother's humanity. Some schools of thought suggest that we choose these roles. A week at AA meetings and someone might tell you how you are enabling her apparent disfunctionality.
At best, I can say it seems she does not share your ambition for self-discovery and psychological exploration. Maybe sometimes you would agree she is safer that way, nes pas?
This is the end of the thread.
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