TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS WHEN SELECTING HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS!

For those of you who grew up in the midst of chaos and uncertainty (and surely I was such a child, as my memoir reveals) – not knowing what to expect from one day to the next and not having what you saw or heard respectfully affirmed – what often remains well into adulthood is a hesitancy to trust your instincts. But that is a challenge well worth meeting, especially when it effects the care of your physical and/or mental health.

No doubt, you know people - as I do - who talk about how abused they feel when doctors speak to them condescendingly or refuse to speak to them at all, treating them with little or no respect ... and, by the time they've left such offices, they do so doubting their own sanity rather than the sanity (or at the very least the professionalism) of the physician.

Anyone who has experienced such feelings, please take heed: That is pain well worth sparing yourself! When someone else’s behavior sounds/ feels/appears not to be respectful or rational, then chances are it is not, even if that someone is a so-called professional.

While it is true that many physicians no longer have the luxury to spend as much time with patients as would best benefit the doctor/patient relationship, it is also true that if their focus is not on you, how you need to be heard and given information, but rather on which tests should be ordered and/or administered ... stop, take a deep breath, and ask yourself how this person is making you feel. Then, if a follow up is done only when it's most convenient for the doctor ... even if that means keeping you - the understandably concerned patient - waiting an unnecessarily lengthy number of days to receive test results or prescriptions for needed medications, stop and think again. Re-evaluate this relationship, especially if you opt to call for results and are told that you are "badgering" the office staff.

"Keep the faith," but do take action! There are still dedicated and wonderful health care professionals – physicians/specialists in every area - psychotherapists, physical therapists and every other therapist - who will take your care seriously, return your concerned phone calls, and offer you respect. You never need to place your trust in professionals simply because they have a title or may have come highly recommended. You owe it to yourself to trust your instincts! Not being treated thoughtfully is not acceptable! Respect yourself and be selective when choosing anyone to help care for your body and soul! And if you are a parent of a child too young to make such a decision, be that child's advocate. Nothing will empower you more or ensure that you or your family are receiving the quality care each of us deserves!

Remember: you are the consumer! If any health care provider’s style doesn’t offer you comfort and confidence, trust that what you're feeling deserves attention. Leave that practice. There's no reason to walk away meekly or apologetically, especially if you've acted courteously. Tell the office that you have, regrettably, chosen to take your “business” elsewhere. Doing so may never cause the staff or the doctor to change, but it most definitely will release you from a situation that - as an adult - you have the privilege to change, something that many of us were not afforded as children, when so much was out of our control!

Here is something that is now in your control!  Do some research and know that there is a good clinician out there waiting for your call!

On that note, I wish you all good health, good health care, and a great weekend!

~ Linda

TRAUMA, REPRESSION, and MEMORY

A part of Webster's definition of the word memory states that it is the act of retaining and recalling impressions, facts ... Placing the word facts next to impressions is, I believe, a distortion and a dis-service to one's personal reality. Why? Because what we call our reality, though it may feel, smell and often taste factual in nature is, nonetheless, always processed through the lens of our particular personality. Our ability to recall often includes the need to repress a variety of experiences, if we are to survive early trauma and remain functioning members of society. So, while I agree that each of us has impressions of the past, if you were to speak to members of the same family you'd often hear the so-called facts sound as though the people never shared a common experience. So much for facts!

Many have thought writing Four Rooms, Upstairs must have been a cathartic experience for me. It was, but it was much more than that. As one vivid memory emerged, it triggered others - ones buried so deep inside a protected cave that for more than 50 years (and many therapists's probings) I did not know existed.

That reminds me of something I've kept on a scrap of paper (with no author's name attached to it) ... and I'd like to share it with you.

"We are never quite in the present, but are always meeting the present. And what we meet it with is memory - the expectations, habits, desires and fears that began and then were transmuted through memory into behavior."

What I've learned from that is that when I'm able to disempower negative memories, I'm better able to meet the present without fear and with realistic, hopeful expectations. I hope that through these blogs I am able to offer you tools to do the same.

Again, I look forward to you posting your thoughts and responding to mine, as you read my entries. (Scroll down.) Have a great day!

~ Linda

WHEN MOTHER WAS "NOT HERSELF" ...

I hope that sharing this chapter from my memoir, FOUR ROOMS, UPSTAIRS: A Psychotherapist’s Journey Into and Beyond Her Mother’s Mental Illness will resonate with you, whet your appetite, and make you feel this is a book you really want to read.

CHAPTER TWO
The other stories Mother told merge with my visions of her during the times when Father would say, “Your mother’s not herself these days.” During those bouts, her stories were even more painful. I wished I could believe they were just stories, not a part of anyone’s real life, least of all my mother’s. Yet, it all did happen. Her childhood stories of life in Russia after the turn of the 20th century were replete with images of unthinkable loss.

She’d begin with her usual “What’s the use to look back? What’s to see?” Yet, all she was ever able to do at such times when she was not herself was to look back, to go back to where she was most determined not to go, to a time and place where the traumas began haunting her, taking away the best of her from the rest of her and, ultimately, taking her away from us, her anguish always visible, the manner in which she spoke frightening.

As Mother paced nervously throughout the night, sometimes mumbling incoherently, nightmares invaded my sleep, mixing the real with the unreal. An instinctive vigilance soon governed my days.

I never understood what it was about the night that robbed her of dignity by morning, when she refused eye contact with any of us and mumbled only to the dead or to God, and I would lose her again.

Our apartment would become victim to a relentless urgency and desperation as her memories pushed their way to the surface, wreaking havoc with her mind. The chaos that then permeated our rooms alternated between Mother’s anger and a child-like fragility, confronting the silences of feelings never articulated by any of us.

Nothing made sense.

With no one explaining anything to me – except for Father’s saying Mother was simply not herself – my body tensed with every shift in her mood. My fingers clenched into tiny fists. I stayed close by, watching her every move as she compulsively washed the kitchen and bathroom floors on her hands and knees, re-washing and re-waxing sections made spotless moments earlier.

With the scrub brush held tightly in her hands, her knuckles bone white from the pressure, she rocked and scrubbed, scrubbed and rocked, her energy and strength frightening and hypnotic.
All the while, her stories continued. She’d rant on in rapid, staccato whispers or loud, disjointed speech. “What’s to see? What’s to remember?”

Whatever voices she may have heard, I wasn’t privy to them. I heard only her words and the images they conjured up. “That one day there’s a family, a house, vegetables in the garden, a sun that shines? Then, boom! There’s no more sun. No more ‘tateh,’ no father. No hug. No goodbye. He’s gone! Gone to America. Mama tells us we’ll join him, but, no, that never happens.

“After giving birth to our eighth baby, Mama’s already suffering too much when the midwife comes. The baby, our brother Abrasha, is already born.” Lifting her head at that point, her sad eyes squinting, she’d look across the room, at another space, another place far beyond the circle of suds facing her, beyond our four rooms in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

“We have the bris (the ritual circumcision) for the baby,” she’d continue. “Papa sends money for it, and weeks later, even though Mama’s not well yet, the packing begins. She tells us tateh is ready for us to come to America, and every one of us is hopeful. All the furniture is sold. Then, what do you think? One-two-three, the whole world turns upside down. A notice arrives. The borders are closed. There’s war! War! We can’t leave Russia. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

Dusting every piece of furniture, she’d talk on about the war as though she was living it all over again.

“And with no more furniture, all we have is boxes. Boxes of clothes and blankets, Shabbos candlesticks, some books and a few chatchkes (knickknacks) Mama can’t leave behind. So, what can she do? What can we all do? There is no choice.”

Rinsing the mop, strangling it with a twist of her wrists, unaware of what was in her hands or what the rest of her body was doing, she’d ramble on. “There’s no more going to America. The government tells us we can’t leave. Nobody can. The borders, they’re closed. To stay in our house, even that we can’t do. There’s no more furniture, no house, no nothing. Just war. Then more war. As much as she hates to, Mama moves the eight of us to Bubby and Zadie’s, to her parent’s tiny hut in Tolochin, where there’s no room for nobody. Nobody.”
As each memory re-surfaced, it tore at the fabric of our family, her new family here in America with Father, Herbie and me. Her voice – the one we knew to be soft and gentle – grew shrill. Her cleaning frenzy intensified. With each new day, she’d dust everything in sight, then wash and wax, re-wash and re-wax each floor. Mother’s words – her stories – echoed in my head. Her behavior, a cause for alarm, left me ever more watchful, desperately wanting to help her, to save her, to make her happy.

Self Publishing and Networking

Not being very computer savvy, I'm more than thrilled to be experiencing ways to communicate with people about my recently released memoir, FOUR ROOMS,UPSTAIRS: A Psychotherapist's Journey Into and Beyond Her Mother's Mental Illness. Having contacted Dan Poynter's www.parapublishing.com allowed me to write about my book in his monthly Marketplace Issue, which in turn has found its way to many generous people offering to review my book, as well as an invitation to join The International Women's Writing Guild, www.iwwg.org, another wonderful way to network. As any author, my main goal is for my book to reach many readers ... and so I thank all of you who are making that possible!
~ Linda