Yesterday was an adventure in facing worst fears. This particular monster? Psychiatry. The combination of stigma, adverse side effects, humiliation, and sketchy biological experimentation had thus far overwhelmed my willingness to tap into the vast reservoir of chemical interventions supplied by the pharmaceutical companies’ men in black. I suffer from knowing too much. There is probably a drug for that.
I went to see my therapist and share more news from the front lines. What a life, that of a therapist, meeting with many gurus every day! They don’t need to climb any mountains. The gurus come to them, one after another, teaching with their living illustrations to which they have committed their very identities.
In the book, How Can I Help?, Ram Dass and Paul Gorman include an insightful chapter on what they call “helping prison.” They outline the ways in which being a “helper” can trap us in the role of compassionate or wise one and reaffirm the role of the one we assist as the weak and helpless one. In reality, the one who receives help may confer untold benefits to the one who helps, and the lines between helper and helpee are blurred.
Though intensely averse to my role as someone in need of help, I made an effort to embrace it through and through and feel reverence for the intrinsic elements of goodness and healing hidden within it. We are all here to learn from one another.
On my way to help my helper, I had a few minutes to spare, so I stopped at a nearby thrift store. A used book caught my eye, The Te of Piglet. It was only a dollar, so I got it.
Once in my therapist’s office, I told her about my weekend, and after hearing of my encounter with rock bottom, she recommended an urgent psychiatric evaluation. No appointments were available for weeks, so she directed me to the emergency room, where an on-call psychiatrist would be able to speak with me.
“I know this is your worst nightmare,” she said. (See post: Seeking Help, Getting Traumatized from January 2007) Her acknowledgment reassured me. She was able to respect my awareness, skills, sanity, and strength while simultaneously respecting my need for help. In my experience, people tend to choose one or the other. Today, I was ready to face my demons.
Soon, I was on my way to the emergency room, where my belongings were confiscated in exchange for a hospital gown. I was, however, allowed to keep my fortuitously acquired reading material, which illuminated the hours that followed. In this Taoist tale, Pooh sings a song for Piglet:
You can be a guiding star,
If you make the most of Who You Are.
And the sensitivity
That you’re now ashamed to see
Can be developed even more,
So you can find the hidden doors
To places no one’s been before.
I let myself sink into the moment and fully and wholeheartedly experience the role of mental patient. Opening to shame. Opening to fear. I gave myself to it without analysis. Just being. What would normally comprise a hell realm transformed. All the forms were the same, but the feelings were different. I found myself answering questions about my despair from a place of inexplicable inner peace.
Perhaps on the healing journey, there comes a time when our worst fears materialize so that we can discover just how impotent they are. Roles you identify heavily with, like the role of happy and strong caregiver, and things you feel you cannot survive without, like social support or the capacity to function and dictate your environment, are destroyed, and you get to see what is left. I was supposed to be losing my mind, but instead I was finding it.
A comedy routine about emergency rooms came to my mind. Brian Regan pokes fun at the silly questions of doctors and nurses. When a nurse asks him to rate his pain, he says, “Four stars. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.” Instructed to use a scale from one to ten, he balks at the idea of saying a low number. “Just give me a baby aspirin,” he says sarcastically. “You can cut it in half.” He avoids the highest numbers too, reserving them for women in labor. Finally, he says, “Eight,” and receives morphine. Soon, he is waltzing through the waiting room yelling, “Say eight! Say eight! Happy eight day!”
After three hours, I left the emergency room with a prescription that kept me awake all night twitching and nauseated. The doctor selected this chemical wild card in less than ten minutes. I tried to lie on my trembling hands, but my whole body was effervescent, as though worms were wriggling under my skin. My mind exploded with vivid hypnogigic imagery. I would have fared better on a stale double espresso with a shot of psilocybin. Happy crazy eight day!
I wish they had given me a placebo instead. What little we know about healing the mind! I end with a story from Chuang-tse in The Te of Piglet, which I first opened to in the thrift store:
Once when Duke Huan was passing by a marsh, a goblin appeared in the road before him. The duke turned to Kuan Chung, who was driving the carriage. “Do you see anything in the road ahead of us?” he asked. “I see nothing,” Kuan Chung replied.
By the time the duke returned home, he was speaking incoherently, and had become ill. For several days, he remained in his bed.
An officer named Huang Kao-ao called on the duke. “How could a goblin harm you?” he asked. “You are injuring yourself. If your vital energy is weakened by fears and anxieties, you will become seriously ill.”
“But do goblins exist?” asked the duke.
“Yes, they do. By small mountain lakes, you will find the Li; around fires, the Ch’ieh; in the dust, the Lei-t’ing. In low-lying areas of the northeast are the Pei-a and the Wa-lung. In the northwestern lowlands can be found the I-Yang. The Wang-hsiang live near rivers, and Hsin in the hills, the K’uei in the mountains, and the Fang-huang in wild places. Around marshes [emergency rooms] can be found the Wei-t’o.”
“Describe the Wei-t’o,” said the duke.
“A Wei-t’o is as big around as the hub or a carriage wheel, and as tall as the length of an axle. It wears a purple robe and a red cap. It hates the sound of passing vehicles, and when it hears one, it claps its hands over its ears. Whoever sees a Wei-t’o is destined to become a great ruler.”
“That is what I saw!” exclaimed the duke. He sat up and straightened his clothes. He began to laugh. By the end of the day, his illness had vanished.
A captivating lullabye, the song Fragile, by Sting:
