PATHOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTS

In the past few months at my job, I've watched the behavior of my boss degenerate. I suspected some kind of mental issues beforehand, but of a kind of benign nature. However, with the added stress of a percieved threat, her mild bipolarism of before has lapsed into some kind of paranoid desperateness. I would say it is odd to watch this happen before me, but some of you who read this recognize that situation as a kind of dejavu. Oh, I really don't think this time it will go as far as the last situation did - my boss doesn't own this company, so if she freaks out, she is not going to run it into the ground - but worst case scenario is it could cost someone their job and professional reputation. My goal is to stay out of the crossfire, but I find myself caught sometimes in the middle, sometimes simply due to the nature of my position and sometimes out of a desire to protect the innocent party.
Meanwhile, I continue my work, which is to look for pathological behavior in my patients. Every day, I am observing, identifying abnormal behaviors, trying to ascertain the stimulus, determine the stressor, so I can remove it and hopefully cause the patient to revert to a normal behavior pattern. I put my "behaviorist" hat on and watch carefully with a tuned mind, clipboard in hand, while my patients merge around me, and make notes. This is normal, this one is not normal, what is going on here, what's wrong here, making observations, thinking about plausible connections.

Sometimes I forget to take off my "hat" and I see things around me in a different way. Sometimes I see my boss as a person in charge, and sometimes I see her as a victim of her own pathology.

Like most of us, I am beginning to suspect. I remember one time a friend asked me if I have ever wondered why I seem to always end up with insane bosses. I am not convinced it is something about me that draws me to these people, although my own pathology could lead me to stay in situations other people might not put up with.

My own pathology is also abnormal, and sometimes I see that as a direct result of my upbringing. There is probably some genetic interplay in there as well. Both of my grandmothers had some kind of mental pathology as well, maybe an undiagnosed anxiety or depression problem. My father and sister have both been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, and maybe that is a part of my abnormality as well, but my psychiatrists never get past the bipolar or anxiety/depression labels with me.

I am not convinced I have a true problem, because I function fine without medications. Sure, there's been the occasional panic attack or overwhelming sadness, but it has always happened when I have been emotionally worked up about something, and I still think it all ties into to my mother, who constantly rejects me.

This is part of her pathology, and like I said, plays a large role in mine. I brought my friend over to her house the other day, and I finally had a witness to it. My mother will get this look on her face, and I know it is coming; then she lays it down, some kind of heavy-handed criticism. Constant rejection, constant doubt of my ability to do anything. The past years, it has been mostly related to my parenting skills. This is the latest thing for her, but this kind of behavior has been going on with her for years. She gathers my sisters around her like allies and encourages them to gang up on me. She finds something in me to knock around every time I see her.

I no longer believe the things my mother says about me. It only took me about thirty years and a lot of therapy to get her negative feedback loop to stop playing in my mind. I decided at some point that even if my mother didn't believe in my worthiness, I did, and that is all that matters. Lately, I put on my hat and look for the triggers. I gaze at it with observer-neutral eyes.The trigger for her lately seems to be protection of my children, which I see as unjustified. I take care of these children just fine.

However, her pathology does affect me in this area. My biggest fear is that I will end up with a child who feels about me the way I feel about my mother. I want my children to feel loved. However, there are times when showing that love is difficult for me. Sometimes I am angry with the children, or tense, or short on patience, particularly in the morning, and particularly with my oldest son. His (currently unmedicated) ADD issues make it really taxing when we have to get out the door by six thirty, and the toddler is frequently cranky. My youngest son is a lot of work at this age. He wakes up crying sometimes and the only way he stops is if I hold him. This goes on sometimes in the afternoon as well, so I end up holding him a lot, or having to watch him attentively as he wobbles along in the house, trying to stick everything in his mouth or a socket. Meanwhile, my older son flits around and only sometimes and painfully follows directions. Everything is a struggle, and sometimes I am not the nice mommy, but the freakout mommy. I feel angry.

My worry is that this struggle I describe will someday become part of my older son's pathology. Will I be judged, as he enters manhood, for the good I did as a mother, or my failures? Will he suffer self esteem issues as a result of pushing and prodding, the frustration when he can't sit down to finish his homework assignment, the irritation when instead of following directions, he gets distracted in his bedroom looking for a toy to sneak into school?

I worry about the pathological footprints I am leaving on his psyche. My mother passed the baton, and every day I make conscious decisions to not be the kind of parent she was. Every night my children are hugged, kissed, and told they are loved. I try to make sure I tell my son what I love about him, what the good is in him. Sometimes it is hard, though, sometimes it takes searching, and I loathe that about this part of life.

The other day, there was an odd situation with my dog Scout. The youngest and most exuberant of the dogs, he had gotten excited with I was playing and laughing with the toddler. Scout was running around throwing a mitten up in the air and attacking it as it came back down, but sometimes when he runs around like that, he doesn't pay attention to the baby and knocks him down. I commanded him to calm down, and he quit running, but he came up to us and began barking. I asked him to lay down, and he backed off a few feet, but then he began barking a series of sharp barks - woof! woof! woof! I gave him the command to quiet, and when he continued to bark I tried to get his attention and realized I could not reach him. His eyes were glassed over and his body was quivering, and his woof was a steady even stattaco.

I stepped out of my role as his owner-mistress and put my behavior hat on. This was aberrant behavior, and something about his body position struck me as symptomatic of "rage syndrome", usually seen only in Springer Spaniels. I actually became concerned that in this state he was in, he might behave aggressively. I was concerned about the potential impact that his pathology held, and considered the consequences. I understood the trigger for the incident, which was a frustrated play drive, but the way he handled it was abnormal. It could be something that gets worse, or continues, a symptom of something darker, some untapped aggression, only time will tell. I will have to wait and see if this manifests into a true pathological condition, as opposed to an incident. Wait and see.

Likewise,with my boss, with my patients, with my son. Sometimes it is not clear what the ramifications are until what is becomes what has past. It seems unfair sometimes that it is so easy with the patients. I can rearrange their situation to decrease the stress, the pathological behavior. It is like a puzzle I can fit together different ways. With my mother, with my son, with my boss, I don't have that luxury. I can't simply rearange their environment and increase positive interactions. There are no easy solutions, although from the outside, it might appear so. Or maybe solutions never came easy for me.

It makes me think of the Serenity prayer, which I remember seeing stitched in a framed piece of cloth at my grandmother's house during my childhood.

God,
Grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.