Atypically Recovering

Photo- online general search.

When I was shipped off to the nut house at 18, my mom was horrified. She thought for sure they’d turn me into some kind of cult member. I’m glad I was able to see the value in therapy when I left home- and had NO ‘judgey’ stuff yammered at me about needing help. They told nobody in the family except for one uncle who was sent on a recon mission to see if they had me chained to the wall in the dungeon. He brought my flute and a package of Oreos (he did not get the memo that I was there for anorexia and depression from malnutrition)… my folks were BANNED from contacting me or seeing me for over a month.

Growing up, the idea of therapy had come up a couple of times. The first was when I was in Junior High school (grades 7 and 8) after I’d asked our pastor if people who committed suicide got into Heaven. He responsibly told my parents, who were livid. THEIR kid wasn’t going to be talking to people about things like that, and in no uncertain terms was their kid going to a therapist. I had my direct orders. I was miserable and later, as an adult, I realized that the emotional toll was related to a lot of trauma that went untreated for decades.

In high school, I was on a ‘fast track’ to graduate a year early. I was already at least 6-12 months younger than my classmates because of my birthday being late in the year. In my junior year, I had 8 classes and no lunch period for the time it took to get through drivers’ education. That meant, after no breakfast, I had no fuel to function for 8 hours at school, and it didn’t take long before the fatigue and hunger were taking a toll. One of the teachers who monitored the hall I walked down daily noticed I wasn’t doing well. She asked me to answer some questions one day in what I now know was the Beck Depression Inventory, and I did not score well. She went to my guidance counselor (longtime family friend), who went to my dad (school principal) about having me cut out one class so I had a break during the day. That night, dad was fuming. He loved me, but didn’t understand why people can’t just buck up and move along. He reamed me for telling that teacher that I wasn’t doing well. Keep in mind that I spent most of my time after my folks got home in my room, so they had no clue how I was doing. I was told, verbatim, “If anyone asks you how you are, I don’t care if your arm is hanging on by a thread. You are FINE.” Then I got the “You don’t need therapy, do you?” in the same tone someone would ask if someone had herpes. Nope. Not me. I’m FINE. (later, as a detox RN, FINE meant ‘f-ed up, insecure, neurotic, and emotionally unwell, which was more accurate). About 9 1/2 years ago, I tracked down that teacher, and called to thank her for trying to get me help- and I was allowed to drop a class, so she did help, even if there was no therapy involved.

Then, off to college a year later after graduating a semester early. I left high school on Friday, and the following Tuesday, I was in community college classes (two- just to keep me busy between work hours at a gift shop). I got through those classes (history- hated it, and philosophy, which was so boring), and then off to summer camp to work for the summer. That’s when the hardcore anorexia started, after years of moderate restriction- whether by my mom, or my own hopes of getting her approval by dieting on my own. I didn’t want to be huge for the University of Illinois. I wasn’t really huge- but I wasn’t what the weight charts of the times said I should weigh. By the time I got to the university, I was a mess. I was ‘caught’ going to get some water from the hall water fountain, and had on my stadium coat and six pairs of socks because I was so cold. They could feel the cold through the socks. This was in late August in central Illinois where the humidity all but causes a greenhouse effect on a good day. My dorm mates got the resident advisor, who got the resident director of that dorm, and they called an ambulance to haul me off to the university health center. I had to stay overnight and talk to a psychiatrist in the morning before I could go back to the dorm.

It took the psychiatrist about 10 minutes to diagnose me with anorexia nervosa based on the criteria at the time (Feighner criteria). I’d lost %25 of my body weight, and was still heavily restricting. I was at a normal weight, and wanted to lose another 40-50 pounds, which would have been severely underweight by any criteria. In order to stay at the university, I had to start therapy at the counseling center. I wasn’t opposed, but I had no way to express what was going on, and I’m not sure the therapist/she ever heard me say anything but “I don’t know” during that entire semester. But I showed up so I could stay in school, and not have to face the music of being some mental defect back home. The next semester, shortly after returning from the winter break of about a month, she finally heard something different… “I don’t want to wake up anymore.” And I had a very lethal plan set up that would have been easy to do in a room with no roommate. She called the university fire department to take me to the student health center where I was kept until family friends could pick me up and take me to a psych hospital near Chicago. I couldn’t face my parents because of the shame I was bringing to the family, and mostly their fear of how church friends would react, so they told no one. There was a blizzard that weekend in February, so I was in limbo until the roads were passable, which took about 3 days.

I hadn’t planned on my folks being at the hospital to sign me in since I was on dad’s insurance. I was horrified. Fortunately, I was moved quickly to the locked adult unit (only adult unit aside from the substance abuse floor), and my folks were told they could have no contact with me for a month. No phone. No visits. My assigned psychiatrist knew something was wonky if I had been too afraid to have my folks pick me up at school. I felt so defective for being there, but also discovered that psych facilities are probably the most honest places on the planet. There are no useful defense mechanisms- they’d seen/heard them all. It was all about unloading the secrets and shame, and healing. Granted, back in the early 80s, things were still pretty basic, but cognitive therapy was being introduced via the new book (back then) “Feeling Good”, which simplified it for non-professionals. And if someone was acting up, where were they going to be sent? They were already in the funny farm.

During that first admission (3 months), I wasn’t a model patient when it came to food and supplements. I was also a dissociative mess, and that part of my therapy wouldn’t be truly addressed for years, until I was no longer living with my folks in my hometown. I ended up in restraints in the “Quiet Room” (terrible name for that room depending on who was in there- I was quiet, and that was part of the problem). I wasn’t batshit nuts, but restraints were thought to be a way to keep people safe. They hadn’t planned on me being able to sort of fold my thumb in enough to get out of the wrist restraints, so when they looked in the little window in the door, it looked like I’d disappeared. I’d turn around with my legs crossed at the other end of the bed, and lean against the wall, arms free.
They’d adjust the straps if I was still deemed unstable, or let out if I would commit not to do anything that made them feel I was still too goofy to be let loose in my room again.

I got out after 3 months, and planned to work at the summer camp again for 1/2 of the summer once my boss from the nature center came to visit me in the nuthouse, and found that I wasn’t any different than my usual self, and I think he probably was glad I’d gotten help, after the camp was very concerned the previous summer when I dumped 40 pounds in 5 weeks. It was a good 1/2 summer season, though I was a cabin counselor, so had a much more hectic schedule. Then the plan was to go back to the university once my psychiatrist signed off, which he did without hesitation, making sure I had my prescription antidepressants and sleeping pills.

I had to be dropped off at the dorm about 2 weeks early because my mom was undergoing radiation for post-mastectomy breast cancer. It was weird being in the dorm before everyone else got there (12 story building) with only a couple of people on each floor that usually held at least 100 girls. I made acquaintances with the bars on campus, even though I was under age by more than 2 years. I was getting drunk nearly every night. I know now that the pressure to “look normal” after being sent away the previous semester was too much. I was on a different floor, so not a lot of people knew about the psych hospital. Eventually, I broke.

The other students were there, and classes had started. On September 2nd, I had been to the bar, but wasn’t sloshed because I had homework. I remember taking the 10 sleeping pills one at a time, like a robot. I wasn’t thinking about dying, I just wanted to sleep (escape) from what was going on in my head. At some point, I also took 50 imipramine 50mg tablets, and went to sleep. I wrote to ask my roommate what had happened that next morning, because I didn’t remember anything until someone was going towards my crotch with a syringe to remove the catheter I didn’t know was there. She said that she tried to wake me up that morning, but I mumbled something about needing sleep. When she got back from classes later that afternoon, I was still in the same position, and she got help. Again with the ambulance, but this time I was transferred to the trauma center where my stomach was pumped and I was sent to ICU. My Glasgow Coma Scale score was 3. Next step down is dead. I didn’t wake up fully for 3 days. I have a couple of memory flashes of someone asking me if I overdosed while pulling the oxygen mask away from my face. I said ‘no’, which did nothing for my credibility. But I honestly never remembered wanting to die. I wanted to be at university- it wasn’t home, so that made it a better place to be with how messed up my head was.

SO, back to the hospital near Chicago, which I was informed of when my parents SHOWED UP that Saturday. I was so angry. My therapist was called to the hospital to explain that I wasn’t safe enough for the university to want to be responsible for me. There wasn’t another chance. I went back to the psych hospital for another 4 months, with another 2 weeks in medical facilities altogether for 1982. My folks were still not OK with psychiatry, but also knew that I wasn’t OK to be at home at that point, especially with mom still doing radiation, so they took me straight back to the hospital with me seated between them in the front seat. They’d already packed up my dorm room before getting to the hospital.

I was given every tricyclic antidepressant but one and one MAOI, along with anxiety meds, but they didn’t do much. I’ve never been ‘diagnosably’ depressed unless I was heavily restricting food. Meds weren’t going to help. I needed to eat. I was doing better, but still not well by a long shot. I left with supplements since lab work showed poor protein intake, which has been an ongoing battle, unless I allowed myself to get BBQ when I lived in Texas.

After being discharged in early January 1983, I was still going to downtown Chicago for twice weekly appointments with my psychiatrist for a couple of months, then down to weekly. Eventually, he had a second office in a closer suburb (that avoided all Chicago traffic). He didn’t want me to go home at all, but to a halfway house in Chicago in a sketchy area of town, and I refused. He figured out parts of an ongoing puzzle that wasn’t made clear for another 7 years, but he got me through nursing school, which was stressful. I’m not proud of having been in a psych hospital, but those admissions did keep me alive, and removed me from my home, which allowed me to speak for the first time in my life. I didn’t have to pretend I was OK- being a patient already cleared up that I wasn’t OK. They were good to me there, even when I was a jerk with the food situation. I was the youngest on the adult floor the entire time I was there. That facility has since been shut down, but while I was there, I was treated fairly, and became fond of several of the staff members.

There’s no shame in getting help… just in not trying. And for those who also deal with any kind of religious bias against therapy, it’s not a boogie man situation. There are all kinds of therapists and levels of care. Your faith can’t be taken from you- only relinquished. If you need help, I think God would rather have any of us do that than show up to His place early.
❤