Soul's Code

BY PAUL KAIHLA — I grew up with a mental illness — my mother’s.

That’s not a very funny thing to say, but it is a really codependent thing to say.

My mother developed schizophrenia when I was a young boy (in the image at left, with parents). The lone psychiatrist in the small, remote factory town we lived in may have been as disconnected as my mother was at times: he prescribed her amphetamines. The standard treatment for schizophrenia is to administer drugs that tamp down the patient’s dopamine receptors — and an over-active mind that crosses a line into delusional thinking and auditory hallucinations. Amphetamines would have the opposite effect.

What followed were years of suicide attempts, hospitalizations and acts of arson on our own property — family photos, articles that had the misfortune of being the color red, and on a couple of occasions, even buildings.

Early on, I realized that my mother was tragically not well in her mind. In fact, I internalized an awareness that she was a danger to me. As soon as you say something like that to yourself — this person is too messed up to be a parent — you’ve emotionally orphaned yourself. It’s kind of a reverse-abandonment: You’ve psychologically disowned your parent.

But instead of cutting my parents off and disowning them in reality — a common response among those with a similar background — I tried to help my mother as I grew older and more resourceful. If I ‘fixed’ her, my internal logic went, I could once again have a mother.

My mother’s well-being became almost a parallel career that absorbed vast swaths of time, energy, travel, vacation weeks and so on. A crisis became a highly effective way for her to get my attention, a kind of unconscious blackmail. Her words and actions would sometimes trigger anxieties like . . .

What if she stops taking her pills? What if she doesn’t make friends in the new building I put her in? What if the RN quits?

Those weren’t even really my fears; if I experienced fear it was more like I was afraid of having to feel her pain, to turn an old phrase.

What I ultimately realized was that the concept of ‘enough’ didn’t exist in this picture. In other words, if my goal was to make my mother better, to make her okay, I could never reach that goal — no matter how many words, people, time or money I threw at the situation. More important, I un-plugged from that equation I framed in my psyche as a young boy: if I can make her okay, I’ll be okay. I let go of the need to ‘fix.’

The process involved learning to see my mother for herself rather than what I needed her to be. And learning to be myself rather than playing out the role of a person who placates or pleases to get what they need. This is the story of a personality, and therefore, falls into the basket called psychology.

The spiritual journey here, I believe but cannot prove, lies in the realm of what the author Caroline Myss calls a sacred contract.

That path points to this sharing, and hopefully helping others who feel trapped by family obligations or demands. It's not about fixing the world but connecting with others as we mutually discover its mysteries, and our own true natures. But that's another story :)

Feel free to share a ‘confession’ of your own in the Comment form below . . .

NEXT: Psychology's Solution to CODEPENDENCY