[skyblue22]

Hi Benjamin,
I really like your work, hope you can give me some helpful advice sorry if this is a bit long and disjointed:

I`m really struggling with my life at the moment. I had a kind of breakdown about 18 months ago and have felt extremely unwell since. I`ve had horrible symptoms of anxiety , exhaustion and depression, feeling suicidal, anxiety attacks which have been very frightening and unpleasant:.
I think it started a few years ago when I caused a fire in the shared house I was living in at the time, (by leaving loads of clothes drying in front of the gas fire overnight) All my clothes were burnt up, the living room was up in flames, sofas and carpets burnt to a crisp etc it was really frightening, and a few months later I started getting sudden anxiety attacks when I was away from home, worrying about whether I had left something on the stove, or a candle or josstick burning and would have to rush to the phone in a panic to get my flatmates to check everything was ok. I was doing a teacher-training course at that time, commuting 3 hours a day to get to my course, my boyfriend had just dumped me and I was very distressed, but really preoccupied with my full-time course.
At that time my gp said I was depressed and prescribed anti-depressants, but after a month I had a low blood count and stopped taking them. Then I had 6 months of psychodynamic therapy which I don`t think helped me, and the therapist apparently didn`t see that I might have the breakdown which came 18 months ago .
This is how the breakdown started: I got a call from my elderly mother`s neighbour to say that my mother had wandered out of her house that night in the cold and dark, and had got lost and turned up very confused at the neighbour`s house. My reaction to this phone call was very extreme, I was with my boyfriend, and over the course of that evening I became more and more distressed, crying and shouting, feeling a huge panicky anxiety rising inside me. I began to remember lots of things about my mother from my childhood, she did so many lovely things for my brother and I, played with us, took us on outings, holidays etc and I felt so distressed that my lovely mum, who used to be so bright and energetic has now gradually become a frail old lady (she`s 88 I`m 43).
My boyfriend had been so upset by my outburst that he made me go to the emergency doctor, but the doctor didn`t seem to think there was anything wrong with me, he thought it might be hormones and gave me some vitamin B6.

Since then I`ve had a very bad depression, for which I took anti-depressants, which certainly stopped me feeling suicidal, but haven`t helped the depression and anxiety which I`m still feeling. I have a constant uneasy feeling of anxiety, not about anything in particular, or rather, just about anything my mind finds as a focus for that anxiety.
I`m very distressed about my mother`s frailty, not only because she has been a very good friend and mother, and I dread her death and not being able to see her or phone her and talk to her, but also because I feel that I am gradually losing her anyway to old age and advancing memory loss/dementia. I`m caring for her 5 days a week and have arranged care for the 2 days I`m not there. It`s not ideal, but I don`t like the idea of putting her into a home which her doctor suggested.

I haven`t worked for 18 months, due to being ill, haven`t found the doctors helpful; there is a one-year wait for CBT if I`m accepted, and don`t know how else to help myself get better. I stopped taking the anti-depressants after 6 months, at the beginning of this year, because I got pregnant. I was really happy, as it seemed like something positive could come out of all my negative feelings, but I had what they call a "missed miscarriage" which is when the baby dies inside and I had an operation to remove it. They said it would have been badly handicapped and would not have lived for many years.

I`m living on benefits which is demoralising in the long term, and I have to rely on my mother for any major expenses as I just don`t have it. I`m worried that I have gone in 18 months from being highly employable as a newly qualified teacher to being a member of the long term mentally ill!

Also, although I only trained as a teacher 5 years ago, and held a full-time job for 2 years and did supply teaching , by the time I stopped work, I really hated the job , and dreaded going into school. I had some lovely colleagues and I liked most of the children, but the job just ground me down and I felt exhausted. Now I wonder whether those feelings weren`t a symptom of my "illness"? And if I ever should be well enough to go back to work, what job am I going to do?
I started feeling TIRED during my training year, but after 18 months out of the classroom, I still feel exhausted and can`t really see any light at the end of the tunnel. I`m aware that I`ve become very isolated, my friends have all either, moved away, lost touch, fallen out, or just aren`t around, and anyway I don`t seek them out because I don`t feel I`m good company. My mainstays are my boyfriend who has been fantastically supportive, and my mum, who is probably not the best person for me to rely on...

I hope I haven`t gone on too much, and thanks for any insights you can offer.

[Benjamin Fry]

There are layers within layers at work here. It is the same for all of us. One of the great difficulty of starting to understand ourselves is just how complex the whole emotional puzzle has become. One of my therapists said that when someone comes to her for the first time it is like looking at a big tangled ball of string. The only way to start is to begin to gently pull at it one strand at a time.

I try to find a string to pull by taking a distant view of what is actually happening and seeing what that might be unconsciously useful for. Iím of the general opinion that we get what we need in life and that we are mostly responsible for arranging it (unconsciously). You are spending five days a week caring for your mum. You are overwhelmed by your emotions and as a result are repressing them. It is hard work repressing emotions and you can not be selective about it; this results in exhaustion and depression since the good goes out with the bad.

The question is what are the feelings that you are resisting and why would caring for your mum be a way to get them to break through? There seems to be a lot of fear in there somewhere. Certainly the fire incident sounds traumatic and there may be some post traumatic stress disorder there (PTSD). However these things do happen and not everyone goes into a meltdown so it is likely that the strong emotions elicited by the fire find and echo in your earlier life. After all, remember that you caused the fire. Unconsciously it was something that you knew would be useful to you emotionally.

It seems like the breakdown following the confirmation of your motherís worsening dementia is related to these fears. You can look at this incident as a break through. You perhaps finally started to contact the emotions that you have struggled to repress all your life. Iíd encourage you to try to think back to exactly how you were feeling that evening. I think it holds the key to finding your way out of this emotional prison. Those feelings there were very authentic. You probably need to get back in touch with them in a more safe way to move on from here.

Buddhists teach that the fear of death is at the core of all of our behaviour. You certainly seem to associate a lot of fear with your motherís death. Perhaps the breakdown was because you finally could no longer deny to yourself that her death is inevitable. I think you touched a long forgotten part of your psyche that has always been absolutely terrified of being left alone by your mother. The question is why?

These kind of emotional eruptions have a straightforward cause. They are your mind-bodyís attempt to cleanse yourself of trauma that was stored up earlier in your life. Often this is from childhood. The earlier it was, the stronger the trauma and the harder it is to recall. Thatís when the feelings can get very overwhelming and unfortunately also very hard to understand. Only you can speculate where this all started. Did someone die when you were very young? Did you perhaps think it was your fault? (all young children think everything is their fault) Where is your dad in this picture?

Iím very sorry to hear of your miscarriage. Again it raises the theme of life and death. If this was an unconscious act of your own mind and body, then it would suggest that you are being encouraged to experience your emotions in relation to the issues of life and death. It seems that perhaps this is too hard for you to do. All of the medication may have further clouded your ability to get in touch with these urgent but lost feelings. You may really need some help with these emotional issues. This could explain why you became resentful about being a teacher; perhaps you really wish that someone could just look after you for a change.

I want you to download the first chapter of my book which you can get from my website. At the end of it is an exercise which you should do. It will help you to take an inventory of things in your life that you may have experienced as overwhelmingly threatening. Certainly your fire will be on the list. Iíd like to know about what came much earlier in your life than that.

Once you start to be honest in identifying the original causes of these feelings which you now repress (something that you will initially resist) then you can put into practice measures to help yourself experience these feelings safely. Writing about them is a great start. Feel free to do so here.

[skyblue22]

Dear Benjamin,
Thanks so much for your reply, you have very good insights.

I think you are right that my breakdown was triggered by the realisation that my mother's death is not only inevitable (as is mine and yours) but must be imminent given her frail condition and great age. I find the prospect of her death almost unbearable, at the same time, I'm glad that she is still here and able to enjoy life, if to a lesser extent than previously.

You are also right that I have a deep fear of separation from my mother, though I can't bring to mind any experiences that would have triggered a breakdown:

I can remember losing her briefly in a department store when I was about 5, the panic of losing her, and the relief of finding her again. I don`t think she even realised - I`d only been gone a few minutes.

I can remember not wanting to go to school when I was little, and the shock of realising that my mother had gone away and left me there, but again I wouldn't say it caused a lasting trauma.

When I was about 11 my maternal grandmother came to live with us when she became too old, frail and senile to live alone, and it fell to me to look after her for several hours a day, as my parents were both at work, and I felt resentful of this, and frightened of her senility which I didn`t understand. I know that there are echoes of these feelings in my caring for my mother, though I don`t feel resentful towards her, only angry with life (and my brother).

When I was 12 I went to weekly boarding school, and I could say that because of that I have some problems about rejection, but again I wouldn't say it had a traumatic effect, though I wish I hadn't gone, and think my life would have been better if I hadn't.

My father died when I was 17 which was a real shock, very unexpected. I was very immature, having been brought up in a small country village, and it was my first encounter with death. I was away on a cycling holiday when it happened, and I know that I have had separation issues with my mother since then - the feeling that something bad will happen while I'm away.

I had an abortion when I was 19, which I don't doubt did some lasting damage to my feelings about sex, relationships and babies, and of course came into my mind this year when I had the operation.

I like your phrase "you are being encouraged to experience your emotions in relation to the issues of life and death", though I don't really understand what it would mean in practical terms.

Anyway thankyou again for reading this, it really helps. All;the best.

PS Is your book available in bookshops? Or from Amazon? And have you tried to get any media exposure? eg Richard and Judy, or a feature in The Times?

[Benjamin Fry]

From the incidents that you describe there is definitely a theme of life and death; getting lost when young, nursing your aged grandmother, being away from home, your fatherís death, an abortion (nothing ties life and death so closely).

From the way that you have described your reaction to these incidents and your general mental state, I would speculate that you experienced some real trauma in the very early years of your life. This may have been very benign, such as simply being left alone to cry yourself to sleep a lot. However it would have been the quality of the experience for you that is important. It sounds like you had a lot of very serious fear stored up in your system, and this is likely to be the sort of fear of not surviving that you might experience in the first year or two of life. Whatever it was, you have experienced it when you had your breakdown ñ that ìhuge panicky anxietyî. I also suspect that there is a quality of responsibility for whatever happened. This is very normal in young babies who see the whole world as being derivative of themselves. So for example if you mother suffered post-natal depression, you would have felt responsible even though you were too young to even understand the word or conceptî

Since then layer upon layer has heaped itself on this fault line in your emotional structure. Every time you would have experienced something with similar emotional qualities it may have been too much for you to cope with. I suspect that your fatherís death was an even bigger blow than it might normally have been. Your absence at the time probably contributed to an unconscious sense of responsibility and guilt.

These are all normal, logical things. Stuff happened and you naturally had feelings about it. Not all of those feelings were expressed at the time because it was overwhelming. Now these feelings want to come out, because you unconsciously know that it is very unhealthy for you (physically and emotionally) to hang on to them for ever. It is the letting go that is difficult. You need to help yourself by doing whatever you can to stimulate and get in touch with your emotions. Then you will find some relief from your symptoms. Writing in this forum was one way that you have been able to do this for yourself. Since it seemed to have worked for you then maybe you should start to write a journal of your emotional life, and perhaps also a history of what you can remember and how it affected you. If you can find some help from a counsellor to assist you in talking these issues through then so much the better.

The phrase you refer to is my way of suggesting that your own unconscious mind is helping you to encounter the themes that you need in order to trigger off your frozen feelings. Basically if you follow your nose, donít judge your circumstances and allow your emotions to happen, all will be well in the end.

My book is being printed in hardback in August and will be available on Amazon 4-8 weeks later. Sometime later (probably in the New Year) there will be a paperback with a media and publicity campaign. Meanwhile you can order a copy from my website, or just download the first chapter. Iíd appreciate your feedback on either.