I had always felt that there was something wrong with me. I’d wander through prep school alone at night, anxious. I became brilliant at faking the kind of extraordinary confidence that people like me, equipped with a world-class education, are supposed to have – I even did a stint at modelling. Inside, however, I knew I had zero emotional skills. In my twenties, I suffered panic attacks and needed therapy, which was only partially helpful.
I didn’t feel as though I could complain – I had drawn lucky in life, so what had I to moan about? People like me don’t cry: we cover our emotions and carry on.
On the surface things looked fine, but I was ignoring a rising panic within. With a fifth child on the way and the work I loved not paying enough, I began to behave more and more recklessly to try to keep my golden life intact. I invested in the emerging Greek property bubble.
When I lost everything in the crash of 2008, I gradually spiralled into a total collapse and became suicidal. I tried every clinic there was, but nothing helped. In the end, months after I had ignored a recommendation from a therapist friend, I gave in and found myself on a plane to Mellody House, in Arizona.
There, where a new generation of psychological therapies were being pioneered, I finally had my breakthrough. I learnt that conditions we have traditionally called “mental health” problems, such as anxiety and depression, are now beginning to be understood differently.
Increasingly, they are seen as being rooted in the neurobiology of our nervous systems, and in this respect all mammals are almost identical. When faced with stress, the body does what it needs to respond and ensure survival. However, when there is no chance to allow stressful experiences to resolve themselves naturally, many of us are unable to turn off our “neuroception” of threat long after the threat itself has been survived. This means we get stuck in a frozen state that our system struggles to resolve, resulting in a biological meltdown (aka “trauma”).
Outwardly, this can manifest itself as many symptoms including anxiety (when the system overreacts to perceived threat); depression (when it underreacts); OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder); ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder); and “medically unexplained symptoms”. These almost always arise from a failure of the nervous system to regulate itself.
Many people unknowingly make things worse by medicating the symptoms with drugs and alcohol as they try to bring themselves back to a balanced “normal”.
As I began to understand this, I realised I could apply it to my own childhood. My mother’s death was a major stress factor that I hadn’t resolved. On top of that – part of the double bind of being privileged – I was pushed to be independent from a very young age at boarding school, another stress. I formed weak, anxious attachments because my parents had, in their turn, done the same as children – they were the product of an even more difficult generation above. There’s no blame in this, I realised, just biology and causation. Mammals that are well attached in early childhood metabolise threat and stress well; those who are not do not.
I realised that in 32 years from starting boarding school to being admitted to hospital, I had been hiding. At Eton I was desperate for friendship, and pretended I was fine. At university I didn’t offer friendship, but instead used it. I started a lifelong habit of neglecting friends once I found a woman to comfort me. I had to continue the façade, living like posh people live, succeeding like posh people succeed; crying was not an option, so in the end no one even knew who I was. And I don’t doubt that I used and abused my family’s help: I just took from them and then withdrew again. Ours was a typically high-achieving, stiff upper lip household, and they didn’t know what to make of my gradual, messy falling apart.
Once I’d come to terms with this, the Arizona centre treated me by working with the body from the “bottom up” (upwards through the brainstem) rather than from the “mind down”, and my so‑called mental health problems were restored by a new generation of therapies, such as sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing and EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing).
The difference between these and other therapies is that the therapist tries to engage with the mammal part of the brain and biology, not the human thinking or “mind”. The instruction to patients is often to engage with “sensation” rather than “thought” and in doing so the therapists are helping us to resolve problems in our mammalian brain rather than in the human neocortex. This is radically new because it puts the primal, animal instinct before the brilliant, overdeveloped human in the chain of solving this particular problem. And it works.
Months later, recovered and back in England, the entrepreneur in me slowly fluttered to life again. My illness had taught me a lot, not least about how difficult it is to find the right kind of help, so I founded a non-profit organisation and lobbied government for better access to more effective treatment for all. Passionate about the groundbreaking therapy that had helped me, but which was only available in America, I also established a residential clinic, Khiron House, in Oxford, and an outpatient practice in Harley Street.
People began to come in their droves, from every conceivable walk of life. I couldn’t help but observe, however, that those who had grown up with the same advantages as myself, although they had the money for treatment, somehow found it even harder to accept help.
Their lives “should have been” wonderful. They were ashamed of not being happy, let alone well, and the isolation this caused was almost worse than their illness.
Anxiety; depression; bipolar: in my clinic we no longer think solely in terms of these recognised conditions. We think of “incomplete stress cycles”. Our patients are overwhelmed, responding to life as if it is a constant threat, and they cannot cope.
The first step to recovery is helping patients understand this. In my case, I also had to come to terms with why I was alone in that Arizona hospital. And it was because I deserved to be. I had treated people badly.
The damage still runs deep. Much of my family still don’t speak to me and I’m getting divorced, but at least now I understand why. I accept my own adult responsibility for the consequences of my behaviour and have gone a long way towards fixing that permanently – and now can help others to do so too. I was lucky.
*How I F—– Up My Life and Made It Mean Something by Benjamin Fry is published this month. See khironhouse.com; getstable.org for more information
Mental wellness: men and women like me don"t cry we just carry on
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder