#psyd

Ty in advance if you decide to do it <3

YES!!! i did have the opportunity to watch The Boys Next Door! overall, I was impressed with the film, especially since it was from 1996.

personally, my clinical and research focus area is trauma rather than severe mental illness like schizophrenia, but i have had many clients present with psychosis and actually just started working with someone with newly developed and early management schizophrenia.

so — when I watch TBND, I really thought of Barry through a trauma lens.

not only is he reported presenting with symptoms of schizophrenia (delusions, disorganized speech at times, eventually catatonia and flat affect - no hallucinations that I remember), but he has a SIGNIFICANT history of complex trauma which we pick up on when his dad comes to visit. i definitely think Barry would meet criteria for some kind of trauma related disorder as well, likely PTSD with dissociative symptoms. when we hear him learn that his father will be coming, his symptoms worsen (on top of not taking his meds). we see him sit in the bathroom, curled up like a child. he spends more time alone and smoking. he seems anxious when his dad arrives and after the horror of that visit, he is extremely dysregulated and ends up in severe “freeze” with catatonic and dissociative symptoms, which leads to his hospitalization.

the boys and his social worker act as stable attachments for him, which is what we call a “corrective emotional experience” but when his father shows up with all his expectations and anger, it is overwhelming.

i truly believe that without Barry’s long-term relational trauma, his symptoms of schizophrenia would likely be more easily managed. his negative relationship with his father and various forms of emotional/psychological (and likely physical) abuse compound an already challenging diagnosis.

personally, i think Bobby did an excellent job demonstrating some pretty intense symptoms — especially those related to trauma. as someone with ptsd myself (in partial remission woohoo!) and has worked with people who have severe trauma related symptoms, i saw that reflected in his performance, particularly leading up to his dad’s arrival and following the golf incident when he is there.

Simology Psychology: Anaya Devi, PsyD, is a seasoned psychologist with experience working with Sims who have conditions such as ADHD and anxiety. Her creative, hands-on practices teach anxious Sims what to do when their thoughts spiral too fast. She works from her home and apologizes in advance for any ruckus caused by her husband and baby daughter.

It was worth a shot; at this point, Everett could use all of the help.

...

"Everett Dupant?"

"Hello, Everett, nice to meet you!" The psychologist shook Everett's hand. "My name is Anaya Devi- how are you doing today?"

Everett shook her hand back. She seemed nice. "I've been better." He admitted.

"Why don't we sit in my office and chat?"

"So, Everett, I've heard you've been struggling with anxious thoughts lately." Anaya sat down in her chair and began the conversation. "How has that felt like to you."

"I guess I've always felt a bit nervous." Everett looked down at his shoes. "Like this lingering feeling that never goes away. But, I had never had a panic attack until..." His voice wavered.

"Until?"

"...until I came out to my dad." Evrett sharply blinked some tears away. "I was so, so nervous, ma'am. I thought my family would shame me, would push me away."

"And did they?"

"They didn't. And now I feel like an idiot for even thinking he would in the first place."

"You're not an idiot for letting your feelings out, Everett. The men's mental health crisis is real." Anaya smiled gently. "We can get you the help that you need."

And hearing those words took a weight off of Everett's chest.

Anaya proceeded to ask Everett some questions on a questionarre:

Have you been feeling restless and/or on edge most days for the past six months? I've always been a restless person; I manage it through movement. I want to go pro.

How is your sleep? Could be better. I toss and turn and sleep-talk a lot.

Do you have trouble with concentration and your mind going blank? Occasionally, yes.

Do you often feel irritable or have anxiety about social situations? My parents say I was a fiery kid. Socially, though, I was great. I've always had lots of friends.

Have you dealt with any possibly traumatic events in your life? My parents fought a lot, especially when I was little. I'm not traumatized or anything, though, just a bit on edge when things get tense in the house.

Have you dealt with any recurring obsessions or compulsions before? Never.

Anaya observed Everett closely, taking notes and analyzing his body language and facial reactions. When the questionnaire had finished, Anaya put her pen down and looked at him once more. "Well, Everett, I'll have my full report ready for you tomorrow. But from what I've observed so far, it seems like you may be a candidate for a diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD."

Everett returned home to find his mom waiting for him. "Mom!"

"Everett!" Toni wrapped her son into a hug. "How was the appointment?"

"It went pretty well." Everett shrugged. "My psychologist is nice. I'm going to start meeting with her once every two weeks. What have you and Dad been doing today?"

"Nothing much." Toni lied.

The truth was, Toni and Lancelot had been playing at home, practicing their singing and piano again. The hopes of SMASH coming back were becoming more and more true each day.

"Everett, how did the college meeting go?" Lance asked Everett when he went inside.

"College meeting?" Everett raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about? I went to a psychologist."

"I thought you were searching for which college to attend." Lancelot frowned. "Did you choose Britchester or Foxbury? Your aunt Aurora went to Britchester and-"

"Dad..." Everett shook his head. "I don't WANT to go to college. I want to go pro in soccer. I thought I already told you."

Lancelot was appalled. "What do you MEAN you don't want college? Your mother and I didn't give our whole lives away just for you to be a failure."

"But, Dad, I'm good at soccer! My coach at school told me that I might make the big leagues if I try hard enough." He groaned. "Can't we talk about this another day? My birthday party's in a couple days and I have to plan."

Lancelot shook his head. "Things can change fast. One injury and that's that for you. You need the stability that a college degree provides, Everett."

Deep down, Everett knew his father was correct, but the thought of going to college and being surrounded by so much work and so much uncertainty...

...made him physically sick.

The following morning, Toni awoke to find Everett practicing skipping the ball around. "See this, Mom?" He showed off his moves. "I wasn't kidding when I said I'd be a good player."

"I can see that" Toni nodded. Her son truly was a pro at the sport. If only Lancelot could see that potential, too. Maybe the failure of SMASH had jaded her.

When Toni went to work that morning, the men were left alone. "So," Lancelot began. "You made a decision yet?"

""Dad, it's been a day." Everett rolled his eyes. "Dad, it's been a day." Everett rolled his eyes.

"It shouldn't be a hard decision. Just go to college, crank out a degree, and voila."

"If that's so easy for you to say, then why didn't YOU go?" Everett snapped.

"To raise YOU!" Now Lancelot was furious. He stood from his chair.

"I'm not discussing it further, Everett Duke. Either get a degree, or you're on your own." And with that, he walked away.

Study link: https://williamjames.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9KwpwqWIz9vlV5A

this is why I need my advisor to talk to me.

and she still hasn’t responded to my email, which makes me think that she’s not the best person to ask about an appropriately sized workload??

on the one hand, I want something manageable, and on another hand, I want to get as much experience right now as possible, and on (somehow) yet another hand, I know that at this point in my career, I am learning how to set the stage for my workload later in my career.

someone please teach me how to do coursework, externship, TA’ing, and research simultaneously please. 

Aug 17, 2020

Oops I forgot to post. Here are some notes from a telehealth training and an anatomy coloring page I was working on to help me stay focused lol. 

Hopefully posting more, if you like instagram I’m there too @ily_studies

Another bad day was the day the Mexico City Temple was re-opening. It was a funny experience for me because the evening before I was contacted by the Mission President and told that an elder in our district had confessed some serious sins to him and that those sins precluded him from going to the temple. The MP told me that nobody in this elder’s ward could get time off to babysit him so he was begging one of us – I didn’t want to go to the temple, it was a crappy way to spend a P-Day in my opinion, so I told the MP I’d do it. I spent the day eating popsicles and napping with an elder who, in between Bolis and naps, would shakily and tearfully confess that no fewer than half of his companions had secret phones they used to watch porn, hire prostitutes, and buy drugs. This was bewildering to me since I had been Trying So Hard my whole mission and had always felt inadequate, and these elders who were doing better than me and more respected than me were somehow out here fucking, doing drugs, and jorkin’ it.

I was actually in a “Punishment Area” at the time because in my last area one of my life-threateningly attractive companions had gone into the homes of widows to repair their electrical wirings (he was a trained electrician prior to going on a mission.) Being alone in the home of an 80-year-old widow with failing lights was “against the rules” to the extent that me mandaron a la goma, and some handful of guys I’d been told to view as role models were out here breaking actual laws and shit. Of course, I knew in my heart of hearts that I was in this area because of the Deep Evil that Lay Within My Heart (wanting to kiss Elder Electrician on his stupid himbo lips) but my MP could not have known that, just like he didn’t know that the guys he was making Zone Leaders were getting their dicks sucked and snorting cocaine. That honestly felt outrageous to me.

I feel like the stereotypical “worst day” of a mission is the last day – they take you to the airport in a big van, all melancholy and nostalgic. We sang on our drive to the airport – elders and sisters tearfully sang or hummed hymns together. I was deadpan the whole time, it was such a relief to be going home. For me the worst part of the day was the relief – the release of pressure. The pressure to perform, to be “on,” to be at your best, is omnipresent for elders. I was the only person flying to Phoenix, so for the first time in two years I felt a release from that pressure. Nobody was scrutinizing me, I no longer felt that every thought, action, and feeling was being evaluated and judged as a sign of my true character. It was hard to realize, a the pressure let up, that I had been holding all that weight for two years without knowing when it had started. I remember getting confused in Customs and needing someone who spoke Spanish to talk to me because I kept forgetting words in English. I remember getting home and my family waiting for me and feeling like it was all finally done, finally over, I could finally breath. It didn’t feel bad, but it did feel heavy. And it definitely was not the worst day of my mission.

The actual worst day of my mission, though, was about 5 months in. At the 6-month mark I was expected to make a long trip down to an area of town near La Basilica de Guadalupe to submit my visa paperwork, and the mission office had sent me an extra $500 MX to use for transportation costs. When I withdrew the money they had sent for the month, I noticed it was higher than expected. My companion, a senior companion and district leader, had the cell phone. He was talking to another elder while he waited for me to withdraw my monthly deposit. I approached and asked if I could use the cell phone to call the mission office, as I had questions. He said “no,” and ignored me. I waited until the conversation ended and asked again, and again, angrily, he said, “No.” I said “Elder, relax, I just need to call the mission office to see why they sent me more this month than usual.” His face turned red as he realized other elders were watching the exchange occur. He handed me the phone, I called and was told the money was for transportation costs, and laughingly returned the phone to my companion. He took it, told the other elders he needed to tie his shoe but they could head on over to the District Meeting, and waited until they were out of eyesight. Once that was done, he grabbed me hard by the wrist, dragged me into a hidden corner out of earshot from others, and said, “If you ever disrespect me or my authority again I swear to God I will kill you.”

I was actually shocked. This guy had spent the last month and a half being SUPER nice to me, so I thought he was kidding and I was just confused. I laughed and said “Haha, yeah, your authority over the cell phone is sacred,” and tried to walk away but he didn’t let go of my wrist. He pulled me back and said “I will literally slit your throat if you ever talk to me like that again. As senior companion my authority over YOU is sacred, and I will not let God be mocked by you.”

I realized that he was serious. Like, actually threatening-my-life serious. I could see it in his eyes, I could feel it in the way he squeezed tighter on my wrist. In actuality, the idea seems laughable now. The guy was absolutely chickenshit. He cried if his shits were too hard, he couldn’t end a human life, but I still didn’t let myself fall asleep first for the rest of our time together. And I still hid the two knives we had in a different area while he was showering the next morning.

If I’m being honest though, even that wasn’t the worst day of my mission. That was bad, and each subsequent time he told me he was going to cut my throat for minor infractions against his God-Given Authority Over Me (like not wearing a belt for morning scripture study, or not taking the path he thought was best to get to a lesson) was a bad day. Every P-Day where he read my emails over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t telling my parents about how he was treating me, every day he told me that the ward members would never believe me over him, every day he put me down in front of other elders and they laughed in agreement, every day he was in a bad mood and took it out on me was a bad day. But the worst day was the day I told the mission president about it. I told him about the threats to my life, his temper, his physical abuse, hiss manipulation and rule-breaking, and the mission president told me “The time to tell me this was 6 months ago. The time to forgive him and focus on your own failings is now.”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt as confused or betrayed as I did then. Like, man oh man, that was a rough thing to hear, but as the day went on I kept feeling more and more confused and scared – had I misinterpreted everything? Had I miscommunicated something in telling the story? Had I not been objective enough in recounting the threats against my life? Was it true that a senior companion actually had the authority to hurt me if I went against his authority? Was I wrong the whole time? I had no idea, to be honest, but it was bewildering.

Knowing now what I wish I had known then, I would have done things differently. But in the moment, on a mission, knowing that my biggest reason for going on a mission was the hope that the Spirit of God, which hymns told me burns like fire, would burn the faggot out of my heart. I think I felt like I deserved it. Like somehow that elder knew the evil I was hiding and felt compelled by God’s power to hurt me. I think that’s what made it so hard to defend myself in the moment – I did not have that problem with other elders. The companion who told me we were gonna wrestle to settle an argument lost three consecutive matches and pouted about it for like a week. The elder who threatened to punch me for making a joke at his expense got knocked on his ass just for raising his fist. But this elder got into my head first, and that made it hard to fight against it. Instead of fighting against it, I just silently lived with actual, verifiable, diagnosed, by-the-book, DSM-5-TR Posttraumatic Stress Disorder because I thought I deserved it. It took consistent supervision of my clinical work revealing countertransference with Male LDS clients (I consistently discussed addressing shame in a client’s presentation where no shame or discomfort had been reported), an awkward conversation with @inbabylontheywept after an even more awkward dinner with a cousin who vaguely reminds me of that companion, and a bad acid trip where I had visceral flashbacks to my mission, before I was able to realize that I was living with a pain that was as abnormal as it was unnecessary.

Even once I realized it, even once I got help, it was hard. I remember telling jokes about what happened to my therapist and seeing her jaw just…drop. She said she didn’t know it had been that dangerous for me. The session ended and he sent me the PCL-5 (a good, evidence-based, highly face-valid measure for PTSD) and some other measure for dissociative symptoms and I was like “Girl, I just took this class, I know what you’re trying to measure and this ain’t it.” I reported my symptoms accurately and was fully prepped to confront her the next session. She showed me my scores and the norms used, and I was like “Oh fuck, this looks really bad on paper,” and she was like “Yeah, I can’t imagine living like this” and I just sobbed for most of that session. We ended up doing 9 months of TF-CBT and ACT (largely because I am a terrible and uncooperative patient, realistically I think I could have been done in like 5-6 months if I wasn’t so stubborn) before I was discharged from treatment successfully.

The thing that was so weird about starting therapy for PTSD was that it made things feel worse for a while. I started taking edibles a lot more. I started behaving differently around family members and Mormons. I started being outright hostile to elders I could see. It took about 3 months before I could see the missionaries and not have an actual fight-or-flight response to their presence. I think the way I had made it a far as I did without getting treatment was by repressing the thoughts, feelings, and memories that made it all hurt, and a soon as I let them just be there it was like all the confusing aching hurt came back. The first few months of therapy were just spent expanding the amount of time I could feel that hurt before turning to other means (like dissociation, cannabis, repression, etc.) so I could actually address the experiences without crashing the rest of the day. It was hard. I know I ended several sessions sweating a LOT from the exertion it took to just let the feelings happen. By 6 months, however, I could go into a church building without blacking out from panic. By 9 months I could sit in the same room as elders without sweating and shaking like a chihuahua on Adderall. 3 months after therapy and me and my supervisors noticed that my work with Mormon men had improved substantially. 6 months after therapy and I was able to begin writing anonymous stories online. Now, about two years after completing therapy, I feel like I can talk about it without needing the cloak of anonymity, and that is empowering.

Again, I am not sure why I’m typing these stories out – they’re not fun to write, I don’t love that my family can find these posts, but I guess I just like to remind myself and others that it can always get better. That mind numbing platitude, the old thought-terminating cliché that “it gets better, just power through it” doesn’t give enough credit to how much it hurts to get through it, but it does get better. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. The triggers can go away with time, great effort, significant expense, and a lot of discomfort. The world can feel safe again, the hurt can feel bearable, that nagging worry that I might have deserved this, or that I did something wrong, can eventually go away too. It’s not easy to do it, and I have an incredible respect for the patients of mine who can pull it off, but it is undeniably as doable a it is difficult. If this story resonates with anyone, if it feels close-to-home, if these experiences feel shared, just know that the relief I talked about can feel shared too. Know that it’s worth it to get the help, that you deserve the help, that you deserve to live a life that doesn’t hurt you, that you deserve to be a full person and not a living prison for the pain and memories. Know that healing yourself does not involve extending forgiveness to Them, whoever They are. That the pain you felt will not be made less important by making the pain less potent. Know that taking care of yourself now is, in a way, taking care of yourself then. And Please, with a capital P, take care of yourselves.

Thank you to my family, especially my immediate family (special shout outs to @flowerologists and @inbabylontheywept) for the support and patience with me as I dealt with this.

Thank you to my therapist, Jordin Borques, who I recommend highly to anyone seeking trauma therapy in Arizona.

Thank you to my wife, @cintailed, for being the push that got me into therapy, and for taking care of me at my worst and still being here with me.

Thanks to my mission president for being such a colossal disappointment to Christianity that my departure from the church was inevitable.