What the Heck is an ACMI?

The term ACMI "Adult Child of the Mentally Ill" is one I found in the book, My Parent's Keeper" by Eva Marian Brown. Who are the people this term refers to? Do the members of the group truly have a shared experience? Do we have a "syndrome" which is derived from our experiences as children? How many of us are there?

There have been a few attempts at shedding light on this issue and population. One is a book called "Troubled Journey" by Diane Marsh and Rex Dickens. They look at the affects on people of having an mentally ill parent or sibling. They also refer to a syndrome connected to a shared experience of ACMIs and the siblings of mentally ill people. Another great book is the one cited above by Eva Marian Brown. Like Marsh and Dickens, she lays out a process for acknowledging the issues we ACMIs face as adults and what their sources are in our upbringing. She then offers specific suggestions on ways to heal ourselves.

A third resource is a website in Australia called the "National Network of Adult and Adolescent Children who have a Mentally Ill Parent" (nnaami.org). This is a place where ACMI can share experiences and create community in an online forum.

Other online chat rooms for ACMI can be found at

http://pub2.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=151263616&frmid=150&msgid=0

and another on the NAMI site:

www.nami.org//Template.cfm?Section=Daughters_and_Sons

It seems to me that the experience of ACMIs lies on a vast continuum. The trauma we experience, if any, of growing up in a household with mentally ill people is very difficult to determine. It is very hard to generalize. And because for many of us it involved the basic patterning of our personality and self image, the exact affects of the mental illness can be extremely challenging to tease out.

One statistic put out there about the prevalence of mental illness in the general population is 1 in 4. I don't know about you but to me that sounds a bit high. Here's a more nuanced description from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) website:

"Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people. Even though mental disorders are widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion — about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 — who suffer from a serious mental illness. In addition, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada for ages 15-44. Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Nearly half (45 percent) of those with any mental disorder meet criteria for 2 or more disorders, with severity strongly related to comorbidity."

The serious mental illnesses Marsh and Dickens focus on in their book are schizophrenia (1.1% of the population over age 18 in a given year or 2.4 million people) , major depression (6.7% of the population over age 18 in a given year or 14.8 million people) and bipolar disorder (2.6% of the population over age 18 in a given year or 5.7 million people) . If you add all three of these together you get 10.4% of the population or 22.9 million people over the age of 18. (Statistics from NIMH)

There is a discrepancy between the 10.4% statistic for those three disorders and the "6% who suffer from serious mental illness" cited in the NIMH passage above. I am guessing it must mean that there are some cases of schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar which are not classified as "serious mental illness".

Whether it is 6% or 10% of the population with "serious mental illness", how many of these people have children? How many have siblings? I have not been able to find data to answer that question. What is likely is that we're talking about tens of millions of people in the U.S. whose formative years have been massively affected by a family member's mental illness.

If there is any question about the impact of these diseases on society one need only look at the Global Burden of Disease Study conducted by the World Health Organization. Currently they list Major Depression as the third leading cause of disease burden world-wide. By the year 2030 the study predicts that it will be number one. The definition of disease burden is the burden that a particular disease process has in a particular area as measured by cost, morbidity, and mortality (wikipedia).

In addition, there are the families of the people with mental illnesses which make up the difference between the 6% (serious) and 26.2% (diagnosable mental disorder). Perhaps the trauma they've endured is less intense in many cases than families where serious mental illness is present. Nevertheless, disruptive affects are likely, as is the need for healing.

So here's an obvious question: if mental illness is having such a huge impact on the world, why is it still so hidden? Why are so many people who are mentally ill or have an MI relative afraid to speak about their experiences openly? What it is about mental illness that makes us all so afraid to talk about it?

My sense is that mental illness can cut right to the core of our basic sense of self and for that reason it is more terrifying than, say diabetes, another chronic disease. Someone who has diabetes can manage their condition with insulin and the disease might have relatively little affect on their fundamental sense of self. It is a burden they have carry but they still have the experience of being "themselves." Mental illness seems more frightening because it can change, sometimes very dramatically as in schizophrenia, the basic personality of an individual. In olden times it is very likely that such a change in a person would lead others to think that the person was possessed by an evil spirit or demon. Today we don't believe in such things but we also haven't found an easy "box" in which to place such a dramatic and frightening shift in someone's sense of self. So since we are not really able to find an easy explanation about what's going on, we are left with the shit being scared out of us and pushing the whole topic away from our awareness to the greatest degree possible.

I know that's what I did until only a few years ago. And the only reason I changed my stance is that the basic quality of my life depended on my delving into this frightening world and trying to make sense of it.

Diane Marsh and Rex Dickens describe the family burden of mental illness as having subjective and objectives facets. I understand "subjective burden" to mean our inner feeling response to what's happening around us; and "objective burden" as the facts of the illness that we have to deal with.

The subjective part includes:

--a sense of grief and loss for your relative, your family and yourself;

--chronic sorrow as the illness is woven into your life on a continuing basis;

--an emotional roller coaster in response to the course of the disorder; and

--empathic pain as you share in your relative's and family's suffering.

The objective burden includes:

--symptoms of the illness, such as bizarre or frightening behavior;

--caregiving responsibilities for your relative;

--limitations of the mental health system; and

--social stigma, which continues to surround serious mental illness.

Eva Marian Brown, in "My Parent's Keeper", speaks about some of the common affects of this disease burden for ACMIs:

"You feel unsafe in the world because your family hasn't taught you the necessary interpersonal skills. You have a deep feeling of aloneness and deprivation because your parent isn't providing reliable and loving contact. And you feel terrible about yourself because you consider it your fault you aren't being adequately taken care of. In the midst of this massive struggle there is little room to be a playful, light-hearted child. The result is a typical profile of the parentified child--serious, responsible, intense, unusually sensitive, and often readily hurt."

It seems to me there is a deafening silence in our culture in regards to the mentally ill and their families. This is slowly changing. The conversation is gradually opening up and the stigma is trending downward ever so slightly. It also seems to me that NAMI is a huge help in creating a positive trend for all of us. Still, the fact that a single mental illness (major depression) is predicted by the WHO to have the most significant disease burden on the planet within two decades tells me we had better make a lot faster progress in acknowledging mental illness, trying to understand it better, and meeting the needs of those it affects.

It also seems to me that ACMIs and other family members of mentally ill people are in an excellent position to raise awareness about the issue of mental illness. We can do this by honestly sharing our experience, by working to heal ourselves, and by communicating with others who share our experience. We can support each other and gradually work to change the cultural bias against mental illness which we all feel so acutely.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Family

In this lifetime it seems that I one of my major lessons has to do with family. I felt a lot of pain as I was growing up in relation to my family of origin. My dad abandoning me when I was six years old was tremendously painful to me. I have not yet touched the pain of that experience at its depth. Instead I carry it around with me. I hope in the next year to reach towards this pain in a counseling context and try to work through some of it.

Taking on a caretaker role with my mom from the time I was about six years old was also disruptive to my growth in childhood. Instead of receiving nurturing from my parents and imprinting on a healthy model, I had to use my own forces to keep the family afloat. I had to become a pillar long before I was of an age to take on such a task. I now am living with some of the consequences of growing up in that way. Now that I am an adult and would like to carry more, I find that it is difficult for me to do so at the level I would wish. I do the best I can but I also look around and see that others have a far greater carrying capacity than I do. Some of my "investment capital" vitality seems to have been spent in childhood when it should have been invested. Because it was spent then I have less now.

I am not saying this to be in a "poor me" kind of state of mind. I just need to face the facts. I can see that I have a path in the world; that I have unique gifts to offer. And in order to do this it seems important that I have an accurate picture of the vehicle I have been given. If I pretend that the vehicle is something that it's not, then I can be more likely to go into fantasy thoughts about what I can do in the world. That doesn't serve me or the world.

At the same time, it is crucial that I don't get into a negative self-talk and sell myself short. There are deficiencies that I have which I can overcome. But time also continues to march along. I am not thirty years old anymore. I need to take stock of what I have to bring and then try to bring it.

When I was growing up I often felt less than, like I was the deficient one, the less cool one. My friends all had more "normal" families and had more going for them. At the same time I could experience a potential within myself that was not related to my family. By the time I finished high school this potential was largely buried in drinking, drug use and trying to have sex with as many girls my age as I could. I was lost in the woods.

When I was seventeen I lived overseas for a year with a family who showed me a different way of living. They showed me what it was like to live in a warm and functional family. Coming back to the U.S. I started to try and live my life more out of the values I had learned from that family. But I was still very confused and felt lost in the world.

As a child I developed social skills differently than those with tighter-knit families. Relationships were for me less involved. I didn't have any siblings and I spent a lot of time alone. My mom was also both a single mom and kind of "whacky". We were different than the other families. I didn't see a single other family where I said to myself, "they're like us." I looked at families with many members and wished I had more family I could have been close to.

As I look back, it was certainly a grace that I had no siblings, as it would have been extremely diffficult for all of us, and it very likely would not have turned out well. It seems infinitely better to be an only child and have spent some lonely hours than to have siblingss who are really messed up and needing support. In the latter case I might have felt just as lonely and have had a lot more responsibility. Mom ended a pregnancy when I was 10 years old. I think that was a good call. She was not going to marry the guy and she was not able to take care of me adequately, let alone a new infant in addition to me.

I felt responsible to play an important part in keeping my mom afloat. I felt very isolated in many of my experiences and took on more responsibility than was healthy for someone of that age. I had been molested but didn't tell people about it. From the time I was seven years old I knew that there were things that had happened to me which were "bad" and which I needed to keep secret. My father had abandoned me. I couldn't even speak that to myself. It was just too painful. It is almost too painful for me to say it today. I had to keep it all to myself. My mom was so involved in staying afloat herself that she never really asked me how any of these things were for me. And, having taken the caretaker role, I didn't expect her to.

My mom's illness, my dad's leaving and my being molested affect my current life every day. I will likely be dealing with their affects for the rest of my life. And, until recently, I haven't been able to talk about them. I've been profoundly ashamed of all three.

I don't keep in touch with the man my mom married when I was 15. They divorced when I was 23. He sent me a Christmas gift for several years before cutting back to a card and then stopping that a while back. I sent him Christmas cards too, though not every year. This past year he called me up when he was in town once and we had dinner. He said he was thinking of relocating to an area near where I live. It seemed to me like he wanted to connect with me to see what kind of contacts he had in the area. I don't really feel any kind of familial connection to him. I'm not really sure how to describe what the feeling is. It's ironic. I am actually legally his son. My mom really wanted him to adopt me when I was in high school. Because she wanted it I agreed to it. So legally I am his son. But I don't feel like his son, nor does he feel like my father, in any other way than on paper.

There were other friends of the family over the years who were like family to some degree. One of them died when I was 17 in an accident. He was a wonderful man whom I didn't see that often but really liked it when I did. Another family friend, as I got into adulthood, started giving me the impression that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with me. He regularly had sexual relationships outside of his marriage so it's probably not my imagining things. Anyway, it freaked me out. Kind of like having your uncle hitting on you.

My saving grace in terms of my family of origin were three individuals: My two grandparents and my aunt. All three of them gave me both love and attention as well as a solid example of basically healthy adult behavior. They all three had their faults but were very good people, each with a rich soul life, intelligence, and a grounded personality. You could rely on what they said and know that once you established something with them they would remember it and hold true to it.

I did not grow up in the same town as any of them but did see them about once per year as I was growing up. They had a lasting influence on me and came to love me for the radiant person that I am inside, not just to help "the poor son of our ill daughter/sister". My aunt especially really loved me for me and was willing to tell me so. I suppose someone who can have three people in their family, even if it's the extended family, who can offer that to them should consider themselves very lucky. In fact, I do consider myself very lucky.

All three of these dear people have now passed the threshold. I miss them each a lot. I hope they know how much their example meant to me. My sense of groundedness was so very tentative as a young adult and they helped me to find my ground within the family, and help me on my way into the adult world. Without their love and support my life would be VERY different than it is.

In my late teens and early twenties the chaos of my upbringing and my unwillingness to look at those issues meant that I was something of a loose cannon. Most people I would keep a "safe" distance from. That is, I would become friends but stand just on the other side of being truly close to them. There were a few important exceptions to that rule. When I dated someone I could bounce back and forth between sympathy and antipathy with the person I was with. I looked good on the outside but once a person got closer to me they began to see some odd behaviors.

The odd behaviors were an expression of the internal chaos I felt which I basically never showed on the outside. I was pretty much collected and friendly all of the time. That was "who I was" and I was not about to show others, or myself, anything else. By the time I was twenty-four I realized that I was really clueless about relationships and that I should not date anyone until I figured things out a bit better.

Looking back to that time it is clear to me that my wife has been the person who has been instrumental in my finding a peaceful and satisfying life as an adult. What I brought into my adult life was a potential to have a good life, but also a chaotic jumble of unconscious thoughts, feelings and actions which could cause me and others even more chaos and upset. I wanted to do good but there were unconscious forces acting through me which were sabotaging me on a regular basis. I didn't have any addictions, which was very helpful to finding my way out of the mess; but it was still a mess.

My wife has shown me what a stable, peaceful and rich family life is. She has taught me countless spiritual ideas and has offered me a level of love which got around all of my defenses. The purity of our connection bypassed my lower nature and spoke directly to my heart and ideals. The wonderful thing is that we have built a successful life together. We have been able to find more and more solid levels of ground in our life together. My two step-daughters have also taught me a tremendous amount about life. I have to pinch myself sometimes at the luck I have to be family with three such amazing people as my wife and step-daughters.

And being in family life has not been easy for me. My own unresolved pain has come up again and again. My difficulties in forming healthy relationships has made the road steep at times. There is still chaos in me that would want to tear down what I have achieved. But what is healthy in me has become stronger. The higher voice is able to see the tricks that the lower self is up to and to treat the lower side with firmness and compassion.

That's on my good days. And I have more good days than bad days.

My continuing with therapy is a way that I can continue to look at the pain I carry within, to transform it, and then release it. It is an on-going process and one I have to be committed to on a continual basis. When I fail, I try not to berate myself but pick myself up, acknowledge my error and inwardly commit to myself that I will do better the next time. It doesn't do any good to beat myself up. And it is crucial that I see my error for what it is, to the best of my ability. If I try to rationalize my error it only takes me that much longer to reach the goals I have for myself. So I might as be honest for my own sake.

And what I have realized is that the pain I carry around with me every day is steadily being turned into fuel; fuel for my gradual transformation.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Tools for Healing, part 2

Last week I spoke about the Enneagram, a helpful tool for me in my search for self-knowledge. In this post I will build on that introduction. It should be said that I am in no way an expert on the Enneagram. Everything stated here is related to my own personal process; it is what I have so far gleaned from the material.

The value I have found in the Enneagram has a number of aspects. First, it is a window into personality which acknowledges humans as a spiritual beings; that we are born into the world for a temporary journey in material form, and then return to non-material form after death. Second, it has shown me types of personality structures which really dig into both the dark and light aspects without flinching with either side.

This tool has helped me to cop to my weaknesses and shortcomings and work steadily to overcome them. At the same time it has shown me aspects of my self which are highly functional and useful in the human community. The Enneagram confirmed to me that my personality is not my essential self; rather it is the lens through which we experience the world during this lifetime. Furthermore, our personality is not static. By honestly assessing and working to transform the darker sides of our self we are then supported in reaching towards the radiant aspects of our personality. As we do that we bless ourselves and those around us.

We have to dig deeply and unflinchingly into our sense of self, but we can get "behind" our personality to some degree and realize that there is a spiritual being, which is us, that can direct the lower forms of self, such as the personality, to the highest possible good.

I do not see the Enneagram in any way representing my spiritual path, but I do find it to be a useful tool. And as with all tools that deal with personality types, I believe it's helpful to take it in with a certain grain of salt.

Perhaps those of you who have read my posts and who are familiar with the Enneagram have already guessed my type: Nine. The Nine type is described as the child who "went to sleep to it's self" and that it did not develop a personal agenda. Type Nine is receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent. He focusses on other people's agendas rather than his own and he avoids conflict to the highest degree possible.

In the book, The Enneagram, Helen Palmer says of the Nine:

"Nines are the children who felt overlooked when they were young. They remember that their point of view was seldom heard and that other people's needs were more important than their own. Eventually Nines fell asleep, in the sense that their attention turned from real wishes and they became preoccupied with small comforts and substitutes for love. Realizing that their own priorities were likely to be discounted, they learned to numb themselves, to divert energy from their priorities, and to forget themselves."

The basic proposition of the Nine is that belonging and comfort are gained by attending to and merging with others and by dispersing energy into substitute objects. The Nine can lose himself easily in inessential details. He represses his anger and may be completely unaware of it; he seems sunny and friendly but can express anger through passive aggression. The Nine wants life to be comfortable and familiar and enjoys repetitive tasks. He deeply wishes to belong and can easily merge with others, and their agendas. A vice of the Nine is indolence or laziness. In the higher mind, the Nine has the ability to cultivate selfless love.

Some of the Nine's strengths are of being balanced, accepting and peace-loving. Some of their challenges are of being stubborn, indecisive, conflict avoidant.

Here are some quotes about the Nine by people who identify as Nines:

They say that Nines

--see all sides to every issue as peacemakers and harmonizers;

--avoid conflict and want the comfortable solution;

--have difficulty saying "no";

--are ambivalent about their own needs and wants;

--"go along to get along";

So how is this information useful to me? First of all, it has helped me to "call myself on my stuff". My awareness about my strengths and weaknesses was fairly low coming out of my childhood. My self-awareness was weak and it was very difficult for me to take a stand in being one or another way. It was much easier for me to float along in one situation and then move on to the next experience, always willing to change myself to meet the needs of what I found.

A key for me in taking a stand for something was my connecting to a spiritual path. Once I began the journey of gradually shifting my thinking towards a spiritual perspective, it became easier for me to focus on what was essential for me. I was able to identify my values to a much greater degree and act out of them more and more.

And yet, I can still see the attributes of the Nine which visit me every day and ask to be transformed. I can see how I depend on my wife at times for opinions because it is so hard for me to come to my own. I can see how easy it is at work to merge with the opinions of others, to see it from their side.

One way I have transformed myself to some degree is by finding good models to work with in my workplace. Where I work now is based on a model which I find to be very forward thinking. I am always able to refer to the model when I am faced with decisions. "What seems right according to the model?" I ask myself. This was true in my previous job as well. And because I was in harmonious accord with the model I was freed up to offer my gifts as a Nine.

This isn't to say that I blindly or stupidly follow the model am working with. I do bring my thinking to bear and am always willing to consider other perspectives.

The Nine type is called the Mediator because he can see a given issue from many points of view. He can identify with the people who carry different opinions and actually feel what it's like for that person to carry that opinion. This ability can be very helpful in a group setting. A person who is a Nine can bring together groups who may have seen each other as opposed. The Nine can sometimes see the higher place where the "opposed" groups meet and are in harmony, when others cannot. The Nine also has a primary goal of creating harmony, which, if done consciously, can have a beneficial affect on any group.

What the Enneagram material has done for me is to identify some of these strengths and weaknesses. I then have been able, to some degree, be more aware of my weaknesses and to see my strengths as valuable in the social community. What makes this tool useful for me is that it shows me the dark side of my personality so I can work on it, while it shows me the light side, which I can build on.

Over time, as I continue to struggle to transform my lower nature and to encourage the development of some of the gifts given to me, my life becomes richer and I take another small step on the path towards knowing myself.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Sources: "The Enneagram" by Helen Palmer

enneagram.com (website maintained around Helen Palmer's work)

Tools for Healing, part 1

One of the keys for my healing path so far has been my spiritual life. I have gradually developed a sense of knowing over the past fifteen years which tells me very clearly that my essential self will continue on after my physical body has withered and died. Birth is not the beginning and death is not the end. This is more than belief for me; it is something I know to be true.

An aspect of the topic of spirituality and self knowldedge comes with the the question: What is the relation between my personality and my essential self?

I have written in this blog about what I call my "Bubble", a survival mechanism which I took up at about age six when a number of big waves were threatening to swamp my little boat: my family was splitting up, I was being molested by a baby sitter, dad was exiting my life, and mom was struggling with the launch her professional career as a single mom with untreated bipolar. The Bubble included a number of facets and was quite formative in what developed as my personality.

Both of my parents have had fairly narcissistic personalities. My mom has a strong tendency to refer conversations back to her own thoughts and feelings. When I was a child she was not capable of sustained empathy towards me. She cared for me and loved me but was relatively unaware of what my non-material needs were. My mom very much wanted to be a good parent but, given the fact of her mental illness, and being a single mom with no back-up and holding down a professional job, she was not able to achieve it.

My mom did not perceive and cultivate parts of me that are "me". I believe that she wanted to but her illness got in the way. I grew up like a chameleon, able to take on the colors of the environment around me. As a child I developed an ability for foreign accents and would blend into and endear myself to wherever I was.
I did not develop a strong sense of self as a child. It was, and is very easy for me to take on other peoples' agendas and lose track of what I think on the matter. Part of me can just go where the breezes would have me go. This comes from my being very tuned into mom, where her mood was, what she was wanting to do.

A very helpful tool I've found in shedding light on this question is the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a way of understanding our expression in the world. One aspect of the model is that it acknowledges human beings as having a spiritual essence. It says that we develop a certain kind of personality based on our childhood upbringing. It then goes into both the dark side and light side which emerges from the same kind of personality structure.

The Enneagram helped me to become aware of some of my weaknesses and acknowledge some of my strengths. Because my basic sense of self was fairly weak due to my background, this tool has been very useful to me. For me to see myself as I really am in the world can be a real challenge. Afterall, my primary models, the ones who were there to orient me to the world, suffered from mental illness and alcoholism. It was very difficult for my parents to be my guides into the world.

In addition, they were not able to be models of having strong sense of self.

In my next post I will describe my "Point" on the Enneagram and how it has been a useful tool for me.

Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben

Living Hidden

Something is hidden when it is not acknowledged by those around it. My mom's mental illness was completely hidden up until the time she checked into the psychiatric hospital and received a diagnosis when she was forty-three and I was fifteen.

And even after those days mom spent in the hospital in the summer of 1984, when she came home with a new label which described what she "was", everyone in our family tried to side-step the implications of her having "manic-depressive illness". We had almost no information about the disorder or what it meant to either my mom or to anyone else in the family. We just tried to go on as if it weren't so.

There wasn't a single person who explained the situation to me, other than my mom. She at first told me she had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, then, on my visit to the hospital a few days later, she told me the diagnosis had since been changed to manic depression.

Years before, when I was a littler kid, apparently no one called what my mom had "mental illness". I could see that we, my mom and I, were a bit different from other families. From my child's perspective, our different-ness was both that there was no dad in our family and that mom was a little "wacky". It's quite possible that adults we knew had private thoughts about what "wacky" meant. But none of our friends, or anyone else, ever mentioned the term "mental illness" within my earshot.

It is likely that, to some degree, people we interacted with in our various milieus looked at us and decided to keep a distance from a family which looked a bit unstable. Luckily, I found a cohort of friends which responded well to my mom. My peers were accepting and would joke in a friendly way about my mom's quirks: her very loud laugh and occasional odd statements. Mom was always very friendly when they were around. I don't remember a time when she was irritable and my friends were present.

Pretty much all of my friends had professional parents, both moms and dads. This meant that our parents had little contact with each other; they were just too busy. And none of them were paying very close attention to what the kids were up to. I am reasonably certain that whatever conversation they had was about the weather, rather than sharing perceptions about how, and what, the kids were doing.

So because my mom can pass for "normal" to the superficial observer it appears there were few who were in a position to see that there were some problems. She had one or two friends who visited her in the hospital when she had a "nervous breakdown" when I was ten. But they didn't talk to me about it or try to give some reality to what was going on. My mom didn't talk about it. She raced back into her life and tried to pretend that she hadn't been in the hospital. "I'm back, every thing's fine, why dwell on the past?"

The every-day family life that developed over time had a teetering quality to it. I never really relaxed in my life as a child, because my mom never really relaxed. There was a low-level feeling of anxiety which permeated into each day. As I look back it was likely because my mom felt very insecure about whether she could sustain the life she had created: a professional job and a middle class lifestyle. I believe that inwardly she felt that it could all come tumbling down like a house of cards. And in fact, it did. When it did in 1986, she was exceedingly fortunate to have a soft landing, compliments of the family.

Part of every day life was that mom was swinging between high and low moods. She did not see herself as having a condition. No one communicated to her in so many words that the swings were unhealthy. As far as I know she had zero insight about her moods. She was in the moment with them. When she was up, the world around her had to meet her there. When she was down, the world had to adjust.

Since I was the person who was by far the closest to her, I was often the "world" adjusting to her ups and downs. I did this adjusting as a matter of course, rather than thinking, "she's up now so that's what we're doing." I adapted at the level of my personality. I was ready for her to go either way. And I would help smooth the road for her, and for both of us.

A big part of my survival mechanism, which in earlier posts I have termed "The Bubble", was smoothing out the edges of our life and helping us to present to the world as normal. First of all, I needed to be very steady. That was the basis of my instinctive strategy. Because my mom passed as normal enough most of the time, usually I just had to "round the edges" a bit. If a friend was over, I had the whole downstairs to myself, so I could limit his contact with her. She could come across as nice, if a bit nutty, and we had plenty of space away from parental presence.

When I was younger it was like mom and I were a team. It was the two of us who were making it in the world. She was the adult and I was her child companion. I was smart and could talk like an adult to some degree. People always thought I was several years older than I actually was. I was her confidant in certain ways. She never shared about her love life, but she did share other things that normally are part of adult conversations.

It was just the free flow of thoughts and feelings that she likes to share with someone who is a willing listener. I was the most willing listener she had so she depended on me as a primary person she could share her thoughts with. We still have the habit going today where I call her once a week and, for the most part, just listen to what she has to say.

My mom usually has a lot to talk about. She can talk for hours at a time about things she's interested in. And someone who wants to have a two-way conversation really has to assert his/herself. I did a lot of listening as a child and was not listened to very much at all. Honestly, almost not at all. Back then as well as today, if I say something out of my own experience, my mom will reference it to something she is familiar with and sort of change the subject to that, rather than explore what my thought was. At those moments I feel resignation come up and go back to just listening to what she has to say, keeping my own thoughts to myself.

I had a friend in high school who said to me one time, "Do you realize that your mom sharing all of her thoughts and feelings with you like you're an adult is a form of abuse?" I was shocked by her statement. I could sort of see what she meant but inwardly I said to myself "If this is the price of having a more-or-less stable life, so be it."

My friend who made the statement was no longer living with her mother, who had used my friend as her child-confidante as well. In fact, she was 90% estranged from her mother. This same friend was also getting into heroin. I wasn't about to take her advice as the gold standard. But I also never forgot what she said.

About the time I turned eleven, life had a certain stability to it. The shocks of sex abuse and my dad leaving were beginning to fade and life was becoming predictable and pleasant enough. That was until I reached puberty.

At puberty I began to explore, as my friends were, the taboo realms of tobacco, beer, pot and sex. By the time I turned thirteen I had tried out all of the items on that list and was ready to develop my interest in them. And because I had had years of "smoothing the edges" around my mom, now I was able to very smoothly keep much of my activity out of parental view. Not that it was very hard to do. It was pretty easy to create hidden realities in my life. After all, I had had years of practice keeping up a certain image.

When I was thirteen, my mom's boyfriend moved in and a new regime took hold. All of a sudden there were more rules. He had no idea about my mom's mental illness. Neither did she for that matter. He was on the rebound from the end of his previous marriage of fifteen years and having lost his job in the military.

Perhaps mom thought that a more "law and order" kind of presence in the house would help us develop the structure we needed. In my view, one aspect of my mom's untreated bipolar is that she would have knee-jerk reactions which would override her intuition. If she had been tuned in to her intuition, she likely would not have married the guy. It seems to me that the illness has had a way of largely burying my mom's connection to her intuitive sense. I am pretty sure she felt a large degree of desperation when she married him.

Mom was grasping at something that could give more stability to her life. She had been a single mom with untreated bipolar for years. As I came into adolescence she likely just couldn't imagine coping with it all by herself. And it seems clear to me now that her solution was to find a husband.

Now there were three of us invested in the pretense that everything was normal. For a while that seemed to go ok, but my dad's suicide, which happened a few months after boyfriend moved in, threw it all for a loop. About a year after dad's death they were married. A few weeks after their marriage my mom became psychotic and was checked into the psychiatric hospital. We didn't really talk about it. Mom's husband especially didn't want to talk about it. No doubt he was asking himself, "What the **** have I done?!"

Now the striving to appear normal took on a more intensive form. Mom and her husband were not able to communicate about her disorder. No doubt they both were very freaked out about it. So as best as I can tell they tried to go on with their lives without bringing up her bipolar as a subject. They argued a lot, and often put each other down using angry and hurtful words.

He and my mom were married for eight years. My guess is that he decided to ride it out for a while and not leave my mom in a desperate place. She made more money than he did so the financial benefits of forming a household also seem relevant. His business meant that he spent about half off his time away from home. It seems like he made a decision to, at least to some degree, lie in the bed he had made for himself.

My mom's illness was such that she could come roaring back from being in the hospital or other setbacks. When she was in a more manic stage she could be filled with energy, enthusiasm, optimism. She could also be quite brittle and short-tempered.

Everyone in the family was invested in her condition remaining a secret. My grandparents were, mom's husband was, and I was. Maybe if we ignored it would go away. If it ever came up as a subject it would be in hushed tones, like it was shameful even to be talking about it.

One of the symptoms of mom's illness is "lack of insight". Before she received a diagnosis, she was not aware that she had a mental illness. And when she ended up in the hospital with a "nervous breakdown" she seemed able to forget about it and move on with life as it had been. "What nervous breakdown?"

Once she had a diagnosis her complete denial changed to 99% denial. Now she realized that she had a disorder and needed to take meds and see her psychiatrist fairly regularly. But even then she didn't talk about her condition within my earshot.

I didn't talk about it either. It was much easier to acknowledge that my mom was "a bit nutty" and ignore the reality that she had a debilitating medical condition. And perhaps I unconsciously understood that if people thought of her as 'That mentally ill lady" then it would be easy enough for them to tack on, "And her damaged son."

Remaining hidden and rounding off the edges seemed a lot more advantageous than being judged in that way.

If your parent has a chronic medical issue like diabetes, or chronic fatigue syndrome, it seems more likely that the condition will be talked about. With my mom's mental illness there was never any talk of it until diagnosis. Then she would refer to her medication and its side effects but to speak of her illness as an objective fact was not something we could do.

Even after her diagnosis I sort of knew she had this illness but couldn't connect it to anything tangible. From the time I was 16 (when she was diagnosed) to only a few years ago I only had a vague notion about something that was clearly a major factor in my upbringing. Looking back I really don't know why I did not seek out information about mental illness. I could have read a lot more on the subject. I could have tried to empower myself by becoming informed.

But I didn't. I was invested in denial because it seemed like it would be easier for me. And perhaps, in a certain sense, that is so. If I had read about bipolar running in the family, about the age on onset being the age I was at that time of my life, I might have become intensely freaked out. As it was, my denial bubble lasted well into my thirties, past the time of likely onset were I to suffer from the disorder myself.

Like my mom, I deeply wished to build up my adult identity as if everything were fine. And like mom, I could present pretty well so maybe I could just be ok on the inside as well. The idea of delving into the topic of mental illness just didn't occur to me. I didn't take psychology courses in college until I had to for my teaching degree. I guess it must have been just too frightening to look at. I had built up my identity as a child as smoothing the edges of our life. My studying mental illness could very well blow apart all of those nice, smooth edges I had been working on for so long. I would have had to challenge my own personal myths as well as those of my mom and family.

It was one hell of a lot simpler to just pretend all of the issues away. Except that it doesn't work that way--not for long.

By the time I reached my twenties I was hiding as best I could from the reality of my own upbringing. I didn't want to face its implications to me and my life. Better to place as much of it as possible in a drawer and leave it there. Maybe my present life wouldn't be affected so much by mental illness. Maybe I could just side-step it all. I wanted to hide what was true for me and present an outward identity which was well-adjusted and successful.

The problem is, I had to carry the hidden parts all of the time inside of me. And because of my denial, they were largely unexamined. The hidden parts began to fester like a wound under the skin and became increasingly heavy and disruptive to the life I was trying to lead. Taking the Family to Family course from NAMI was the first major step in my acknowledging the facts of my upbringing. Since then I am hiding less and less and the burden feels steadily lighter.

It seems understandable how invested I was in having my life seem normal-ish to outside observers. I wanted desperately to be normal. But what I have realized is that I have to be honest about basic reality. If I don't do that my whole life will become enshrouded in a fog of unreality, with lightening strikes of my unconscious behavior zipping out of it. I have to look at the truth even if it makes me look weak or stupid. I owe it to myself to be honest about who I am.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben