So I will focus this post on the "pressured speech" symptom, of which I have a very strong sense.
My mom has a mostly one-way speech pattern. She can talk and talk and talk and, well, you get the idea. I speak to her over the phone once a week on average and most of our conversations consist of me listening to her talk. This is something I am very good at. When she is on a manic swing the volume of her speech goes up and I have to have the phone volume set on "low" and hold the receiver away from my ear.
My mom's pressured speech is like a snow-plow of words, pushing other people's thoughts and feelings out of the way. Her speech often contains a free association of ideas and impressions which she is very excited to share. Typically each sentence makes sense in and of itself, but taken together, the conversation is a bit of a jumble. Occasionally she will ask me something about my life and if I do share something she typically will counter-share an experience she's had that reminds her of what I've said. That allows her to take hold of the conversation again and keep going with her free association. She does not have, and has never had as long as I've known her, the habit of delving into something I've shared or looking into it from my point of view.
My mom loves me. But she has a very low understanding of what I think and who I am on the inside. She's just never been able to pay attention for very long to thoughts that weren't her own.
Something I have to be careful about is figuring out how much of what I experience as her "pressured speech" is a symptom of her bipolar, and how much is a family habit. My grandmother also liked to have her thoughts at the center of the conversation and would direct social relationships to that end. It seems to me that my mom has the family habit with an illness overlay. Double whammy.
This speech habit means that my mom is often exhausting to be around. When someone is talking with her they tend to get more and more tired and then need a break. Since my mom can be charming, insightful and fun to be around (in short doses) she has some friends she's maintained for several years and whom she sees on a weekly (or so) basis. But she has not been in the presence of another person for more than short periods of time. For a long, long time. This is not an accident. It is because no person, I believe, could be around her for longer than a few days without needing to get away. Being with her is just too intense and one-sided. She can be fun to be around but one simply does not get one's social needs met in her presence. Like being listened to.
So that's why I will call her up and be ready to just listen to her for an hour and then hang up. I never get mad at her for doing this over and over. It's such an ingrained pattern that I do it without thinking. My social needs are met through people other than my mom. And I know that she feels very supported by the fact that she can depend on me for these weekly "conversations" . Not that she ever thanks me. She did say recently, however, that she is able to be by herself for long stretches without any problem because of our "talks". That might be the closest thing to a "thanks" that I will receive.
What gets my resentment up and baring its teeth is the fact that she doesn't think about me in this scenario. And since she is more high-functioning these days than she's ever been, I know that her speech, and my role as listener, used to be even much more pronounced and one-sided. In the past year she has even started saying things like, "you haven't said much--tell me more about what you're doing". But when I do say something she brings in her thought that reminds her of what I said and she's off to the races again. Consequently my sharing is often perfunctory. If I think something is important for her to know I will tell her more. But otherwise the habit I've had with her for thirty five years marches on.
She counts on me for emotional support. The reverse is not true. If it has ever been true it was only fleetingly. I deeply craved emotional support from her. But at a certain point I realized that it was not something she could offer me, so I stopped holding any expectation.
I believe that the symptom of "pressured speech" exhibited by my mom is one of the factors behind my low self-esteem. Ideally, parents can listen to their children and acknowledge both their ideas and the evolution of their thinking. Simply put, my mom did not listen to me. She was very busy with work and other things. And for much of my childhood I was her primary confidant. I was apparently the only one who could sit and listen to her for long stretches. She had other friends and family she spoke with but none of them were willing to take her way of communicating for longer than short doses. I was a captive audience.
In a way, listening to my mom was one of my principle activities as a child. Most likely my listening was also tuned into my own alert system. If she was getting manic I would be there to see how bad it was. If it was bad, then I would become active and try to calm her down in some way. If it wasn't bad I could listen for a few minutes and then go off to play with my friends or be by myself.
My mom told my wife several years ago, "Ben is the strong, silent type." My wife told me later that she wanted to tell my mom, "Well, if you'd listen to him for a minute you might hear that he has something to say!" Of course she bit her tongue. But her saying that to me was very helpful. It made me think that maybe my defined role as "listener" is something I should try to work on and overcome. The pattern goes so far back into my childhood that I was very unconscious of it until recently. "She talks and I listen, and that's just the way of things" is what I have believed all these years.
And even though I will call her up again this week and listen to her talk for an hour, my awareness about what I am doing is greater than it was a year ago.
Sometimes it helps to mark progress incrementally.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
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