This past week or two I've been feeling stunned. It's a feeling I've had before. It comes up for me every so often. When it does, my feeling life lessens, I feel much less dynamic and less confident. At my therapy group I've called it my "soccer moment". I had a sports moment in high school that seems to epitomize the "stunned" soul place I come to.
When I was a junior in high school I made the varsity soccer team for my school. I was fast and pretty good at the game. I was used to playing offense. During a game early in the season the coach sent me in to play defense. We were playing a team who was picked to be one of the best in the league. We were wondering if we, perhaps, were also at a place to compete for the league title. I was feeling a little green as I had not played in many varsity games to that point. After several minutes the other team brought the ball towards the goal I was defending. The ball came right towards me. I swung at it and missed. A player of the opposing team rushed and tapped it into the goal.
I felt totally stunned. Humiliated. I knew I had let my team down. My mom was in the stands as well as a few of my friends. I felt embarrassed to have people I knew watching. I think it was at that moment that I inwardly decided that I probably wasn't cut out for competitive sports. My confidence was extremely low. I wondered if I could do anything right.
The whole experience was actually a picture of how I was feeling in general at that time. That summer my mom had checked into a mental hospital for about a month. She had had a psychotic episode about one month after her marriage to my "step-dad". Our family was under enormous strain. I disliked her new husband. He was now freaked out big-time. Their honeymoon period ended about as abruptly as one could imagine.
All this was happening and no one was talking about it. My mom was diagnosed as schizophrenic, then had her diagnosis changed to manic-depression. She began taking lithium. We were all very freaked out and unable to talk about what was happening in our family. I don't remember anyone offering any help. No one explained to me what my mom was up against. No one ever said to me, "wow--that must be pretty challenging." The way it worked out is that we all just tried to muddle through. And pretend that what was happening wasn't actually happening.
The bottom line is that I did not have the opportunity to process any of what was going on for me. A ton of bricks was falling down on me and I just tried to take it and pretend that nothing bad was happening. I did not cry. I did not scream. I did not even say to myself, "this fucking sucks!" Instead, I just went into a "stunned" place. I went on with my life; I don't think any of my friends even realized what kind of stress I was under. Summer ended, school started and soccer season got under way. Go have fun, kid!
In my stunned place, my affect goes down, my initiative goes down and I just try to muddle through whatever it is I'm doing. More on this next week.
Warmly, Ben
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