Her Story
“Oh, Holy Shit! The sky could fall.
I could hyperventilate at the mall. My head
It spins with do’s and don’ts. Around the corner
Could be a float from Macy’s parade. Why is it here?
Was I supposed to put a tissue there? On no, not me.
I dodged that one. Now I’ve fallen into Kingdom Come!
Will I get out? Will I get in? Just keep watching!
Or is that a sin?”
This was the first journal entry that Joy gave me. As you can read, there’s not a lot of joy in it. But there is a lot of fear. That her name is Joy, made it really ironic when her dad bellowed for her, which he did frequently. “Joy, get down here. What’s this puddle on the kitchen counter? Come clean this up!”
“It can come from left, right, above, below.
Best friends, neighbors, siblings, mom.
Any adult, any teacher, even a nice one.
Especially a nice one.
‘Why do you keep doing wrong things, Joy?’
Why do people only notice when I screw up?”
Joy was the fifth of nine children. Four were beautiful and brilliant before her, and four were handsome and athletic after her. She was the dreamer. The shrinking violet. In a family of screamers, she was by nature a whisperer. In a family of opinionated, outspoken, loud individualists, she never stood a chance. She simply couldn’t get it all.
“Just always be prepared.
And scared. And watchful.
Try to see it coming.
Learn the rules: close door; lights off; energy crisis.
Remember all the stuff he/she/they’ve told you.
Anyone can be a land mine at any time.
Be super nice, kind, friendly, upbeat, supportive.
Agree when you don’t.
Use mind-reading skills.
Assume he/she/they are upset with YOU. What did you DO?”
Joy learned to be scared all the time. As a little girl she learned to feel safe only when grandma was there. But at Christmas time, when she was five, Joy was taken to visit grandma in the hospital.
“They told me she was very sick. I stood at the end of her bed.
She had on a soft blue nightie, was smiling and looked beautiful.
I was enchanted. We looked at each other and we seemed to smile and
she seemed to just glow for a long time.”
But, Joy was told, grandma’s sister went to visit her and while her sister was there, the sister looked out the window, and when she looked back, “Grandma was gone.” Joy was already determined to be as attentive as possible. Now, to learn that when you looked out the window people you loved could disappear . . . ?
In third grade the family moved and Joy started at a different Catholic school. She remembers the first time a nun talked to her. “What’s 9 from 15?” sister wanted to know. Joy couldn’t do it. She hadn’t learned negative numbers. Again, “What’s 9 from 15?” Joy asked if she meant 15 minus 9? The nun pursed her lips and demanded, “What’s 9 from 15?”
The teasing started in fifth grade. “Your hair is out of style! What’s wrong with your mom’s leg? Don’t you have any blue jeans? Only dresses? Saddle shoes? Nobody wears saddle shoes anymore.” Joy remembers being teased, tripped, punched, pushed and called “an ugly dog.” In gym they had to pick partners and Joy and one other girl were always the last two, left to be together. She’d stand by the nuns at recess to try to stay safe, but the kids realized they could keep up their taunts. The nuns were busy talking to one another. Joy learned she was unprotected.
By sixth grade Joy says the depression started. Actually, she was considering suicide. She took the cap off the nail polish remover and was ready to drink it when something stopped her. She wrote the teacher a note to tell her about it, and the teacher read the note out loud to the class, calling it a story. She also remembers blurting out to her mother how awful she felt and what she was thinking of doing. She recalls her mother had a basket of laundry in her hands when Joy got up the nerve to confess. Her mother frowned at her and kept on walking.
When she was seventeen, her father died. “Our world wasn’t just flipped upside down. We weren’t even in a world anymore.” Joy became the chauffeur to get the younger four to their activities. Mom, who never drove, had to be carted to the store, church, the attorney’s office, Social Security and anything else that was necessary.
When someone else was old enough to drive, Joy was released to go to college. In her first semester she walked into a counselor’s office and said straight out, “I need some help.” She’s been in counseling ever since. She’s been under the care of a psychiatrist ever since. She’s been diagnosed as depressed, bi-polar and having a borderline personality disorder or maybe even an hysterical personality disorder.
She received an education degree and taught middle school for a number of years until one of the large, frightening boys beat her up. Since then she’s been unemployed and ill. She’s been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis and acid reflux.
Joy is nocturnal. She stays up at least until dawn and sleeps all day, at least until three or four. She never relaxes, never calms down, never takes a full, true, deep breathe. She forgets to eat. She often doesn’t get dressed. She’s late everywhere she goes. She has had few successes in her life and fewer joys.
“Come, Heavenly King, Creator, Blessed.
Oh, no. It’s Not. But now look. Someone’s just been shot.
How could I let that horror reign? Just think of those I put in pain.
Time it has passed. I’ll go to sleep. But I’ll sleep fast.
You never know just what lurks around a sunny corner or with
A child’s birth. Good is bad and bad is bad. Stay alert.
Just remember about dad. Don’t even blink, you’ll miss a move.
And then a bad thing will explode.”
Her Signs
Anxiety and hyper-vigilance have been taken to a new level in Joy’s case.
Because she was boomed at, hollered at, yelled at, she started very early trying to protect herself from attack. What confounded her was that the other eight siblings didn’t seem to mind dad’s loud criticism and correction. Nor did they seem to feel deprived by mom’s indifference. Only Joy shook and trembled when dad roared and only she begged and pleaded when it was time for mom to go anywhere. Joy did not feel safe. Not with her dad and not with her mom. Not at home and not at school. She simply couldn’t remember everything she needed to remember to keep herself safe. And the older she got, the more things there were to remember and the more likely it was she would forget something and so she worried constantly about where “it” would come from--the attack.
Everyone in the house agreed Joy was different. She became the scapegoat. She was easy to blame and she always took the blame. No matter how agreeable and conciliatory she became, she never seemed to be able to cover all the bases. If she tried to take credit for something she had done, she was told to stop bragging. If she tried to take the blame for something she had done, she was told they had expected nothing else from her. The pattern had begun so early that she had no recollection of ever being anything except the bad one.
Joy’s nervousness showed in everything she did. She trembled, she shook, she talked too fast, she talked too loud and she never stayed on topic or on task. Virginia Satir has a descriptive term for the Joys of the world: the distracters. You can never get a straight answer from them, because a straight answer has the power to put them in a box. So, instead, distracters dither and sound dumb and wishy-washy and “crazy.”
“Is it raining?” some one might ask. The distracter would talk for thirty minutes and never tell you whether it was raining, but you’d end up knowing that Mrs. Schmidt had a green scarf and a fat dog. But you had no idea who Mrs. Schmidt was. Nor did you care.
Also, Joy constantly shot herself in the foot. When someone warmed up to her, she tested them and pushed them away. No one was supposed to like her. When she found some medicine that seemed to help, she’d forget to take it. When someone turned out to be a trusted friend or therapist, she’d start missing dates and appointments and stop returning phone calls.
Joy, in addition to being a distracter, became a clown. In a therapy session she would chatter non-stop to keep from having to talk about anything painful. In her friendships and family relationships, she would do a stand-up comic routine that left everyone laughing and no one having any idea what was really going on with Joy. She seemed fine. She sure was funny. And she learned that the best defense was a good, funny offense. But, of course, the offense couldn’t be offensive. To prevent that, Joy was always the butt of her own jokes.
Joy has a number of physical and mental health diagnoses. These symptoms of something “wrong” with Joy certainly add to her self-belief that she is different, odd, unusual, maybe even “crazy.” The inability of any internist or psychiatrist in finding out what is the matter with her has compounded her neuroses and psychoses. Even the doctors can’t determine what’s wrong. “Just how messed up am I?” she wonders.
Her Steps
I asked Joy to do something I frequently ask a client to do, which is to go on line and take the Myers/Briggs Personality Inventory. To do this, simply type Myers/Briggs in the search box and about the seventh option down is a test sponsored by Humanetrics. It’s free. Seventy-two questions. It gives a printout which contains four letters with a number referencing each letter.
What this test does is divide people into sixteen personality types. These are incredibly helpful for individual therapy and invaluable for marital therapy. The letters and numbers, which correspond to the strength of each variable, tell us what type personality we have.
All of us come wired. We are what we are, and it’s all good. No personality type is either bad or unnecessary in the world. The descriptions of personalities and temperaments are vital for self-awareness.
The Myers/Briggs is the most used and best researched test in psychology. An estimated two million people take the Myers/Briggs each year. If you look for books about the Myers/Briggs, you’ll find 1, 850, 000 options. The book from which I have learned what little I know about this mammoth topic is David Keirsey’s Please Understand Me What I go on to explain about each temperament and personality type is informal information I’ve gathered over twenty some years as a therapist.
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Go on-line and type Myers/Briggs in the search box.
The test provided by Humanetrics is free and reliable.
You’ll be given a one page printout with your personality type.
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After you take the test you will find yourself with four letters. If your second letter is an “S,” you will find either a “J” or a “P” for your fourth letter. This means your temperament is that of an SJ, a sensing judge, or an SP, a sensing perceiver. If your second letter is an “N,” you will find either a “T” or an “F” for your third letter. That means you are an NF, an intuitive feeler, or an NT, an intuitive thinker. These then are the four temperaments: SJ, SP, NF, or NT. It is these that we’re going to talk about because it is the unearthing of Joy’s temperament which was so helpful in her therapy.
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SJs are the responsible worker bees of the world.
They keep the societal train well-greased and on the tracks.
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SJs make the world go round. They keep it spinning. They are the rule-followers who do what they should and understand the world through their senses. If they can’t see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, smell it and feel it (feel it in a kinesthetic sense, not an emotional sense), then it doesn’t exist to them. That’s the “S” influence. The “J” influence is that these people are planners, organizers and they like to accomplish things in a coherent, consistent, sequential way.
George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower are two notable SJs. The squirrel who plans for winter by storing away nuts and the beaver who perseveres as he gnaws his way though logs and branches to build his dam home are animals which represent the SJ. Thirty-eight percent of the population are SJs.
Sensing and judging individuals are caring but not usually affectionate. They are sensitive but not normally empathic. Their great strengths are responsibility, loyalty and honest trustworthiness. One of their typical weaknesses is judging and resenting those who are not as devoted or accountable.
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SPs are the life and energy of the world. They were born to play!
They get off the train for adventures and love the detours.
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SPs are the polar opposite of SJs. If they can get someone else to handle the drudgery of daily life, they’re all for it. The “S” influence is sensing, like the “S” in the “SJ.” So SPs perceive the world through their senses, too. Like the SJ, the SP is also a realist, but typically SPs define reality differently. The SPs usually decide, really, what does it matter if we make the beds and do the dishes? They’ll just need to be re-done tomorrow, so why stress over it? Let’s eat, drink and be merry.
The “P” of the SP is perceiving. The perceiver, when paired with the sensor, is impetuous, spontaneous and primed for adventure. There is no fore-thought here. Lights. Camera. Action. John F. Kennedy and Ernest Hemmingway were two well-known and representative SPs. Where SJs are the rule-followers, SPs are the rule-breakers. Well, it’s just that the rules don’t apply to them. If you’re not an SP, get out of the fast lane. The fox is the animal used to portray the SP, wily, creative, conniving. SPs are also often artistic and musical and great with their hands. The SP is the name on the wall: “For a good time, call. . . .” Obviously, a slight down-side to this temperament might be a lack of accountability. Paying the bills? Going to work? Responsibility? Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud.
Seventy-five percent of the world is sensing. Half of them are SJs and half are SPs. These folks see the world and everything in it as black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. There is no slack to be had from an SJ or an SP and there are no multiple realities or alternative explanations. It is what it is, they will tell us.
The “Ns” of the world, on the other hand, only a quarter of the population, live in a gray world of abstraction. The “N” temperament is not black and white. Those who are intuitive are subjective thinkers (test questions with multiple choices and plenty of room for philosophizing) rather than sensing, objective thinkers (right/wrong and true/false questions and answers).
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NTs are the “head” of the world.
They are the thinkers, the analyzers, the architects of ideas.
NTs think outside the box and move society forward.
They design new trains that don’t require tracks.
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When intuition is paired with thinking, we get the twelve percent of the population who “think” outside the box. These folks can look at things the way they’ve always been done and see new ways to do them. They conceptualize things which have never existed and create the new and different. They’re known as the “architects of ideas.” The owl is the animal which epitomizes the NT with its ability to see so much more than the rest of us see.
NTs are typically emotionally cool and aloof. They are often arrogant, or at least seen as arrogant because the niceties of social interaction are meaningless to them. Notable NT’s are Einstein and Descartes. Society would sit still and vegetate were it not for the imaginative, intuitive thinkers who are responsible for most of the progress of the human race.
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NFs are the “heart” of the world.
It would be a cold, cruel world, indeed, were it not for their empathy and warmth.
They bring faith, hope and charity along on the train.
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And now we come to the last twelve percent of the population, the NFs.
(If you’ve just added up the percentages to make sure they equal 100, you’re either an SJ who is also a T or an NT who is also a J. If it never occurred to you to add up the numbers you either don’t care, SPs of the world, or you wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings by adding them up in case I’m wrong, NFs.)
This is where the Myers/Briggs put Joy and this information was vital to understanding how she was traumatized by a childhood everyone else in the family seemed to simply accept and endure. Joy is an INFP. Only about one of every one hundred people has this personality type.
We’ll talk about the NF first, to finish our discussion of the four temperaments.
Then we’ll talk about Joy’s personality and how it might have played a part in her woundedness.
The twelve percent of the world who are NFs are the “heart” of the world. They feel outside the box, in contrast to the NTs who think outside the box. Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt are well-known NFs, and if any president in recent history would be an NF, it would be someone like Jimmy Carter, creator of Habitat for Humanity and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. (NFs are very, very big on peace). History buffs would tell us he wasn’t a very effective president. He wouldn’t be. NFs tend to be empathic idealists. They see the potential in people, not people as they actually are. NFs are dreamers, not realists. A job like President of the United States of America demands realism, savvy and the ability to make snap, hard life and death decisions. Don’t send an NF.
NFs are the sensitive children. They are the kids who stay in from recess to play with the kid in the cast. They worry themselves sick when the teacher doesn’t come to school. They are friends with their grandparents. They want the admiration and affection of all and they give it back ten-fold.
The dolphin is the animal that represents these soft, make-no-waves dreamers. NFs preach and counsel faith, hope and charity. They believe that everyone is worthwhile. They explain that criminals had bad childhoods. They argue that we need to be green and save the planet for our children. NFs are the hippies who want to make love, not war, and if you have an NF as a friend, you always have someone on your side. They’ll drop what they’re doing and rush to your aid, not out of responsibility like the SJ, but out of love. To the cynic and the realist, NFs are the patsies, the naïve bleeding hearts.
Joy was, of course, one of these tender children, the ones frequently described as “too sensitive.” If these children are protected and sheltered from the harsh and the heartless at too young an age, they grow up to be like orchids: indomitable bloomers. But they’ve got to have the early soft and gentle coddling.
SJs need to be taught how to play and be carefree. SPs need to be taught how to be responsible and accountable. NTs typically need some lessons in compassion and social intercourse. If SJs and NTs don’t learn their lessons early, they seem to self-correct when their hormones scream out for connection. SPs learn their lessons from society and the need for a steady paycheck. But NF children probably demand the most compassionate and understanding parents. They have got to be protected while they grow strong. When this happens, they are passionate adults, fighting for causes and people and they are resilient members of society.
Joy is an example of how a vulnerable, budding NF can be traumatized by life. Her dad was a critical, controlling screamer, her mom overwhelmed and unresponsive. The siblings tramped her down, the nuns broke her spirit and the thoughtless, cruel children broke her heart. She learned that people died if you took your eyes off them, even if only to look out the window, and she learned that she was not safe anywhere, anytime, with anyone.
Her Steps
In addition to the Myers/Briggs, to which we refer often, Joy has done a multitude of different things. In therapy she has done artwork, poetry writing and voluminous journaling. All these right-brained activities seem to unearth trauma in ways that our conscious brains won’t permit. The unconscious right-brained information sneaks through under the radar.
Joy has tried numerous medications for her mental and physical health issues.
Nothing seems to make as much difference as she needs it to make. Medication for Joy’s issues has been difficult to determine, and perhaps the various combinations have simply not been put together in the right order yet.
My suggestion to Joy that the root of her issues is that she is a posttraumatic stress survivor has probably done more to help Joy than anything else. This diagnosis was a relief to her. There is no stigma to having been traumatized. You didn’t do it to yourself. Admittedly, we have to work on this point constantly with survivors of abuse, but gradually it does become clear. They reacted to what was done to them in the only ways they knew how. Blaming themselves keeps them in perpetual victimization and traps their abusers inside their own psyches.
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Blaming myself for my own trauma and abuse
Keeps me in perpetual victimization
And traps the abuser inside my own psyche.
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Joy and I have frequently made schedules. Her nocturnal hours continually throw her out of rhythm. She simply can’t get to sleep most nights, her fear of the night and the dark unknown is too strong. She remembers as a little girl crawling soundlessly into the bed two of her sisters shared and only there, with them, being able to sleep. We haven’t gotten to the reason for this and perhaps never will. I am hopeful we’ll get the little orchid strong enough that she can close her eyes in the dark.
Joy also forgets to eat except for junk food, sugar and caffeine especially.
She has come to therapy in pajamas and in various states of being uncombed, unmade-up, and inadequately dressed. Please understand this woman is clean and pretty and delightful. She simply doesn’t know how to care for herself or how to nurture herself. I frequently ask clients to find a childhood picture and place it on their dresser so they look at it often. Then I ask them to care for themselves as they would care for that little child. Joy has done this. The results are disappointing. She has a terrible time being good to herself, even the most basic aspects of good, like eating and sleeping and getting dressed for the weather.
Joy has gotten a lot of meaning from reading War and the Soul. For Joy and another client I’m seeing right now who has a similar story, Ed Tick’s book has been a breakthrough. Although written for veterans of military wars, it is easy to see how domestic war veterans can be similarly shell-shocked and traumatized. We send men and women to military service at eighteen--clearly, much too young. But wars in the homes of innocent children start much earlier than that.
The other similar client, we’ll call her Nancy, was molested by her brother. When she told, she was not believed and was punished for making up such things. Her brother died in a car accident and his pictures are spread throughout the family home like objects on a shrine. She cannot go home without throwing up. One of her sisters cannot go home at all. All these years later, when there is no doubt whatsoever about what this brother did, since it affected four sisters, neither parent has yet been able to say the simple words, “I’m sorry.” He is a hero and no one had better contest that fact.
While Nancy’s childhood abuse memories are specific, Joy’s are vague. For example, she remembers that her grandfather got drunk a lot and she was told to stay up with him while he drank and was assigned to get him up the steps and into his bed. She also remembers one of the neighbors from her early childhood as always giving her the creeps. She recalls holding her little arms out straight to ward him off. Her memory stops there. We know no more right now. We may never have additional information. That’s okay. We don’t need facts. This isn’t a seeking of justice. This is a giving of mercy and Joy is beginning to understand that this mercy needs to come from herself to herself. Here’s one of the most recent things she wrote:
Here’s My Shot in the Foot
Giving all up with every fiber of my being.
Too fast,
Too easily,
Too freely.
Trusting completely
Without reserve
Or reflection
Disregarding my tiny voice.
Not protecting parts of me
I know are too vulnerable and valuable
To fling about like old bird seed.
Over and around
An unsuspecting and unaware World.
Just throwing my flood gates open
And wondering why a friend
Didn’t just flow with the current.
Figured she could swim.
Doesn’t everyone? No.
Won’t she grab the big round tube
If I have perfect aim? No. No.
I forgot to save my heart again.
I am repeating a toxic pattern in a new way:
“Just too kind for you to hurt me”
“Just too nice for you not to love me”
“Just too humorous for you to lose interest in me”
“Just too agreeable to be irritating to you”
And the air is sucked out of my lungs
Even as I remember people
I let go under that current and damn them anyway.
Who needs him?
Who needs her?
Not me.
I forgot to save myself -
As myself,
As a child of God,
As a good person,
As a worthy person
A writer,
A comic,
A friend.
Lifted 10 fifty-pound bags
By myself today.
It’s better with a friend,
But not impossible to do by myself.
I see I was strong enough,
Even if a few muscles were pulled
Stretched
Tender.
I’m still here.
There’s prayer and tomorrow
And right now.
I still have me
Spirit whispers.
Then, I turn the page and write.
My Story
It is impossible not to love Joy. She is kind, charming, complimentary and frustrating as hell. That tendency she has to distract and go off track could be very annoying, if I didn’t understand why she does it. Joy needs to protect herself. She is one of those clients to whom I will inevitably say, as I lie on my death bed, “NOW, do you trust me?” And, of course, I do understand that it is not about me. But it breaks my easily trusting heart when children have been treated in ways which prohibit them from ever trusting again.
Joy has been wounded and hurting since she was a toddler. She is unemployed and struggling through life. It is my determined commitment to keep working with all the nurturing and gentleness she didn’t receive as a child and to help her find herself and build a strong, resilient stem on this orchid so she can bloom and flourish and give the world her wonderful, abundant gifts of love and humor. And if you are a stray dog or cat, I suggest you head to Joy’s house. She cannot resist your innocent little eyes.