By the time you read this, I will probably be about halfway through my first week of a two- or three-week course of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) treatment to see if this helps relieve my depression.

In two previous blogs, I had indicated both that I felt pretty uncomfortable with the idea of electric shock treatment (I was a BIG fan of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and that I was going to try a non-medical approach to dealing with my depression before resorting to additional biological treatments. But here I am in the hospital, getting hooked up to the ECT machine.

What has changed in the past week is the urgency of reducing the effects of this depressive episode on other things. For whatever reason, I’ve been somewhat overwhelmed the last few days with a bunch of new memories and flashbacks related to the childhood abuse I experienced for the first 13 years of my life. I don’t know if the depression is reducing my capacity to keep those memories away, or whether the memories have been mucking around in my subconscious for a while and generating the depression. Maybe both. Or neither. All I really do know is what’s happening right now, which is that I can’t handle all of this at once and still function in my daily life—something has to give. I haven’t been able to sleep for 3 days, and my anxiety level is a steady 14 on a scale of 1-10.

Trying to let the past be the past before it’s too late.

Given that I’m 60 now, and that I’ve been dealing with this old childhood baggage in one way or another for my whole life, I figure I’m not going to have many more chances of getting to the bottom of it. So, my desire is to actively and directly deal with this stuff right now while it’s coming up on its own, instead of trying to put the lid back on again. That means I need to get myself to the point that I’m strong enough to do that—and that means getting through the worst of this depression as quickly and easily as possible. They tell me that ECT is the best treatment when a quick response is the goal, so I’ve decided to give it a try. And, honestly, I could do with a week in the hospital right now, with nothing much to do except cope with getting my brain zapped a few times.

Some Background Info
I used to believe that one’s psyche never gives you more than you’re ready to handle at that time, and therefore, that the appearance of new memories and feelings from the past meant that I was ready to handle whatever it was that wanted to make itself known.


In my eagerness to cooperate with this process, I told all my various therapists that I wanted to use whatever special techniques they could offer aimed at uncovering what I couldn’t remember or couldn’t accept as real when I did remember it.

When I started out for the first time in adult (voluntary) therapy, I didn’t remember anything at all about my family life before my mother died when I was 13. I “knew” a lot of information--where we lived, what my father did for work, where I went to school, the names of some friends, and so on. But I had no picture memories or narrative memories of my family or our interactions that actually felt like my own. Just words I could repeat if someone asked for my story. I assumed this was the way it was for everyone—until my first therapist told me that, in fact, most people can remember (with images, feelings, and stories) most of the important details of their lives after the age of 4 or so. The fact that my family and personal memories started at 14, when I started high school, was “interesting, and something I might want to explore in therapy.”

Right. “Interesting.” Maybe so, in the same way that guerilla warfare or an atomic bomb is interesting. Because that’s how I felt for the next 15 years--like I was constantly walking through a minefield and trying to be prepared to deal with unpredictable assaults from an unseen enemy. A simple bout of good old-fashioned, uncomplicated depression was a welcome break during this time. I don’t regret any of the time or effort I spent on trying to figure out and deal with what had actually happened when I was a kid. I know how important that can be for knowing and appreciating yourself as an adult, with all your strengths and weaknesses.

What has been frustrating, though, is that this old business never seems to be done. Whenever I think it is, and that I’ve come to terms with it, a new wave of memories surfaces and knocks me down again like a sneaker wave.

I was pretty dysfunctional, basically, from my divorce and subsequent business failure in 1988, until 2003, when I started losing weight and (a year or so later) hooked up with SparkPeople. After about 18 months as a member, spending a lot of time on the MessageBoards (that was the extent of my social life then, and still is now, for the most part), I was offered a job as “Coach Dean,” and the next chapter of my life was launched.

I’ve really enjoyed the last 3 1/2 years, especially my work at SparkPeople. Even though I’m not in the office and don’t see anyone face-to-face very often, I feel pretty close to several of the staff, have a lot of fun teasing some of the tech guys, and the work itself is great. I really love seeing people do well at working on themselves and moving toward their goals, and feeling like I played some small role in that. And I dearly hope this will continue for quite a while into the future, as soon as I can get myself back to more normal functioning. SparkPeople is a unique organization and a very exciting group of people to be part of.

The heart of the matter

I think that, somewhere down deep inside, a part of me doesn’t believe I can ever have a decent social life as long as am still “keeping family secrets” from myself and others. When I'm around others, I'm constantly "on-guard" and unable to relax and simply be myself. At this point, all my friends are people I’ve either never met in person or seen only a time or two. All my I work as a coach and trainer is done online as well. If my internet and phone service ever go down at the same time, I might as well be marooned on an island in the middle of the ocean.

The saddest part of all this is that this is the way I like things—or at least that’s what I tell myself. When I’m actually around living, breathing human beings for a significant length of time, I don’t do well at all—I’m prone to panic attacks, bouts of extreme self-doubt and self-consciousness, and actual physical meltdown (extreme sweating, difficulty concentrating enough to participate in a discussion, etc).

My life isn’t totally bleak, though. In addition to my job, I enjoy my biking and hiking outdoors. And even if I didn’t have all my history and psychological baggage to contend with, I’m sure I would naturally be a pretty shy person who had only a small circle of friends, so it’s not as if I “had it all” at one point and lost it due to some accident or mistake.

But it does feel to me like the next step in my personal journey will be about building a wider and deeper set of connections with other people, in “real life”. I think that my recent surgery and the dependency it caused for several weeks really brought home to me how isolated I am. Aside from my daughter and almost son-in-law, who live nearby, and my sons, who don’t, there is really no one who was physically in my life. That doesn’t feel good anymore. I’m sure it’s contributing to my depression and anxiety, both because it doesn’t feel good in itself, and because knowing that I need to do something about this generates a pretty huge amount of anxiety and fear.

What I need, I think, is a real confidante--someone I can talk to about anything at all that’s going on, including the unfinished childhood business, without worrying about traumatizing them in the process. I suppose that’s exactly what a therapist is supposed to provide, but that’s not exactly what I think I need. I need something that’s more like a two-way street, not “treatment.” I need to know whether a regular person can actually stand to see the real me, past and all, and still want to be around me, because I think I’ve convinced myself that will never happen. And I need to know that I can open the door to my internal “toxic waste dump” without hurting anyone.

I don’t think there’s any way to do this intellectually. I can tell myself it all wasn’t my fault, that I did nothing I didn’t have to do to survive, and that it’s perfectly safe to know, experience, and talk about anything that happened then or is happening now with me. But I’m just not going to believe it until I manage to do it, which is probably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever considered doing.

Who knows—maybe I’ll run into a kindrid spirit who’s in the hospital for the same reasons I am, and we’ll be able to give each other what we both need.

Anyway, I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as I get out of the hospital again, probably in a couple days.