THOUGH THE LOOKING GLASS 5 – A new past

Suzanne Black and Stuart Jessiman

Psychologist Dr. Suzanne Black and reluctant patient Mr Jessiman

…So I’m diagnosed Bipolar. This isn’t a nightmare, at least not right now. It offers explanation of so much that has come before it – my attitude my ‘turns’, my sadness. I find myself reappraising the past…

Repeated weekly visits to the psychologist help me begin to make some sense of the past and to examine and mange the myriad of thoughts in my jumbled head. Illogical and tangled noodles of thought begin to unravel strand by strand; the past and the reason for why things happened as they did begin to make sense.

My trust in Dr. Black, the therapist, continues to improve. We make each other laugh a fair bit, and this rather informal relationship is unlike any therapist I’d worked with before and it works for me. It is like having a conversation with someone who treats me as an equal of sorts. This feels real. No blessed clinician here. No cold psychoanalytical water to wash my wretched Bipolar feet. We are just two folks sitting in all encompassing massive leather furniture. Mine, she says, is made of buffalo leather dyed black. Blimey, did she shoot it herself? ‘Her club fauteuil hailed from the 1930’s and again harkens back to images of Freud’s plush office, she continues. I had no idea what she means, but the whole place is comfortable and that is the key thing for me. Mind you if Freud shot buffalo to create furniture for his office no wonder he was obsessed with hysteria. Perhaps one day his gun jammed as a Rhino turned and charged him. One can only be glad he didn’t seek a Tiger hide for his wall. Perhaps the last we would have seen of him was the man, gun held uncertainly, stalking into the Sumatran forest.  One could only hope his Superego would generate sufficient horsepower to have his legs cycle fast enough to outrun an enraged tiger….Stuart please. Therapy, therapy.

‘Do I have a Freudian enchantment of sorts and fancy myself as him? Am I trying to show this Brit an American’s way of bringing attention to one s unique assets – See how wonderfully comfortable an atmosphere I’ve created  – just like Freud!‘

Dr. Black mentioned the ambience she had tried to create and the inspiration she drew from visiting Freud’s offices in Vienna and London. The therapy space works well. But, having never seen Freud’s office, it doesn’t generate interest for me. He might as well have conducted therapy in a bouncy castle for all I care. Why this relentless, restless need to joke? I’m paying for this therapy. Why bother? Shut up, shut up for god sake shut up. DO THERAPY NOW! It’s a constant strain to bring myself back from flyaway frivolous thought to be, once again, sitting here in front of Dr. S Black doing therapy. I now know why. Then on some occasion I wasn’t even aware i was doing it. Without realising it I was exposing the problem. This was hypomania only I didn’t yet know it yet.

As we talk about issues from my past, I realise my life story is not one that is remotely similar to the one I crafted for myself. A central theme of the old narrative, that I realise is wrong, was the sense of personal failure derived from my inability to make my long-time relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) work for me. Being unable to remain sober despite repeatedly doing the twelve-step program was failure that soaked and corroded my sense of worth. But now understanding something of Bipolar, I understand the burden of guilt I carried was wrong. I began to reason AA was probably NEVER going to stop me drinking, because relapsing was not a fall from grace, but instead a form of self-medication. I was trying to escape either a racing mind flying from pillar to post, or one that had stopped dreaming and was struggling to maintain a belief that human effort was worthwhile.

But that was then. You can’t undo what is done I suppose But as I recall memories of opportunities missed because of my Bipolar condition it draws out still more anger. The euphoria is gone. There is a future to shape, but right now I cannot help but wonder what might have been had I known what the problem was and had it been treated decades before.