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It’s Not Your Fault How Healing Relationships Change Your Brain & Can Help You Overcome a Painful Past

Patricia Romano McGraw

Wilmette, Illinois

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Bahá’í Publishing, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091-2886 Copyright © 2004 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ 07 06 05 04 1 2 3 4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [copy to come]

Cover by Robert A. Reddy Book design by Suni D. Hannan

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Contents INTRODUCTION 1: RELATIONSHIPS AND

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2: ATTUNEMENT

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3: ATTACHMENT

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4: STRESS, TRAUMA, AND MEMORY

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5: HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIP TO HEAL EMOTIONAL PAIN

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6: BELIEF, BLAME, AND GOD

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7: IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT

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NOTES

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APPENDIX 1: HOW TO GET HELP

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APPENDIX 2: A WORD TO THE PROFESSIONALS

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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INDEX

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Why Won’t My Brain Do What I Want It To Do? Many people who su²er from emotional pain share Kim’s feeling of being broken, damaged, permanently un³xable. They, like Kim, often complain that their emotions just won’t do what they want them to do. They, like Kim, have asked me, “Why do I sometimes feel and act ‘crazy’?” “Why do my emotions get out of control?”

“Why do I explode with anger when I am telling myself to be patient?” “Why am I anxious when I need to be calm?” “Why can’t I sleep?” “Why am I addicted to . . . (you name it)?” “Why can’t I make myself be the way I want myself to be?”

When people like Kim ask me such questions, I answer them something like this: “Your emotions are causing you pain because you have been injured. You are hurt, and you need to heal. Just like when you break your leg, or su²er a wound in a war, you are not the same as before the injury. But that does not mean you cannot heal. You can, you will, you do heal from emotional injuries. But this healing, like all healing, takes time.

Knowledge and compassion for yourself can help to speed the healing process.

Your healing will happen within our work together, within this relationship between you and me that I call the ‘healing relationship.’ But remember, just like a broken leg or a wound from war, the healing will happen gradually and in stages. There is no Maytag repairman for your emotional tangles. Your brain and emotional system include all of you: your body, mind, emotions, relation-

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ships, experiences, everything. There is no switch that can be ·ipped so that you will snap out of your problems. You are not a computer that simply needs to be reprogrammed by popping out old software and popping in new software. Your emotional being is an aspect of the totality of you, and you are a part of creation, a part of nature.”

“You are alive and constantly in a state of growth and renewal. You will heal. Together, you and I will walk the healing journey, and you will heal.”

Disease or Not a Disease—Injury or Not an Injury One of the reasons Kim believed that her brain was like a broken computer was that she had been told by some of her doctors that if she took medicine, it would cure her. She was given lots and lots of medications before, during, and after all of her attempts to hurt herself. She had the idea that medicine was the “Maytag repairman” of her brain problems. Find the right medicine, and voila!

Your brain is ³xed! The problem is that this solution only works for some problems. It works for problems that ³t the “disease” model of mental illness. Doctors rely on a method of reasoning called “the medical model.” The medical model says that to treat a disease, you must ³nd the right diagnosis and then apply the right remedy. This should cure the disease. For example, if you have an ear infection, you take an antibiotic, it kills the infection, and you

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are better. Or if you have diabetes, you take insulin, and although you won’t cure the diabetes, you will control it. Right diagnosis, right remedy, right treatment for the disease.

In mental health, the medical model continues to work well for mental illnesses that are disease based. For example, if you have schizophrenia, you should take medicine and realize that without it, you cannot expect to be well. This is because schizophrenia is a disease in the same sense that diabetes is a disease. Although it can’t be “cured” with medicine in the sense of making it go away completely, it can usually be well controlled with medication. It is inherited and has a documented biological cause. Treating the disease of schizophrenia with a medication ³ts the medical model very well and, in fact, works very well. Likewise, if you have a biologically based mood disorder such as major depression or manic-depressive illness, mood-stabilizing medications and antidepressants usually work very well. There are many other mental health problems that ³t the medical model well. For these problems, proper diagnosis and treatment by a psychiatrist are very important.

A psychiatrist is a medical doctor, meaning he or she trained in medical school just like your family doctor did. All doctors, from surgeons to gynecologists to psychiatrists, receive four initial years of medical training. Then, during their next three years of training, they focus on their respective ³elds. Psychologists do not attend medical school. They attend graduate school for approximately the same seven-year period that it takes to become a physician, but instead of studying medicine they study psychology and psychotherapeutic processes. Psychiatrists, as medical doctors, are licensed to prescribe medication. Psychologists (and other psychotherapists such as social workers and counselors), for the most part, are not licensed to prescribe medication.

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However, the problems that I will be discussing in this book are not well understood by using the medical model. The problems I am discussing are related to injuries sustained within relationships and to the long-term consequences of these injuries on the brain and nervous system. In other words,

This book is about how relationships change your brain.

A relationship injury or an emotional scar is not a disease process.

Table 1 Making a Distinction between Major Mental Illness and Emotional Injury

EMOTIONAL INJURY

MENTAL ILLNESS

Yes

No

No

1. No mental illness, but has a history of emotional injury.

2. No mental illness, no emotional injury.

Yes

3. Has mental illness and a history of emotional injury.

4. Has mental illness but no history of emotional injury.

1. I have no major mental illness, but I do have a history of emotional injury. Much of what this book discusses applies to me.

2. I have neither mental illness nor a history of emotional injury. I can learn how to help others by reading this book.

3. I have both a major mental illness and a history of emotional in-

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jury. While I can learn a great deal about part of my problem by reading this book, I will not learn about the parts of my problem that my psychiatrist needs to treat.

4. I have a major mental illness but no history of emotional injury. I can learn from this book, but I must remember this book does not directly address many of the problems I have.

This book is about box number 1.

To make these distinctions clearer, see Table 1. At the side of the table is the category “mental illness,” with two choices: either “yes” or “no.” At the top of the table is the category “emotional injury,” with the choices “yes” or “no.” This creates four possible groups of people: (1) people who have emotional injury but no mental illness, (2) people who have neither mental illness nor any history of emotional injury, (3) people who have mental illness and also have a history of emotional injury, and (4) people who have mental illness but no history of emotional injury. This book is about helping people who fall into box number 1.

My point in making all of these distinctions is to be clear about two things. First of all, this book is not about mental illness per se.

Please do not interpret anything I say about healing from emotional injury as a suggestion either that mental illness is not real or that it can be cured by good relationships alone. This is not the case. Mental illness is very real and is best treated by skilled physicians. The second reason is to make clear that it is very possible to have a mental illness and emotional injuries. In fact, it is very common. It is also possible to have a problem with addictions and to have this problem in combination with emotional injuries and mental illness. I will mention some of this interplay later. But for now, it is enough to know that this book is about how relation-

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ships, both good and bad, a²ect your development. Much will become clear as the chapters unfold and one idea builds upon the next. And now on a related note . . .

Depression, Depression, or Depression?

The English language sometimes makes it di¹cult to communicate about emotional things. For example, take depression. If you look at the four boxes in Table 1 and think about it, “depression” could ³t in all four boxes. You can feel depressed because of a disease of major depression, or you can feel depressed as a symptom of emotional injury. Or you could be depressed as in box number 3, because of a combination of the two. You might also have neither of these problems and be depressed as a result of some physical illness or because of grief or loss. To make matters even more confusing, we sometimes use the word “depression” to describe everyday sadness, the feeling of being “bummed out,” or “down” for a short time. The word “depression” is just about as confusing as the word “love” in our culture. We say we “love” ice cream, and we “love” God! How can that be the same? We “love” our parents, and we “love” the Red Sox. We “love” to sleep, and we “love” to serve humanity. And so it is with depression. We say we are “depressed” on a bad hair day, and at the other end of the spectrum, depression can be a life-threatening mental illness. Feeling sad, blue, and low in energy are signs that something is wrong. Temporary sadness or a low mood that is a reaction to everyday life problems will pass in a short time.

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