Calling Dr Ruth: Reclaim your life, Mary Jo!

My childhood friend from Shaker Heights "Mary Jo" calls me every so often to report on her struggles with her mental health. She is an incest survivor, having been molested from infancy to puberty by her father, a WWII veteran who reportedly was not the same person AFTER the war as before. Afterwards he developed extreme moodswings, later diagnosed as manic depression, and was treated with ECT (electroshock therapy) as well as lithium. Now deceased, he did very well financially and was regarded as a fine citizen.

I remember very little about him except that he was extremely quiet. So was the house. It was quiet as a tomb, not a fun place for active little kids.

Mary Jo was a firecracker of fun. She was enthusiastic, always up for a bike ride, a visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art, or exploring a cemetery. If childhood is for fun, we certainly had our share! Unbeknownst to either of us, tho, Mary Jo was being sexually molested by her dad in the family basement. Her memories of this trauma were shunted off from her main memory system and kept safely out of range.

Like many other incest survivors - and other trauma survivors - they resurfaced about 30 years later.

MJ and I have kept in touch all these years. When she became an adult, she lagged behind the norms of other adults her age, but unusually so for a woman with such gifts as she had - her ebulliance, her likeability, and her great creativity. She is an artist of the highest degree. But everything seemed to go wrong for her - her relationships with men and her dead-end jobs and her lack of confidence. Neither could she choose good counselors to help in her life's journey.

When she wrote me the other day she said she was desperately unhappy. I gladly called her and listened to her latest saga. The more she talked, the more I said to myself, What's going on with this woman? She NEVER gets better. She NEVER learns.

I'd helped her in the past giving her excellent suggestions on how to take charge of her life. Was it a question of self-sabotage? Partially. But it was deeper than that.

Mary Jo, I said, you have a hidden personality disorder that has never been detected.

No on ever diagnosed me w/that, she said. The one constant in her life is an excellent psychiatrist she sees - Dr. Schottenstein - who has her on meds for depression.

It doesn't matter, I said, all that matters is helping you get well. This new diagnosis I've given you - personality disorder NOS (not otherwise specified) - is also a mix of several personality disorders - it helps ME as your surrogate therapist to understand you better and to know the difficulty of your learning abilities.

Interestingly, she has always loved working with developmentally-challenged individuals and once thought of adopting a girl with a very low IQ. This makes sense as MJ herself has difficulty in learning to manage her emotional life.

I asked MJ to write down all my suggestions and to do her best to follow them.

A theme that cropped up in our conversation was she wants to get closer to God. I told her this was a cop-out, a way to avoid her current massive problems. She wanted to get closer to God by continuing to attend Overeaters Anonymous meetings even tho she no longer has a weight problem. Through attending, she must adhere to writing down her meal plans, which, for her, is now obsolete, but she was willing to make that sacrifice so she could attend meetings.

This is absolute nonsense, I told her. I suggested she feels so comfortable with these people she'll do anything to be around them. I stressed that she be around normal people. If you wanna be close to God, I said, go to a church! Get involved there!

She is drawn to unhealthy people, in particular, crazy people, like a horse to oats. She identifies with them plus her self-esteem won't allow her to be with normal people cuz she feels uncomfortable, inferior.

Above all, I said, you must find a good psychotherapist. She goes to losers. She managed to find, a couple yrs ago, a male therapist who had sex with her during the session. She's the type of person that If something bad is gonna happen, it'll happen to MJ. This is no coincidence. It's an inability on her part to "read" other people, to anticipate the future, and an inability to protect her inviolable self. She is the same victim she was when her father perpetrated the atrocities upon her young innocent body.

Then on the phone she tells me, "I have to work on my incest issues."

I almost jumped thru the phone! (Please realize I am NOT her therapist, I'm her friend.) Mary Jo, I said, you've been working on your incest issues for 10 years. You've processed them. It happened. The memories are still there. Just brush them away when they come. Don't go back for more... that's being a masochist.

So what's a personality disorder anyway? And is it treatable? It's an INEFFICIENT WAY of looking at life to solve problems. Ever read Lamb's Essay on a Roasted Pig? In order to roast a pig for dinner, they had to burn down the whole house and then they'd have the desired roasted pig. That's MJ's story. It takes her 10 years to figger out what she should've in one year. I'm exaggerating, of course, but you gt the point.

So does MJ. We talked on the phone today. She said I could blog this.