From Real Pain to False Memory
& Priest Bobue Horaguchi
Introduction:
What I have is called "Disassociative Amnesia". There is no brain damage caused by physical trauma, but because of a psychological trauma, my short-term and long-term memory play tricks on me. Between my vivid dreams, my childhood and young adult memories, and the experiences that are being formed in my head as they happen, I'm pretty damned confused about what came first, what happened before, and what just happened. Case in point: That lengthy article about my clinical death and floating in the operating room. It seems to have happened yesterday, but it happened when I was 13 years old. I turning 56 this year.
The meds my Shrink gives me keep me in the present moment, which is quite honestly, fucking boring. She tried to get me on antidepressant pills, but I took her advice personally and told her that I wasn't depressed. She tried to explain that that's what the pills are called, but that's not what they work on; they control the wandering mind, the fluttering memories that crash into one another. I tried to explain that a good strong cup of coffee keeps me grounded in the present, so all I really need is something to keep the frazzled nerves of being wired all day in check. Thus, she prescribed Xanax, an anti-anxiety med; it prevents my frail nerve ending from triggering an anxiety attack, you know, like when the air-conditioning on the public bus goes on and you think your core body temperature is dropping, so you must me dying. Yeah, that. Without anxiety, such thoughts as "Am I dying?", "Is this a heart-attack?", "Is that trio of thugs going to kill me?", and other paranoid triggers, don't have any response. With Alprazolam, the answer is always "No" to any paranoid question. I guess with anti-depressants, the answer is always, "Who cares?!"
But enough about me.
Update 11B was all about me and the long-winded analysis about why there's always two sides to the same memory. Which I've been giving a lot of thought to given the fact that my iphone has become my back-up brain, my memory retrieval. What was the name of that movie? Google it. What was the name of that barista at the Starbucks. Check your iphone notepad. What song are these the lyrics to? Search them on YouTube. That's how I remember things now. But the Shrink promises me that once the anxiety and paranoia stop triggering my reliance on my back-up brain the iphone, my memories should return normally. I need to access a normal memory to string together a series of memories, the way one remembers the annual seasons of your favorite basketball team: When you can remember one season, the following season falls into place, creating a string of memories. This string is what is strengthened by recalling the seasons rather than any one player and his individual statistics; the stats will become part of the string as one remembers more and more. That is, remembering without the iphone Google search, which atrophies the brain function of remembering. Anyway, that's the plan. That's MY therapy. Taking happy pills, noting the events in my community (the weather, the homeless, the butterflies, the deaths of our hill animals and birds), and talking with people about the old days of our little town. Connecting the past, present, and predicting the future strengthens the string of the history of my city. It's the base of my memory for the time before I moved in here and what has happened since.
Just as I have my trauma and therapy, so do all the volunteers who share theirs with us here on the blog.
Syndromes & Delutions:
Before I turn the column over to the volunteers who have shared THEIR therapy with this blog, I thought I'd go over the main conditions that trauma creates in the troubled mind. For me it's "disassociative amnesia". I can't distinguish things that just happened from things that happened a long time ago (plus, I confuse dreams and books and movies with the plot of my own life as well). Here's a look at other disorders.
1. Thought Insertion--The feeling that one's own thoughts have been inserted by outside forces and that these memories are not of one's own making.
2. Erotomania--The delusion that a stranger is in love with you. The most publicized cases involve people believing famous celebrities are in love with them, but anyone can suffer from this delusion.
3. Capgras Syndrome--The belief that one's friends, coworkers, and family have been replaced by duplicates or actors.
4. Fregoli Delusion--Like Capgras, Fregoli syndrome holds that one's friends, coworkers, and family are in fact one person, changing disguises to pass themselves off as many people.
5. Intermetamorphisis--Often called "reverrse Capgras", this syndrome holds the belief to trauma sufferers that friends, coworkers, and family are in the process of changing facial features and personality traits, often right in front of the sufferer; many times these morphing people have no faces as they are in the process of changing to another face. One cannot distinguish facial features; instead, they see blank faces.
6. Syndrome of Subjective Doubles--The belief that a doppelganger, an exact duplicate of the sufferer, exists somewhere living a parallel life; they may or may not have similar character traits to the sufferer. Often they feel that they may be living the doppelganger's life by mistake or that the doppelganger has moved into the sufferer's life while they're at work.
7. Reduplicate Paramnesia--The belief that an entire town, city, or neighborhood has been duplicated and replaced with one's own place of residence. If one travels to New York, say, one believes that they are still at home in Los Angeles, that their neighborhood has been changed just enough to seem different.
8. Truman Show Delusion--The belief that all public surveillance cameras are following only the sufferer, that they exist only for them.
9. Cotard's Syndrome (lycanthrophy or birds)--The delusion one believes that one is dead, and that their organs have been harvested and they are in fact empty vessels. Ironically, given the fact that they are dead, they also believe that they are changing into another form, a bird, a small rodent, or even a werewolf.
10. Ekbom's Syndrome (contagious)--The belief that one is covered with bugs that one cannot see; symptoms include scratching one's skin sore, washing clothes and bedsheets constantly, and trying to keep bugs out of the home. This is the only syndrome that is contagious to nondelusional people close to the sufferer.
11. Disassociative Amnesia--Taken as discussed.
Trauma Patients
Foreword & Summaries by Priest Bobue Horaguchi:
Thank you, Professor Anthony Servante, for providing me with the list of syndromes and delusions that would precede the patient updates. I am quite confident that these descriptions will help readers to better understand the symptoms that trauma sufferers display during their daily lives, symptoms that are certainly taken for granted by the general community who are unaware of the mental conditions that our patients endure and the effect that they have on family and neighborhood. Too often have I been told by parishioners that these "sick" people should not be allowed in my temple, or that they should have a separate service; they worry about how their behavior will influence the children. Well, I can most certainly assure any concerned parishioner that the effects of trauma are not contagious or dangerous, and that Temple, Church, Synagogue, or Mosque, is the best place for our patients to be in their time of mental turmoil or doubts.
It is never my intent to segregate the sick from the healthy, be it mental or physical, and I would no more turn away anyone with cancer just because a parishioner felt uncomfortable or believed their children would be frightened by the patient's appearance. I cannot say with absolute certainty that we are all equal in the eyes of the Almighty, be it Buddha or Christ, and I do recommend that anyone with the flu or extreme depression spend the day with a loved one at home lest he cause undue stress to the parish, but only in matters where it is best for all that any disease be kept at bay.
With that in mind, allow me to update your readers on the latest developments with the patients who have volunteered to share their trauma and therapy with your readers. As always, bless you, Professor for giving the traumatized sufferer a voice and a platform to use it.
Summaries:
Ms. E started Sunday services as community service for shoplifting. She attends Paint Therapy also, in addition to Dream Therapy. She was suspended from her job when the store manager noted that she worked with the Sheriff's office as a Community Safety Representative. Since she pocketed only packets of cough drops and aspirin, the manager didn't pursue charges and turned the matter over to her superior. She is serving three months community service at the temple and can return to her job only after completing her therapy. She insists that someone placed the cough drops in her jacket pocket and often finds items in all her pockets when she gets home, but does not remember putting them there. Her paintings depict her Siamese Twin with handfuls of cigarettes and lighters--other items that she has found later in her pockets.
Mr. S was in an car accident and fears driving. His partner does the driving now, but the patient feels that his partner will one day deliberately drive the car into oncoming traffic to teach him a lesson. Since his job requires driving, Mr. S now attends community service at the temple on Fridays. He comes to Paint Therapy on Sundays. He refuses any other forms of therapy. He insists that his driving is in control. But his partner reported that he always turns on the windshield wipers for no reason, though he insists that bird poop is all over the glass. He suffers manic depression and has been referred to a Psychiatrist, but he says he's only there for the community service classes. He paints his partner over and over in different suits. He says the ones in the black suits do the driving. The blue suits are the passengers. All the drawings have blue suits.
Mr. W completed his Dream and Paint Therapy but refused to return to work, though his community service was completed. He demanded the return of all his drawings, but I had to take photos to keep for his records to show his finished his therapy and three months of CS. The drawings depicting Mr. W being followed by clouds. Then he said they were jets. He dreamed often of flying in jets above the clouds, but then denied it. He was almost relieved to be done with his CS and did not return even for temple services. It was rumored that Mr. W committed suicide, though this has not been confirmed. He spoke often of returning to his home country to be with his sick father. As of today, we have no further word on Mr. W.
Mr. D communicates by email. I forward the email to Prof. Servante. He last wrote about writing a book about the causes of his trauma but was having trouble finding a publisher or volunteers to interview. That's when I put him in contact with the professor.
Mr.M attended two months worth of Dream Therapy but began showing up drunk. He was referred to the local AA. He has since been rehired by his former employer. He asked that we minimize sharing his story with the blog until he is settled into his job. We will respect his wishes.
Ms. E suffered a schizophrenic break during her Paint Therapy sessions. She is now under the care of a County Psychiatrist. Last we heard, she was taking her medications and doing well.
Ms. B avoids crowds. She was referred to a County facility. Only her close friends and family visit with her, though we heard that she limits her communication to nods and smiles. She sleeps up to fourteen hours a day and drinks vitamin juices rather than eat solid food. A nurse attends on her once a week.
Ms. S assists me with the therapy five days a week as a means of her own therapy. The other two days, she does Paint Therapy and attends multiple services. Once shy, she is now very talkative. Originally, I thought she was proselytizing, but found out later she just likes talking about Buddha very much. She always asks me questions about reincarnation and is fixated that death may be permanent. Her drawings are of Buddhist gods and demons.
Ms. N does not hide her anger, frustration, and anxiety very well, but she tries. She tries every therapy, attends services here at the temple, and sees a County psychiatrist. She has begun writing to Prof. Servante of late about possible breakthroughs in her memory, information she will not share with me.
To Anthony Servante
You haven't responded to my last email, but I saw my email on your blog. I guess that's a start. Therapy is so limited in what it can do. It gives you a name for what you have, as if that is a cure. What if the disease doesn't have a name, even if you give it one? How will that help? We come up with names for unexplainable or unnameable things. The word "thing" itself raises the question of why it doesn't have a name, other than "thing", and what is to be explained by replacing a nonexistent object or concept with the name "thing" as if that is an answer to a unasked question. Other names like ghost, god, supernatural, demon, also perform this function. Such names beg the question that if the word exists, the object of the word must exist as well. But just because the paranoid man may believe he is being followed doesn't mean he isn't being followed. The therapist must leave room for doubt when giving a name to the syndrome or delusion suffered by the trauma patient. As creepy as some of these delusions may seem, just because one believes that there exists an alternate reality doesn't mean our reality is not someone else's false belief.
I will continue to send you emails. Please respond.
Thank you.
P.S. There is a cure.
Update: I have contacted Ms. N by email and we exchanged phone numbers. It turns out we know each other from Facebook (small world).
Anthony Servante
Thank you, readers, for following the Trauma & Therapy series. Next time out, I hope to turn to Music Therapy and Crafts Therapy. We will continue to post updates from Priest Horaguchi and emails from others who contact me directly.
