Do you have a painful experience you can’t get out of your mind that is changing your good thoughts and feelings into bad ones?
Do you have more than one painful experience?
Do you want help with your painful experience?
Have you thought about talking with a mental health professional?
Nobody can force you to get mental health help. They can make your body go to see a shrink, but your mind doesn’t have to be there. You’re the one who has to make up your mind that you really, really want help, or it just won’t work. I know that from my own experience. I started seeing shrinks in 2nd grade. My mom and dad hated each other from day one. They tore my brain into a million pieces for eleven years and then divorced. My shrink back then was a good guy, but I was so stressed-out by the war between my parents that part of my mind shut down and I quit listening to adults. Instead, I tried killing myself by downing a whole bottle of aspirin, and later by cutting my left wrist with a broken Coke bottle.
I didn’t really want to die. I just wanted a better life where my mommy and daddy loved each other … and me. It’s all I thought about. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong? Is it my fault? Will my life ever get better? Why me?
An endless loop of questions without answers kept going round and round in my dizzy head. That’s why I started acting out my mental problems in more and more bad ways, which got me in more and more trouble.
With the benefit of a lifetime of thought, my adult mind tells me that the only way my scrambled teenage brain kept me from going crazy was by taking my painful thoughts and hurling them back at everybody around me. Bad behavior was my cry for help. I didn’t know how to put my pain into words, so I acted it out, like most confused kids do. That’s when my mental health and the rest of my life finally flushed down the toilet.
The summer between 7th and 8th grade, Mom put me in a Lutheran children’s home. I played invisible and cried every minute of every day until they chucked me out. The summer between 8th and 9th grade, I threatened suicide by car and ended up in the psych ward. Three days later, after tearing up the padded cell, I landed in the state mental hospital, where I spent seventy-seven horror-filled days and sleepless nights questioning my sanity and fighting to stay alive.
I was only fifteen and surrounded by dozens of mindless old zombies who peed and crapped in their once white hospital gowns and on the floors or furniture or rocked back and forth and stared straight ahead through blank eyes or suddenly threw temper tantrums or hit someone for no reason or ran down the hallway and rammed their head into the wall to stop the demons inside their brains. Except for keeping my eyes open and my back to a wall, I’m not sure how I dodged most of the bad things that could have happened to me in a place totally unfit for the physical and emotional safety of children.
If I wasn’t already crazy when the court put me there, I sure as heck must have been by the time they paroled me. For an entire summer vacation, men and women in white coats checked me from head to toe, made me take all kinds of tests and asked me a zillion questions, mostly about my parents. I’ve read their reports. The shrinks used words like “schizophrenia,” “schizoid,” “neurotic” and “autistic” to describe my messed-up brain. They didn’t give much hope for my future, either, and suggested that I stay there. The court paroled me anyhow, leaving me in even worse mental health than when it put me in that hell hole.
My behaviors only got worse. I was on juvenile probation, in and out of the juvenile detention center, failed the 9th grade and got expelled from school for beating up another student. The day I turned sixteen, I stopped going to school and spent my time on the streets getting into trouble. I was totally out of control. The court didn’t think much of my behaviors and sent me off to a residential program, where I had to attend school.
It was the best thing the court could have done for me, although back then I thought otherwise. Now, looking back on it, I realize that I was given a second chance. I was taken away from my unhealthy family and sent to a place that put broken boys back together again. The Pennsylvania George Junior Republic changed angry, lost and out of control boys into young men through psychology, guidance and discipline.
Every kid had scheduled appointments with an on-campus counselor. Aunt Biddy, my counselor, was a round-faced, graying grandma with wire rimmed glasses. Her smile lit up the room. I came to trust her with my secrets, although it took a while before I let her in. She had talked to a million screwed-up kids like me over her lifetime and knew just what to say and do. She shared information about me with the administration, staff, my house parents and teachers to help guide me, using discipline and rewards, to keep me on track. I left there with a whole new outlook on life.
Don’t get me wrong. I was far from fixed. I still had problems senior year at the same high school that had suspended and expelled me. I spent many, many hours in detention hall for ditching class, fooling around in class and not turning in homework. I had terrible grades and graduated 187th in a class of 192 students. I’m pretty sure the English teacher raised my grade to a C- to help me graduate. Despite my many failures and problems, I somehow managed to get a high school diploma. Getting the rest of my life together took a while longer, but having a clearer mind and graduating high school put me on the path to a better life, a life that I could not have dreamed of or hoped for in my old mixed-up head.
If your mind is a mess, like mine was, please get help. Don’t put it off because you’re afraid or don’t trust anybody, especially adults. You’re only hurting yourself. Believe me when I tell you: The sooner you start working on your mental health problems, the sooner you will realize a better life.
Become the master of your destiny.
If you are not already getting mental health counseling, tell your foster parents, house parents, case worker, social worker, school counselor, teacher or other adult you want help. Don’t be afraid to ask. Someone will gladly help you. Sometimes you have to ask for help to get help.
If you are getting regular mental health counseling, you are already on your way to feeling better. Take advantage of this second chance. Listen to the therapist and learn to trust. Trust will set you free. Your therapist does not know how to help you conquer your mental health problem unless you share all the details of your painful experience.
That’s the secret to healing.
If you are getting regular mental health counseling, but do not feel comfortable with your therapist, ask to see another one. Not every therapist/patient relationship is a good match.
You must feel good about your therapist to build the trust you need to spill your guts.
DO NOT quit your mental health therapy! Mental health problems not resolved as a teenager will probably follow you into adulthood. The recovery process takes time, patience and strong commitment. Quitting is the rocky path to a lifetime of failure. Fighting for your mental health is the super highway to a successful placement and adult life.
Changing your bad thoughts and feelings into good ones means putting your painful past behind you and dreaming of the future. *
*Adapted from our book, Beating the Odds In and After Foster and Residential Care
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