Recovering from cognitive dissonance using self help techniques

Then came the fall. The children were happy in their old schools, but I didn’t have a job or any household help or anyone to talk to except a telephone call each morning from my mother and Bob. I became clinically depressed. It was time for me to find ways to recover my mental health.

• After I got the children off to school I did what clinically depressed people often do. I lay on the couch in a fetal position and suffered. I started to watch TV which I rarely did and found solace in “Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”. Finally, at three o’clock,  I picked up the children from school. I was so sick that I couldn’t even go to the grocery store instead sending the children in to buy what we needed. Andrew would get so angry with me because I was living in a dream world and making up story lines that I would laugh at instead of listening to what he was saying to me.

Very slowly I came around with the help of Audrey always giving me a hug, Andrew insisting I play soccer or basketball with him, Stephen cooking and teaching me about Fantasy Therapy as we watched “General Hospital” and I would make up a story line for my favorite characters Anna DeVane and Robert Scorpio using my own experiences each night, and Stacey demanding I act normal and me not wanting to disappoint her.

Summer came again. We all had our friends back and I had children home to watch and someone to talk to and my mental health improved.

I knew I couldn’t spend another winter alone so I convinced my mother to lend me the money I needed to take a course in “Lotus 1,2,3”. This got me out of the house and gave me something academic to do.  I applied for jobs and got two adjunct teaching jobs: one in Uptown NYC and one in Downtown NYC and I began to recover.

A technique I learned in the first mental hospital is very important. When something sad happens people become depressed. Their bodies react by producing serotonin and dopamine. The more depressed a person is the more manic they become in recovery like a pendulum swinging.

When you are manic and the synapses in your brain are firing rapidly place your thumbs on your temples and let your fingers roam at will around your brain. Your fingers will vibrate rapidly and you will feel angry words traveling rapidly from your brain to your temples, so rapidly that the “words” are unintelligible.

I call this a  “memory dump”. By doing this you erase any psychological abuse you have endured without reliving it.

You have to work constantly to regain your mental health once you have gotten rid of the cause of your “cognitive dissonance”, the one who is saying he loves you but is treating you and your children like he hates you or the parent who is treating you,  an adult, as if you are a child. You can recover and lead a normal life if you take every opportunity to do the work necessary to regain and maintain your mental health.