Brad is 25 years old now - fully recovered but he can never bring back the 17 years of missed 'normal' experiences. Today he stopped by unexpectedly and we only had about 30 minutes before my next scheduled student. We sat and talked, enjoyed sharing stories. Soon those 30 minutes turned into 45 and I began to think something might be amiss. Sure enough, the dad called and said his son was still at the school but hoping to be here soon. Things weren't going so smoothly.
That's when the conversation between Brad and I became extremely interesting. This young lad, much like my Brad pre-IM, had a quick fight or flight response. Brad and I started talking about how the fight of flight response leads into a very predictable 'meltdown' sequence that I expected this family was dealing with at that very moment. Because Brad remembers what a disconnected brain feels like (remember he was 17 years old when he found relief) and because he is so articulate, I asked Brad to explain what exactly he was feeling as a 4th grader when he put his fist through his bedroom wall. Of course being accurate, Brad corrected me and said it was actually his heel! He went on to say it was hard to explain the emotion - there were not words for it, words even take the powerfulness away. Then he scrunched his face and fists physically expressing the emotion. I shared that I had recently read of someone describing this meltdown emotion as a GRRRR feeling. Brad agreed, it feels like saying GRRRR really hard - it's a feeling, not a word.
Brad started talking about how it feels when you don't connect things, such as people with their own unique personalities. He ran his left hand down the space in front of his left side, making a list - "Here are a bunch of people" and "Here," running his right hand down list fashion on his right side, "Here are the attributes that each of these people bring. But you don't connect the people" pointing left, "to the attributes" pointing right. "It's very confusing, disorganized" as he scrambled his hands in space. "You also live in a very egocentric world. If you see individuals as a single entity, 'people', as I did, and person A is a bully, but person B is kind. Remember that you don't connect the attributes to the individual people, therefore you never know what to expect. Sometimes they (the entity of people) approach you with kindness, the next time with hurtful words and meanness."
I particularly enjoyed this next description of Brad's, "It's like you are living in a schizophrenic world, full of schizophrenic people." I took just a moment then to try my best to visualize that image.
I love Brad's insights. Some day I would love to sit and interview him on video camera. I think he has a special gift of insight that not many of us have. He's been there.
