ANN LANDERS

People will do things differently, your instructions will probably be misunderstood. What you say is likely to be different from what they hear.

(Priscilla Elfrey)

This story appeared in Ann Landers column in the “Toronto Star” newspaper many years ago.  By spending so much time listening to, and trying to help other people, and  getting feedback from readers who disagreed with her, Ann Landers provided a very valuable service to her readers.  

It was interesting to note that she openly admitted that many of the basic truths that she was prepared to take to the bank earlier in her career, were later assigned to the trash can in favor of deeper levels of truth.  The story in this case was entitled:  --- Chronic Depression. 

  

“Dear Ann Landers:

I am 28 years old.  Seven years ago, I developed chronic depression.  After 4 years of agony I was given medication and I began to pull out of it.  My psychiatrist advised me not to return to my former occupation.  He claims that if I take on too much responsibility I will fall apart.

I am extremely shy.   I have an inferiority complex and hate the job that I have.  I have never felt loved by anyone.  My mother, father, sisters and brothers deserted me when I was ill.  

I asked my Psychiatrist to tell me the truth about my mental illness.  He said that if I avoid pressure situations and continue to take my medication faithfully, I may lead a fairly normal life.  Should I believe him Ann? 

Signed --- climbing out of darkness.”

Here is Ann Lander’s Answer:

It sounds as if you are in the hands of a highly competent Doctor.  Listen to him.  Reach out for friendship.  I’m sure that you have a lot to give and there are so many folks like you who are lonely.  

Look in the phone book for Recovery Inc. (It is free.)  Attend the meetings.   Recovery’s members share problems similar to yours.  The emotional support they give is phenomenal.  Good luck and God Bless You.

My response:

When you understand what distorted fear can do to the human mind, the above problems are far less complicated than one might expect.  To know that this young woman was probably never given the right advice as she journeyed through the maturing process, and that she may have been unduly relegated to the ranks of the mentally ill, leaves me with a sickening feeling as I write these words.

Suppose we took a 10-year old boy who was considered to be mentally, emotionally and physically well adjusted, and we locked him in a room where he obtained no outside stimulation except for the basic physical requirements to sustain life.

If then, at the age of 21, we released him into the outside world and he could not cope, or compete with his peers, we would not conclude that he was suffering from some form of mental illness.  We would know that he had been denied the opportunity to mature like the other people in his age group.

When the young girl in our Ann Lander’s story states that she is extremely shy and she has a massive inferiority complex, shouldn’t alarm bells ring inside the minds of the adults who should be nurturing this young woman?  Shouldn’t the Psychiatrist recognize these “symptoms” as a brilliantly lit microcosm of distorted fear reactions? 

Are they so preoccupied with the veracity of their psychological understanding that they fail to see the obvious?  Must this girl be shunted aside and told that she is useless when in fact the psychiatrist is acting like he is useless himself?

Shouldn’t it be obvious that this girl locked herself up in a voluntary prison designed to avoid fear reactions of embarrassment, guilt and failure?  A prison that was just as devastating to the maturing process as the  “prison” for the boy in our above imaginary story.

Like the young woman in this story, I also suffered from feelings of inferiority when I was trying to get through adolescence.  Once in high school when I was required to give a speech in front of the class, my voice and body shook quite openly.  That teacher never had any advice or encouragement to offer me. 

He probably thought that my nervous system was inferior to that of other students and there was nothing that he or I could do about it.  At the time, with no other advice to fall back on, I came to the same decision about myself also.

Thank God that nowadays, the teachers are more in tune with psychological matters, and such a student would be referred to the proper channels for psychological help.  How sad to think that a person’s lifestyle and potential lifetime career can be sidetracked so easily.

Did you know that Winston Churchill stuttered and stammered when he was a youngster and he only went on to become one of the world’s finest orators?   Yes it is true that all of us have some such problems as we approach adult life and most of us overcome them.  But it should not be a hit and miss affair.                        

My performance in that classroom, and in many other interpersonal situations, should have earned me admission to a special class where psychological guidance would have helped me to change my incorrect approach to fear.  It is my fervent hope, that one of the by-products of this book will be the addition of such courses in every school in the entire world.

Returning to the letter in Ann Lander’s column, not only did the girl systematically lock herself out of the maturing process by her constant avoidance behavior, (shyness etc.), but she compounded the problem by telling herself that she was inferior to others.

The current level of psychological understanding that is being practiced by many in that profession has concluded that the girl in our story is suffering from physical or chemical damage inside her brain. 

They believe that this perceived damage is the reason for her extreme shyness and medication and avoiding too much responsibility is the best recommendation for such people. 

But if they were right, how could some people who were extremely shy when they were young, become absolute extroverts in later years?  The answer is that these conditions are all negotiable and can be corrected with the proper psychological help.  

What the girl in Ann Lander’s story really needed was a competent psychiatrist who understands what fear can do to the human mind.  Who knows the value of empathic thinking on the part of a therapist, --- who could guide her in the hierarchical approach to overcoming fears, --- and who could gently persuade her, that her problems are all negotiable.

Her self-proclaimed inferiority complex tells us that she never was able to sustain any confidence about herself.  We need individuals who can assess this girl’s failure to experience specific and necessary maturing achievements and to motivate her to become involved in these experiences.

She has to give herself the right to make mistakes and fail.  Obviously you try not to make serious mistakes but she must at all times begin to learn from her mistakes.  This approach, systematically encouraged by others, has the potential to allow this girl to actively participate successfully in the adult world.

The advice that the psychiatrist gave this girl can no longer be justified.  His lack of understanding can no longer be used as a reason to set this girl’s life, and others like her, aside.  

Since her problems are all negotiable, she deserves the chance to embrace life with all the happiness and pride that a reasonable level of confidence and successful performance can potentially give to her.

Did her bio-psychiatrist ever ask her if she was afraid of the feelings of fear itself?  If she was, --- and I would be willing to bet on it, --- then, every time that she tried an achievement that activated the emotion of fear, she avoided it.  Obviously she can not take any pressure or adult stress, she hasn’t experienced the maturing process.

Can you remember the fear that you felt when you first tried to ride a bicycle?  If you never got past that fear, then you may never have learned to ride a bike.  That wouldn’t prevent you from becoming a successful adult, but if you applied the same type of avoidance behavior to a conglomeration of achievements, then you would begin to accumulate enough failures of commission --- or omission,  to invalidate the maturing process.

So why does medication actually help some people?  Some of them act on the brain to make the person more relaxed and less susceptible to the emotion of fear reactions.  In this state, some people can do things that they can’t do without the medication.  There is a disheartening parallel here to someone using alcohol to give himself a shot of bravery.  

Of course it doesn’t always have a positive result. One person, who could not speak in a conference setting at work, took medication to calm his nerves which worked fine except that the ideas that he expressed were disjointed and his audience wondered what was wrong with him. 

The point being that as long as you try something, even if you fail, there is the potential for you to learn from it and be better the next time.  If your fear makes you avoid the achievement, then no new learning is possible.

Another factor in determining that medication has helped a person concerns the power of suggestion. This brilliant psychiatrist, who knows what he is talking about, has told me that my brain is damaged. 

The neuroleptic drug or drugs that he is giving me allow me to function normally.  These positive thoughts can, for a variable period of time, alleviate the conglomerated fears that are actually causing the problems.

Ann Lander’s answer that the girl was in the hands of a competent Doctor was incorrect.  It is usually right to place ones confidence in those who have studied something all of their lives, but at the same time, the truth is not interested in how long you have studied a problem. 

If you are wrong in your assumptions, no amount of time can make them right.  Only increased knowledge can change a wrong, or false idea into a right one.

Ann’s further comments about self-help groups like Recovery Inc. are excellent.  But should these people be required to find their own way out of the quagmire when structured help should be available? 

There are thousands of competent psychiatrists that help these people out of their dilemmas.  It is the confused psychiatrists, who don’t know that they are confused, and the obtuse bio-psychiatrist’s that must change their incorrect beliefs.

Knowing that these problems are all negotiable, places a heavy burden upon me to finish this book and give these people a chance to be “recalled to life.” I hope that this story from Ann Lander’s column from long ago helps to convince you that understanding fear equals understanding human behavior.