Tracey had tried medications before. It was just that she didn’t feel like herself when she was on them. She liked her personality! Yes, it was true she could get excited. As when they had picked her husband’s family up at the airport that time they had flown in for a visit. On the way from the airport back to the house, with her husband’s relatives in the car, tired from the flight, surrounded by all their luggage, Tracey had insisted her husband stop the car so that she could run into the Tatoo Parlor they had just passed on the highway; she’d always wanted to get her belly button pierced and Tracey was just a spontaneous kind of person! They could wait! Why should she turn out so… boring? So like everybody else?
Tracey’s therapist and the psychiatrist said she had Bi-polar Disorder or something or other. Sure, she got depressed. Tracey thought, “I get depressed every few months—it’s seasonal. Everybody gets depressed sometimes. Can’t we just say I’m depressed? But I am definitely not “Bi-Polar”. That would mean I really need help in a mental health kind of way. I’ve got three kids—of course I’m overwhelmed. I know it wasn’t right I grabbed my girl by the hair and shook her and yelled at her. I was fried. If the kids would only listen… but I know plenty of people who are worse off than I am. Why would you say I’m the one needing help? My sister-in-law lives in California and goes to this big hall every morning to sit on a square cushion with a bunch of strangers and hum to herself and focuses on her breathing. Why is that normal?”
Tracey had worked with Carson Center’s Care Coordinator to invite her In-Home Therapy Team, her Outpatient Therapist, the Therapeutic Mentors and the DCF Caseworker to the family’s Care Team meeting. Tracey wanted to make sure that they were all there with her husband and kids and the Carson Family Partner because she wanted to find out once and for all what the big deal was about her medication. Tracey’s Family Partner had been talking about how much better Tracey’s kids might do if Tracey followed through with the medication plan her providers had recommended. The Carson Family Partner had asked, would Tracey try out her new meds for three months and then meet with her family to get their thoughts about any changes they might have experienced in the family as a result? Tracey had agreed and this was the meeting. She was relieved the meeting was finally here. Then everyone could see, finally, that the medication did nothing but slow her down and had nothing to do with helping anybody, especially not herself.
The kids were there with their Carson Therapeutic Mentors. Tracey’s best friend, after whom Tracey had named her first daughter, was there, too. They began, as planned.
“Mom, I like how you’ve been spending so much more time listening to me and talking about my stuff.”
“Things are just better at dinnertime without all the yelling.”
“Tracey, you aren’t running so hot and cold when we disagree. Sometimes you’d go for weeks without talking to me, and it’s been so great having my best friend back in my life in a dependable way.”
“Mommy, you aren’t getting so mad anymore.”
“Honey, it’s been great the way we’ve been able to follow through on our plans, like going to the Berkshires on the weekend. And it’s been really good how we’ve been able to talk things through when we have a problem. Things have been going better at home—we can do our parts in the kids’ plans now—and you even said things are better at your job.”
“The truth is,” said Tracey to her Carson Center Family Partner the next day on the phone, “I didn’t really think there was much of a difference at all in me. I don’t really see it, except that I don’t feel as good as I used to and I think I’m kind of boring now. But I guess I don’t feel as bad as I used to get, either. I thought they were all acting differently these past few months, not me. And maybe they were—maybe it’s a little bit of a back and forth kind of thing. My mom and ex boyfriends had said some really mean stuff about me in the past, so I had stopped listening to people who were critical about my personality. They were jerks. Nobody was being a jerk at this meeting, though. It just wasn’t what I thought they were going to say. I think the truth is that if I want a good family life, I’m going to have to think more about this.
By JAC Patrissi
