About a month later, I noticed—surprisingly casually—that I hadn’t had a panic attack since that evening in therapy. It was 1995, and this was the longest I had gone without an attack since it all started in 1990. And then it became clear to me why it finally stopped, that we had previously been missing a critical trigger, the one to which I needed exposure therapy, my Locke’s Frog: publicity. That is, I had kept my anxiety too private until then, as I had been so terrified of others seeing it and appreciating how defective I was. By finally having a panic attack with someone, and telling her about it as it unfolded, and her being present with me throughout the whole thing, from beginning to end and beyond, that incredible, indescribable force had finally lost its—well, force. I didn’t panic again for many more months, and only about three more times ever. And these were only on isolated, peculiar occasions, that is, when accidentally smoking too much pot. These never led to a legitimate relapse.
Surprisingly, once my panic was cured my emotional life really didn’t improve dramatically otherwise. Honestly, I barely noticed a difference, at least in the immediate aftermath. That said, I had been changing in other ways aside from panic reduction; most significantly, as I alluded to moments ago and will detail later, it was during those years of therapy with Jessica that I also gave up God and became an atheist. Now that I think about it, finding atheism and losing panic were approximately coincidental. I suspect some readers would like me to decisively proclaim that dumping religion cured me of panic, but I don’t recall feeling a clear connection, at least at the time. On the other hand, in retrospect, it’s hard to argue that those two momentous developments weren’t related, at least to a degree. In any event, what I do recall is that I stayed in therapy for quite some time after both religion and panic left me because there was still plenty of other crud to work through regardless.
I suppose the reason my emotional life didn’t improve much otherwise once the panic left is because my anxiety was actually much older and deeper than what became evident that Sunday evening watching Desert Storm. Panic—while a very salient manifestation of my distress—was only the tip of some other iceberg.
* * *
1 Most of the people I meet in my practice who think they have bipolar disorder actually have a more traditional moodiness/anger problem, related to a personality disturbance or some degree of trauma. But doctors like the bipolar diagnosis because insurance companies readily pay for the treatment; patients like it because it readily qualifies them for disability benefits. So, no one’s complaining. To make matters worse, the meds kinda work, falsely validating the diagnosis (heroin would also reduce their anger but it doesn’t mean it’s diagnostic or appropriate). Some of the drugs for bipolar actually have abuse potential, so some folks don’t even take them, instead selling them on the street to supplement their government checks. Similar dysfunctional dynamics popularized ADHD before bipolar, and autism since. We need to be much more careful, so that disorder “awareness” does not become disorder hysteria.
2 As quoted in: Hergenhahn, B. R. (2001). An introduction to the history of psychology (4th ed., p. 119). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. The original work is Locke, J. (1693). Some thoughts concerning education. London: Printed for A. & J. Churchill.
CHAPTER 3
Growing Up with God
He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.
— Proverbs 13:24 (NASB)
MY PARENTS OFTEN REMARKED about having been saved by the Lord around the time I was born (ironic, now that I think about it). They always gave the impression that this was some sort of dramatic event, but—as with most issues in the Landers family—they never discussed it openly. Over the years, I gathered that their pre-Christian days included, at worst, some degree of alcohol consumption, but I suspect it was nothing compared to how much I’d drink when I was the same age. Rumor has it they met in a bar, a notion about which they always seemed embarrassed but that I somehow found endearing.
For as long as I can remember, we had been attending a First Assembly of God in northeastern Dallas at this modern and imposing TV-evangelical-looking structure. Some of my earliest childhood memories are set in or around that building. I can literally remember, albeit vaguely, being in a crib at the church nursery while my parents were engaged in some other church function. When I was old enough, I started Sunday school. And when I wasn’t quite old enough, my parents started making me go to Big People Church. I was restless and didn’t understand much, but I didn’t dare complain openly, for fear of bringing judgement from my parents, or worse, from Above.
Ours was a very Pentecostal production, with regular laying-on-of-hands and speaking-in-tongues. I got to see it all up close, occasionally some grown-up speaking in tongues while standing right next to me—my own father, no less, who was a frequent flyer. I’d sneak a peek at his face, careful not to look too long, like you might when negotiating a solar eclipse. It was frightening to me at times, but I was mostly in awe. Still am, in a way. I obviously don’t believe in Jesus any more, but I still think that shit’s real, whatever it is.
As a family, we were entrenched in that church. For most of my life growing up, both of my parents actually worked there, my mom as a teacher in the day care and my dad as the maintenance man/groundskeeper. Because Dad needed to be available in case of any sort of crisis, he was essentially obliged to be there at almost every service, twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday. He wasn’t too keen on going alone, so typically we all went. But that’s not the only reason we did. My dad was a quintessential Man of the House, a bit puritanical, the kind of dad who might quote Old Testament scripture in casual conversation or when lecturing us. Now, he wasn’t exactly Carrie’s mother from the Stephen King story, but no kid of his was going to sit at home and watch TV while he and everyone else were at church. Mom was a less assertive believer. She seemed as faithful but not as devoted; I suspect we would’ve stayed home with the TV if she had been in charge. Instead, we had our own personal pew space, informally reserved on account of our almost perfect attendance over the years, sitting in the same spot, conspicuously missing if we weren’t there.
I remember feeling so upset some Sunday afternoons, packing up the weekend early to get ready for another freaking church service on Sunday evening, only having been home from Sunday school for just a few hours. Those were the days before cable television, and it always seemed that the best TV shows for the entire week were on Sunday night, like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Instead of being a joy, that theme music for The Wonderful World of Disney was often a cue that it was time to get up from the living room carpet and clean up for church. It always felt cruel and unusual to have to trade in Mickey Mouse for some grown-up church service that I really didn’t have the capacity to follow in a meaningful way. I never understood why I couldn’t just have my private relationship with God and skip it. The public relationship, at that big scary building around all those adults, would never do the private one any justice anyway. I was a lonely, distressed kid; God was sometimes the best company I had, and quite often the only comfort I had. I spoke to Him daily, and prayed more formally every night before sleeping, diligently and methodically thanking him for the blessings and asking forgiveness for the sins of that day. Praying like this was not negotiable: I wouldn’t go to sleep without it. As I prayed, I’d feel a calm come over me. He was listening and I felt safe and no longer alone. Life wasn’t great, but it was tolerable with prayer.
There was something wrong with our church anyway, manifested as this cycle of conflict between different factions of the congregation that peaked every few years. The first time happened when I was too young to be privy to goings-on, and too young to figure it out myself. All I know is that some contingent of the congregation had “run off” Pastor Salter, a man I always saw as intimidatingly angelic. His replacement, Pastor Brach, was also railroaded out a few years later. After that, representatives from the national First Assembly of God ruling body
or whatever stepped in and somehow supervised the hiring of the next pastor. It was so weird: Each week a different preacher was on the pulpit, essentially auditioning, each quite distinct from the rest. Some were hard-core fire-and-brimstone motherfuckers, while others were calm and soothing. Fortunately, we ended up with Pastor McCoy, one of the sweetest human beings I have ever encountered, hands-down. His entire family seemed so pure, to truly embody the essence of Christianity, the way you really expect it to be but is rarely realized. They were all glowing with joy, and it always seemed so real. Still does today, in retrospect, despite my evolved cynicism since.
In any event, being in my early teens, I was now old enough to understand what was transpiring when even our sweet Pastor McCoy and his family were excommunicated (I’m running out of verbs here!). The problem with the McCoys was that the old-timers wanted a more traditional, preachy sermon, instead of this younger, more progressive man who liked the idea, for example, of incorporating a drum set into the musical portions of the service. I remember it getting nasty, people arguing loudly in the halls after church sometimes. Sure enough, my dad and our family friends were in the middle of it all, on the pro-McCoy side. I remember spying from afar, worried that it was going to come to blows, but it never did.
Back at home, things were rough for me, and always had been. Don’t get too excited: I don’t have a dramatic horror story to tell, nothing like David Pelzer’s of A Child Called It fame, whose mother allegedly starved him and assaulted him and tried to make him eat vomit and feces. My problem was a lot less dramatic, a lot more commonplace. My problem was that I was an anxious and sensitive kid, and neither of my parents was affectionate or otherwise accommodating. You’ll see, I was doomed nevertheless.
There used to be a debate in psychology regarding whether our personalities and psychological symptoms and strengths come from nature (that is, our genes) or nurture (that is, our upbringing). I say “used to” because there’s not much of a debate today: We know it’s both. Of course, genes and upbringing interact in complex ways, so many questions remain regarding the relative roles of each. And of course it depends on the condition in question. Some mental health issues may be determined almost entirely by genes (for example, some intellectual disabilities), while others, by definition, require an experience (for example, trauma). However, most development occurs on the middle ground, in that our genes form the foundations upon which life experiences have their impact. Sometimes the genes provide a strong foundation of strength and resiliency, but at other times a shaky one of sensitivity and susceptibility. Even with trauma, one person’s bad day could be another person’s life-changing calamity, depending on their respective inborn temperaments.
I haven’t had the privilege of genetic testing, but I get the sense that less-than-optimal genes have been running in my family. I couldn’t help but notice growing up that my mother’s mother, my Mamaw, was an exceptionally anxious woman, with the kind of anxiety that just seemed psychiatric as opposed to psychological—that is, more natured than nurtured. For as long as I can remember, even when I was really too young to appreciate what clinical anxiety was, she always seemed so nervous, her voice quivering when she talked and her hands shaking when she chain-smoked. On rare occasions, my mother did violate the apparent Landers Policy of Secrecy and disclosed a few tidbits that confirmed some of my suspicions, such as that Mamaw had once spent some time in a state hospital for a “nervous breakdown” of some sort. Keep in mind that back in those days, “nervous breakdown” could mean anything from full-on psychotic to just pestering your husband too much. But a few more tidbits over the years suggested something legitimate, something about a profound fear of spiders that bordered on delusional … and something about a fear of intruders in the home, so that one of my mother’s duties as a little girl was to search the house upon returning from the grocery store or whatever, to look under the beds and in the closets to make sure someone hadn’t snuck in while they were gone. That’s what I mean by psychiatric and genetic, not psychological and learned, if that makes any sense. My mom got some of those anxious genes, and so did I. I can almost feel them in me sometimes, manifest as extreme self-consciousness that can smell a little like paranoia. Often when I hear laughter in public, especially when I’m alone, I reflexively assume it’s directed at me, and might even do a scan to make sure my zipper’s up. When taking my turn in line at the post office or ATM I can almost hear the disdainful thoughts of the impatient people behind me, wanting me to hurry; at times I’ve kinda felt an impulse to turn around and tell them to fuck off, but never have.
As you might expect, Mamaw wasn’t well equipped to be the best mother. On other rare occasions, my mom made vague allusions about physical abuse in the home, the real thing, Pelzerarian. She talked, very little, about long days waiting desperately for her fireman father to get home so it would be safe again. I think one of the kids may have even had to go the hospital once, or at least should have. That apparently changed things, alerting my grandfather to what was going on while he was at work fighting fires, and he put a stop to it. Better late than never, but surely some damage was already done, and it didn’t fix everything.
So, even if our genes had been perfect, my own mother obviously hadn’t received the best education on how to be an effective parent, so my own nurture got off to a bad start shortly after conception in 1969. In her womb, I was apparently exposed to alcohol and amphetamines on a fairly regular basis. Those were the days before fetal alcohol syndrome had even been formally named, and it was not uncommon to give pregnant moms diet pills so they wouldn’t gain weight while pregnant. And “diet pill” in 1970 didn’t mean green tea extract or ginseng: They were real amphetamines not a whole lot different from today’s methamphetamine. It’s probably not a coincidence that those are the two drugs—alcohol and meth—that would later provide me with the most comfortable highs in adolescence and early adulthood. I truly believe that my fetal brain was exposed to these, got a little wired-up to accommodate them, and now feels a little deprived without them (or, alternatively, feels relatively whole with them).
I’m quite confident that I didn’t get a lot of attention from my parents during infancy. Mom once told me that I was an exceptionally quiet baby, rarely demanding attention. I strongly suspect this suited my parents well, facilitating a policy of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when choosing whether to interact with me. Neither of my parents ever had the gift of warmth, but for different reasons. To finish mom’s story, I would repeatedly have a peculiar experience during my college years when I would bring a girlfriend or other guest home with me for a holiday. At some point, I’d leave my guest alone with my mom while I went to the bathroom or whatever, my mom always lighting a cigarette as I exited the room. Later, when I was alone again with my guest, she or he would tell me that while I was away my mom unloaded about how she always loved me but was afraid to try to show it when I was little, because her mother hurt her so badly and she was afraid she would somehow do the same, so she just kept her distance. I’m not sure if that’s all there was to it, but it is validating to know that she knew something was wrong. And it makes me really sad to think about all of this, not just for my own sake but also for that of my mother’s, and her mother’s, and so on.
My father’s problem was simply egocentrism, but a caricature of the same that we all have. My mother would often joke about it, his conversations often being obscenely one-sided. It really was remarkable—a recurring joke from an animated sitcom featuring Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin—how my dad would demand that you listen when he spoke but he would reflexively drift off when it was your turn. Of course, it’s not funny when you’re a baby, learning about reality and forming a sense of identity and self-esteem. Through education and experience, I feel that this is one of the most underrated parenting skills one can have: simply paying attention to your kids. Many psychologists (including this one) believe that there is no free trial period. Even the littlest of babies is not
icing how and to what degree his parents are interested in him, and he’s forming ideas about his identity as a being and his value and role in the world. His little brain is growing very rapidly, making relatively permanent connections, all in the context of getting attention—or not.
Worth noting, I don’t really recall ever feeling neglected. My only memories are of perceiving emotional solitude as normal, perhaps even preferred. Was that preference natured or nurtured? Does an independent baby have leave-me-alone genes that allow, or even provoke, parents to keep their distance? Or is it more nurture: Has the baby simply learned very early on that there’s no use trying? At any rate, Mom did describe one exception where I demanded attention, that I would go ape-shit whenever my diaper was dirty. I remain a bit obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness and order today, and have to entertain that my diaper fits were more about nature than nurture, because it’s difficult to imagine how I could have learned that response so early. On the other hand, we can’t forget Landers’s Second Law of Psychology: “You never know.”
I don’t remember anything about wearing diapers, but I do remember fear being an integral part of my childhood experience, along with solitude. Regardless of how it all came about, I was such a scared little kid, just like my chain-smoking grandma, tense most of the time in general but also cursed by myriad irrational phobias. I threw the cliché tantrum on Santa’s lap during my preschool years, and another on the first day of kindergarten. I was terrified of elevators and even escalators. I was afraid of heights in general and amusement park rides in particular. I was scared of water. I couldn’t put my head under water, whether at the pool or even in the bathtub. In fact, for some time, I couldn’t even put my head under a running faucet. During my early bathing career, my mother had to rinse shampoo out of my hair like they do at a salon, except she would use a cup. Getting water in my eyes made me think I was gonna drown. Swimming pools during summer were never fun for me. For most of my childhood, it was a humiliating chore, until I finally became comfortable swimming in my early teens. I’m not sure how that happened; the fear just dissipated, just like most of the others.
Optimistic Nihilism Page 5