How I Rescued My Brain

by David Roland

  ‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

  He named a town out west — an area that I knew to be affected by drought. He said he was a farmer.

  ‘Things have been hard lately,’ he told me. I saw pain flash across his face. ‘I’ve got to handle stress better. I’m glad I came.’

  I smiled. I wasn’t the only one looking for an insurance policy.

  UPON MY RETURN home, I felt renewed, despite not yet having a definite idea of how to undertake mindfulness meditation. With a new commitment, I took the Chenrezig statue, a black metal Buddha we’d bought on holiday in Thailand, an incense burner, a blanket, and some cushions, and set myself up in the girls’ cubby house.

  The cubby had been an afterthought to the house. Once we moved in, Anna said we needed one. Ashley and I had sat down with a book of cubby-house designs and agreed on one we liked. It was classic, a colonial farmhouse with a gabled roof and a long verandah. I imagined the girls sitting on the verandah in their yellow and pink chairs, looking out over the garden and having tea parties with their friends. Anna was happy with the design but, being practical and farsighted, wanted it to be large enough for a double bed so that guests could stay, while still leaving room for the kids to install their toy kitchen and to play school. And so the cubby was expanded into a pint-sized garden studio tall enough for an adult to stand in. We’d painted it the same colours as the main house and attached the same grey tin roof.

  I made the cubby house my place of refuge, away from the commotion and demands of the family. I tried different ways of meditating. I visualised the Chenrezig image as best I could, peeking at the statue every now and then to remind myself of its particulars. I tried attending to the surrounding sounds, not placing emphasis on any individual one. I tried counting my exhalations. I tried visualising a dark colour while breathing out and white light while breathing in.

  Gradually, over several weeks, I increased the length of time I was able to sit in meditation. And gradually, something changed in me. I began to feel motivated. I weeded the garden and stopped reading the newspaper from cover to cover.

  The next time I met with Wayne, I reported my renewed vigour. I was sleeping better and exercising again. And I had made a friend.

  I had met Nick, who was around the same age as me, at a barbecue. He’d played classical guitar in his youth, like me, and wanted to do so again. He was eager, with a grin that reminded me of a cocker spaniel. We agreed to meet up and play some duets. The day after we met, I pulled out my old sheet music, warmed up my fingers with scales and arpeggios, and went through the short pieces I used to play.

  Before long, Nick and I were playing together regularly. Nick was a hustler, prodding me into action with his enthusiasm. Soon we started a series of fundraising concerts, held at a local community hall, inviting other musicians to perform. The duets with him and the contact with other amateur musicians brought me pleasure.

  I began to have the energy for other new projects too. For years, I had been mulling over an idea for a book on risk-taking: why people did or didn’t take risks, such as embarking on a new relationship, or ditching an unfulfilling job. Now I picked up books on the subject, started making notes, and worked out a rough chapter outline. I came across a book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, that recommended stream-of-consciousness writing: ‘morning pages’. So I added this exercise to the end of my meditation session, as a way of generating ideas for the risk-taking book. I hadn’t written about Anna for a while, but my thoughts and feelings about whatever was happening with us also began to slip into the jottings in my journal.

  It seemed that life had finally turned around, and I dared to hope that my ‘insurance policy’ was working. To reward myself, I decided to go on a seven-day group trek along a desert mountain range. I hadn’t walked in wilderness with a backpack since my twenties. During that week, I exhilarated in the sense of freedom: the momentum of walking without children tagging along, and the splendour of camping under big desert skies without a building in sight. Life had taken on a new sheen at last.

  I returned to civilisation in September, to hear news of the Lehman Brothers collapse. Global stock markets were plummeting. It was being referred to as the global financial crisis. At the same time, I noticed how low our bank balance had become.

  7

  OVER THE LAST year, ever since Dad’s death, I’d hankered for someone to look up to — a parent to listen to my miseries, give me an accepting hug, and tell me something wise. Dad wouldn’t have been able to do anything practical for me, but he could’ve provided these things. After his death, I realised what a vacuum there was; as the eldest of my siblings, I was now at the end of the family line.

  Being the executor of Dad’s will, I’d had to deal with his accountant, his solicitor, and my extended family. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs had also contacted me: they’d made Dad a payment before becoming aware of his death, and it needed to be refunded. I had to make sense of his pharmaceutical and nursing-home accounts. A final tax return was required; Dad continued to pay tax long after he was gone. I debated dollars and cents with clerks on the phone as if Dad were still alive. The people I dealt with were only doing their jobs, but each conversation, each occasion I went through his documents, re-ignited my sense of loss, and the ache in my chest would restart. Every time, it took several days for the veil of grief to part.

  As the first anniversary of his death approached, I got an anxious feeling, as if something awful was about to happen. I called my sister and spoke to her about it. She said she didn’t feel apprehensive and that it was okay. She was right, of course. Following the anniversary, the feeling eased, and I could finally stop thinking about him so intensely.

  When I had first stopped work, it meant that I could help out more with the children, relieve the domestic pressure on Anna, restore my health, visit Dad when he was ill, and look after his financial affairs. It also meant I had time to extend our property portfolio.

  I enjoyed dealing with numbers, and with property managers, builders, and tradesmen. With men in work shorts and boots, there was no need to step around sensitive feelings. And I liked talking about things I could see and touch, things that would last — a contrast to psychology, in which most of the people whose lives I’d helped I would never see again.

  At Dad’s funeral service, a cousin had presented me with an extensive family tree he had drawn; there was a line of builders going way back. Our earliest Australian male ancestor, originally a convict, had made good, building churches and hotels, and eventually becoming the mayor of Waverley, in Sydney. He even had a street named after him in Bondi. Dad had been handy at making things too.

  I’d always enjoyed looking at buildings, identifying their architectural periods and features. It was a passion that Anna and I shared. I’d renovated my first house on my own, before my marriage. Dad had shown me how to do the electrics and lent me his prized tools. So my cousin’s revelation of our architectural line had a neat symmetry about it.

  In 1993, one of Anna’s relatives had told me how he’d built his wealth through property investment, and how we could do this too. ‘You do your psychology thing, which is what you really want to do, and let your assets build up on the side. You’ll hardly have to think about them,’ he had said.

  Anna liked the idea of investing too. With her relative’s guidance, we nervously made our first property investment, and then bought our home. By 2002, with three young children, and conscious of the uncertainties of self-employment, I wanted to expand our portfolio. By now, I was more enthusiastic about devoting time to this than Anna; she was developing her business interests, post-babies.

  By 2007, with the escalating property market, we had become, on paper, wealthy. During the unfolding of this ridiculously easy path to success, I had happily mentioned to friends and family — trying not to be evangelical — that they could do it too. A few
took up the challenge; most did not, and I felt sorry for them: tied to nine-to-five jobs with no other options.

  As our wealth grew, we seemed to want, or even need, things that we had never needed before. I was keen on building a beach home. I wanted a retirement apartment by the sea for Anna’s mother and stepfather; overseas trips for us and the children, to have new cultural experiences; and the children’s future education expenses (no matter what or where they wished to study) to be met. I imagined stopping work altogether one day in the not-too-distant future, devoting my time to music, writing, or ‘good causes’.

  We had a multi-million-dollar property portfolio with lots of equity, but it was not self-supporting. The rental returns did not cover the outgoings — the largest being interest repayments. We had aimed for capital growth with the idea of selling down at some point to make it self-supporting and put cash in the bank. But after 2006, when I could no longer work, my income stopped. At first we were fine, relying on savings and drawing on the equity in our properties. Yet the reserve bank raised interest rates throughout 2007, and lenders raised their rates faster than the reserve bank, bleeding our funds for loan repayments. It kept going until early 2008, bringing the property market to a standstill. As fear gripped the nation with the onset of the GFC, and the market slid in value, people stopped buying in the face of the unknown, and credit dried up.

  With the economic recession now a reality, we had little other income. Forces outside of our control had us in a bind: we couldn’t sell, we couldn’t refinance, and we couldn’t meet our repayments. A prominent economist interviewed on television said that property values would fall by 40 per cent before the crisis was over. Such a fall would wipe out any equity we had left and leave us with loans we couldn’t repay. We could not see a way out.

  I decided that I would have to return to work. After all, I had gotten much better. But the more I contemplated a return, the more I got that old sense of dread.

  By December 2008, our funds had gone. We asked family members for loans so that we could put food on the table while we waited for our first property sale — in a dead market — to happen.

  The benefits of the therapy, swimming, music, the teaching with the Dalai Lama, and meditation seemed to vapourise. My jumpiness and nightmares returned. I was close to shutting down: so worn out by dealing with the calamity that was unfolding and with my deteriorating mental health. I wanted to walk away from it all, even though I knew that this would help no one.

  One afternoon, I was driving back from a new construction — started before the GFC had taken effect — after meeting with the architect and the builder. We’d argued over one of the contractors, who I felt had overcharged. Out of nowhere, I was hit by the strongest desire to drive off the highway at one hundred kilometres an hour, down a steep embankment — hopefully to a quick death. It was a vicious, uncaring world, and I couldn’t meet it head-on anymore. The past me, the strong me, the one that blinked after a setback and then got on with things, was gone.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ I shouted, to that part of me that was now being very scary. I needed it to stop carrying on like this, with this craziness.

  But the steering wheel coaxed me to the left, off the side of the road, the deep embankment promising deliverance.

  I tried reassurance: You’ll get through this. This feeling will pass.

  I tried alarm: Imagine how distraught Anna and the kids will be. I saw their shocked, unbelieving faces upon learning of my death. I saw my friends’ horror.

  I tried compassion: I would be letting everyone down; it would cause immense heartache.

  I tried a warped logic: What if it doesn’t work and you end up crippled, and can’t make a second attempt?

  I tried the radio: I had to get my brain out of this groove.

  With the radio jangling my thoughts, I managed to hold it together until I arrived home, trembling, and collapsed onto the bed. I was afraid of myself — what was my brain doing? When would the next suicidal urge swoop down upon me?

  I knew from my work that when people are overwhelmed by sustained physical or emotional pain, they can lose hope that the pain will ever go away, seeing no point in sharing their thoughts with others. The world would be better off without me, they think.

  I was sliding down this path.

  I summoned my courage and told Anna about the experience on the road, explaining how worn down I had become and how I couldn’t deal with the financial stresses anymore. She was taken aback, almost speechless. ‘I’m sorry you’re feeling this way,’ she said.

  I caught up with Lily. She reminded me of all the people who cared about me. She asked me to contact her at any time, even if it was only to go for a walk when I was grumpy.

  I wanted to have a proper talk with Ian: not one of our standing-at-the-car updates after a swimming-squad session. I wanted to know, specifically, if he thought I should take antidepressants. I had taken St John’s wort for short periods over the last two years when feeling low, and this had helped.

  St John’s wort was a herbal medication that many trials had shown was effective in the treatment of mild to moderate depression; in fact, it was as effective as the commonly prescribed selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in these cases. It didn’t have the side effects of the SSRIs, although it could have a few of its own — thankfully, none of which I had experienced.

  It took two weeks before Ian and I could catch up for lunch; I hadn’t told him what I wanted to talk about. He’d been preoccupied with family and work, he said when he arrived at the cafe. ‘I need to give friends greater priority,’ he said with a rueful smile.

  We sat at an outside table, where we could smell the nearby ocean. The sandaled foot of his leg, which was crossed over the other, poked around in the air like the snout of a sniffing dog.

  I described my experience the other day, driving home. I said those thoughts had hung around for a few days afterwards; now they were gone, but they didn’t seem far away. He asked how readily I was able to get out of a low mood. I said that a swim or a music session was usually enough to do it. St John’s wort made a difference.

  ‘It sounds more like you’re reacting to circumstances around you,’ he said. ‘If the St John’s wort is helping, keep this up, but be consistent with it.’

  After opening up to Anna, Lily, and Ian, my suicidal thinking seemed ridiculous, embarrassing; I might have been exaggerating it, I tried to tell myself. But underneath I knew that this wasn’t the case, and I was still apprehensive — not at all confident that the urges wouldn’t come back. Anna checked in with me every now and then, asking how I was faring.

  The suicidal episode was constructive in one way: if the thought of going back to work was bringing on such extreme notions, I shouldn’t be contemplating a return at all.

  My other option was to make a claim on my income-protection policy, the one I’d been paying into for all these years. I’d never thought the policy was necessary (if we did have to draw on it, it would only be because of an unexpected physical injury or illness), but our financial planner had encouraged it strongly. I thanked him for it now.

  I had considered this option over the previous months as our money ran low, but I’d wanted to cope using our own resources. And I hadn’t wanted to put myself through the insurance wringer. Many of my past clients had been made worse by the sometimes brutal insurance-claim process and in dealing with young, naive insurance case managers. But recent events had forced my hand.

  Three weeks later, I visited my regular GP, Doctor Sunbury, and told him that I was not coping. This felt awkward; I’d only talked to him about my physical ailments before. I showed him the results of a psychological questionnaire I’d completed, which measured compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary trauma. I was in the average range on the first two scales, but high on the secondary-trauma scale. He helped me to complete th
e insurance claim, and I sent it off.

  The insurer organised an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist, over an hour’s drive away. The company was also good enough to start payments immediately, while I went through the claims process, so our family could survive for the time being.

  On the day of my appointment with the psychiatrist, I walked into a corporate-style waiting room, in an office suite where specialists rent rooms for the day. I was on time, and sat down to wait. I saw a middle-aged man with dyed-blonde hair walk out of a room. He strolled straight past me without a glance and disappeared into the lift. Half an hour later, he returned holding a cup of coffee, and some time after this, he called me in.

  He made no comment about his lateness.

  Doctor Waverly sat down on the other side of a large desk. There were two seating options for me: a low chair and a high chair. The high one, he said, was for elderly people who had difficulty getting out of chairs. I opted for the low chair, which meant I was looking up at him.

  He started up a friendly chat about professional matters, and about an upcoming annual mental-health conference — would I be attending? After ten minutes, as if only just realising why I was there, he shifted into a professional tone and said, ‘We’d better get on with it.’

  His questions were extensive, and he recorded my answers in his handwriting, on a form with spaced headings. I was nervous: my family’s financial wellbeing was riding on the outcome of this, whereas for Doctor Waverly, it was just another report. I emphasised my exposure to vicarious trauma, seeing this as the primary cause of my deterioration.

  Yet after the interview was over, I thought of things I should have said. But it had been impossible to keep everything in mind with his questions rattling me along, spurring on my nervousness. Afterwards, however, more memories of direct exposure to trauma surfaced, as though Doctor Waverly’s questions had stirred a mental pot: the heavier ingredients swirled to the top.