by Naomi Judd
Diana pulled her chair closer and promised, “I can give you a guarantee of something. I can guarantee, one hundred percent, that there are going to be better days than this one. You know it’s true because you’ve had them. And you’ve had bad days like this one and survived to live a better day.”
I nodded in agreement, but I still had nothing to say.
“If you kill yourself,” Diana pressed on, “there’s no guarantee. But if you stay here and stick with it and climb out of this, I can help you.”
Linehan uses the metaphor of climbing out of hell on a steel ladder. It burns. It hurts as you go up. “This is your climb out of hell, Naomi,” Diana said. “It will get easier as you go higher. But you will never know that if you kill yourself.”
I wanted so badly to believe Diana’s guarantee. Severe depression had made me irrational. There was no feeling of vitality with depression and the pain creates thoughts of darkness that feel absolutely real. I needed this connectivity with Diana. At a time when I couldn’t trust my own irrational thoughts, I found I could trust hers. It helped me get through each week until we met again.
When I first started seeing Diana as a therapist, I would have some appointments at my house and some in her office. One morning, I realized I had forgot an appointment that was scheduled that day in her office. Hurriedly I taped a note to the door for Larry, who had gone to play golf.
I headed out the door, turning off my cell phone for the hourlong appointment. After our session, I forgot to turn my cell phone back on. About a mile from our farm, I saw Larry driving toward me. His face was completely pale and his eyes looked frantic. Something had to be horribly wrong and it made me panic, too. Larry made a sharp U-turn and followed me to our driveway. As I got out of the car I saw that Larry looked as if he could drop to his knees on the driveway. I now knew his panic had been about me.
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling and calling you,” Larry demanded
I explained that I was running late and had taped a note to the door. When I turned on my cell phone back on, there were seven messages from Larry. The final one warned that if he didn’t hear back from me in five minutes, he was going to contact the sheriff’s office.
As it turns out, ninety minutes earlier, Larry had not found my note when he arrived home. After searching the house and noticing that my car was gone, he tried my cell phone. When it went directly to my voice mail, Larry’s mind jumped to the worst conclusion. He had driven at top speed to the Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge, afraid that today was the day I had chosen to leap to my death.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on my husband’s face at the thought of me making that choice. There was no happy ending or relief with suicide. I could easily end my own life, but it didn’t mean that misery would die with me. It would be like the ash from the giant furnaces at the production plants in my hometown of Ashland. My misery would settle like a dark layer of grief over everyone I left behind.
Actor and comedian Robin Williams had committed suicide earlier in the fall and that evening I thought about one of my interactions with him backstage a number of years earlier. We were both performing for the same charity event.
Whenever I participated in a variety or late-night show, I always arrived with my hair and makeup already done and dressed in the outfit I was going to wear onstage. I liked to have the time to leave my dressing room door open so I could chat with the other performers.
I could hear Robin’s voice in the hallway as he careened from dressing room to dressing room, and the trail of loud laughter that followed him to my door. He came in, twirling my makeup chair on its stand, making faces into the mirror, and running through a dozen character voices, and then pulling a pair of pantyhose over his head trying to make me laugh. But it wasn’t a real interaction with me. It was a manic and irrepressible display. It soon made me feel very nervous in its bombardment of energy practically bouncing off the walls. After about five minutes I finally took Robin’s forearm and cajoled, “Hey, guy, you’ve got to split because you’re winding me up too much. I’ve got to sing and I can’t when I feel all hyper.” With that he bounded out of my dressing room and into the one next door.
I had remembered that a sound tech who had worked on the crew of Mrs. Doubtfire had mentioned how manic Robin was the entire time they were filming. He exhausted his cast-mates and crew, and everyone wanted to tell Robin to “calm down.”
In retrospect, I remembered noticing how sad Robin’s eyes were, even though he was constantly “on” and bigger than life. I certainly didn’t know Robin well enough to make any assumptions about his inner life. After having such a long, ongoing depression myself, I wondered if, like me, he had traumatic emotional memories that were demanding his attention. Were his brilliant, quick-witted mind and luminous personality that never took a break in public all a coping mechanism to keep the trauma submerged? Was that an impossible feat once his life slowed down following his heart surgery, and as he secretly suffered with diffuse Lewy body dementia, which had gone undiagnosed for far too long?
I appreciated reading this quote from actress and writer Carrie Fisher about Robin: “He was driven by that frantic eagerness that you don’t just want someone to like you, you want to explode on their night sky like a miracle. And he did.”
I thought about how many creative artists commit suicide, either knowingly or by overdose or fatal mixture of drugs, without considering the consequences. Creative people need to have a way to express their vision, to have a purpose and a goal. Depression can cause you to believe that you have no artistic vision or future, which can make a creative person feel hopelessly dead inside.
When Dr. Mona Lisa called to check in on me over the weekend, I told her, “I don’t care how many years I have left in my life. I only want those years to have purpose, meaning, and joy.”
As Diana, my therapist, would tell me during every session, I needed to radically accept where my life was right now and slowly build it back into a life worth living. As she explained it: Radical acceptance is to know that painful things are still going to happen, but how we respond makes a difference. We don’t have to condone our current reality, but we have to accept it for what it is instead of staying stuck, wishing it were different. Pain will happen, but suffering is optional. You can change your future reality, but you first have to accept the present reality.
It was time to really work the ABC, PLEASE plan. DBT would become a big part of my salvation.
Chapter 18
What Michelangelo Knew
I couldn’t be alone. Being alone terrified me and created panic. If Larry couldn’t be with me, then someone had to come over and “babysit” me. This wasn’t how I wanted to be. It was humiliating. But then, being alone was far worse for me than the humiliation.
The prolific writer Virginia Woolf knew about being alone. She wrote of “always some terror; so afraid one is of loneliness; of seeing to the bottom of the vessel.” As long as someone was with me, I didn’t have to examine the bottom of the vessel. Woolf saw the bottom and she drowned herself. I knew I had to prevent the opportunity for the disease in my brain to convince me of the logic of a similar fate. If I spent time alone, I would find myself ruminating constantly. I decided to accept that, until my oppressive depression and anxiety abated somewhat, I wouldn’t be critical of myself for needing not to be alone. One of my lifelong emotional traumas has always been abandonment by Mother, Daddy, my relatives, my siblings, and my first husband.
One of the first things Diana advised me to do was make concrete plans for activities that helped me boost the number of positive emotions in my life. I had to begin to outweigh the overwhelming traumatic memories with good new memories. The traumatic memories couldn’t be replaced, but they shouldn’t have the ability to run and ruin my present-day life anymore. I had to work toward regulating the distressing emotions by replacing them with positive new actions. To break an old bad habit you must replace it with a better new one.
If Ashley was in town, she came over with any guest she wanted to bring. One night she showed up with four of her girlfriends. My grandson, Elijah, and his longtime girlfriend, Haley, are mainstays. Often our dear friends Roy and Helen came. Tanner and Beatte, the brother and sister, who are the adult children of Wy’s road manager, Tami, loved to be invited. They call Larry and me Papaw and Mamaw.
I would shop early in the morning and then spend almost the whole day cooking. When my family and friends were gathered around my dining table, I was able to forget my depression for an hour or two, even though I couldn’t eat my own food because of my errant taste buds. I would still sit at the table with my smoothie.
My one firm rule for our Thursday family dinners was no cell phones at the table. Everyone seemed happy to comply. Actually “being” with each other, in person, with no technical distractions, was critical to my positive emotions about the evening. Social media might be a great way to catch up on one another’s news, but I believe it has increased our feelings of separation drastically. Sitting behind a computer or staring down at a smartphone screen is not human interaction.
According to a study from Microsoft in the spring of 2015, our human attention span is now only eight seconds long! A goldfish has a longer attention span. How can we feel that we are seen or heard when we know that in eight seconds the other person’s mind will wander? We are social beings. Interacting in person and not through a gadget changes our emotions and the nerve cells in our brains for the better.
At our Thursday dinners, Larry would ask a blessing over our food and then we all spent an hour or two talking about everything going on in our lives and in the world. Or we asked each other questions like “What is your biggest regret?” They produced revealing and insightful answers. Elijah and Ashley were surprised to learn that my biggest regret was that I didn’t go to Iraq following 9/11 to work as a nurse.
It was always eye-opening to hear the perspective of the young people at the table about the current news headlines. And I like to think that Larry and I could give them perspective by relating some of our real-life experiences. Usually, only a matter of minutes would pass before someone said something hilarious and we all doubled over with gales of belly laughs.
At the end of the evening, my guests would take turns choosing what the menu would be for the next Thursday dinner. Once someone was invited to family dinner, they usually cleared their calendars to be a part of these regular Thursday evenings. The feeling of family, togetherness, and interaction with those I love helped me to remember that depression forces a person to look at life through a negative filter that isn’t true reality.
Now, you may be thinking, Right. I wish I could have a family dinner without some type of drama or upset. Believe me, I understand. Nothing can bring me down quite as low as when there are family arguments. It makes me feel like there’s no hope if my closest relationships aren’t working. If your family has big personalities, like mine, it can be a challenge to keep the peace.
Years ago, early in my marriage to Larry, I came up with some simple family interaction rules called “Judd Family Powwow Rules.” Larry, Wynonna, and Ashley also contributed. Then I had them printed up and laminated the page so that they can survive in the family kitchen without getting butter or mustard all over them. I can rinse the page off at the end of every meal. They worked for my family to make our time together better. Perhaps they will be beneficial for you, too.
The Judd Family Powwow Rules
1. No interrupting.
2. No shouting.
3. Each of us must realize we have our own realities.
4. Everyone gets as much time as they need to express themselves completely.
5. Everyone should be prepared with our thoughts and solutions, so time isn’t wasted.
6. Stop and think before you speak so that you talk to the person as if he or she were a friend instead of a relative.
7. Everyone needs to remember that these are just issues. Our commitment to communicating is the bottom line to making sure the family endures.
And finally, conflict can’t survive without your participation. Confrontation gets easier when you give up your need to be right. No matter how you slice it, there are always two sides.
One thing that contributed to my depression over time was the reality that I had only a very small family that I could count on as people who love me unconditionally, as I love them. This may be true for you, too. Or perhaps you have no actual blood relatives to count on as family.
My daughter Ashley came up with a great remedy for the longing for a large, close family. Every Sunday afternoon that she is in town Ashley hosts a picnic or get-together on her property. She invites the people she calls her “family of choice.” Most of these people are people from our small village area who may not be geographically near any of their own relatives. The variety in the group keeps it lively: both couples and singles, artists, health care practitioners, humanitarian workers, soccer moms, yoga instructors, business owners, and intellectuals of all different ages, along with the young children of people in the group. Everyone brings a dish to share and we get involved in each other’s lives, catching up on personal news in the same way family does.
Larry and I go if we are in town whenever possible. I get caught up in the enthusiasm of the little children and end up playing with them. I’ve been known to have a ring of dirt around my neck by the end of the picnic from my willingness to throw myself into any game. We play softball, dodgeball, badminton, and other games. We wade in the pond and collect moss for Ashley’s garden.
There are always some interesting discussions to join in with the adults, a book recommendation, or even sharing something as helpful as how to get pen marks out of a white blouse.
Our “family of choice” relationships have extended beyond the Sunday picnic. We support each other in the ways a family would. We go to their kids’ baseball games, celebrate birthdays, dive in to help when it’s needed, and congratulate each other’s successes. Larry and I attend the children’s school events. We take them for pizza and ice cream afterward. We might meet a few other adults at a café or go to a movie together. In the past, we’ve all gone to the beach as a group and rented cabins on the shore.
This past winter we had a great snowfall over the weekend in the Nashville area. The valley on our property has a big sloping hill, perfect for sledding. The families were invited over and Larry got out our four-wheeler to bring the kids from the bottom of the hill back up to the top for another thrilling sled ride down. Their excitement and joy was like a happy virus that spread through my system, lifting my mood for the whole day. This chosen family has shown me how unconditional love can make a person feel accepted, safe, and useful.
I found I had become so isolated that I forgot that social interaction is the best way to be reminded that life is still going on in interesting ways. At first I had to push myself a bit to join back in socially, because it seemed as if my depression had zapped any ounce of energy I had. Some Sundays I couldn’t imagine how I would figure out a dish to prepare and bring, because I felt so exhausted from depression or being up at night with a panic attack. However, the simple act of getting dressed, putting on a bit of makeup, and leaving the house would inevitably put me in a different frame of mind. Once I got going, I would forget that only one hour before I had been convinced I should stay home.
Depression also does a deceptive number on a person’s self-esteem. I would often feel like I had nothing of interest to contribute to a group situation, or even a one-on-one with a friend. My mind would feel dull and scattered and I couldn’t imagine engaging in a conversation that would matter to anyone. I found that my fears had no basis in reality. Most people are happy to have you liste
n. Listening will put new and different thoughts in your mind, and that alone will feel like a relief. You only have to ask a few questions and they will feel pleased that you are interested. Most people are paying attention to their own lives and are not sitting in judgment of you. Usually the best you can do is absolutely fine with them.
Besides doing one-to-one therapy with Diana, I found another outlet to talk about my feelings without the pressure of having to be careful about what I expressed. I began to attend Al-Anon meetings when I could. Al-Anon is a mutual support group for people who are or have been affected by someone who is an alcoholic. It is a twelve-step program and every meeting is confidential and anonymous. One of the main goals for people who attend Al-Anon meetings is to find ways to stop being codependent in a relationship with an alcoholic.
Though it was never spoken about or even labeled in my childhood home, Daddy was an extreme binge drinker on the weekends. He would never bring alcohol home, but would stay at his gas station after it closed for the day, and have a buddy or two come by and they would drink until dawn, by which point they were of course completely inebriated. I had no idea of this the entire time I lived at home, choosing instead in my adoration of Daddy to think that he was working extra-long hours on the weekends. He never went to church with us on Sunday. I would come downstairs, ready for breakfast and to go to Sunday school. Daddy would be sitting at the table, usually without a shirt on, his head propped in his hands and drinking a Pepsi. His eyes would be bloodshot and for some reason, most likely denial, I’d never notice that he could barely keep his head up because he was drunk. I remembered thinking, Poor Daddy. He works so hard. Mother would move noiselessly around the kitchen and then hustle us as quickly as possible out the door and off to church.