I have never been one of those incredibly annoying "positive" people. You know the type – bubbly, energetic, perpetually smiling... laughs right along with canned soundtracks.... always putting inspirational quotes and glitter stickees on Facebook... They appear to lead charmed lives filled with the love of a supportive significant other, a secure career, and expendable income for life's little pleasures, such as the annual jaunt to Myrtle Beach or Hawaii.
Positive people have little tolerance for "negative" people. If you're in a slump and looking for a little "misery loves" company, don't go looking to them for a shoulder to sniffle on! Their brand of Southern Comfort is to let your "depressing" words fly in one ear and out the other, while offering some cheesy "solution" that doesn't work for you, but which somehow relieves them of feeling any empathy or giving viable support because you didn't take their advice.
Case in point: you lost your awesome job, your home, and depleted your 401k in order to survive. You've hit rock bottom – you need empathy, moral support, and hope. You need to know that people still see you as a worthwhile person who happens to be down on her luck. Maybe you just need someone to go to a cheap movie with or have a fun afternoon together, indulging in double-mocha iced-capps at a trendy outdoor cafe. But Polly Positive's idea of cheering you up is to say "I heard that Walmart is looking for a Greeter. It doesn't pay much but at least it's something, and you need to take what you can get or you're going to be up shit creek! ... No, don't tell me you can't be on your feet for 8 or 9 hours a day because of your bad back – you can do anything you put your mind to!" (Note: you will never see Mr. or Ms. Positive working at Walmart, or any other minimum wage entry-level job).
Case in point: you lost your awesome job, your home, and depleted your 401k in order to survive. You've hit rock bottom – you need empathy, moral support, and hope. You need to know that people still see you as a worthwhile person who happens to be down on her luck. Maybe you just need someone to go to a cheap movie with or have a fun afternoon together, indulging in double-mocha iced-capps at a trendy outdoor cafe. But Polly Positive's idea of cheering you up is to say "I heard that Walmart is looking for a Greeter. It doesn't pay much but at least it's something, and you need to take what you can get or you're going to be up shit creek! ... No, don't tell me you can't be on your feet for 8 or 9 hours a day because of your bad back – you can do anything you put your mind to!" (Note: you will never see Mr. or Ms. Positive working at Walmart, or any other minimum wage entry-level job).
Run-of-the-mill "uppers" are exasperating enough, but New Agers are a class all their own. To someone with cancer, for example, they may dole out the standard holistic mantra, "What is it that's 'eating you'? You must address the underlying anger issue that created this dis-ease, and change the way you think. Visualize being totally healthy. What you believe – is what you will attract". Or to someone who has suffered a long string of bad luck, "Wow, you must have been a real S.O.B. in your past life!" (hahaha)
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that there is no truth to the theory that our attitude and emotions affect our circumstances and our health. In fact, I know that attitude majorly affects our reality. But I do take umbrage at the dismissal of my pain and suffering with the mere flick of a quip! Pain, suffering, depression, ill fortune… bad things are quite real… and damn hard to overcome with empty affirmations and a plastic smile. It's the material world's version of Catch-22: Bad things happen because of your negative thoughts and emotions... You have negative thoughts and emotions because bad things happen. And so you go, around and around between feeling dejected – and bringing on more dejection because of the dubious sin of feeling hopeless – because dejection is all you know!
Meanwhile, Mr. Top-of-the-World and Ms. Sunny-go-Lucky are enthusiastically enjoying their latest adventures. She is hosting a mystical retreat at the Great Pyramid in Giza. He has just returned from his annual Great Barrier Reef diving excursion.
And then there is you and me
Was coming in on a dark cloud part of my pre-life plan, or had some forgotten childhood event shaped my endorphin-deficient life? I reach back into the recesses of my mind to recall an onset, but it seems as if I've always felt out of kilter with the world.
The smallest in my class, I always looked years younger than my actual age. I was very shy (aka, fearful) in school. My mom said that when the nun told her I was a "quiet little mouse", my mother was like "Say, what? You must have my daughter mixed up with some other child!"
I skipped kindergarten because the old kindergarten had been razed and the new one not yet built. I went straight to first grade at age 5. I could read quite well, thanks to my father's exuberant love of tutoring. Armed with reading and arithmetic skills, I was ready to take my place in the blue-tiled institution of learning that was to be my school. Not so adept socially, insecurity gripped me like a cold hand from a Vincent Price movie that first day as I watched my mother exit the gymnasium, leaving me behind in this unfamiliar place, surrounded by grown up strangers and even stranger children.
Room 3. I will always remember standing in line in front of semi-circularly arranged desks, where several of my new classmates flashed cards. When it was my turn to read I looked at the yellowed placard and the boy holding it up in front of him. That's the last thing I remember of that day. I've heard the story often enough: Sister Mary Greta, who had been informed that I could read, and read well, became angry at me for "refusing" to read the flash card. She grabbed me by the ponytail and gave it a good yank. Evidently, my long years of daily stomach aches began at that very moment. My mother, always quick with the logic, surmised that I might be myopic, as was she. And indeed, her diagnosis was correct! The following day, after school, Mom took me to see Dr. Fujibayashi, her own childhood optometrist, who determined that I was as blind as a bat, proverbially speaking. I read without incident in class after that, duly bespectacled and in awe of the world's sharp edges, beginning with the leaves in the trees, which mesmerized me no end.
Sister Mary Greta was filled with remorse upon finding out that poor vision was to blame for my failure to read – not insolence, as she had assumed. After that disciplinary faux pas, she often hugged me against her habit (the long black ones of yesteryear), which I found very comforting. I quite came to care for this towering paragon of virtue, who would slap her students on the knuckles with a ruler one day, and take them out for ice-cream the next.
So, in retrospect, could the first very bad terrible awful day of school have been the catalyst for my negative attitude? Methinks not. It is my contention that much of how we feel, and the personality we exude, originates in the endocrine system or in our unique pattern of brain chemicals or hormones. I have a basis for my theory.
For 44 years, I was a person fairly devoid of energy, timid around people, and generally melancholy. Then my doctor put me on Prozac.
Holy Mexican Jumping Beans!!
It was the 10th and last day that I would give this latest in a series of anti-depressant prescriptions a chance. Like the others I had tried and rejected previously, this prescription also made me sick. One script (I'm thinking Zoloft) altered my consciousness so drastically that I felt as if my mind had taken leave of my body. I was beginning to think that I should abandon the idea of using any antidepressants at all to treat my chronic depression (aka, negative attitude).
It happened one night while watching Interview With The Vampire. I didn't make the connection at the time, but this was clearly the moment that the Prozac started to take effect. Utterly mesmerized, I was completely drawn into the story, and intensely fascinated by the characters. When Louie "saw with his vampire eyes", I, too, experienced a preternatural transformation. I was on a "high". Euphoric, in fact! And every scene, every word, had a profound impact on me. When Lestat said "You are what you are Louie", it resonated with me, deeply. When he said "It is the Dark Gift, and I gave it to you", he seemed to be speaking directly to me. I was wholly immersed in the alternate reality I beheld. In some magical way I felt like I was a character in the movie, right there with Lestat and Louie and Claudia. I watched it again and again. I was no longer the same person ... something had changed!
A very imaginative, artistic soul, I decided that there must be real vampires in the world, and they would find me. I started taking walks every night at 3 a.m. "I must be having a spiritual awakening!", I decided. I found a book about spiritual awakenings and my assumptions were confirmed – I had all the symptoms: an increase in psychic ability, an ecstatic love of life, a positive outlook, charisma... Strangers were drawn to me, drive-thru clerks gave me free food, people smiled and waved from their cars on the highway. I made friends, started going out, lost a lot of weight. (Didn't eat... not hungry). Guys less than half my age wanted to date me. I wanted to be ready when the vampires came and transformed me into an immortal!
There were profound personality changes. No longer timid, I told a young guy, my direct supervisor at work "I want to see you outside – now!" He had gotten me in trouble with our company's owners by blurting out a confidence, and I reamed him a good one. He didn't know whether to go back into work or get in his car and go home. To add insult to injury, I said, as he reconsidered entering the workplace before heading back to his car "Seriously? You're going to let me intimidate you to the point where you're just going to leave..?!"
And then there was the dog. My normal reaction to hostile dogs is to be gripped by paralyzing fear. But not this time! This time when that territorial dragon of a German Shepherd approached me in the middle of the street, his snarling hot breath on my calf – I glared at him, and using the standard hand gestures, goaded "C'mon, I dare you!" Well, a guardian angel must have been looking out for me because that dog did an about-face and went back to the place from whence it came. I was devoid of fear.
And then there was the dog. My normal reaction to hostile dogs is to be gripped by paralyzing fear. But not this time! This time when that territorial dragon of a German Shepherd approached me in the middle of the street, his snarling hot breath on my calf – I glared at him, and using the standard hand gestures, goaded "C'mon, I dare you!" Well, a guardian angel must have been looking out for me because that dog did an about-face and went back to the place from whence it came. I was devoid of fear.
What I did have, however, was a libido. Historically absent (one of the many symptoms of an endocrine imbalance), I reveled in my newfound feelings of passion. If I couldn't sink my fangs into a mortal's bare throat, I would settle for seducing someone the old-fashioned way. I reasoned that I could metaphysically draw his energy essence into my own... the next best thing to draining an artery! There was a printer that I'd taken a liking to. He would be my conquest.
I won't go into details about my "conquest". It took over a year of cat and mouse games, but we did finally have a brief tryst. By then my vampire phase (and the Prozac high) had begun to lose steam, albeit not entirely. I really did care for this guy, but I had always looked at it as a temporary reunion between soul mates. I have had many such reunions in my life. It's always a wonderful experience to be with soul mates (meaning people you've had close relationships with in former incarnations), but when the reason for your paths to cross has been fulfilled, it's time to move on. Most significantly, I never intended to enter a long-term relationship with someone young enough to be my son. When my printer guy relocated to his home town and hooked up with an old high-school flame, I was actually relieved. The first thing I did when I got home that night after we said our goodbyes, was to slip out of the uncomfortable thong and eat an entire Cadbury fruit and nut bar!
I won't go into details about my "conquest". It took over a year of cat and mouse games, but we did finally have a brief tryst. By then my vampire phase (and the Prozac high) had begun to lose steam, albeit not entirely. I really did care for this guy, but I had always looked at it as a temporary reunion between soul mates. I have had many such reunions in my life. It's always a wonderful experience to be with soul mates (meaning people you've had close relationships with in former incarnations), but when the reason for your paths to cross has been fulfilled, it's time to move on. Most significantly, I never intended to enter a long-term relationship with someone young enough to be my son. When my printer guy relocated to his home town and hooked up with an old high-school flame, I was actually relieved. The first thing I did when I got home that night after we said our goodbyes, was to slip out of the uncomfortable thong and eat an entire Cadbury fruit and nut bar!
Long after the Prozac "awakening" wore off, I still had enough of my new personality to merit being welcomed with open arms by my new coworkers. (My former employer laid me off. Puzzled, because I knew that I had done a great job there, my "conquest" confided, "In a word: Prozac!"). I knew though, that my gregarious new personality was preferred by most people to my old personality. In fact, I was told this by members of my own family. When I thought about going off the pills, a sister said "But… you are so much more pleasant to be around now… and you have… friends!" True. I had the energy and the confidence to be friendly, that I lacked prior to taking the serotonin reuptake inhibitor. And fortunately, my new coworkers didn't have to reconcile with the mind-bender of someone's reversal of personality traits (the reason my former employers cut me loose). Well… not yet anyway!
My young coworkers and I bonded in no time at all. Invariably they lingered at my cubicle to talk. Our supervisor once referred to my cubicle as "Kat's Counseling Booth". That made me smile. I'm a good listener and I love to give advice. I was pretty happy. I had a positive attitude and was well liked. I garnered 2 raises and a promotion in less than 6 months' time.
The descent into madness (so to speak) was gradual. I didn't even realize at first, that I was becoming increasingly unpleasant and impatient with people. Looking back, I guess I can say it was a double whammy. I was going through menopause, and the constant hot flashes were unbearable. But simultaneously, the Prozac, er, Paxil (I switched somewhere along the way as the excitement waned and I yearned to have it back) just wasn't performing its magic anymore.
Two significant things happened. The first was road rage. I had "graduated" from merely feeling angry at other motorists – to expressing my hostility overtly. For example, giving tailgaters the lane and then getting right behind them and chasing after them just long enough to get my message across. One day, feeling intensely perturbed over something some driver did, the desire to ram into him entered my mind and left me shaken. That was the defining moment when I realized "I have to go off the antidepressants!" Add to that, the fact that I was beginning to turn off my friends and supervisors at the workplace. The drugs gaveth – and the drugs tooketh away. It was time to go off of the pills.
Weaning yourself off of antidepressants is not something you can do quickly. I had to cut back and cut back over a 2-month period. It sucked to relinquish my gregarious personality. (Which was pretty much gone anyway, so no biggie). But one night, the second significant thing happened.
I was driving home from work when my favorite song, Theme From a Summer Place, came on the radio, and as it played I felt that uplifting feeling that only beautiful music can give you – that wonderful, soaring feeling that envelops your soul, carries you away, and makes you go "aahhh…"
And then it dawned on me: "Oh my God, I haven't felt this way in years!" In fact, some emotions, or levels of emotions, had taken a leave of absence during my Prozac years – and I never even knew they were gone until they came back. I had been numb inside! Now, going back to my former self, I could enjoy music again. And when tragic stories were relayed to me, I could feel empathy instead of deadpanning: "Oh, how sad."
I do not recommend antidepressants for anyone unless they are so unable to function in their normal life that there is no alternative. True, I had a uniquely exhilarating experience at the onset, which, I have learned, most people on antidepressants do not have. It acted like an amphetamine in my system. Ultimately, it robbed me of my natural emotions, backfired and made me cranky and angry, and even altered my dream life. Prior to the SRI's, I had the most fantastic dream life of anyone I know! I remembered most of my dreams, which were colorful and exciting – even lucid on occasion. I miss those dreams! I have been off of the antidepressants for a good many years now, but the incredible, exciting, even euphoric at times, dreams have never returned.
This has been a long intro, diverging into a narrative about my Prozac period. But I wanted to make a point. We can be a drastically different person from who we are now, simply by virtue of a tweaking or minor adjustment of some body component or brain chemical, such as serotonin. I have a long history of depressions, and even when I'm not depressed, I am low key and low energy. I don't feel like dancing. I hate being on the phone or making small talk. I complain a lot. I can't "think positive", or envision the life I want. I never made a vision quest board because, well, why bother? But I remember what it was like to be, albeit briefly, a friendly and outgoing person, confident, popular, and a believer in dreams (even crazy wide awake ones like becoming a vampire, haha). That is why I hesitate to judge people anymore. If a person is a perpetual downer, I can't help but feel sorry for him. I may avoid him myself at times. But I know that whatever it was that made him who he is: DNA, hormones, his childhood experiences, his parental upbringing, an anxiety disorder – even, yes, past lives – all that and more… is valid! I know that he could be a positive force in the world but for a dearth of serotonin or a deficient thyroid, for example. (You are what you are Louie) Therefore, it behooves us to accept people for who they are instead of imposing our ideas of who they should be, based on our own feelings, views, energy level, and chemical compositions. Unless you are dwelling within their skin and living their life, don't even to pretend to know what they should or shouldn't do, or how they should or shouldn't feel! You don't know.... you can't possibly know what another person's reality is, or why they were born to be the person that they are!
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