Originally from issue #12, September 2007.
For those of you who think your life has reached bottom, or that you have some troubles, go to a support group and you might be surprised. In the film Fight Club, in response to the narrator’s complaints about insomnia his doctor suggests he go to a support group for men with testicular cancer adding that there he will “see what real suffering is like”. In many ways that doctor created in the brain of Chuck Palahniuk was on to something.
I had in mind becoming a “facilitator”, which is the person who directs the flow of a support group. He or she makes sure everyone gets a chance to speak. It is also this person’s job to dig a little deeper into people for more information about their concerns. My interest was facilitating with a bi-polar group since that is what I suffer from (although I’m much better than I once was). I wanted to help others who had been dealing with issues similar to mine. However, I had never even been to a support group. Obviously a visit to one was due.
I went to a group that meets every other Wednesday evening at a house in a residential neighborhood where a local mental health organization had their offices. I arrived a little before seven, not knowing anyone. We started slightly after seven and went until about nine. To quote comedian Patton Oswalt (although he’s referring to liquor billboards), what I was about to witness was “the saddest short story you’ve ever seen.”
The setup was very simple: we all sat in a circle and for the first hour of the meeting we went around, said our name and what our primary concerns were. The second hour was spent expanding upon those primary concerns and hoping to find some guidance by talking through our concerns and getting feedback from the group.
The facilitator of the group was an older man in his sixties named Noel (pronounced “Nole”). He works for the Army Corps of Engineers but has been frustrated with his job as of late. He’s stayed on years after retirement because he’s working on a project that he really enjoys and wants to see through but his strained relationship with his boss makes it hard. Out of everyone at tonight’s meeting Noel has his shit together the most (which is probably good seeing as to how he’s the facilitator). He seems normal, looks normal and generally is in no way discernible from the general population. He does a good job of getting the program to move along throughout the night. He cuts people off when the situation is necessary to move on to another person but always in a polite manner. As a facilitator, there’s not much else he could have done better.
The first person in our circle to speak is Keith. He’s an older man most likely in his sixties with thinning grey hair that lays flat on his head. He’s fairly thin but not in any sickly way and stands over six feet tall. Keith has a look on his face that seems to be somewhere between angry and tired. He sits there, lounging with his arms crossed. At any moment I expect one of two things to come out of his mouth: “I’m so angry with all of you! You make me sick!” whereupon he would stand up and throw his folding chair across the room in a swift motion and storm off. The other possibility would be for him to mumble: “I’m so tired.” And then see his chin rest on his chest while he starts to snore lightly. Neither of these things occurs. Instead, Keith says he has nothing to speak about and that everything is going fine. While not as outgoing as Nole, Keith seems fairly well adjusted, too. I’m not entirely sure why he’s there but it’s good to see someone else who doesn’t seem so depressed.
Marcia is next in the circle. She is fifty-four years old and slightly overweight. She is kind and gentle and laughs in a pleasant way. Her brown hair is shoulder length, somewhat curly, somewhat straight, no doubt influenced by hair care products and a curling iron, but at this point in the day it’s hard to say. Marcia lives at home with her elderly mother and has no job. She worries about keeping the house in which she lives in the family. She enjoys gardening and being outside but her general condition of mental instability keeps her from being able to support herself independently. It’s not entirely clear what all the details of her situation are, but she’s fifty-four and lives with her mother. That kind of speaks for itself. And yet, I suppose we’ve all got to do what we need to in order to survive.
I find myself next and after Marcia I feel like my problems aren’t too bad. If I knew some of the people who were to come, I would know beyond a shadow of a doubt how good I have it. I express some concerns I have with my meds and as Noel writes something down on his pad of paper, he says that those sound good and we’ll come back to them.
Jessalyn is next. She is a longhaired woman in her 30s who has brought along her dog, Japser, a very cute and affectionate Border Collie/German Shepherd mix. She’s also brought some Pho for her dinner and asks every person if it’s ok if she eats during the meeting. We all say it’s fine and she proceeds to have a few bites of it and doesn’t finish. She does, however, tell us the best Pho places in the area. She is very high energy and it’s quite clear that she’s in a manic phase. Jessalyn shares that she’s had a hard time sleeping and has a lot of energy at that moment. She will leave after the first hour of the group, due to her inability to sit still for very long.
Zach is a character by far stranger than all of the others in attendance at the support group. In his youth, his glasses, reddish hair, pale skin and skinny frame were most likely sources of ridicule from antagonists. His incredibly juvenile way of talking and nerdy sense of humor doesn’t seem to help much. Assuming he is in his late twenties/early thirties, it was somewhat odd to hear him often try to imitate the voice of Scooby Doo (amongst others and always with no success). Although one might assume he would be embarrassed by his behavior he was not. Instead, I find myself the one embarrassed for him, even amongst a group of people with a myriad of problems. People with depression have enough problems; they don’t need to make things any worse by inaccurately doing impressions of cartoon characters. He has a government job of some sort in a warehouse-type building doing computer work. His work has been very lenient with him for all the times he has missed work due to his illness. Zach informs us that he has been in what he called “the cuckoo bin” seven times in the past eight years. This was consistently due to his manic phases in the summer and primarily because he couldn’t sleep. His lack of sleep was attributed to the long daylight hours that exist in Seattle during the summer months. For some reason unknown to me, Zach has just found out about the concept of black out shades and curtains, in the year 2007. These seemed to be helping him.
Rachel is the next person in our discussion and she seems like she is in a pretty good mood for someone at a bi-polar support group, especially someone with schizo-bipolar disorder. This means that she has both schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, which I can’t help but think, is something like the chocolate-peanut butter combination of mental illness. “You got schizophrenia in my bi-polar disorder!” “You got bi-polar disorder in my schizophrenia!” “Two great diseases, together at last!” It’s as though God decided the problem this person was dealt wasn’t enough and decided to shit on them a little more. “Hey, you feeling like you’re up and down all the time and can’t be consistent in your emotional state and relationships? That’s fantastic. Why don’t I just go ahead and let you hear voices and see things that aren’t there. I’m sure you’ll love it.” Rachel works at an organic grocery store chain in the Seattle area. Despite all of her problems, she seems to be fairly healthy, mentally speaking, and makes plans to go walking with Jessalyn the next day.
Holly is the group’s lone non-white (Korean) and like Rachel, she seems to be fairly stable. She is kind and sweet and at the end of the meeting is the only person to say good-bye to me. She shares with us that her part-time job at JC Penney is going well, as is her relationship with her boyfriend of the past seven years. Holly shares that she is also in Overeaters Anonymous.
And finally we arrive at the clincher, the peak, and the person who could not be imagined if I hadn’t actually seen her with my own eyes. A few minutes after we began, a woman walked into the meeting. She had dirty blond hair, was wearing platform sandals with her toenails painted red, and seemed much better dressed than anyone else there that night. Up until now I consider the support group to be primarily aimed at the lower class. Most of the people talk of getting help through public health agencies and being on Medicare. This new woman, who says her name was Leslie, seems from a much different tier. She apologizes for being late and says she has had a tough time getting to the meeting because of traffic from downtown, where she lives. While it seemed that at first she was reserved and timid, once she starts talking, she won’t stop. It is as though we were the only people she could talk to about her problems.
Looking at her face it is one of complete exhaustion or a recent recovery from a cocaine bender. Her eyes have dark rings under them and seem to profess a look like an injured animal that begs to be put down. She slouches in her chair, alternatively looking anxious and scared and generally bringing a very different air to the room. Leslie shares that she is thirty-nine with a three year old daughter (oh sweet Jesus, why are the mentally ill reproducing?). She also lets us know that she has schizophrenia as well as problems with bulimia and anorexia. If schizo-bipolar disorder was chocolate-peanut butter, the eating disorders are like the nuts and graham cracker crust, making it simultaneously the most delicious candy and the worst possible mental condition.
Strangely enough, Rachel recalls working with her at the grocery store, something that Leslie confirms, whereupon she acknowledges she had been fired because she was having a hard time there with her schizophrenia (“I was hearing voices all the time,” she said). It’s virtually impossible for most schizophrenics to keep regular employment without constant medication, something that Leslie said she has quit taking ten days ago. It isn’t entirely clear why that was the case but everyone encourages her to get back on the meds.
As Leslie begins to speak, I immediately find her intriguing. If my past consists of me always falling for the people I shouldn’t, then Leslie could very well be my queen. I imagine a life where we could be together – me the younger guy with her, the older mom – and thoroughly ruin our lives even more than we could imagine (I’m actually quite good at that – ruining lives, that is). I imagine us with intense love-making sessions, interspersed with her doing cocaine off the armrest of a green leather couch in some high-rise condo that we’re magically able to afford somehow and she would yell at me about the voices in her head. Meanwhile we find the maddening love flowing its’ way through our veins, making every moment feel passionate and genuine. In the end we both no doubt end up dead or with one of us locked away in an in-patient facility, drugged severely to calm us down to a catatonic state whereupon the doctors could find out why the one of us killed the other one.
Yeah, that Leslie was something else.
There is a break between the first and second parts of the session. When we go back around the circle again to address the specific issues raised, half of the people don’t seem to really even need help. After Leslie had shared, it seems as though we should spend all the rest of our time focused on her problems. When it is my turn again, everyone suggests how I should try this drug or that drug in order to help me with my problems. I later told my counselor that I had recently seen eight “doctors” and they had told me some things that contradicted her opinion on what my medications should be. She gave me a quizzical look and I explained to her my experience. Why a bunch of people thinks that the meds that worked for them would work for me is kind of strange, seeing as to how the brain is different with each person. It’s not like a liver or lung, which are virtually identical in how they are treated. That night, though, I just take their advice with a series of understanding nods and thank yous.
By the end of the meeting I feel things have been kind of anti-climactic. It leaves me feeling kind of down at not coming to any great breakthroughs.
My experience showed me, however, that I don’t think I can be the type who could lead a support group. I don’t know if I have the understanding and compassion. I found everyone there more sickeningly fascinating than anything else. I guess it’s one more thing I can check off my list of potential things to do with my life or free time. Now though? Now I don’t want to do anything at all. I’m too depressed.
