Guest Post Breaking Free of Being the Perfect Child

Today's guest post is by Paul Taylor. This is the fourth post in which a writer recounts his or her own experience in a family with a problematic history, as well as its aftermath. Itillustrates a couple of themes of my blog very well: a family role that must be played by a member – or else - and the existential horror and despondency people feel when they try to break away from it. His criticism of cognitive psychotherapy for this sort of problem is also right on.

It is hard being the perfect child. According to my family, I was born perfect. I was quiet and obedient and always willing to help out. From the time I was very small my family relied on me to be the good, responsible child. Although I was not too much older than my siblings and cousins I was relied on to make sure they were safe, happy, and cooperative too.

As I got older and some of the extended family moved away my responsibilities changed. I was now supposed to go to school and do all my work without complaint or question, answering any inquires about what I was learning with an in depth explanation. Then I was supposed to help my younger brother complete his school work while also teaching him what he missed in class due to his ADD. After that came helping with chores like ironing, laundry, dishes, yard work, vacuuming etc. That I was also supposed to do without complaint for as long as it took. 

Every member of the family had set chores and I was expected to not only do mine, as quickly and quietly as possible, but also “help out” with everyone else’s. That meant doing the dirtiest, hardest or most complex jobs while they watched and shook their heads –feeling helplessly confused all the while.

If I finished everything I was then expected to have “family time” which consisted of sitting around the television, watching something my brother and I were not interested in. I was supposed to keep him quietly entertained so we could “be a family.” If, by chance, there was time left over before bed I snuck in reading a chapter or two of my books, which were my only escape from reality.

When I got into my teen years and nothing changed, I began to become uncomfortable with the arrangement. 

I had not made many friends outside of school before then, of course, due to my packed schedule. When I attempted to make plans with friends and let my family know ahead of time, some emergency inevitably came up: a last minute project, a chore that had to be done RIGHT NOW, or just a guilt trip of “not being with your family.”After a few attempts I decided it was not worth the effort and went back to my routine.

Finally when I reached my twenties I realized that my life style was not normal. I started to try to pull away. I knew that I wanted to become my own person and not just the person they told me I was. I wanted to make choices based on my own needs and desires instead of doing what would make them happy or what would not get me in trouble with my family. It was very hard for me to break out of the thinking patterns that had formed from my many years as the perfect child. 

I constantly had to remind myself that I was not responsible for anyone else’s happiness or emotional welfare. I could not change anyone no matter how much I did for them or how much I loved them. In fact I was only allowing them to continue to suffer because they never had to grow as long as I picked up their slack.

At first I planned to move out. I started to squirrel away money for an apartment and shopped around near my work during lunch to see what I could afford. Then a few weeks before I decided I would make my move, a family member had to have emergency surgery.

Well, of course I couldn’t leave then. There was an actual sick person to take care of; the house had one less person to help with clean up, and the person that did not work and stayed home needed a break in the evenings. It was only reasonable.

Six months went by and I decided that I would take a smaller step towards being independent. I planned on going on a trip by myself for two weeks. I would use the money I had saved to pay for the gas, and I had a tent so I could just go on a road trip and camp along the way. I got permission from my work and was all ready to go. I decided to give my family two weeks’ notice so that they could adjust to the idea.

Bad idea.

As I started to pull away, my family teamed up against me. From telling me I was wrong in my thinking to guilt trips to outright anger and abuse, they piled on the difficulties and tried to make me conform to their way of thinking; the way that was easiest for them. I fought back for a while but eventually got worn out, and found myself being sucked back in.

I postponed my trip indefinitely.

However, this time I was aware of what was going on around me. I felt like I was living in another world. I watched in horror as I went through the same day-to-day routine of being the perfect child and cleaning up the messes they left behind. I felt disconnected from reality and just went through my days with a kind of hopeless, formless, pointless movement. Somehow I thought that as long as my body was moving I was still all right and functioning.

What I did not realize is that I had become seriously depressed. I had been depressed in the past but had repressed the dark times in my life to the point where I did not even remember them happening. I tried to function on auto-pilot without my own conscious approval. However, this time around the auto pilot would not engage. I had become too self-aware to let my brain slip into a waking coma.

It got to the point where I would be driving and would consider just letting go of the wheel and seeing what happened. After all, it did not matter one way or the other. What was the point of living like this?

After having several similar thoughts, I sought professional help. Although it did help to have my irrational thinking pointed out to me, it did not help in the sense of giving me something concrete to do.

“Move out,” they said, “Get away.”

Well, that is all well and good for someone to say, but the practicality of it was beyond me. I had been beaten down by the combined forces of my family. From bills to pay to broken down cars to guilt trips and attacks of hysteria I had so much to deal with that even planning a way out was beyond me.

I checked out. I really did. I went to work every day and somehow managed to crank out my job with no brain power. I got home and took care of the chores and bills and things that needed to be done. I chatted pleasantly about the weather, feigned listening attentively to problems, and worked steadily until it was time to fall into bed and start the whole day over again.

Weekends and weekdays were indistinguishable except for the physical activity required. It was much more restful at work, sitting at a desk, then at home running errands, cleaning up messes, and trying to pretend everything was fine.

Hopeless does not even begin to describe it.

I tried to express to my family why I was so angry, or stressed, or just listless. Their solution:

“Just stop thinking so much. Everything will work out.”

Eventually I got fed up with the whole thing. Working with friends I came up with a way to get out of the house. One day I just moved, taking only a couple of bags of clothes and tossing them in the trunk of my car I left.

After the meltdown, things changed. I was still the ‘perfect child’ in some ways but I learned the benefits of boundaries and getting away from people. The physical distance helped me to create a personal space where I could feel safe and grow. It was still very hard for a long time but it has gradually gotten better. My family still attempts guilt trips and manipulation but now that I have time to see things as they really are I can resist them and deal with them in a healthier way.

Author Bio:

Paul Taylor started www.babysittingjobs.com which offers an aggregated look at those sites to help families find sitters and to help sitters find families easier than ever. He loves writing, with the help of his wife. He has contributed quality articles for different blogs & websites.

Is Marketing Drugs for Non FDA Approved Uses Free Speech

A recent ruling by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan threatens to legalize the marketing of snake oil without any restrictions. It maintains that the marketing  of pharmaceuticals by drug companies for conditions for which the FDA has not approved them is free speech!

Considering the ruling of the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case, many of us are highly concerned that if the lower court ruling is appealed and ends up there, that the current court will concur, and this will become the law of the land.

U.S. Supreme Court

As my colleague Ken Harvey says, only in America.

I have posted here several times about the huge fines levied against big Pharma drug companies for marketing psychiatric and other medical drugs for uses in conditions for which the FDA has not approved them as safe and effective. For a summary, see my last post on the subject.

Once a medication is FDA-approved for any indication, doctors are absolutely free to prescribed it for any other condition they see fit, but pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to market the drugs for these other conditions. This is important because pharmaceutical companies can run poorly-constructed studies that show that a drug might help this or that condition, and if there were no law against it, use their various marketing techniques and financial inducements to get doctors to prescribe the drug to larger and larger populations of patients.

Many of these powerful marketing techniques have been described by me in a series of previous posts (the last one being my post of August 7, 2012). The profits to be gained by so-called off-label marketing are enormous, and completely dwarf even the billion dollar plus fines levied by the U.S. Department of Justice. The fines are considered to be just a cost of doing business by Big Pharma.

This situation has also led to an explosion of disease mongering, in which the definitions of disorders like bipolar disorder for which certain drugs are FDA-approved are expanded beyond all reason (see my posts of 10/20/12 and 8/13/11).

The damage to patients, especially in the field of psychiatry, has been particularly horrendous. People with family and behavioral problems who are in desperate need of psychotherapy are instead given only drugs, many with potentially toxic side effects.  Patients unfortunately are all to eager to buy in to the proposition that their emotional problems or those of their children are merely the result of some brain dysfunction rather than their own behavioral difficulties.

(Disclaimer for the anti-medication lot: of course some psychiatric conditions do indeed result from brain dysfunction, and for those medication is the primary and most effective treatment, and psychotherapy is next to worthless. Which ones are those?  Read this blog! Also, medications can control anxiety and emotional reactivity so that psychotherapy becomes even more effective).

Just as an aside, readers may wonder if I think it should be illegal for doctors to prescribe medications for non-FDA approved indications. This is a complicated question, because of the crazy way the FDA in the U.S. works. For example, we know that if one SSRI antidepressant (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro, Luvox, Viibrid) works for, say obsessive compulsive disorder, then they all do.

However, once one drug company does the studies that result in their getting an approval from the FDA for their product for this indication, the other drug companies have no financial incentives for doing studies with their own product. Doing the studies is expensive, and they know doctors know about the if one-then all idea, so they will use the other me-too drugs off label. I don't see anything wrong with doctors doing so in properly diagnosed patients (which, BTW, is unfortunately a big "if" nowadays).

Also, sometimes there is widespread clinical experience that shows that a given drug is effective for a certain indication for which studies have not led to FDA approval for that indication. For instance, many of us have successfully used SSRI antidepressants in patients with borderline personality disorder to decrease their emotional reactivity (neuroticism). The drugs do not stop the hyper-responsiveness that these patients show to problematic interactions, but they do raise the bar. It takes a higher level of stress to get them into a state of dysregulation than it would in an unmedicated state.  Hardly a cure, but still very useful.

There have been many studies to show that SSRI's do this, some performed by Emil Cocarro, a highly respected researcher. But so far, no drug company has, for a variety of reasons, made a petition to the FDA for this indication.

Dr. Emil F. Cocarro

I would be very much opposed to any action that would limit my ability to help my patients in this way. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues listen to drug company propaganda and use drugs in ways that are very inappropriate. I'm not sure what the solution to this quandary is, but of one thing I am certain: allowing Big Pharma to market drugs for unapproved indications ain't it.

Hark! Hark! I Have Free ARCs!

Ok, Book Sluts! I have now officially (and oh-so-randomly) chosen winners! I was going to choose two but I am too much of a softie so I chose THREE. The post office needs the money, right? Here they are:

Beverly Diehl:
Born Wicked
My Family for the War

Kathy Coleman:
Grave Mercy
The Fine Art of Truth of Dare

Brooke:
Bloodrose
Harbinger

I will contact you all personally to let you know. Congratulations! For those of you who didn't win, don't despair: There will be more giveaways just like this. Come back again, fair book sluts. Giving away books warms the cockles of my heart, and also my duodenum.

Please review and let us know how you enjoyed these titles!

_________________

Let's not meddle around here. You know what you want, and why you are here. Free books!

YOU ARE AN ADDICT.

But that's OK, because I like to feed your addiction.

Better yet, these YA books are unpublished and as yet untouched by human hands! Except mine. I groped them a little bit. (But you would too, if you came across a book called BORN WICKED. And that woman on BLOODROSE looks like she don't wear nothing under her clothes. Just saying. Damn it, did I learn nothing from NYC's Slutwalk '11?)

If you get them you can gloat and think something along the lines of the sign I once saw in a Brooklyn storefront: OUR STUFF IS CHEAPER THAN IF IT FELL OFF THE BACK OF A TRUCK.

So are these books.

The rules are simple for this giveaway:
1. Leave me a comment with a way to contact you should you win (if certain titles appeal to you, say so!)
2. Follow my blog
3. Tweet at least once about this giveaway, and please tag me @feralpony so I see it
4. If you don't tweet do something else nice, like help a young lady across the street without fondling her just because she's dressed like a slut.

I will pick 2 winners soonish...in a couple of days. Good luck!

Cate Cahill and her sisters are witches! If their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood,
it will mean an asylum, a prison ship—or an early grave.

See the blood drizzling from the "O"? Yeekers! There is a wolf, too.

A 17-year-old fleeing from an arranged marriage will be trained as an assassin...and a handmaiden to Death.

Plagued by waking visions and nightmares, her only comfort the bones of dead animals, sixteen-year-old Faye thinks she's going crazy. [These books sound awesome; why am I giving them away? I am a dope.]

Funny kissy cute!

At the start of WWII, Franziska is torn from her family to escape the Nazis via the kindertransport train. Being German in London and piecing together a new life isn't easy.