On madness and the power of surrender

There is a gift that comes with pain, there’s medicine in surrendering to precisely the experience we don’t want.

I’ve been trying to stay calm and strong for six years now for my grown up daughter. She lost herself in dimensions of reality and a labyrinth of identities and worlds that I can only guess. By osmosis I feel some of her bewilderment and distress.

I have followed every trail of explanation and possible treatment I could find. Some have been dead ends. Worse. The “biomedical model” preached by conventional psychiatry prescribes locking her up for life in a chemical straight jacket of antipsychotics. The “spiritual emergency” possibility is seductive but hasn’t helped. How does one find the way out of the Dark Night of the Soul when identity is fragmented and agency has been hijacked by voices who shout profanities and order to do dangerous and disgusting things?

The most convincing thread, my current working hypothesis, is that hearing distressing voices is the body’s way to cope with overwhelming situations to protect itself from traumatic events or a distressing environment that are more than the nervous system can handle. Neurodivergence increases the likelihood of psychosis: for the most sensitive among us the world is just too much, if we haven’t learned strategies to navigate it safely. Think ultra sensitive and precise measuring instrument  that has been hit by a hammer. It takes a while for the parts to organically repair themselves.

I am lying awake in bed at 2am ago by my daughter’s side. She has been relentlessly woken up by the voices the previous nights and is exhausted and upset at what they are saying to her. She asks me to be with her, she says my presence soothes her. I can’t sleep, yet exhaustion is weighing heavily. I have no energy left to do anything else but lie by her side, as a sign I am with her, whatever her experience is. No energy to find meaning or solutions. Just a total acceptance that this is the reality at 2am: mother and daughter awake. Daughter bullied incessantly by voices in her head. Mother holding space, without any idea of what to do or what to say, so not doing or saying anything.

No energy to resist the pain of seeing my daughter suffer. No energy to pre-empt what the voices might order her to do. Completely unguarded, at the mercy of whatever might happen next. She might stand at the balcony of the hotel and shout back at the voices, waking up all the guests. She might not be able to resist their insistence that she gets up and walks naked in the streets, or maybe even swims in the glacial river we can hear.

No intellectual resources to list all the possible steps and actions I could follow to create safety or relief for her and resilience for me.

No energy to do anything but accept that is how it is and surrender to it. 

And at that very moment of “I give up” calm appeared. 

We spent the evening with old friends. I was tired but their cheer and natural inclusion of my daughter in spite of her acting different nourished me. And at 2am I let all their love touch me and cried. I was on my last knees and warmth had been given. I felt into the discomfort of being so vulnerable and in such desperate need of support. Maybe it was pride but it felt more like being naked and not knowing whether that nakedness and utter vulnerability would be taken advantage of or would meet support.

I felt as helpless and clueless as a newborn and as appreciative of the warmth as a newborn is for the mother’s milk.

It felt simple. I cried. I felt my heart breaking open and feeling into all the acts of kindness I had closed myself to to protect myself. All the beauty around me. I felt life wanted me to be alive and take in all the gifts it had for me, as one gulps water to quench the thirst after walking in the desert.

Cracks are where the light comes in.

I felt incredibly supported. Life sent me pain but also sent me infinite resources. It took me being pushed to my limits to be able to open up to every once of kindness, beauty, support that come my way.

Today the light has an extra sharpness. People look so much more beautiful.

Watching a torrent follow its course that morning I feel I can trust blindly life’s process. Pain, joy. Water hits rocks, rocks are polished after years of water flowing. The edges of obstacles are polished and rounded. Water flows around them.

It’s vulnerability that hurts us. But it’s also vulnerability that heals us and opens us up to Life’s abundance. 

May we become better at creating safe spaces for each other so we can show up naked and heal.