The Great Suppression

Or The Unintended Consequences of Chronic People-Pleasing

I seem to be in the midst of a sort of life review. I don’t know if this means that I am about to die, or if it’s a more symbolic kind of birth of one self and transformation into another. But in any event, the review is happening.

I’ve been thinking about various ways throughout my life I have, consciously or unconsciously, suppressed myself. I know very clearly that what I really enjoyed doing was expressing myself creatively. And yet, I have gotten to this advanced age with very little to show. How did this happen? There are many layers to this answer but I will put forth one of them.

In 1992, when I was 33-1/2 years old, I gave birth to my wonderful daughter Hannah. Wonderful is not at all adequate to describe who she is, but for the purpose of this story that will be my descriptor. Well, Hannah is a wonderful daughter but unfortunately had a rough start to this life. Within her first three months she had been hospitalized twice, and cried enough tears to fill the Ganges. Her teeny tiny (less than 6 lb.) body experienced this existence as very painful, and she let us know this. Consequently, I did not sleep for about her first six months (I don’t mean not at all, but practically so). The cumulative effect of this lack of sleep was that I would walk around Kew Garden Hills, pushing her stroller, and crying. Of course some postpartum hormone wackiness was probably thrown into the mix. So I went to the doctor. Oh Mrs. Swisa, we have this nice new medication that will help you “take the edge off”. Karen meet Paxil. Paxil meet Karen. Initially it was love at first sight. Even though I was still sleep deprived, it didn’t matter so much. I didn’t feel it so badly! I was calm. And I had no edge! Wow! My edge had been taken off.

How does people pleasing have anything to do with this? A lot. So two months after Hannah was born we moved into an attached house because we needed more space. We had been living in a one-bedroom apartment with our son David and we just needed more room. Our new home had three bedrooms. The master bedroom was for David, the regular bedroom was for me and my husband, and the tiny bedroom was for tiny Hannah. Wait a minute? The three year old had the master bedroom? Why? Well, since we had gotten married in 1988, a steady stream of relatives presented themselves at our door and needed a place to crash. So we bought a sleeper couch to accommodate our guests. I have never seen such a large sleeper couch before or since. I don’t know where we found this but it was tremendous. So, because we were always having guests, the decision was made that David’s bed and the gigantic sleeper sofa would be in the master bedroom. I don’t know why in retrospect we could not have put it in the living room but God forbid our guests would have been uncomfortable not having any privacy. So rather than having the master bedroom in which I could have fit Hannah’s crib, I was sleeping in the smaller bedroom, which did not have room for her crib. So every night I would hear Hannah cry down the hall. I would go from my room to hers to try to comfort her. It would take about an hour to get her back to sleep. I would stealthily return to my room, pull up my blankets, and there would be another “Wahhh!”. The procedure repeated itself, all night, every night for about six months. It may have continued after I started taking Paxil but I can’t remember and even if it did I had no edge so it wouldn’t have bothered me that much.

In retrospect I ask myself, why was the comfort of our many guests more important than having my baby next to me so that I might have gotten just a little bit of sleep and she a little less distress, during this time? The answer is “people pleasing”. Quite honestly my people pleasing behavior was so much of a reflex at this point that I don’t even think it crossed my mind to suggest that perhaps my and my newborn daughter’s needs might have trumped the comfort of my guests. 

I was an expert at people pleasing. I could meet a person and tell what they needed before they even knew it.  The cumulative effect of knowing what everybody else needed was that I no longer knew what I needed. I just wasn’t there. No wonder the idea of selfless service appealed to me, I was already living it, but not in an intentional, God-devoted sort of way. More so as a form of maladaptation and fear.

Over the next 32-1/2 years there were a number of times that I wanted to stop taking Paxil. Hannah has been sleeping through the night very well for about 32 of these years (or at least if she isn’t she’s not waking me up). When I got pregnant for the third time with my son Johnathan, I told the doctor that I was taking Paxil and I thought I should stop for the baby’s sake. I figured that since even ibuprofen was not allowed during pregnancy, surely a psychopharmacological medication would be contra-indicated. He said, there’s no known risk to the baby and it’s better that you don’t get depressed. I wasn’t depressed. I was actually quite happy because I really wanted to have a third child and I was thrilled that I was pregnant. Why did he think I might get depressed out of the blue? And if that did happen postpartum, why not re-prescribe me the Paxil then? I don’t know what he was thinking. All I know was that God forbid, as an expert people pleaser, would I listen to myself and not the doctor. I remember a few years later asking another doctor about stopping Paxil and he said “you need to be on this for the rest of your life.” Oh, ok, why? He said if you have depression, you have it for life; it doesn’t go away and this medication will make it manageable. But I wasn’t depressed. At the time I went to that doctor I had a 2-1/2 year old child, a 9 year old and a 12 year old. My husband is self-employed so we were always on a roller coaster of highs and lows financially. Then my father’s partner died and he came to Cherry Hill so that I could take care of him. I wasn’t depressed. I was overwhelmed, exhausted, stretched very thin. But I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t hopeless. I could have used some help, some friends or family nearby. I needed that much more than I needed a chemical to “take the edge off.” But once again, I complied with my doctor’s orders and kept popping that little pill every morning.

A few years later, in a moment of not very great sanity, I decided I just wasn’t going to take those damn pills anymore. Of course, most sane people know that you don’t just stop taking antidepressants, you must wean yourself off of it. I admit I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was one of those periods of downturns in our finances. I had no insurance. The medication was expensive. And besides, by this point I had been so proficient in not knowing what I needed that I decided I’m just going to stop. Well, if you want to know what Hell is like, start taking Paxil for a number of years, and then stop it cold turkey. I believe I actually looked the Devil in the eyes when I did that. It wasn’t immediate. At first I felt pretty good. And then I felt euphoric! The year was 2005 and I was on top of the world! I was going to collaborate with the relatively new artist Kanye West (who was still taking his meds at that time, I guess). My usual rather reticent self was replaced by a totally extroverted personality. I would talk to anyone and everyone with complete ease! Wow, this is great! But then the crash. And oh what a crash it was. I cannot or will not look back too deeply into that time because it was the closest I ever got to losing my mind. Needless to say, I crawled back to the doctor and begged for a new prescription of my beloved Paxil.

Throughout all of this I sense a theme: one of being such a very good, compliant little girl/woman, and total obliteration of my inner voice. 

All of this brings me to the present. Last year, about a month after my brother died, I had a visit with a nurse practitioner who was managing my medication. “How are you doing today Karen?” Me: “I’m really sad, my younger brother died unexpectedly and I’m just really really sad.” Her: “Maybe we should change up your medication to see if another one will help you more.”  Me: “Ok.” So Paxil got switched to Prozac. My brain and my stomach really did not like this, to put it very mildly. Me and Prozac were not going to be friends. After trying Prozac for three weeks I told her that I saw no point in taking a medication that made me feel like absolute shit. So we agreed that I would stop the Prozac and that because I had taken it, this would effectively be my weaning off of the Paxil.

At first I felt very strange. My brain was kind of freaking out, as if it was saying: hey man, why’d you remove that “edge taker off-er”? I was determined to stick it out as I felt that finally I was off of the Paxil and without having gone through hell, just a few weeks of discomfort on Prozac. 

This all happened about five months ago. By now I am living with my edge back on. And I like it.