Podcast: Understanding a Dysfunctional Childhood

Discuss how parent-child dynamics can go wrong in undiagnosed mental illness.

(Transcript available below)

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About the not crazy podcast hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and public speaker living with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Insanity is an asshole and other observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Lisa is the producer of the Psych Central podcast Not Crazy. She is the recipient of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Above and Beyond award, has worked extensively with the Ohio Peer Supporter Certification program, and is an on-the-job suicide prevention trainer. Lisa has battled depression her entire life and has partnered with Gabe for over a decade to advocate mental health. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband. enjoys international travel; and orders 12 pairs of shoes online, chooses the best and sends the other 11 back.

Computer generated transcript for “Dysfunctional childhood” episode

publisher's Note:: Please note that this transcript was computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors. Thank you very much.

Lisa: Y.You're listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast hosted by my ex-husband with bipolar disorder. Together we created the Mental Health Podcast for People Who Hate Mental Health Podcasts.

Gift: Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Not Crazy podcast, I'm your host, Gabe Howard. And with me, as always, is the sparkling Lisa Kiner.

Lisa: Thanks, Gabe. Today's quote is from C. S. Lewis. You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the end.

Gift: But is that true?

Lisa: Yes, of course that's true, it's never too late until you're dead.

Gift: That fits my quote: it's never too late to have a happy childhood.

Lisa: No, it's not similar at all.

Gift: Are you sure? Because I think memory is one of those weird things. The way we remember things changes dramatically as additional information enters our brain. Now it should come as no surprise that we are talking about Gabe's childhood, especially how toxic my parents were.

Lisa: Ok but yes, your memories are constantly being re-evaluated by your brain, but the real truth about what happened isn't. If you had a video camera that wouldn't change, you could just go back and watch the video. What actually happened is the same. It's just how you interpret it or how you feel it has changed.

Gift: But that is a very esoteric concept and has ever seen you.

Lisa: You are not using the word "esoteric" properly. No, it's not an esoteric concept. You want to say nebulous

Gift: Well, it's a nebulous concept, me

Lisa: OK?

Gift: Think it's esoteric, you think it's nebulous, let's cancel this. The

Lisa: No, the words have an actual meaning.

Gift: Do they

Lisa: Yes, that is the purpose of words.

Gift: Do they

Lisa: Oh for god's sake Okay.

Gift: The point I am making is that the way we see things changes when additional information becomes available, for example the whole world, literally the whole world believes that there is a line in the film Casablanca who says play it again, sam, that

Lisa: Yes.

Gift: Line does not exist. And we all remember it. We all believe it's true. Now, when I apply that to our own lives, I remember my childhood very much in some ways, but it develops when I put myself in my parents' shoes. For example, when I was 15, my parents were idiots just trying to stop me from having my best life. And when I was 25, they were horrific culprits trying to kill me. And now that I'm 43, they're boring and just fighting a lot. But I remember the same.

Lisa: We have to go back to that twenty-five year old thing, oh my god, really?

Gift: Well, I knew you when I was twenty-five.

Lisa: And that convinced you that your parents tried to kill you?

Gift: Somebody had to try to kill me. Either that.

Lisa: What?

Gift: Or invented things. If it wasn't them, who was it?

Lisa: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. You thought your parents wanted to kill you when you were 25?

Gift: In order to.

Lisa: Wait, wait, wait. Did they try to kill you when you were 25? Or when you look back, did you think, my goodness, you tried to kill me 10 years ago?

Gift: I, probably everything. Remember, I thought back then that demons were hiding under my bed, I was paranoid. I thought something was trying to kill me and I blamed her for all of my problems because I had to blame someone and my world was very small. In fairness, I also blamed my ex-wife, society, and probably several celebrities. It was a hectic time. But remember, those who are closest to you are primarily to blame. It's no surprise that when you and I got married, we moved on to you.

Lisa: There is so much.

Gift: There is. There is an incredible amount there.

Lisa: And it all comes because we got an email with a question and the question is, Gabe, how old were you when your bipolar symptoms started and when you were diagnosed? Did you have a relationship with your immediate family members at the time? And how did they help or hurt your recovery?

Gift: Of course we're going to be discussing this a lot more because, you know, we have to fill a longer show, but the answers to the speed lap were that the symptoms were kind of always with me. Nobody just recognized them. Law? I've thought of suicide for as far as I can remember. Like literally from birth. Yes. It was just always a part of me. I showed symptoms of bipolar disorder in my teenage years. Yes, it was always there. I was 25 when I was finally diagnosed, and my relationship with my immediate family was strained when I was diagnosed.

Lisa: Before the diagnosis or because of the diagnosis?

Gift: Oh no, before. It was tense because of that

Lisa: So at the time of diagnosis, was your relationship strained?

Gift: Yes, it was tense, it was problematic, I don't want to say bad because we were still in contact. I think it's bad, like I haven't spoken to my mother in five years. That is bad or like extreme abuse. As if your family steals from you or

Lisa: Okay.

Gift: You know i don't know

Lisa: So it wasn't as good as it is now. So tense.

Gift: Oh, no, no, no, now, now it's fine.

Lisa: Do you think this was tense because of your behavior and symptoms?

Gift: Oh, yes, yes, without a doubt my behavior was very problematic, both in the way I treated her and the way I treated her, that's like the real bitch about bipolar disorder right? It kind of distorts what you see. And that is very difficult to overcome. Even after treatment, it took years to ponder and realize what a strange reason to be angry.

Lisa: They say that as a teenager you had symptoms of bipolar disorder. What types of symptoms are we talking about?

Gift: When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, my mom said to me after learning what bipolar disorder is she said, oh my god I always took you as my child from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde described. And I said mom, this is literally bipolar disorder. How did you not think something was wrong? And she said I just thought it was hormones. I thought it was guys that will be guys. I thought it was the teenage years. I. In defense of my parents, I am the oldest. This was her first teenager. They didn't know what the hell was going on. And teenagers are ridiculous. Were. Watch a coming-of-age movie and I don't know that my behavior was that out of character. If you got your mental health education from pop culture they just thought I just needed a guide.

Lisa: I have often thought that, especially with parents of teenagers, you have a child who is crippled with fear. Well, the point of a parent is to say, no, no, no, you can do it. Get out there, try this thing. Well, at some point they can't. As you said, your parents are the oldest. Teenagers are moody. You were moody. Teens are dramatic. You were dramatic.

Gift: Here I think it's a good idea to talk about the hidden symptom of bipolar disorder and I'm trying to be really dramatic like dun dun thin. You see, everyone thinks of bipolar disorder as the two poles, right? Suicidal depression and godlike mania. And these are absolutely symptoms of bipolar disorder. But what people are getting wrong is that it is a spectrum disease, meaning that suicidal depression is the lowest and god-like mania the highest that you can meet. But you go back and forth on that spectrum. This is what brings me to my quote with no quote and no hidden symptom. It is reasonable and probable and probable and possible that doing nothing will land you in the middle. You will end up quoting unquote, normal, just fine. And in my teenage years, I would excel in my after-school activities. Then I would excel in school. Then I would be the charismatic, intelligent, charming gift my parents wanted to raise. And when that middle ground fell near punishment, we now know it was just luck. It was just coincidental. But at the time my parents were acting as if Gabe had acted. We grounded him. And now look. Now look, he's fine. He joined a club. Look at all of his friends. He mows the lawn like we asked. That was just luck. I was only asymptomatic, but actually not asymptomatic. I was just in the middle of that spectrum.

Lisa: That is asymptomatic.

Gift: Sure, but that brought my parents further home that what they were doing was working, but it was actually just the disease process that happened to combine near my parents' discipline.

Lisa: I'm confused. They keep calling it a hidden symptom, but that is not a symptom, this is a time of normalcy. They say that at times you had a normal mood because you were between the two extremes. That is actually the absence of symptoms. This is not a hidden symptom. This is a period of normal mood. It's not a symptom.

Gift: I understand what you are saying and I don't want to be confusing, but the reason I call it a hidden symptom is because it still has negative consequences. So you describe it as symptom-free, but you are still in the bipolar spectrum. It's not because I'm asymptomatic and have no symptoms.

Lisa: Yes, that is exactly what the word asymptomatic means.

Gift: OK, you are right. Let me, let me, let me keep clarifying, I'm trying to spin an analogy and it clearly isn't working well. Let's take an example. So I'm getting suspended from school for dancing in front of the room and being the class clown for what mania looks like. Law? So I'm getting suspended from school. I come home, mom and dad sit down and they say: OK, Gabe, OK, we have to stop this behavior. That is bad behavior. So my parents grounded me, they grounded me. And for the three days that I'm suspended, I have to work in the garden. And then a week later I go back to school and suddenly I'm good, I'm perfect. I am respectful of my parents. All is well. In my parents' minds, the punishment worked and grounded me. That is reasonable to think. But in reality I wouldn't have been manic if my parents had done absolutely nothing the next week when I went back to school. The disease process would have shifted and I would have been perfectly fine.

Gift: But they didn't notice. And here's why that's a problem because the next time I was the class clown they thought, OK no problem, we're going to ground him and let him garden for a week. But that didn't work next time and that just gave them a chance to say, OK, we need to put more pressure on. We need to ground him for two weeks and let him work in the neighbor's garden. I dont know. And they thought I was persistent.

Lisa: What you're saying is that like bipolar disorder, your mood would go in and out of a period of normalcy, but your parents would attribute this to something they did

Gift: Right, yes.

Lisa: As if he was going completely out of control. We grounded him. He stopped doing that. Hence the grounding worked. So the next time it gets out of hand, we'll ground it back down. And when that doesn't work, we just escalate and escalate and escalate.

Gift: Law.

Lisa: In reality, however, this was just the ups and downs of bipolar disorder. It wasn't actually related.

Gift: Yeah, exactly, but there's one more insidious little bit and that's what I really want people to focus on. My parents believed that I could do it. Wondering why you should try to get the symptoms of an illness out of your child? How sick is that. Could you imagine if I come home with a broken arm and you look like you're grounded until your arm isn't broken? We'd call childcare. It's sadistic. You grounded your son because he has a broken arm? But remove broken arm and put you in mania, depression, anger. They tried that. They were literally trying to punish the symptoms out of me. And you wonder why in the world would they do that? Because it worked. At least they thought they saw it work. They knew I could be good. You saw it. It's like having a temporary problem with your son. It's like taking the car to the mechanic. What does that say

Lisa: Oh every time you take the car to the mechanic the problem is gone.

Gift: Yes, their son happened to have an intermittent problem and every time they took me to the mechanic I was fine.

Lisa: They thought, because there were times when you were acting normally, when you were asymptomatic, they thought, OK, yeah, he can control it. If he can do it sometimes, he can always do it.

Gift: Exactly exactly. But here's the thing that sucks. I thought the same. I wanted to be a good kid. I think that's important to understand. My parents introduced me as being intentionally mean and acted on purpose. They saw that. I didn't try to do that. Well, I thought my parents were boring and stupid. And I didn't want her life in any way because of the boring and stupid thing mentioned above. I respected my parents. You worked hard. They paid their bills. They were active in their community. And make no mistake, even in my angry moments, when I got into trouble, I called her. There was never a time, never a time, when I got into trouble and thought I couldn't call my parents. I always knew I could call her. But yeah, yeah, I don't even know what to say. I only have me I felt.

Lisa: I always knew that I could rely on her.

Gift: In summary, did I have a relationship with my immediate family members? Yes, but it was incredibly tense because of all of the things we were just talking about.

Lisa: We're talking about when you were diagnosed, when you were 25, you were in a relationship with your immediate family. You must have left home when you were 18 or 19. What has happened in those years?

Gift: I moved out when I was 18 and still in high school because I just had to get away from them, I just couldn't stand them.

Lisa: But you moved in with your grandparents, right?

Gift: Yeah, I could take her, I like her.

Lisa: It's not that you moved out alone, you just moved on to another family.

Gift: Yeah, I was ready to go out alone, me, just me

Lisa: But your parents thought it was a terrible idea.

Gift: Memories change here, don't they? Here's what 18 year old Gabe thought. My parents were assholes. I can't take it anymore. I'm not dealing with this shit. I'm out of here. Grandma saved me. Law? That's what Gabe thought. Here's what actually happened: Gabe was willing to run away from home and do anything to be away from them. And my parents called my grandparents and said, OK, we have to work together to make sure he graduates from high school and saves him from himself because he's preparing to run face first into the fire. And he's too stupid to realize. And they all work together for the next two years to make sure I have a high school diploma, that I am mature, that I made friends, that I was in a bogus trial, and that I had something to fall back on, that I learned computers. My parents still paid all of my bills even though I called them assholes all along and they knew I call them assholes. They are not stupid, but I ran away from them. It actually happened. That's a really big difference. So it's hard to be mad at her now that I see the full picture. But I was so mad at her when I left, Lisa. So angry.

Lisa: But why were you so mad, what did you do wrong?

Gift: They punished symptoms of bipolar disorder.

Lisa: But neither of you knew that. They thought it was bad behavior, and so did they. Why should you bother about it?

Gift: Because I just felt so strong that I tried and they didn't realize it. I don't think my parents realized how desperate I was to make them happy. Who Wants To Be A Bad Kid? I wanted my parents' respect. Hell, I still want my parents' respect. I never thought my parents were bad people. I found them boring. I'm not trying to rewrite history where I suddenly thought no. I thought, damn it, I still think they're boring. If I have to hear another episode of Ice Road Truckers I can scream, but who cares?

Lisa: Your father spoiled me with many stories about the cinematic masterpiece Ice Road Truckers. Yes.

Gift: Oh that's great.

Lisa: It never gets more interesting. Never. But your parents weren't fully aware that there was more than normal teenage anxiety going on here because they took you to a psychologist.

Gift: That's true.

Lisa: This would have been in the early 90s, the idea of ​​how you treated children and mental illness in children was just completely different. It would have been extremely unusual to take your child to a child psychologist.

Gift: You are right, in the early 90s it was completely unusual to take your child to any therapy. But wait, there's more. My father is a truck driver. He's a blue collar. He believes that all problems can be solved by rubbing mud on it. And he took his child to a child psychologist. In the early 1990s there were employees with MBAs who did not take their children to child psychologists. My parents were actually only that far ahead of the curve. My parents admitted that they couldn't handle this and took me to see a therapist. We have family counseling. Are you kidding me? There are families struggling with this in 2020. They were progressive.

Lisa: Well, it couldn't have been easy, there weren't very many child psychologists around, it was probably quite a chore to find anyone at all.

Gift: I have no idea how they found my child psychologist, but yeah we went to family counseling.

Lisa: Why did you choose to do it, what was the breakpoint?

Gift: I honestly don't know where the break point was, but yeah what kind of question that would be, you know what I mean? I am.

Lisa: We should call your mother and ask. That could be the next episode.

Gift: Maybe I don't want the answer.

Lisa: Well I want the answer.

Gift: It's only when it comes to rewriting history or reconnecting it, as children like to say today. My parents were not the right people to use mental health services, therapy, and child psychologists. We were very stereotypical workers. My father drives the 18-wheel semi, honks the horn for children. He says things like, we're going back to the house. He couldn't be a stereotype anymore if they tried. My mother, a housewife with a part-time job as the kids got older. I mean, it's like Americana. You just want to throw up. It's so stereotypical. We have dinner together as a family, just like.

Lisa: Leave it to Beaver with no employee income.

Gift: Yes, basically, how on earth were these people so advanced that they admitted they needed help with their child? Is it so messed up that I could break this shape? This is screwed up, isn't it?

Lisa: Was your father away as a truck driver for a long time?

Gift: No no no. Before long he left a day and came back the next day. So he would be gone like every other night.

Lisa: So he was gone every other night, he was quite absent from home.

Gift: Yes, yes, he wasn't home three nights a week. He had a very different schedule, especially when I was younger and he was newer.

Lisa: Yes, not high up in the union yet. That meant it was even more of a strain for him to go to the therapy appointment.

Gift: Yes / Yes.

Lisa: Because it's not like he can just send you with your mom, you all had to go.

Gift: Huh, you blew me away because I didn't even think about it.

Lisa: Well, it couldn't have been easy to plan around him.

Gift: I. Should I give you a medal? I just look, when I was diagnosed at 25 I was sure they screwed me up.

Lisa: Because you thought bipolar disorder was the fault of bad parenting?

Gift: Yes, I also thought that at any moment I could be violent and that I was going to die and that I have to live in a group house, remember. . .

Lisa: So we're making bipolar myths here.

Gift: But they weren't myths then, they were.

Lisa: Well, it was always myth that you just didn't know.

Gift: Ok, yes, yes, but perception becomes reality.

Lisa: Law.

Gift: When I was in the mental hospital, I was locked behind the doors. I stared at a doctor. They diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And all I could think of was, thank goodness, I didn't kill my family and I have to live in a group house and I'm going to die soon because everyone with bipolar disorder was violent, lived in a group house and eventually got killed themselves . That's all I understood And then of course I learned more and more and my memories changed. Things changed.

Lisa: Gabe, you jump back and forth a lot, it's kind of confusing.

Gift: What do you need to clarify? This is just my life, everything is mixed up in my brain

Lisa: Let's get back to the part where your parents take you to the child psychologist. So you've clearly established that something is wrong. This is more than just being a normal teenager. We can't handle it. We have to reach outside for professional help. What happened? Did it work?

Gift: I dont know.

Lisa: Did you get better

Gift: I dont know.

Lisa: Haven't you been going there for years I mean, it's not like they took you and stopped you once.

Gift: I honestly don't know if it helped me understand her, but in some ways I think it helped my parents understand me. My family believes in paddling. My dad had a paddle, it had a handle, and he hit my butt with it. And I was scared of this thing and it was humiliating and demeaning. And besides, it's violence. I see it very much as violence. And I, I said all the things that I just said in the therapist's office and he said you know Gabe is really old. Why are you still threatening him with violence? And my father thinks it's just paddling. And he likes, well, but it's violence. They say that if you don't like the way your son behaves, the way to solve problems is not to talk to him, but to threaten him with violence. And that made my parents want to get rid of not only the actual paddle, but the threats that come with it. And whenever there was behavior they didn't like, it forced them to discuss it with me. There's this little piece of me that's still pissed off that I had to endure this shit for 13, 14 years. But my brother and sister, who are younger, disappeared instantly for her too. You are welcome.

Lisa: Wait a minute, we'll be right after this news.

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Gift: And we're back talking about my teenage years.

Lisa: Your parents had a certain way of disciplining their children that they probably learned from their own parents, and they did that because they knew it. But what you are saying is that as soon as someone else, a professional, a child psychologist, said to them, yes, this is a terrible idea, don't do that, they stopped immediately. They didn't argue. You haven't tried to identify yourself. You were like, weren't you? Well. Now that we have better information, we won't do that anymore.

Gift: I don't think it ever crossed your mind what it looked like from my point of view, because from my point of view, you said that I am not interested in your ridiculous little opinion. Do what i say. Do what i say. And the therapist was able to point out that your son is a few years away from the world and he won't be able to threaten people with violence if he doesn't get his way. And if he is unable to articulate his needs, wishes, desires and not argue with people, then you slow down his development. I don't think my parents noticed. I think they took the path of least resistance. We told you to do it. You said no, we are going to threaten to hit your ass and now the problem is solved. But it never occurred to my parents that there was any value in this debate. They just saw the debate as disrespect. And the therapist could say looking to discuss something with your children is not talking back and it is not that they are disrespectful. They learn to use their voice and articulate their wants and needs. I think this was a big game changer for my dad. Again, I'm sure your experiences will be very different from mine. But I really felt that it was in these sessions that my parents heard me for the first time, heard my words, and saw it not just as a behavioral problem, but that I had the audacity to question it.

Lisa: You have told me in the past that your parents' parenting style changed dramatically when they took you to a child psychologist

Gift: Ja, ja.

Lisa: Zum Teil, weil der Psychologe ihnen alle möglichen neuen Ratschläge gab und ihnen ehrlich gesagt sagte, dass vieles, was sie taten, entweder falsch war oder zumindest nicht funktionierte. Dass sie angefangen haben, Elternkurse zu besuchen, dass sie gerade diese großen Änderungen in der Art und Weise vorgenommen haben, wie sie Sie und Ihre Geschwister behandelt haben, sobald sie diese Informationen hatten.

Gabe: Eines der Dinge, die meine Eltern gelernt haben, und es ist wirklich eines der wenigen Beispiele, die meine Mutter mir als Teenager erzählt hat, weil sie allen gesagt hat, dass sie sie finden kann. Es war kein Trick für Ihre Kinder, sondern ein Kinderkonzept. Und das Beispiel, das sie immer verwendet hat, ist, wenn Sie wissen, dass Ihr Kind nicht zu Mollys Haus gegangen ist, obwohl sie gesagt haben, dass sie zu Mollys Haus gehen sollen, wenn sie nach Hause kommen, sagen Sie nicht, wo Sie gewesen sind und richten Sie sie ein Lüge. Wenn sie nach Hause kommen, sagen wir, ich weiß, dass Sie nicht zu Mollys Haus gegangen sind, um es aus dem Weg zu räumen, und dass diese Einstellung Ihrer Kinder zum Lügen das Problem nur verschärft. Ihre Kinder werden es vermasseln. Sie sind bereits durcheinander. Sie haben bereits ein Problem. Gehen Sie einfach auf das Problem ein, das Sie haben. Erstellen Sie keine neuen. Dies hat meine Mutter tiefgreifend beeinflusst. So sehr, dass sie nur allen sagte, dass sie finden könnte. Und wieder erfuhr ich, dass es für sie als Teenager so wichtig war, dass sie offen vor ihrem Kind darüber sprach.

Lisa: Weil sich die meisten Dinge für sie geändert haben, haben sie erst viele, viele Jahre später, als Sie erwachsen waren, mit Ihnen besprochen. Hinter den Kulissen war viel los, von dem Sie nichts wussten.

Gabe: Ja, eines der Dinge, die ich als Erwachsener gelernt habe, ist, dass meine Eltern den Therapeuten tatsächlich gefragt haben, ob sie schlechte Eltern sind. Ich war offensichtlich nicht im Raum. Für diejenigen, die nicht in der Familienberatung waren, sprechen sie allein mit dem Kind. Sie sprechen alleine mit den Eltern. Dann reden sie alle zusammen mit euch. Und eines der Dinge, die meine Eltern gerade gefragt haben, ist, sind wir schlechte Eltern? Und weißt du was für eine Demut?

Lisa: Ja, das muss für sie schwierig gewesen sein.

Gabe: Es braucht, um in einem Raum mit einem Arzt oder Therapeuten sitzen zu können und ehrlich zu fragen, sind wir schlechte Eltern? Und dann ruhig sitzen und auf die Antwort warten? Wenn du mich mit 15 gefragt hättest, ob meine Eltern Zweifel daran hätten, dass sie großartig sind, hätte ich gedacht, nein, sie sind schrecklich. Sie kümmern sich nicht darum. Aber sie hatten tatsächlich diesen Selbstzweifel, diese Fürsorge und Sorge. Ich wusste damals noch nicht, dass sie dazu in der Lage waren, denn schließlich sah ich sie nur als diese übergeordnete Kraft, die alle Regeln aufstellen musste und alle Macht hatte. In Wirklichkeit kämpften sie.

Lisa: Und sie ließen dich nicht wissen, wie sehr sie kämpften und wie sehr sie sich als Reaktion darauf veränderten.

Gabe: Ja, ja, ich hatte keine Ahnung.

Lisa: Wenn Sie in der Vergangenheit mit mir darüber gesprochen haben, haben Sie immer beschrieben, dass die Dinge viel besser werden, nachdem Sie mit der Familientherapie begonnen haben. Aber natürlich waren die Dinge sicherlich nicht perfekt und es hat nicht wirklich funktioniert, dass Sie weiter gekämpft haben. Sie waren weiterhin äußerst symptomatisch und hatten alle möglichen Probleme, brachen die High School ab, einfach weiter und weiter und weiter. Bedeutet das, dass es nicht funktioniert hat oder bedeutet das, dass Sie immer noch bipolar waren?

Gabe: This is where my dad is very angry, my dad believes very strongly that the child psychologist should have realized that I had bipolar disorder and diagnosed me with it and got me help before I really got into a lot of trouble. We have spent a lot of time, my family and I, my father and I, debating and discussing this point. For what it’s worth, I understand why my dad wishes that I would have gotten help sooner. He’s not wrong. And I understand his frustration because he’s like, look, I did everything I could.

Lisa: Right, what more was I supposed to do?

Gabe: Right, but 15-year olds just weren’t diagnosed with bipolar disorder back then, they’re not really diagnosed with bipolar disorder now. I don’t blame the child psychologist for not diagnosing me. I’ve thought about this a lot. I’ve gone back and forth a lot. And I am 100% confident that diagnosing me with the information that he had with what he heard from my parents and what he saw would have been wholly irresponsible and would lead to way more false positives than it would actual positives. So, I want to say that very, very clearly. But yeah, my dad is still frankly, he’s pissed about it. It comes up pretty much once a holiday.

Lisa: Well, but again, that just isn’t how it was done at the time.

Gabe: Yes. But to your question, yes, things got a lot better. But of course, the underlying issue of bipolar disorder was not actually resolved. The grandiose thinking, the demons under the bed, the anger, the mania, the depression. My parents started doing things better and having more patience and more understanding and moving forward in a much healthier way. But ultimately, if you don’t rectify the core problem, you’re sort of handcuffed on how much better you can do.

Lisa: So things got better, but obviously were not fixed or completely cured because certainly your parents’ behavior towards you might have made things worse, but you weren’t behaving like this because of their parenting, you were behaving like this because you were bipolar.

Gabe: Yeah, I was still an untreated bipolar. That’s probably an oversimplification, but it’s more correct than it’s incorrect.

Lisa: But at the time, you were very angry with your parents and thought that they were doing a terrible job, and you continued to think that for a long, long time, right? When did that stop?

Gabe: When I reached recovery with bipolar disorder, I started to see life very differently and I started to see the world very differently. And when I was on my second divorce, Lisa, which was ours, the world looked really differently, too. Like it was it was much more difficult to be an egotistical, arrogant person facing my second divorce and facing rebuilding my life from the bipolar diagnosis. And I had messed up so many things that some of the arrogance of, oh, I’m better than you went away. I realized that a lot of what happened to my parents wasn’t an example of them being idiots. It was an example of circumstance and them being idiots. I, I.

Lisa: There were mitigating circumstances.

Gabe: I did not see any of those mitigating circumstances when I was a kid. Some of the things that really gave me a great amount of pause was spending more time with young children. You know, young children are difficult. I’m going to go with difficult. I started mentoring a teenager. And the stuff that would come out of his mouth in the four or five hours that we would spend together were frankly, just like, what is wrong with you? What are you? What? And then I would reflect back on me doing the exact same thing to my parents. And then the more I understood about my illness and it occurred to me once I reached recovery that my perspective was skewed by symptomology, my perspective was skewed by bipolar disorder. The way that I was remembering the story is incorrect. I would always say me and my dad got in an argument, but in reality, that’s not what happened. What happened was, is my dad got in an argument with a person with untreated bipolar disorder experiencing grandiose thinking, bipolar rage, who was actively delusional. That’s a very different memory. And what, of course, was even worse is that neither one of us knew. I thought that I was perfectly fine and had 100% complete control of my faculties. And my dad thought that he was in an argument with his teenage son who was being a brat. The situation that we thought that it was was not the situation that it actually was. That changes things, changes things dramatically.

Lisa: In the spirit of the original question, though, that’s how you felt once you were in recovery or that’s how you feel now. How did you feel at the time you were diagnosed?

Gabe: That they did it, it was their fault.

Lisa: Ok, so you had a lot of anger still

Gabe: Yes,

Lisa: By the time you were diagnosed

Gabe: Yes.

Lisa: And it was this process of reaching recovery that helped you get rid of a lot of that.

Gabe: And here’s the sick part, right? I was so angry at them. I was so angry at them for letting me languish and not getting me help, they’re my parents. It’s their job. But I called them five times a day from the hospital.

Lisa: Yeah.

Gabe: I still wanted my mommy. That’s all I can say. I, it was both my mother’s fault and I wanted her so desperately. And my parents, as you know, they came later after I got out of the hospital and they helped me move. There was a lot going on in my life, etc. And they like swooped in and solved all of these problems for me while I largely sat in the corner crying. And I was still pissed at them as I was watching them carry my stuff.

Lisa: As they were fixing your life, you were still angry.

Gabe: Yeah, because they messed me up.

Lisa: And at this point you were an adult with your own home, etc.

Gabe: I was twenty-five. Yeah, I was going through my first divorce. Isn’t it great that we can, you know, chop up Gabe’s life into wives?

Lisa: Yeah, yeah.

Gabe: Like those were during the Megan years. Those were during the Lisa years. Now we’re in the Kendall years.

Lisa: But those are the years that will never end.

Gabe: I know. I mean, I know.

Lisa: So, your parents at the time you were diagnosed, they’re falling over themselves to help you, you needed a lot of help because you were a wreck, but you were still extremely angry and your relationship was difficult.

Gabe: It was, but there was. There was some moments and I didn’t realize how amazing they were at the time.

Lisa: Even adult children are selfish when it comes to their parents. You just feel like they kind of owe you.

Gabe: I was a jackass, I was moving out of the house, it was the house that my first wife and I lived in and I was moving into an apartment. That has a whole long back story. But let’s just describe it as a shithole.

Lisa: It wasn’t that bad.

Gabe: It was pretty bad, especially moving out of a real nice house.

Lisa: It was a nice house,

Gabe: Come on.

Lisa: It was a very nice house.

Gabe: And they had got me all moved in and I was at the corner of the apartment building just kind of trying to stand out of the way and hide.

Lisa: As they did all the manual labor.

Gabe: As they did all the manual labor, while I did nothing. I should probably point out, you know, at this point, my dad is like 60, and my grandfather, who was like 70 at the time.

Lisa: So the healthy 25-year-old stands off to the side so that he can watch his elderly relatives assist him with manual labor.

Gabe: I think they would both object to being called elderly, but, yes, that is that is correct. But there’s, there’s moments in this mess. One, nobody ever yelled at me for this. They just did it. So, I just want to put you in the mindset of my father, who has literally worked all day on this stuff. And I’m standing at the corner of the apartment building because I you know, I don’t want them to see me cry or be upset. I don’t even know why I was hiding. And my dad comes over and asked me if I’m OK. And I’m like, you know, yeah, I’m fine. And, you know, he’s kind of standing there. It’s kind of awkward. And I said, you know, I don’t, I don’t like it here. It’s not nice. And my dad looks at me and he said, Well, but this is just a footnote in your story. It’s not the end. You’ll be out of here before you know it. And then he just walked away.

Lisa: He’s just dropping wisdom and then leaves you in the dust.

Gabe: Yeah, like, literally, and I just, he, it was kind of a powerful moment because all I could think of was this is where I’m stuck. This is where I’m stuck. And my dad’s point was, no, this is just where you are. That’s a big difference. I do remember little things like this, but I didn’t know them at the time. I don’t want anybody to think that my life got dramatically better after my father said that or I didn’t spend the next, you know, four years fighting mental illness and I didn’t suffer a great deal. Or I still thought, you know, my parents are idiots, and they did this to me on and off. And we still struggled and had problems. But looking back now, they knew damn well I was pissed at them. They knew damn well that their son was an idiot. They knew and they were scared of bipolar disorder because it’s a terrifying illness. They didn’t know what to do and they had to drive 700 miles with old people to carry my shit. And yet here they are. Here they are. And I didn’t carry anything. I carried nothing.

Lisa: Well, also, they both had responsibilities at home, they both still had jobs, your mother was caring for grandchildren and they dropped everything and drove to another state

Gabe: They did.

Lisa: To try to rescue you.

Gabe: I mean, when you say it that way.

Lisa: Yeah, well, to be fair, I did not see it that way at the time either. At that point, every story you’d ever told about your childhood was more horrifying than the last.

Gabe: Yeah.

Lisa: It was just constant horrifying. You told me this horrible story about how your mother actually knocked you unconscious once.

Gabe: Ah, the softball story.

Lisa: The way I heard this story is, Gabe was a teenager and was being difficult, as teenagers are wont to do, when his mother couldn’t take it anymore and threw a softball at his face, knocking him unconscious. And then you’re like, oh, Lisa, meet my mom. What? Oh, this will be great.

Gabe: You know what a fish story is.

Lisa: Ok, fair, fair.

Gabe: A fish story, of course, is true in that the person was fishing and the person did catch a fish, but the six-inch fish becomes a two-foot-long fish. The story is true. My mother did, in fact, throw a softball. And it did hit me and it knocked me down. Don’t I didn’t lose consciousness. I don’t and I don’t remember saying that, to be honest. I think that might have been inferred. But it doesn’t matter.

Lisa: You told me that you got fuzzy and that you had a terrible headache for the next couple of days, and I thought to myself, well, that’s a concussion.

Gabe: That’s, that could be true. But the devil’s in the details, right? Let’s get a little more of the scene. At this point, I would have been almost 17 years old. I weighed 400 pounds. I was six foot three. And I was screaming at my mother. I was just screaming at her, yelling every word that I could think of because, frankly, I was enraged. Now, remember, not only am I twice as big as my mother, a foot taller, I am also an untreated bipolar who is clearly symptomatic. And upon the yelling back and forth, my mother picked up a softball and threw it over my head. I want to be clear. I knew she threw it over my head at the time because I didn’t even duck.

Lisa: So she wasn’t throwing it at you.

Gabe: No, she wasn’t throwing it at me at all, of course not, but it hit the wall behind me and bounced off and hit me in the back of the head and it knocked me over. And at that point, I became even angrier and just left. I just got in the car and drove off.

Lisa: What did your mom do?

Gabe: I don’t remember. I don’t think she did anything at that point. Obviously, when you tell the story, hey, mom and son got in an argument. Mom lost her temper, threw softball. Yeah, my mom comes off really bad in that story. And I come off looking like the innocent child. When you tell the story, giant enraged man screams at woman. Woman defends herself by throwing softball above head that happens to make contact. Well, that starts to move the needle a little bit on culpability. I’m not defending my mother. She never should have thrown the softball. She doesn’t think she should have thrown the softball. Nobody thinks that she should have thrown the softball. What my mother should have done was walk away. And we know that now. But it’s a little bit unfair to hold my mom 100% accountable for the aftermath of dealing with somebody with untreated bipolar disorder. It’s a chaotic scene. Again, do not throw anything at your mentally ill loved ones. My mother was 100% wrong.

Lisa: Or any of your loved ones.

Gabe: Yeah, that’s, that’s a good point. Lisa.

Lisa: Wow.

Gabe: I am not advocating for throwing softballs at your children, but I am saying that.

Lisa: Or anyone outside the context of a softball game. I can’t believe I need to clarify this for you.

Gabe: Also, good advice. Can I make my point now?

Lisa: I just, whoa.

Gabe: Yes, this was obviously not my family’s finest moment, it was not my mother’s finest moment. But when you start to dig into the details a little bit, it’s a little more tragic from my mother’s perspective than I realized. I don’t know what she was thinking. I don’t know why she did it. I don’t know why she lost her temper. I don’t know what was going through her head. It’s really easy to Monday morning quarterback now and say that that was a mistake, but

Lisa: Well, it was a mistake,

Gabe: It was.

Lisa: It’s just.

Gabe: But in the moment, hell, maybe that was her only move. It did, in fact, end the issue. I left. So, who knows? Maybe if she hadn’t thrown that thing. I can’t even speculate. I’m just. You know, sometimes things just happen that don’t turn out the best. And it’s not because your parents are bad. It’s because of a momentary lapse of reason or a mistake. I mean, Lisa, you got in a car accident. You don’t consider yourself a driver that needs to turn in your license or you would not drive for fear of killing yourself or others.

Lisa: I had heard this story about your mother. I heard it before I met her, and it definitely shaped my impression of your mother for a very long time. And it does not leave a positive impression of your mother. And it actually wasn’t until we were discussing this show last night and you started giving all of these other details, all of this further information, that I started thinking, huh, maybe that isn’t quite the situation I had initially thought, especially as you started saying, look, she was dealing with an untreated bipolar who was much bigger than her in a full on rage. Do you think she was scared? I mean, was she physically scared of you? Was she afraid that you would become violent?

Gabe: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think my mom thought that way at all. I do think that there was an element of her losing her temper. I think there was an element of her wanting to shake things up. I think there was an element of her wanting to break my thought pattern. You know, I was, I was just in this cycle. You’ve argued with me when I’ve been in this, it’s everything leads back to the same thing. No matter what you say, it’s

Lisa: You get on a loop and you can’t break out of it.

Gabe: And she broke that loop by throwing the softball.

Lisa: So you’re thinking that she just got so desperate and also who knows how long this had been going on?

Gabe: Yeah.

Lisa: That she just thought, oh, God, we got to do something here?

Gabe: And of course, in the moment, I was extraordinarily symptomatic, I was enraged. I was a person with untreated bipolar disorder. So, you’re asking me what happened? But the only memories that I have are heavily influenced by untreated bipolar disorder. So, you know, there’s got to be so much more that we are not taking into account here. But you’re right. When I was angry at my mother, I spun the story.

Lisa: But you didn’t realize you were doing it.

Gabe: I didn’t. I spun the story even for myself so that I could maintain my anger at my mother.

Lisa: There were a lot of extenuating circumstances to the problems you had when you were a teenager and looking back on it now, especially from a position of recovery, you’re willing to give your parents a lot more slack than you were when you were a teenager or even when you were diagnosed.

Gabe: A watershed moment for me, Lisa, was when I was in a support group and I started complaining about my parents and a couple of the people in the support group started talking about theirs. Their families had abandoned them, like literally one woman talked about how she hadn’t talked to her father in a decade and her mother was not allowed to talk to her, but opened up a private email account so that they could email a little bit. But her mother made it perfectly clear that your father is not on board with this and I will never meet you in public and I will not provide any help for you in any way. And other people talked about just horrific abandonment and name calling and.

Lisa: And abuse.

Gabe: Yeah, and I’m sitting there thinking, oh, I’m mad at my parents because they didn’t move me into my new place fast enough and of course, my parents made a ton of mistakes. And I want everybody to listening to this to know, ton of mistakes. I could write a book on all the mistakes that my parents made. But you know how you make mistakes. You’re there. You’ve got to be there. These other people, their parents made one mistake. They abandoned their kids. That's it. That’s all they had. They abandoned their kids. Whereas my parents, they just kept trying shit. And the stuff that they tried was awful because they didn’t have, you know, guidance or understanding. And they thought that the myths of mental illness were real and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. But you have to be there in order to screw up. It never even occurred to me that my parents would leave. I like, I didn’t know that was possible, Lisa. I just, I did not know it was possible. I just. And you know what’s messed up about that? My biological father abandoned me when I was a baby, and it still didn’t occur to me that my mom and dad could abandon me. Like, what’s up with that?

Lisa: If you haven’t listened to other episodes or know Gabe’s back story, your mother got pregnant with you in high school, she and your biological father had a shotgun wedding,

Gabe: Yeah,

Lisa: And within a year

Gabe: Yeah.

Lisa: Of your birth, he’d taken off never to be heard from again.

Gabe: Yeah.

Lisa: And eventually she met and married your father

Gabe: Who adopted me,

Lisa: Who adopted you.

Gabe: She met and married another man who adopted me as his own and is the only person I’ve ever known as Dad. But he is not my biological father, he’s just the man who raised me as if I were his own, which is hilarious because I’m six foot three, giant and have bright red hair and he’s like five foot three, tiny and has black hair. So, yeah, anybody that thinks that he’s my biological father is a moron.

Lisa: Your dad has some fun with that, too,

Gabe: He does.

Lisa: Because people will ask you all the time, where did you get that red hair? And he’ll go, Oh, he got it from his dad.

Gabe: My dad’s a dick.

Lisa: He just stares at them. Like, what?

Gabe: It is funny, it is funny to think about, but but yeah, it didn’t occur to me that people could lose their parents. I just, I thought that I was abandoning my parents because they were bad and I was punishing them. But I always knew that as soon as I forgave them, they’d come back. Like, you recognize that I keep saying that my parents did all of these things so horribly wrong, but the foundation that they built was that I knew that I could count on them 100%.

Lisa: To come and do the wrong things.

Gabe: Well, right, yes, yes,

Lisa: Right.

Gabe: I would judge them implicitly. This is why mental illness is so messed up. My parents are good people. I want to be very, very clear. But they believed all of the myths of mental illness. That really is the take away here. They believed the pop culture representation of mental illness. Mentally ill people aren’t smart. Mentally ill people don’t own houses. Mentally ill people don’t get married. Mentally ill people have bad parents, specifically bad mothers. It was a moral value. And why wouldn’t they? That’s all they were taught. That’s what they were taught growing up in their lives. That’s what I believed. That’s what pop culture, television shows, movies, that’s what it all showed. Mentally ill people were in a corner, rocking back and forth, drooling and violent and came from broken homes. I’m not mad at them anymore for not realizing that I was sick because society kind of set them up to fail in this way. It’s one of the reasons I became an advocate because I thought, you know, my parents love me.  They desperately tried to do the right thing at every single turn and they missed this glaring thing.

Lisa: Well, everybody missed it, including the professionals they took you to.

Gabe: Right, I want to talk to all of the people with mental health issues and mental illnesses who are mad at their families. Listen, I don’t know your families. There’s certainly toxic families. There are certain families that have done unforgivable things and on and on and on. I’m not pretending that every single family is my family. That is complete and utter nonsense. But I am saying that I realized along the way that my family was in the same impossible situation that I was in. So, it’s, I want people to forgive me for the things that I did when I was symptomatic. Why would I not forgive the people around me for the things that they did while I was symptomatic? I should be extending the same forgiveness to them that I want society and my family to extend to me. And I think that’s a very powerful message. Your circumstances pending. But then there’s sort of a shit or get off the pot mentality here. Look, you got to decide. If you’re not going to forgive your family, then cut them off and never talk to them again. Call it a day. Just, just don’t torture yourself. And if you want your family in your life, constantly reminding them of all the mistakes that they made five, 10, 15, 20 years ago is not the way to build a positive relationship moving forward. And that all ties back to your perfect quote, Lisa.

Lisa: You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending?

Gabe: Exactly, so with your family, you can’t go back and change the beginning, you can’t fix all of the things that your parents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents have done. But if you make the decision right now to forgive them, radical acceptance, radical forgiveness, you can change the end. The reality is, is that my parents messed up. That’s fine. I messed up. That’s fine. I’d much rather talk about what we’re doing this Christmas than worry about what they did 20 Christmases ago.

Lisa: Well, and speaking of apologies or messing up, your parents have apologized to you.

Gabe: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, on video.

Lisa: Yeah, good point, your father especially was like, well, yeah, we just tried to punish the symptoms of bipolar disorder out of him and he feels very badly about that now, even though he couldn’t possibly have known.

Gabe: Yeah, and we did not get there overnight, my family and I didn’t have some Hallmark movie moment where music played and it started to snow and we all hugged each other and the camera panned away, showing the half a million-dollar house that we can afford on the kindergarten teacher’s salary. No, it didn’t work that way. We just started building new memories and that’s what we did. And as we started building new memories, the older memories sort of either faded away or became more in focus.

Lisa: But, Gabe, you do have happy memories from childhood.

Gabe: Aat the time that I first met you, Lisa, the answer to that question would have been no. I would have said no. I have no happy memories of childhood. But now, yes, because once I started looking at the entire picture, I realized that my parents can both have made a lot of mistakes and have done a lot of things right. I was very much in black and white thinking. Either my parents have to be all good or my parents have to be all bad. And at the time I met you all bad, all bad, 100% bad. They sucked.

Lisa: Yeah, it made it difficult. You have a much better relationship with your family and your parents now than you ever did when we were together, and it’s made a big difference for you. It’s brought you a lot of happiness.

Gabe: True that.

Lisa: And here you are changing the ending.

Gabe: Hey, next week, we should do you and your family.

Lisa: Oh, I would like that. I have a lot to say, and they’ll love it, too. So everybody wins.

Gabe: Yay! Thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Not Crazy podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and I wrote the book, Mental Illness Is an Asshole, available on Amazon. But if you head over to gabehoward.com and buy the book there, not only will I sign it, but we’ll send you a bunch of Not Crazy podcast stickers. And that’s really awesome. You can put them on your car, your laptop, give them to your friends. And remember, wherever you downloaded this podcast, please subscribe. Also, use your words and rate it. Write a review, give us as many stars as possible and tell all your friends.

Lisa: Don’t forget the outtake after the credits and we’ll be back next Tuesday.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Not Crazy Podcast from Psych Central. For free mental health resources and online support groups, visit PsychCentral.com. Not Crazy’s official website is PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy. To work with Gabe, go to gabehoward.com. Want to see Gabe and me in person? Not Crazy travels well. Have us record an episode live at your next event. E-mail show@psychcentral.com for details.

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