Blue Narwhals

Posted on February 2, 2006 in Disappointment Reflections

About a year and a half ago, my wife posted a note on her blog calling for prayers on behalf of her father who was dying of multiple myeloma. An atheist saw this and posted a comment challenging her to justify her faith in God. Lynn deleted the note and closed the thread immediately.

Similar boundary disruption happened today when two psychology students decided to extract the name of Elizabeth Loftus from a personal narrative about my problems remembering the full details of traumatic events from my childhood. They chose engage me in a debate on false memory syndrome. My wife did the smart thing: she stopped discussion. I did the stupid thing: I engaged them.

During my childhood, I often found myself defending my whole existence (or so it seemed) because of a word or a sentence. Physical abuse often accompanied the emotional deprecations that crowded my ears. I don’t know why my brother, especially, insisted on lacerating me, or why my parents let him do it. What I do know is that it pressed me into silence. I did not write or speak about what was done for many years, especially because I feared that I would be called to account on each point, made to defend what I knew to be true while being racked by the same techniques which had driven me to silence before.

I had a flashback to those days when the two psychology students drummed on my head about Elizabeth Loftus. When I was a kid, the way members of my family — the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally and protect you from harm — worked their bait and switch tactics devastated me. To find myself in an emotional debate after exposing a weak side with people to whom I given unconditional support hurt. I lost my sense of this blog as a safe place.

Psychology students may have special problems floating around on bipolar blogs because we’re the stuff they study. They might argue that they are only using me as a starting place for a point of “greater importance”. To which I say “Thanks a lot.” Then “This is my blog and no matter what you say, this entry is about me. Be warned that if you start to debate me, it will be taken personally. That’s human nature. Keep to that subject or go back to your own blog.”

Boundaries matter. A psychology student or psychology professional milling around a support community had better learn to remember that when you are interacting with patients in a nonprofessional and nonacademic setting, certain things are out of bounds. Quibbles about my mention of Elizabeth Loftus was not the important issue in that article of mine: it was my pain, my confusion, and my frustration at being afraid to put together a coherent picture.

The students and the atheists have their own blogs where they explore the issues. It is inappropriate to start academic debates attached to topics about personal experience — even if the commentators are also sufferers. Period.

Over the years, I have held my tongue on more than one occasion. Right now, I am observing a fellow whose behavior suggests that he suffers from the illness. Do I point it out? Have you ever tried to reason with a person in mania?

More often, I have run into situations where the person expressing emotional anguish gets a fact wrong or positively mentions a figure I don’t like. Many bloggers are more religious than I am. I don’t ruin their blog by telling them that their time is better spent not following their earthly religions. If a person mentions Christ in passing, (and Christ isn’t a bad fellow in my book), it’s inappropriate for me to leave comments questioning if we can prove if there is a God or if their church truly follows the way of Christ. Likewise, I don’t like George W. Bush. But if a blogger friend talks about how great s/he felt shaking his hand (I want photographic proof), then I keep my fingers off the keys.

If a blogger talks about blue narwhals, it behooves me to resist the temptation to correct them, to say “Narwhals are greyish white.” That serves no point when the larger context isn’t about narwhals at all.

As members of the afflicted, we need to be extra cautious about observing the line between psychological controversy (and any controversy) and emotion. If anything about a shared experience raises strong feelings that bring you off the topic, your feelings belong not in the comments but on your own blog.

What is appropriate for an article where a sufferer exposes himself are either consolations for the pain or sharings of one’s own experiences along the same line. What I should have done when the topic got off course was to do what my wife did: delete the comment and shut down the thread. That would have saved me the grief of feeling under attack exactly where I was most vulnerable. I have every right to expect that those articles that I write about my own emotions and experiences should be safe territory, just as I respect that need in others.