Are we creators or puppets hanging on strings? Do we have free will to some degree or not? If not, who or what is pulling our strings? After Mrs Sloan left my office, one wet and cold winter’s morning, I wondered whether she had any perspective on her sad life. Did she have any free will whatsoever?   

I had woken this morning feeling on top of the world. Even though it was wet and dull, the world look beautiful. The reflections in the mud flats in the early morning winter mist were stunning. 

“Hello Mrs sloan, How are you today? ” I asked in a cheery mood, a silly question, I rapidly realised.

As usual for Mrs Slaon a cheery mood was not her bag. She was what we doctors, between ourselves, call a heart sink patient. Their presence is an energy sapping ordeal. They can all too easily ruin a whole day.

“Doctor can’t you see how awful I feel? I can hardly walk because of the pain in my joints and muscles. You have done all sorts of tests, tried all sorts of treatments and sent me to expensive specialists and I am no better.” She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh.

“I’ve spent a lot of money coming to see you and I can’t even sleep at night. I have nightmares. I feel depressed and I have no energy whatsoever. My feet feel like lead weights. I can hardly be bothered to get up in the morning. Life holds nothing for me. You have no idea what life is like for me. Noone is interested in my troubles.” 

Funny thing I thought. I can remember her saying a few years back, ‘Once my husband is dead, everything will be okay. I’ll be free and able to get on with my life; instead of his’. 

As this thought and others passed thru my mind, I heard her talking on in the background. I was drifting. She was telling her sad and painful story to me one more time. I’d heard it so many times over several years. As I drifted off, I gave her my apparent attention.

“When Rex retired, he began to hit the booze. Things went from bad to worse, The only value I had for him was as a body. He’d throw me on the bed, at least once a day, and make love to me as he called it. I called it rape and he would just laugh, ‘You women always mean yes, when you say no’. I used to just lie there and wait for him to finish.” She was on a roll.

“As his alcoholism got worse he gradually became more and more impotent. The rape now changed into beatings. Finally he was too sick to hit me.  He took to his bed and died three months later.”  

She paused and looked at me to see if I was listening. I don’t know why she bothered, This sad story had been told so often. What was the point? What did she want? Sympathy? On one occasion, she was the last patient of the day. I decided not to ask any questions or interrupt her. After 30 minutes non stop verbiage I couldn’t stand it anymore. 

“About a year after his death, I recovered enough to begin socialising. I wanted the companionship of a man.  The first one I went out with took me out to dinner half a dozen times and then he wanted IT.” 

“What’s it?” I asked trying to make it look like I was earning my money. I was bored and I felt trapped by this self-pitying woman.

 “Sex of course; that’s all men are after you know”. She hissed at me.  

She continued her words of misery. “Over the next six months, I dated with five other men. They all wanted IT. The last one asked for IT on the first night. That night I decided to give up on men. I want nothing to do with men ever again” 

At last a possible out or so I thought.

“Mrs Sloan we have a lady doctor starting here next week. Maybe she’d be better for you than me.” My proposition fell on deaf ears.  ‘Why does she insist on plaguing me’, I thought?  

“What can I help you with today Mrs Sloan?” I asked her hoping this would bring an end to this one sided conversation or diatribe. 

“Oh just my regular supply of sleeping pills, anti-depressants, diabetic and blood pressure pills. And oh yes, can I have some antacids for my heart burn, cream for my dermatitis and an inhaler? Do you think some different pills might be better for me?” 

I ignored the last question. In the past it had been a fruitless waste of her and my time – a string of yes buts. 

I wrote out her usual prescription, thinking, ‘was I doing more harm than good for this woman and what good will any of these pills do for her?’

I went to a local cafe for lunch. I sat down in front of a partition. Blow me down, I could hear Mrs Sloan talking to a friend behind it. She was telling her the same old story with a little variation here and there and the odd libellous comments about me. I wondered how often her friend had heard it. She agreed that life was difficult and men were the cause of all the worlds problems. Go girls!

Comment

(2019. These days I know my boundaries better, am able to hold to them with more ease and I’d be more able to be gentle and firm with Mrs Sloan without getting shitty with her.

But back when I wrote all of this, (in 1980s) I was a lost soul in her crazy world. 

I am giving self pity a drubbing here. I am talking about chronic self pity – not feeling sorry for oneself after some major loss or tragedy.)

Did Mrs Sloan attract abusive men into her life? Did her attitudes and beliefs allure them like flies to a light? How come other women of her age had productive and fun relationships with men? I couldn’t see any self respecting male being attracted to her. A loving man would blow her script apart. If she met a man willing to love her, she wouldn’t know what hit her. She’d attack him.     

This lady hated men and so why use a male doctors? There was a female doctor in the practice down the road. No doubt, it seems to me, so we male doctors, like all other men, would fail her!  

Mrs Sloan was such a miserable and embittered person. I’d had some unpleasant impulses towards her myself. I wanted her out of my reality. Yes, she was the author of her miserable life and she didn’t know it.

If she came to see me now, (mid 1990s) I’d tell her that she was the author of her life and she’d probably not come back. She’d wander off and find someone who was willing to sit every month and hear her sad story of woe, be told they were a failure and get paid thirty bucks for it. A well earned thirty bucks I may add. 

On television the other night, a particular brand of washing machine received some extremely bad publicity. The sales of it increased over the next few days. Did these buyers want a machine that broke down, so it could break down? What other conclusion can one come to?

A lot of us humans seem to love self pity, bitterness and resentment. We stagger around in them for years, boring everybody with our tales – what a waste. 

I gave up on sympathy a few years ago. It greases the wheels of self pity. If one hangs around self-pitying people for too long, one ends up in the same pit. They are hurtful and damaging to be around. They are negative and destructive. They ruin relationships and destroy people. 

In lesser degrees to Mrs Sloan many of us are fairly skilled at self-pity, including me. As mentioned in another Tale, my wife has permission to throw a bucket of cold water over me, if I stay in it longer than half and hour. All she has to do is threaten me, to help me out of it. 

If self pity is your bag give your loved ones the bucket of cold water option. If your intimate is into this trick, encounter them, confront them, fight them, go for it and give yourself a time limit, ask them for permission to use the cold water trick. Tell them that you love them and you will help them and they have six months, an hour or whatever to get out of it. If they insist in sticking to it, move on. You owe it to yourself.  They’ll end up crucifying you in your attempts to help if you don’t stand your ground. 

How else do you deal with this without ending up callous and cruel, or ending up being a victim yourself?  By keeping up to date with your own emotional responses, courageously encountering them and being emotionally honest with those close to you. Be brutally honest with yourself and tactfully honest with others. If you do this, you’ll either succeed or reach a limit and move on or you’ll settle. 

We owe it to each other to challenge, not condone our manipulative controlling behaviours. We are all guilty of this sort of stuff. 

One woman had a sad story about her son’s lack of obedience and the misery it made of her life. This boy was being blamed for ruining her relations with her husband. I was sitting in on a counselling session.

“Will you leave me with your boy for a few minutes”? asked the elderly therapist 

“Now Bobby, I want to play a game with you, I’ll do it with you first and then you can do it with me. I will ask you, what can you do right now and when you tell me, I will tell you to do it. I will do this several times and once you have the hang of it, you can ask me to do it. Okay”. 

The boy nodded and enthusiastically responded. He was obeying every command with a sense of fun and ease. When it was his turn to have the old man do various things, he laughed a lot and had a heap of fun. 

He asked Bobby’s mother to come in and watch, so she could play the game with Bobby. When it was her turn to be asked to do things by her son, her first response was to demand that he say please!!!! 

When it became her turn to ask her son to do things, he obeyed and enjoyed himself. She visibly slumped in her chair.  She was having difficulty with her son’s obedience. She knew how to handle disobedience, so she thought. After a short while, she got up and left taking her son with her. 

She phoned next day to say she was taking her son to a proper psychologist to find out what was wrong with him! How many children become the projection of their parents problems? 

Many moons ago I was with several adults and alot of wee kids. The kids were squabbling and fighting over whatever they could muster an argument about. The adults were getting frazzled including me. There were lots of commands not being obeyed and adults wondering how to handle things, arguing even. One person who shall remain nameless lit up a joint and handed it round the adults, most of whom took a puff. Within a short period of time calmness filled the room. This was an eye opener for me. When the adults calmed and began having a laugh the kids responded.

Do we need our sad stories like drug addicts need their drugs? Mrs Sloan’s story was her life. It was her destructive elixir she drank from daily and frequently.  Just like the story of self mutilation I posted a while back.