Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [101]
“Is it possible that you are feeling angry with me?” she would say. And slowly, gradually, I would begin to be able to realize that I had been angry because she had been late to session, or jealous because I had seen her talking to another patient.
If I couldn't make the Voices go away, then at least I could get to the powerful emotions that were underneath, Dr. Fischer and Dr. Doller said. So I practiced letting out that anger in different ways, hoping to funnel off some of the fuel that fed the Voices. With the two doctors tutoring me, I tried to learn to identify my anger and express it in words before it turned into a full-blown crisis of Voices.
Sometimes that had led to some strange triumphs. I wrote in my journal:
I made progress today. I called Dr. Doller an asshole behind her back and not in the Voices’ words. In other words, I got angry on my own.
As time went on, I tried hard not only to understand, but to make myself understood. I tried to explain as clearly as possible to Dr. Doller about the compartments in my brain. When all the individual compartments were closed, I was safe. When one or more compartment drawers were open even slightly, evil would seep out of one of them and villainous thoughts out of another. Pretty soon my mind would be a mess, everything scrambled together like broken sunny-side up eggs. The chaos of the evil seeping from the compartments would be just too overwhelming for me to bear.
I also made up a system to help Dr. Doller judge the strength of the Voices tormenting me. It was so hard for the doctors to tap into my brain and understand how bad I was feeling. So I came up with a 0 to 3 rating scale. Three was so consumed by Voices that I was overwhelmed. Zero—which hardly ever happened— meant no Voices at all.
Dr. Doller and I would be sitting down on one of the halls on the unit and she would ask me how the Voices were.
“Well, Doc, I'd give it a one.” That meant I was feeling relatively okay. When, later in the day, I would report to her that the Voices were climbing into the 2 plus range, and I was beginning to panic and feel suicidal, she would remind me that only a few hours earlier I had been feeling much better, and that I would feel better again.
I even mastered the Quiet Room.
The last time I was in the hospital the Quiet Room had been such a frightening, terrifying place. Every time I had been sent there it had seemed like punishment for misbehaving. This time everyone talked to me over and over again. The Quiet Room isn't a place for punishment, they said, and it isn't the enemy. If you can go there on your own you can calm yourself down.
How could I believe them? I had seldom gone there without being carried. Often I had been in there out of control and screaming until I was dragged out into a cold wet pack. Go to the Quiet Room voluntarily? Now who was crazy?
But still, they persisted with their almost monotonous chant. Come for help before you are out of control. Ask for medication. Use the Quiet Room. Work with us, they said. Work with us. Gradually I became able to listen to them.
The first time I tried walking into the Quiet Room on my own, I was trembling. This was it. This was what I had been taught to do. I could feel the rage and pain building up inside me. “Don't go! Don't go!” the Voices screamed. “You'll die there! You'll die there!” they cried. I paused. Was I going to listen to the staff or the Voices?
Suddenly, I decided. Fuck the Voices. I was going in. At first it seemed like a whirlwind. There was so much stimulation in my brain all at once, it seemed I was breaking apart in all different directions. There were Voices, sights, thoughts, feelings. I wanted to scream but nothing came out. My heart was out of control in my body and my hands were shaking. I couldn't swallow. I couldn't breathe. Too much was happening.
Finally out of mental exhaustion I collapsed. But I relaxed. The more times I marched myself into the Quiet Room the easier it was. The Quiet Room became a place to chill out and deescalate, rather than to