THE MIRACLE OF ADAPTATION AND MR. WHITE EGRET

I was on a walk the other day.  The sun was out after many days of rain.  The creek along which I walk so often had become almost a river.  For the very first time, I noticed a white egret standing motionless  by a man-made waterfall on the creek.  The elegant bird looked as if she were trying to figure out how to navigate the cascade.  The creek had been but a trickle all summer.  But this fall had been unusually wet and stormy.  And the water was high and fast.

Strangely the bird was still there in the same spot, standing like a statue, unchanged, 30 minutes later when I passed on my return trip.  I raced home for my camera, sure he/she would be there when I returned.  In the meantime I had an elaborate fantasy (the kind of fantasy only a psychotherapist would have!) about that poor bird.  It went something like this:  The bird, probably young, had adapted to the stream at its lowest ebb during the summer.   Growing up beside a trickle, it was well adapted to those conditions.  When the stream swelled, her/his adaptation style no longer sufficed and he/she could not figure out what to do.

Of course, this reminded me of the essential human dilemma.  We adapt as children,  with brains, nimble and flexible,  to the conditions of our environment:  the family we are born into,  the emotional surround be it one of privation or abundance.  We are veritable geniuses of adaptation.  Problems arise latter when our brilliant adaptation styles no long suffice.  When the floods of later life come, we are often at a loss.  The tools of the earlier years are more than likely useless.

The child Holocaust survivor who starved and had to scrounge for whatever food was available in order to live,  may well have trouble at the dinner table as a middle aged adult now seated at the groaning board of American abundance: obesity and diabetes II ensue. The woman who has witnessed the suffering of older siblings who resisted a controlling parent only to be vilified, and rejected by that parent, learns submissiveness at home and fails to develop the assertiveness she needs to succeed in adult life.

I returned with my camera,  maybe 15 minutes later.  Mr. White Egret was gone.  There goes my theory.  Somehow he had navigated the falls.  Maybe he was just a patient fisherman all along.

Days passed,  no egret.  No egret, but another lesson came my way.

A week or two later, I had the good fortune to reconnect with a client I had known over many decades.  She was in her mid twenties (I in my mid thirties) when we met.  We worked together for many years and then just on and off thereafter.   She was in tough shape in those early years, nearly mute in our sessions for probably two years.  I did the talking, guessing at her pain, her shame, her fear.  She cancelled more often than not.   But often I could talk her into coming.  She had adapted well to an early environment in which it was dangerous to speak up,  it was dangerous to be noticed at all.  From a very large family, dominated by alcohol, violence, including sexual violence,  she was denigrated, humiliated, unprotected.   She felt insignificant, unsafe, and unworthy. 

Most significantly she was separated from herself—to survive  her childhood her essential self had gone into hiding.  What was left was a child hovering in fear, whatever strength there was seemingly defeated.   She was the only one among 17 children who had managed to finish high school,  but there was very little evidence of pride, and certainly no accolade from the family.  Any sign of independence, strength, intelligence was seen as a negative not a positive by her family.

Fast forward 20 years.  In the interim this woman went to college, gave birth and raised a child single handedly  and successfully without a father. She bought a home,  rose in her profession to a role of leadership,  survived a life threatening illness through sheer grit.  On and off she used therapy to help her navigate these crises, at times I was the second parent to her daughter, but for long stretches of time she did not call or come in to see me.

The one longing unfulfilled,  was the inability to sustain an intimate relationship with a man.

Now in her 50’s we are again back in touch and this time because she is in an intimate connection with a man, someone who sounds mature, loving, and accepting and who wants to marry her.  She knows she needs a little extra support until she decides what to do. 

The white egret has adapted to the falls.  A sustaining relationship with me over the years was certainly part of that critical adaptation.  But the real wonder here,  the awesome reality, is that she had the capacity to use that relationship and all other positives in her life, the terrific child she gave birth to,  her teachers in school,  friends, neighbors,  a few members of the extended family that did not put her down—whatever came her way she used to grow and change and reconnected with all that was positive in her. 

She herself has described it as the child within, the one I saw cowering in the early days mute and frightened, has grown up.

This is not the only story I have of the awe-inspiring nature of our ongoing, life-long capacity for change.  It’s just the latest.

Healing II: Adaptation

I read an article today about the role of adaptation in depressive illness, not just your ordinary blues, but debilitating depressive disorders:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?em

It turns out that Charles Darwin himself suffered the blight of depression, describing himself as so undermined by his malady that he could not work one day out of every three. Darwin was unable to make sense of what might be a heritable disorder. He observed, that there was no adaptive value to being impeded by intense sadness. It made people unable to work, caused great pain, killed desire, and it sometimes led to suicide. It seemed to Darwin to be a mistake in the evolution of the brain.

Recently some psychiatrists interested in “evolutionary psychology” have taken a look at depression in a different light and tried to tease out what is adaptive about it. They raise questions on the efficacy of (anti-depressive) medication which may make you feel better but delay the resolution of underlying problems. Therapists are well acquainted with the phenomena: people on medication might feel better (and might not) but after awhile they seem to be more apathetic about their problems rather than energized in the search for solutions.

There is another useful way to look at adaptation, adaptation within the life cycle.

For instance a depressive response may be adaptive in childhood in a particular family. Some families prefer sad children over “bad” children. Depressed children don’t rock the boat quite so much as acting out children. Some children learn to keep very quiet so as not to ignite volatility in their parents, or anxiety in their parents. This is adaptive at the time. Later, not so much.

Depression is described by sufferers more often as an oppressive wet blanket sort of feeling, more of a heaviness, than a sadness. When unacceptable feelings are not safely expressed they need to be suppressed. Chronic suppression becomes depression.

I have a silly story, not a story about depression, a story about adaptation. When I was growing up we lived near a deep pond. The area around the pond was marshy (we called it “the swamp”). We were told that there was quicksand around the pond and to stay away. As I type this I remember vividly jungle-themed movies of people being swallowed in quicksand. Needless to say, I stayed away from the pond.

Fast forward: in my 20’s I heard my mother counsel a new neighbor who had adventuresome little boys, on how she had kept her children away from the pond by telling them there was quicksand around the pond. This would keep them safe.

In a flash I remembered that queasiness I always felt in "the swamp, even in winter when it supposedly froze (quicksand was said to freeze in winter!) and we went down there to ice skate. I never did learn to skate well.

I never remembered the source of the anxiety, only the anxiety. I was now 20 something and I had not revisited this story/memory and therefore never had an opportunity to revise. Until that moment deep inside I still believed it! I was stunned at how “unremembered” this memory was—“unremembered” but not disarmed.

And so it is with so many adaptations, what once kept us safe now keeps us stuck. There are probably no repercussions of the swamp-quicksand story, other than my failed skating career. But perhaps there are, my good girl adaptation borne of both fear and attachment to my mother maybe plays a hidden role in a risk averse lifestyle, a lifelong aversion to taking physical risks.

It was certainly important to keep us away from the pond. No one drowned. But if we don’t revisit early adaptations we are unable to revise. And a healthy life is all about the ability to revise.