Whose brain is melting?
I’ve always been a little, um, too tuned in to how other people are feeling. After watching a whole lot of Star Trek TNG, I happily decided that, like Deanna, I was an empath and doesn’t that sound groovy and like I’m so, like, in the flow man? And I don’t have to wear pantsuits either, which is a huge relief. Or you could, as a therapist once did, call it codependent. Which sounds a whole lot less groovy. But several years ago, I decided I was fed up with being the crazy one so now I’ve decided I’m sane and empathetic and someone else can be the pet overemotional looney. Or no-one can. That’s fine too.
So in normal life (ha!) I’m much better at tuning out the wants-and-needs-of-others static than I was a child. And I no longer have to feel crabby just because everyone in the house is crabby. I can go be cheerful somewhere else. Or vice-versa.
But whenever I’m with my mother these last few months, something odd has been happening. I feel foggy, forgetful and absent. I feel nervous and strange. I forget the names for things. I lose my keys. I wander in a purposeless daze around the house. It might be simply the stress of facing up to what’s happening. But what it feels like is empathetic dementia. Which is almost as scary as the real thing and makes me want to do ten crossword puzzles every day.
Empathetic dementia. That could have been a whole episode on Star Trek. Where someone you love is losing her marbles, so you spill all of yours out of the bag and watch them all roll around on the floor together.
Beautifully said… I feel foggy and disconnected around *my* mom too (though for far less valid reasons).. when we love someone, don’t you wish we’d only be hooked into their good experiences? Always with the pain!
-Rachael
From one empathiser to another, I just want to say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your mother’s disease and the distress it’s causing. It must be incredibly hard for you and your family.
Sending you a big virtual hug from Germany.
See, now I don’t think that’s crazy at all… I’m an empath. I’ve also been told I’m codependent, and I work on that one every day—work hard at not feeling what everyone around me is feeling. My MIL is having a lot of memory issues and let me tell you, I get very foggy, forgetful and stuttery whenever I’m around her. I feel my brain get cloudy, mushy. It’s pretty frightening.
Sounds like you need some new friends that are highly organized, alert and quick thinking to offset the visits to your mother.
I spend time between the in-laws and out-laws and begin to take on geriatric systems as well. So I try to balance with visits with folks my own age.
Hang in there.
I dont know what to say. I must not be an empath.
Hmm.
The problem with Alzheimer’s (well, one of the problems) is that everyone becomes so aware of what it IS, you know. People losing their cognitive functioning, beginning with memory. And then we’re just focusing on memory loss. And not anything else.
Your mother is your mother who has Alzheimer’s. She is still your mother. You must remember that. And always remember to knit. It has helped me through a most difficult year; I miss you very much.
The difference being that you can gather all of yours back up again.
Of course you empathise .. she is your mother. Its not easy seeing someone you love drifting away.
No matter how far she drifts, you will still loave her and thats tough .. for you.
Be easy with yourself.
I was experiencing the very same thing happening around MY mother!
I do a lot of metaphysical exploration and meditation and have been navigating the collective subconscious of my family pretty heavily these past few months, especially my mother, or our shared inherited patterning.
Because I’m empathic, I feel what other people are feeling. But when I’m also feeling a reflection of what they’re feeling, I accidentally fall asleep in a way and identify with them and never un-become them. It’s like getting stuck in a repetitive loop in a computer program:
1) Go to 2.
2) Go to 3.
3) Go to 2.
Because it is a program. You just observe where you’re repeating patterns unconsciously by deeply feeling them.
On a personal level, I think it works like this:
Basically, for me there’s a lack of proper individuation because I experienced her aggression and hostility as directed towards me (whether or not it was) at a very young age and may never have completely incarnated. Essentially, she’s still inhabiting some of my mental and physical space and I wouldn’t have known that her thoughts and feelings and patterns weren’t necessarily mine.
My grandmother (her mother) has Alzheimer’s and I notice a great deal of hostility and agression in her as well; I guess repressed anger. I think fear would go with that; hostility and fear seem to go hand in hand.
I’ve had a guide tell me that my mother is going through a voluntary Alzheimer’s in response to not feeling safe – reverting to the last developmental period when she felt safe. She’s becoming like an infant in a lot of ways, really refusing her own individual identity.
So I’m positing some general relationship here between individuation, fear, and Alzheimer’s.
I’ve been listening to some CDs (www.hemi-sync.com) that synchronize the hemispheres of the brain. On one occasion, I got to the point of them being synchronized for an instant, and then got sucked into some sudden fear-driven downward spiral. My brain was affected such that now not only were the hemispheres not in sync, but neither were they even functioning independently! It was like what I imagine Alzheimer’s might be like; it felt like a reversion to a very childlike state. That sucked!
To top it off, my mother is really, really shit about giving people space. I’ve felt much, much more clear lately by noticing when I find her behavior disrespectful, inappropriate, or an attempt to draw my energy out of my own body and mind so that I become a character in a drama that she’s living out in her own imagination, and calling her on it. Essentially, feeling my own will and asserting it – and not buying into the drama of the personal story, and definitely not tolerating when she abdicates her own adulthood and intellect.
I’ve felt a lot of compassion grow for her lately as I’ve recognized:
1) Were both tangled in an inherited program that has nothing to do with either of us personally, but that’s kind of just ‘around’;
2) She’s very threatened by my individuation; me being very in my body and very powerful in an animal way is very unfamiliar to her and brings up a great deal of fear – which is the same fear standing between this collective dementia and remembering of ourselves for both of us.
My memory is still pretty on the fritz around her, and somewhat in general, but the whole dynamic is getting much better. There are some specific techniques for gaining conscious control over the inadvertent becoming of her, if that’s an accurate description.
I hope this wasn’t too long, but I’m finding the whole thing, while very painful, also an excellent opportunity to get to know her, and am also very surprised to hear that you’re going through something so similar.
Peace,
Katherine
divineanimal@fastmail.us
Yep–crazy makes us crazy, angry makes us angry, brilliance makes us smarter, peaceful makes us calm and kind. Empathy makes relationships all the more powerful–in their good ways and in their hard ways.
Maybe sharing your mother’s craziness is partly your hidden inner self trying to take the weight off her and shoulder it yourself? Or maybe it is just the world’s twisted way of trying to keep you connected at a time when you might be feeling disconnected….
BTW–have you read Octavia Butler’s books? In the Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents books, the author talks about empaths, or “sharers” as she says, in an interesting (and sometimes frightening) way.
I’m so glad we got to see you last week. Thanks again! Love to everybody.
Hannah
OK, this is spooky. I have been having the exact same symptoms, and I have been attributing them to hearing about your mother, too. I guess I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one, but boy is it sure annoying to be forgetting the word for… I forget now what I was trying to remember.