Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Archives => Archived Topics => Topic started by: Velika on April 13, 2016, 11:46:40 AM
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A friend recently discovered her daughter has PANDAS after sudden onset of OCD and personality changes. Like me, she has spent the year researching personality change, brain chemistry, etc. She actually told me she did read about just what we were describing here -- umbrella term "midlife crisis" -- bus suspected to have deeper neurological/chemical origins.
I was curious has anyone here researched MLC-PANDAS-type link? My friend's daughter's symptoms and changes, like MLC, came on very suddenly and changes were drastic. She was lucky she was able to ID quickly and get treatment (and she can insist because her daughter is eight, not 43). It makes you wonder, though, as PANDAS onset is also quick with personality and behavior changes. Only recently was it understood to be physical in origin.
previous thread: http://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=6315.0
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This is along similar lines to the research I did on adult delirium. If you google it, you'll see many similarities with what we are dealing with, but it's now an accepted medical event because it tends to be picked up while people are in hospital.
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Kikki, very interesting. I guess the big question is, if this is biochemical, what is the common thread? What do all of our spouses have in common?
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if this is biochemical, what is the common thread? What do all of our spouses have in common?
I am not sure that all of our spouses have to have the same biochemical/developmental/ physiological cause.
Let's take something like heart disease. There are many factors that cause heart attack and stroke. Your risk increases with the number of risk factors you have but people can have different factors yet still end up in cardiac arrest.
So, cardiovascular disease can be due to obesity, smoking, genetic history, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, stress, lack of physical activity, unhealthy diets and/or harmful use of alcohol. Some young women who take birth control pills will have a stroke.
So, unlike infectious diseases, that have a specific cause, other illness can be due to many factors. We have all heard of an athlete who has a heart attack, often due to heart malformations that were never detected.
So too with our spouses. There have been several possible reasons for their crisis but there is no definitive test to determine what caused such a break in their personality.
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What do all of our spouses have in common?
Stress. High levels of it.
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I agree with stress and the fact they don't talk about their feelings and bottle it up and it is a silent killer to their relationships.
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I was just looking at the symptoms for adult delirium and I have a lot of them. :P
High levels of stress does appear to be a common factor along with a recent crisis event such as the death of a close relative or a severe illness experienced by the MLCer or someone close to them.
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I agree with stress and the fact they don't talk about their feelings and bottle it up and it is a silent killer to their relationships.
My husband was a poster child about not talking about his feelings. He often said he did not want a partner that´s too much up and down or wanting to talk about "feelings" all the time - and neither was he himself that type. We never fought - which I see now as a major red flag. Also, interestingly, in regards to feelings, if I ever showed anger about something, - not even directed at him but maybe about another person or a situation, that was the worst for him and an absolut "no-no" in his eyes.
I ask myself now if he bottled up his feelings, or - as I suspect him to be a narcissist - if he was not able to experience true feelings in the first place. But either way a silent killer to the relationship, that is for sure.
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Isabella, my husband was exact same. He didn't like to talk about strong feelings and if I were ever upset with someone/something -- he couldn't stand it. I have had exact same question as you, was he just incapable of true feelings? Was he a narcissist? Or worse a sociopath?
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I'm going to sound like my MIL when I say this, and I really hate that. ;D But they're likely not sociopaths. They're men.
Mine was probably more emotive than most. "Passionate" is a word i like to use, but only about some topics. He was also extremely sensitive and non-confrontational, so even though he would have a lot of strong feelings about something, he would likely wait until he couldn't do anything BUT express it, and that would usually manifest in a way that had more energy than it should have. A blow up or a breakdown. My father is the same way, and also a sensitive and artistic man.
Men are still taught, many times, to not show emotion because that it's a sign of weakness. Boys don't cry. You would think we would be past that mentality by now, but I think we see a lot of evidence here that our spouses are at least part of a generation that still experienced that. I think in MLC (or maybe even before, for some) our spouses projected that stance upon us because we were a reflection or extension of them (as my MLCer said, I was "the right hand that I had to cut off to save the rest.").
They're messed up, but I do think many of us spend time thinking we judged them wrong our whole relationship when we didn't. This is just a really specific kind of breakdown. We couldn't have seen it coming, and we couldn't have stopped it. Invisible powder keg.
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I'm going to sound like my MIL when I say this, and I really hate that. ;D But they're likely not sociopaths. They're men.
:o :o :o
My mother, wife, and I were all like this. You don't have to be a man to be taught not to acknowledge your feelings. But I agree that it's more common with men. Big boys don't cry. My wife used to hate it when her sister said that to her son. Now I seem to have gone 180 in the other direction. My wife still suppresses her feelings although she seems to be getting better at displaying anger. And my mother passed without ever learning to express her feelings.
Here's an interesting twist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzpXuRCBgsM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzpXuRCBgsM)
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My H has a double whammy because he is law enforcement also and they are trained to show no emotions, he also has had so many health problems in his early 40's that put him in the ICU 3 times over 7 years he was a crisis waiting to happen. I just made the mistake of thinking my loving him and trying to take care of him through it all would be enough.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/09/delete-bad-memories-forget An article how the brain forgets things for its own protection.
We often talk about how MLCers do not remember and how part can be about the brain's self protection mechanism.
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A little from Richard Brown's An Introduction to Neuroendocrinology.
"The main focus will be on how the endocrine and nervous systems form an integrated functional neuroendocrine system which influences physiological and behavioral
responses."
"Many of the endocrine glands (although not all of them) are influenced by the pituitary gland, the so-called 'master gland', and the pituitary is itself controlled by various hormones from the hypothalamus, a part of the brain lying above the pituitary gland. The release of hypothalamic hormones is, in turn, regulated by neurotransmitters released from nerve cells in the brain.
Neurotransmitters also control behavior and the release of neurotransmitters from certain nerve cells is modulated by the level of specific hormones in the circulation. Thus, neurotransmitter release influences both hormones and behavior and hormones influence the release of neurotransmitters. This interaction between hormones, the brain and behavior involves a wide variety of chemical messengers..."
"The cells of the immune system also produce chemical messengers called cytokines or lymphokines, which interact with the neural and endocrine systems... When hormones, neuropeptides or cytokines alter the synthesis and release of neurotransmitters in the brain, one result is a change in behavior."
"When the target cell is stimulated, it undergoes a physiological change, caused by the hormonal action. The hormones in the circulation also feed back to the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, to alter further hormone release. Finally, when the brain is a target for hormonal action, the result may be a behavioral as well as a physiological change."
"The body has three different communication systems: the nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system, each of which uses its own type of chemical messenger. Nerve cells communicate through the release of neurotransmitters; endocrine glands by hormones and the immune system by cytokines. These three systems are not independent; each one interacts with the other two..."
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"The body has three different communication systems: the nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system, each of which uses its own type of chemical messenger. Nerve cells communicate through the release of neurotransmitters; endocrine glands by hormones and the immune system by cytokines. These three systems are not independent; each one interacts with the other two..."
Very interesting.
Do I dare to ask how this relates to free will? Apparently the answer is yes, I do. :D
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Excellent question. I do think we have free will. However, when our systems are in overdrive, or
underdrive, our judgment and/or free will may be, and often is, compromised.
Imagine a car engine. Or a computer. When all is well they work fine, when something is wrong they do not. I think it is the same with us.
We could try to use an example of what is not free will and what is. Consider the MLCer and their alienator. They tend to say they are in love. Lets assume that is true. The falling in love does not depend of free will, it is chemical (hormones are chemicals). The going the next step is free will. A person may fall in love and not act on it. Of course, with MLCers, they are a hormonal/chemical mess, so everything in them is blurred.
To add a little more confusion (or to make it easier), several of our genes alter depending of the ambient we live in/we have been exposed to. I have often given the example taught in one of the genetics courses I did, a child of a genetically stressed mother will not be genetically stressed if raised by a non genetically stressed mother. If raised by its genetically stressed mother the child will be genetically stressed.
So far, all I have learned suggest that MLC is treatable, or at least mitigable, and that if our MLCers would leave behind their nuts MLC life, their other person, MLC friends, etc, and were able to be on a quiet, restful place, they would change.
The problem is that when they leave it is too late. Usually because there is no way of taking them to a skilled professional for help. The help would have to include more than therapy. Vitamins and mineral, as well as a good balanced diet are important. Those would already be of help. Of course tests of several types would have to be done in order to check several levels.
Essentially, we are dealing with something that is a result of several systems in the brain and body being unbalanced. Therefore, it has to be possible to rebalance said systems.
The use of minerals and vitamins, as well as certain foods, is already being applied to depression by some health professional who do not like to use pills, or who think that pills alone are not the way. I am not against anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills, I have adviced LBS here to go see a doctor and consider taking one or both, but I think decent, even good results, would be obtained with a combination of anti-anxiety pills, vitamins, minerals and certain foods. Why the anti-anxiety pills?
Because LBS are under huge stress. It is very important to protect our nervous system and our heart. The vitamins and minerals alone may not cut it for us. At least not early one. The anti-depressants tend to take a while to work and, often, make people feel even more depressed until they finally kick in. Plus, many are ssri - selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, they work on serotonin but don't much for the other chemicals of the brain.
I have been adjusting my thoughts on some things as I learn more. They do not differ much, but they are more tuned to the introduction of natural ways, without discarting the drugs where necessary, since I know by personal experience that natural alone may not work. Early on I was given Valerian pills. They did not manage to curb my anxiety and stress levels. Alprazolan was the only thing that worked.
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Thanks Anjae interesting I like the idea of anti anxiety pills to help them vs anti depressants, I have heard the side effects can be bad. My questions is are we supposed to encourage them to seek medical advise? We talked about it months ago and we even looked into hormone therapy but then he dropped it and I dropped it because I didn't want to harp on the fact that something was really wrong with him and he needed doctors care. So maybe now months later should I bring it up again?
He goes to the doctor for his knees frequently I doubt he has mentioned he is having mid life crazy.
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Scooter, I think if the MLCer mentions wanting to go to the doctor, or is talking about depression or hormone therapy, it does not harm to suggest it is a good idea to go see a doctor. But I would refrain from using the words mild life crisis. They probably will not take those well. And if the MLCer does not goes to the doctor, or goes and does not approach the depression or hormonal issues, it may be better not to pressure them. We all know how they react to being pressured.
Yes, anti-depressants can have bad side effects. There are some atypical anti-depressants that do not have the usual side effects, but doctors often still prefer the more standard ones. Also, each person will have a different reaction to the same anti-depressant.
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Has anyone interested in this aspect of MLC researched the insular cortex? I was doing some research on empathy and the brain and was very interested to read that this part of the brain is thought to not only regulate empathy but also play a role in list, disgust, pride, humiliation, amygdala regulation and -- interestingly -- emotional response to music.
I also read that depression involves the insular cortex.
Anyhow .. Perhaps others have investigated, I was curious.
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I've heard that the brain is considered to be a lot like outer space - the last frontier.
So very little has been known about it until recent years, and I guess with brain research now being a focus, hopefully knowledge will expand rapidly.
When I did all of my research a few years ago, all of the below (empathy etc) was considered to be regulated by the frontal and prefrontal cortex. (Maybe these areas are now being broken down into smaller parts? I would imagine they would be over time).
They knew then with scanning that in depression, the blood flow to these areas is rapidly constricted, which then affects normal functioning and brings enormous personality changes.
The longer this goes on untreated, the higher the chances of long term damage.
There are many links within these threads about it.
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When I did all of my research a few years ago, all of the below (empathy etc) was considered to be regulated by the frontal and prefrontal cortex. (Maybe these areas are now being broken down into smaller parts? I would imagine they would be over time).
The insular cortex is different from the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex covers the front part of the frontal lobe. The insular cortex is a separated, hidden/isolated one, hence the name, insular. Of course it is not really separated (nothing in the brain is, something always connects to something), that is found on the fold between several other lobes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22230626 - The insular cortex: a review.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_cortex - Insular cortex #The insulae are believed to be involved in consciousness and play a role in diverse functions usually linked to emotion or the regulation of the body's homeostasis. These functions include perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience. In relation to these, it is involved in psychopathology."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex - Prefrontal cortex "Many authors have indicated an integral link between a person's personality and the functions of the prefrontal cortex.[1] This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behaviour.[2] The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.[3]"
Depression can affect both the insular and the prefrontal cortex (among other parts of the brain). It is hardly ever just one thing that is affected/altered.
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Didn't word that well. Scans show that depression shows firstly in the forward most areas of the brain.
Any areas in the front of the brain have a strong possibility of being affected. Therefore affecting empathy, personality etc
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Scans show that depression shows firstly in the forward most areas of the brain.
Any areas in the front of the brain have a strong possibility of being affected. Therefore affecting empathy, personality etc
Indeed. I was writing more to Velika, to say that it is not just one part of the brain that is affected, since she asked about the insular cortex and depression.
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Ah :)
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We have to admit that the brain is very complex. :) And, like you have said, consider a bt like outer space - the last frontier.
Now we know more, but there is still so much to learn. Scientists have just found that they cure diabetes type 2 on mice with a shot to the brain. They think the solution is the brain, not blood of stomach. http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/scientists-find-cure-for-type-2-diabetes-in-rodents-dont-know-how-it-works/
By the way, Ars Technica is a good site for all thinks geeky. From neuroscience to all sorts of technology, not forgetting astronomy and gaming. A geek true paradise. :)
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Amazing about diabetes II.
Yes hopefully one day this forum will appear as old fashioned as a discussion of humors, and would be LBS can stop their wayward MLCers with a syringe to the head.
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Yes hopefully one day this forum will appear as old fashioned as a discussion of humors, and would be LBS can stop their wayward MLCers with a syringe to the head.
Now that would be something. :)
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I volunteer my H for the first shot ;D
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I think we all want to volunteers our husbands for the first shot. ;D
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Not me. I want to volunteer my wife! ;D
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Interesting article on psychopathy and brain trauma from Scientific American. I have noticed that as the MLC progresses, my husband's personality and behavior is increasingly sociopathic. I was curious why this might be and why in general the thought is that MLC gets worse before it gets better.
Can You Make a Sociopath? Either Through Brain Injury or Other Types of Trauma
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-make-sociopath-through-brain-injury-trauma/
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V,
I think it's pretty easy to explain. Their depression deepens. They lose more and more control over their feelings so they get spooked. Lash out with anger or go deeper inside themselves.
Remember MLC is the grand daddy of depressions.
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I came across this article and thought of MLC. My husband around bomb drop used the regional accent of his youth, especially when he was being cruel and monstering. I have this confirmed as my brother-in-law ran into him around this time period and noticed the same.
The age of this man is interesting, but it seems that there is some contradiction in this snippet about the suspected source of the problem, other than neurological.
Foreign Language Syndrome: The Italian Who Became French
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/05/30/7834/#.V0-dJ9dFL7A
A 50-year-old Italian man who, due to vascular anomaly brain injury, began to speak and act as though he were Italian. Of course: "The authors don’t attempt to determine the neural basis of the patient’s strange symptoms."
This led me to a Google search on foreign language and foreign accent syndrome. One thing I read that stuck out to me was: "It seems that if one area of the brain is damaged, then another part of the brain assumes responsibility for its former functions." Maybe this applies in MLC as well, which is why we observe so many odd behaviors.
It's interesting once again how we will easily dismiss a seemingly sane, devoted family man ditching his family, acting like a teenager, changing all his habits and friends as a natural process (a natural one that somehow most people do not go through) — when really isn't that just as dramatic and odd? Of course acting French is more obvious and observable to others, but perhaps there is some connection in their origin or mechanism.
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Interesting comment below the article about dissociative identity disorder.
Agree that it's considered 'normal' to bail and leave your family.
So traumatic for us because most people are clueless about the extent of what we are witnessing.
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"It seems that if one area of the brain is damaged, then another part of the brain assumes responsibility for its former functions."
Not always. It is not uncommon for the functions of a damaged brain area to be lost for good.
Because most people will have troubles knowing if the person leaving did it in a normal way = amicable and still being responsible, or in a MLC way. To us, it is obvious, but we need to remember that our MLCers will seem normal to most people.
Those around the MLCer are either the MLCer family and old friends who do not wish to loose their relative/friend, or people who come along with MCL and are MLC behaviour enablers.
I have friends in MLC. I have not stop being their friends. I also do not get involved in their MLC drama. I leave them to it. I do not condone their actions, but I stay aside. Granted, I have an advantage upon nearly everyone else, I know they are having a MLC and that the behaviours come from MLC.
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"Unethical amnesia."
http://m.pnas.org/content/113/22/6166.full
Antisocial behavior in teens and brain development.
http://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-teenage-brain-evidence-link-antisocial.html
Article about psychopathy and fear. Interesting mention of malfunctioning amygdala.
http://www.psypost.org/2016/06/brain-activity-study-suggests-psychopaths-not-fearless-thought-43373
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Korean Researchers Find Key Cause of Bipolar Disorder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed1g6UsN57M
06.18.16
A team of Korean researchers has found a key element for bipolar disorder, which is known to cause severe shifts in mood and behavior.
The finding is expected to open new doors for both diagnosis and treatment.
Park Se-young has the details.
Last September, a young man in Korea suffering from bipolar disorder killed his grandmother and injured his father at home.
This is one of the more serious expressions of the mental illness, which is more often associated with manic episodes.
There was once a limit to both diagnosis and treatment, but now, a team of Korean researchers has found a key cause behind bipolar disorder.
Without a specific protein, a problem occurs in nerve transmission, which leads to uncontrollable excitement or depression.
"In order to transmit signals, nerve cells need to form dendritic spines. The absence of the key protein results in a dramatic change in spinal formation, causing an imbalance in signal transmission."
When the researchers removed the protein in mice, they showed manic behaviors resembling those exhibited by people with bipolar disorder.
"By making the connection between the protein and bipolar disorder, we were able to create animal models. With the models, we can test various drugs and eventually create effective mood stabilizing drugs."
The researchers added that the protein not only causes bipolar disorder, but also contributes to autism and obsessive compulsive disorder.
They expect their finding to open doors to new treatments for a variety of mental illnesses.
Park Se-young, Arirang News.
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Very cool!
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My H's job, is to figure out how the brain works. Seriously. And sadly, he doesn't realize that something is not quite right in his head.
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My H's job, is to figure out how the brain works. Seriously. And sadly, he doesn't realize that something is not quite right in his head.
That's the problem! How can you know something is wrong when the thing that is wrong is the part of your body that is supposed to tell you something is wrong?
I read that psychiatry is the only field of medicine where doctors don't examine the organ they study. I hope in the coming years all of this is better understood.
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Interesting about the protein.
I read that psychiatry is the only field of medicine where doctors don't examine the organ they study.
To my knowledge, yes. A handful of psychiatrists will have the decency of request brain scans and blood samples, but not many. Blood samples will allow, for example, to see if someone thyroid levels are normal or not. If not, thyroid problems can cause many symptoms that are associated with mental illness.
Even GPs, who, as the name say, are general practitioners, request all sorts of tests. Psychiatrists, not really. They go by what shows, what the patient and those around the patient tells them, rather than look deeper.
Neurologists, on the other hand, examine the organ they study/work with. In fact, in my opinion, neurologists should be the ones dealing with mental illness. But they are not. Or mostly not. Some psychiatric teams include a neurologist, but not all/not always. In a way, psychiatry is still very late XIX century/early XX century.
The knowledge about the brain exists and is public, it just seems that psychiatrists still haven't catch up with the times.
My H's job, is to figure out how the brain works. Seriously. And sadly, he doesn't realize that something is not quite right in his head.
That is some irony. How sad.
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I think I am going to take a new approach and contact the authors of these articles. Like many others on this thread in particular, I believe there is a neurological/biophysical reason for what we are observing, and that the specific family issues that come up are secondary to this loss of brain regulation — or in fact simply a repeat of previous episodes of same illness in other family members.
Watching MLC unfold is both horrifying and I have to admit fascinating. It makes you really wonder how the brain works and what is going on. Perhaps others on this thread have done so already, but I think it would be interesting to approach researchers and ask them how their work on the brain might apply to sudden changes in midlife. Since MLC seems quite similar to bipolar, BPD, and major depression these are likely good areas of research to focus on.
For what it's worth. I hate to feel I am helplessly standing by in all this. I appreciate all the research others here have done on this complex topic.
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V, it really is fascinating.
I know my H's crisis had a lot to do with his hormones.
I think I told you I even saw him having hot flashes the first 2 years or so.
I know a hot flash when I see it, it's obvious.
I had mind ones but I also have friend's who had them pretty bad. The redness would creep up from their chest, to their neck, to their face and they would start sweating. My H did that exactly.
I once told him he was probably having a hot flash and he said...well, I'm having something. He started wearing shorts to work, in the winter!
I would observe him while he slept on the couch sometimes. He would get all flushed and it would wake him up, tearing his shirt off.
I'm like you, I did some research and men can in fact have hot flashes due to low hormone levels just like we can.
So even though my H had a pretty bad childhood I truly think his crisis was more hormonal.
Just my opinion, of course.
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I don't know if this fits here yet I've noticed my H body has changed, as far as looking like a teenager, as well as his voice is changing/cracking. Is this normal for a 40 something year old man having a MLC?
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Elegance, I experienced exact same. In the fall he would get upset and yell at me with a very throaty voice, just as you describe. Even my therapist told me that some of the things he said sounded like words of a teenager. ("You didn't want me so I found someone who did!" "Do you even want to know me?")
Has anyone on this thread researched what happens to teenage male brains during adolescence? If this is also a time of hormonal fluctuation it makes sense that mental illness that often appear in male adolescence could theoretically suddenly appear in midlife.
Considering it, almost all of my husband's FOO issues have to do with mental illness and behaviors as a result of adults in their 40s abandoning the family.
To chronicle, in my experience and from some limited observations of celebrity MLC:
Pre bomb drop: Intense exercise, weight loss.
Bomb drop: Glowing, vital, "manic."
Post bomb drop (four months) Rapid aging, sullen or "dementia" appear to eyes.
Post bomb drop (eight+ months): Puffy appearance, tense expression, vacant look.
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It only makes sense. Their hormones are changing in their teen years and they are changing as well in midlife.
Difference is in youth the hormones are raging, in midlife they are waning.
I guess I get the aging thing, to a certain point. No one enjoys getting old. I certainly didn't, but somewhere down the line you have to accept it. You can stay active and healthy but you are never going to be 20 again. No matter what you do. My H even said one day, I can work out every day and keep in shape but my body will never look like a 20 year old boy. Their skin and their natural muscles are just different. Of course it took him a couple of years to realize that. lol
Your hair will gray, you skin will wrinkle, your body is aging.
These men (well mostly men...sorry guys) think by being with a young woman it will reflect on them. It won't. It could make them feel younger, and I can understand that (youthful energy, firm bodies), but it's not going to make them look any younger. In the end their still the same age and their still aging.
There just is no fountain of youth. Gosh darn it! :)
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It only makes sense. Their hormones are changing in their teen years and they are changing as well in midlife.
Difference is in youth the hormones are raging, in midlife they are waning.
THIS! Bookends of their most 'vital' years (not that it's all downhill from midlife, but it's not called "the change" for no reason. ;)). Plus the dopamine/serotonin changes that are apparently the root of most identity-related disorders, increase in cortisol from stress, etc. Post-crisis I actually feel quite level headed and 'youthful', but it's a different feeling than it was in the thick of it when I was like an emo teen.
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Velika, just for giggles, I went to read the source article for that interesting news report about the brain protein that goes awry in bipolar disorder. Caveat lexor. The protein the scientists were looking at has a very tenuous connection to bipolar disorder, at best. Mostly they were looking at proteins that affect brain cell structure (in mice, who don't really get manic depressive - or at least, who would know if they did??), did some quite lovely studies on the molecular organization of synapses, and concluded with a leap in the dark toward clinical application, by raising the possibility that this could (perhaps, maybe) play a role in bipolar pathology.
Anjae, I feel this is precisely the reason we have psychiatrists, in addition to researchers. I say this humbly as a researcher. I study cell structure myself, I know well these leaps in the diagnostic dark - you're obliged to make 'em to get anyone else in the universe interested in your favorite molecule... but as you would know better than many, there's a huge gap between brain structure and function, and we're all more complex than the sum of our parts. There are things psychiatrists do understand about how the brain works from watching and listening, that can't be seen by pulling the brain up by its roots (or from blood tests). FWIW I'm confident MLC will be better understood once the peculiar stigma attached to this diagnosis lessens (schadenfreude on the part of middle aged docs and researchers, perhaps?), and people treat it like any other disorder of the mind, a puzzle to be solved.
....climbing off scientific soapbox now.... oof.
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I am just curious: anyone tired to put hormone (testosteron??) secretly in their H's food?
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OSB, thank you for looking that up. I was so interested in the story that I looked up proteins, the brain, and testosterone. I guess it is reassuring that there are actual medical professionals on here baffled by MLC -- as well as brain researchers suffering from it.
I hope you are right about it becoming better understood. Maybe it is like postpartum or infertility and just needs more people to talk about it.
Up, I don't live with my husband and he expressed paranoid fear I would spike his food with magic mushrooms soon after bomb drop. Do you think the testosterone would help?
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Smitty2929's husband received testosterone treatment. I'm of the belief that MLC is like COPD in that there are several circumstances that fall under the umbrella, like low T, that affects some but not all MLCers (obviously not female MLCers!). But Smitty's husband was one who benefited from treatment and she saw changes to him from that.
My xH was tested, I believe, for low T, and treatment was not recommended. He has sprouted a ton of body hair during this time, though, so I do believe he has at least seen hormonal changes.
Dr. John Gray wrote a bit about hormone replacement therapy vs. supplementing to increase hormone production in "Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice" that was understandable for a lay person like me. I'd recommend checking it out if you're interested.
For me it is unethical to suggest sneaking drugs and/or supplements to them. As much as I hate what this crisis has done to my life, my xH has free will, and his personal liberties, as unappealing as they are to me, should be respected. I think of my father and how he coughs and loses wind and would benefit from having his lungs checked out, for sure. But he won't do it. He knows he has COPD, but he hates doctors, and feels confident in just cutting back smoking or any of the other home remedies he's got. Will it shorten his life? I have no clue, but I know this is what he prefers, so I don't even pick that fight or try to sneak him to a doctor visit. My xH is lucid, he's not a violent threat, and this is his journey. Leaving them to it could ultimately be better medicine down the line, and without challenging our own integrity.
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R2T, I think she was joking about spiking the food, I'm not even sure testosterone is ingested this way??
Maybe just send them mental "T-vibes."
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I know, OSB. But I still think psychiatrists are often behind the times. Neurologist seem to be, so to speak, the middle of the road. They can both understand the organ and know what a certain behaviour is being displayed without pullling the brain by its roots.
My cousin was helped by my friend who is a psychiatrist. My friend did a good job, but he never requested any tests. Which I found strange. By tests I mean regular things a GP would request, like blood samples to access several basic levels (thyroid, iron, b12, folate, etc), as well as other basic tests a GP would request.
It was interesting because my friend was able to told me Mr J was having a MLC, but he kind of thought my cousin could be bipolar. I told him, no, it is also MLC. The treatment my friend used on my cousin was indeed aimed at bipolar. It worked much better than the treatment that previous pshychiatrists had used.
Cousin was pretty much diagnosed with every single psychiatric disorder in the book, from bipolar to borderline, not leaving aside schizophrenia, psychotic, and something else I forgot. We had been given meds to all those illnesses. And some of those meds cause big harm. Cousin nearly killed himself because of the anti-psychotic meds. The meds for schizophrenia also did not help.
That tends to be a bit my problem with psychiatry (and, sadly, I have some experience with it, since there is mental illness in both sides of my family), often the psychiatrists goes by what is observed and told (by patient and those around the patient) and concludes is X. Or Z. Gives meds for X or Z. They don't work. Then maybe it is H, so lets try meds for H. All this without conducting some basic tests that even a GP would request.
I confess I find it kind of scary. Especially because people with mental illness, be it permanent or temporary, already are in an altered state of mind.
Of course if could be X but it Y also happens in other fields of medicine. But the other fields then to request blood tests, x-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, MRI's etc. See my aunt. When she first when to the doctor early this year, my looking at her, listening to her complains and physically examine her, the doctor already had some idea of what it was. But he still request a battalion of blood tests, plus ultrasounds and ct scans and a colonoscopy. He did not said "is cancer", you need treatment W, without having the tests results. The person who said it is cancer was actually the surgeon that my aunt went to see afterwards. But that was only after more specific and further tests requested by the surgeon herself.
Like the doctor who first saw my aunt, after seeing my aunt for the first time, the surgeon already had a good idea of what it could be, but it was not said until she was certain and it has been confirmed by many different tests.
Another example. It had become obvious to me some 2 to 3 years ago that my paternal grandmother had Alzheimer's. The behaviour was there, then the meds for Alzheimer's were also there. But I had not tests or medical confirmation. Today I had to talk to one of my paternal cousins because grandmother had took a hit for the worst. My cousin confirmed grandmother's GP had tests with the extension of the brain lesions. The behaviour was there, the meds were there, but the tests also exist.
Here some psychiatric hospitals have patients with dementia. Dementia fall both under the scope of psychiatry as well as neurology, but GPs are often the ones who deal with them, and first detect them, on a daily basis. But, again, for the dementia there are tests. My mother has vascular dementia. She had to do tests before the diagnosed was confirmed. The symptoms and behaviour can be similar to Alzheimer's, but the causes are different.
I prefer what could be called a dual approach, symptoms/behaviour, but also having tests to back up the diagnosis.
I also make a difference between the daily practice of medicine and research, be it on medicine, neuroscience, neurobiology, etc. The former is what is applied on the day to day practice, the second the cutting edge research that is ongoing and that, hopefully, in the future will allow us to be able to tackle many issues, from cancer to Alzheimer's, without forgetting MLC.
Agree, I think MLC will be better understood in the future. Maybe the problem is the name in itself and the stereotypes that are associated with it. A disorder of the mind, with many facets. And an intriguing one, because it mimics other disorders.
And I still think some vitamins and minerals could be of a help. Be it for MLC or non MLC depression. I'm not opposed to meds. Sometimes they are the best and faster option, but I think using vitamins and minerals would also be important. You know how much the B12 is helping you. And me. And several others on the board.
Magnesium is also been helping me a lot, as well as B6, a B vitamin complex, vitamin D and even vitamins A and C. I do feel a huge difference, and not only in the body, in the brain as well.
Today I was able to handle the news about my paternal grandmother well, and what I will next have to do. I was not able to deal well with BD nor with the times after. Why? In the grand scheme of things a spouse having an affair, even being mostering, is less serious than Alzheimer's. Even because one can divorce the spouse.
I think part of my very poor reaction was the huge level of stress I was under. Add to it a couple of serious infections that took me to the ER twice, plus more hurt from my dad's death just days after Mr J left, and it safe to say all my levels where too high or too low. Sadly, I knew nothing about brain/body levels and chemicals, and very little about vitamins and minerals.
Upintheair, I may be better to refrain from putting testosterone on husband's food. It is dangerous playing with hormones, let alone without knowing the person levels. Plus stress (cortisol) affects testosterone, as it affects other hormones and chemicals (to make it easy I'm using hormones and chemicals; hormones are chemicals, but I think it is better understand if they are used separated).
On that bundle of neuroscience and neurobiology books I recently got there was some (two?) that had infos on the teenager brain. Velika's idea is interesting. But, at least for the most part, and to our current best knowledge, an adults brain is different from and adolescence one. The adult have a fully formed brain, the adolescence does not.
However, we do not have brain scans and other tests of the brains of MLCers. We have an idea of what may be going on, but we do not have the tests. At least not on a specific scientific experience conducted to see how the brain is altered during MLC. It would also be important to have the before and after MLC. The before, of course, is a problem, since we do not know who is going to have MLC.
The brain fascinates me, but not only because of MLC. Because of the dementia as well mental illnesses. I also have no troubles to consider possible that several things can contribute to any of those. Or a conjugations of things. Proteins, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol, damages in brain parts, issues with the brain electric circuit, even virus or bacteria. Like OSB said, the brain, as well as humans, is complex, and we are indeed more than the sum of the parts.
As for midlife crisis being about middle life, I don't think a 36 years person is a middle aged person. Mr J was 36 when he left. And he was not the only one who was in his mid, or even early, 30's. His current age would be more middle life fitting.
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The updated brain map. :)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/20/updated-map-of-the-human-brain-hailed-as-a-scientific-tour-de-force
"Researchers reveal that human brain has at least 180 different regions, confirming the existence of 83 known regions and adding 97 new ones".
Lots of areas, and many of them new. That is a lot of research to come. :)
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I think I have posted about this before, but wanted to post again about Behavior Variant Frontotemporal Lobe Disorder. I was rereading the description and it really stood out to me as an almost identical description of MLC. It could be that at least some of the cases on the board are this.
Anyhow, for those who are interested:
http://www.theaftd.org/understandingftd/disorders/bv-ftd
Behavioral Variant FTD (bvFTD)
Behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD) is the form of frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) characterized by early and progressive changes in personality, emotional blunting and/or loss of empathy. Patients experience difficulty in modulating behavior, and this often results in socially inappropriate responses or activities. Impairment of language may also occur after behavioral changes have become notable.
Patients typically start to have symptoms sometime in their 50s, though it can occur as early as at age 20 or as late as age 80. As with all FTD, the course of bvFTD will vary from one person to another. Not every symptom will be experienced by every person, nor will these symptoms develop in a pre-ordained sequence.
Key Clinical Features
The hallmark of behavioral variant FTD is a progressive deterioration in a person’s ability to control or adjust his or her behavior in different social contexts that results in the embarrassing, inappropriate social situations that can be one of the most disturbing facets of FTD. People manifest a loss of empathy early in the disorder that is often seen as indifference toward others, including loved ones. Apathy or lack of motivation may also be present. The patient typically does not recognize the changes in his or her own behaviors, nor do they exhibit awareness or concern for the effect these behaviors have on the people around them.
Behavioral symptoms
- Hyperoral behaviors include overeating, dietary compulsions, in which the person restricts himself to eating only specific foods (such as a certain flavor of Lifesaver, or eating food only from one fast food restaurant) or attempts to consume inedible objects. Patients may consume excessive amounts of liquids, alcohol and cigarettes.
- Stereotyped and/or repetitive behaviors can include re-reading the same book multiple times, hand rubbing and clapping, humming one tune repeatedly or walking to the same location day after day.
- Personal hygiene habits deteriorate early in the disease progression, as the person fails to perform everyday tasks of bathing, grooming and appropriate dressing.
- Hyperactive behavior is exhibited by some patients, and can include agitation, pacing, wandering, outbursts of frustration and aggression.
- Hypersexual behavior can range from a preoccupation with sexual jokes to compulsive masturbation.
- Impulsive acts can include shoplifting, impulsive buying and grabbing food off another person’s plate.
Emotional Symptoms
- Apathy or indifference toward events and the surrounding environment can be marked by reduced initiative, and lack of motivation.
- Lack of insight into the person’s own behavior develops early. The patient typically does not recognize the changes in his or her own behaviors, nor do they exhibit awareness or concern for the effect these behaviors have on the people around them, including loved ones.
- Emotional blunting develops early in the course of the disorder, and is manifested as a loss of emotional warmth, empathy and sympathy, and development of what appears to be indifference toward other people, including loved ones.
- Mood changes can be abrupt and frequent.
Neurological Symptoms
- Symptoms similar to those seen in Parkinson disease. Among bvFTD patients, the term “parkinsonism” is used to distinguish the fact that they do not have Parkinson disease, though they do exhibit some of these symptoms. Symptoms include: decreased facial expression, bradykinesia (slowness of movements), rigidity (resistance to imposed movement) and postural instability.
Key Pathological Features
Patients with behavioral variant FTD may have one of three abnormal protein collections in their brain cells, which can be seen at autopsy: TDP-43, tau, or fused in sarcoma (FUS) protein. See Overview of FTD for details. The bulk of these protein buildups is usually found in the brain areas that have lost the most volume, the frontal and temporal lobes.
Genetics
The majority of bvFTD cases have not been linked to genetic mutations.
Treatment
As with all forms of FTD, there is currently no cure for bvFTD, and in most cases its progression cannot be slowed. Although no medications have been proven effective specifically in FTD, many clinicians look to the medications and treatment approaches targeting behavioral disturbances as necessary.
For instance, some FTD patients benefit from selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs, used in treating obsessive-compulsive behaviors, such as hoarding or craving sweets). Clinicians may also recommend antioxidants, such as coenzyme Q10, which are known to slow the progression of damage to brain cells in general, but there is little evidence to support this in frontotemporal degeneration.
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My sister-in-law has bvFTD. I know on paper this sounds similar to MLC and I know how it presents can vary from person to person but this runs in my SIL's family, her mother died from it, two of her sisters also currently have it, and this is nothing like MLC. This is horrible. OK, I know MLC is horrible too, but this is debilitating, it progresses rather quickly, and it's terminal. If the MLCer is still alive and functional after 2 to 3 years, I doubt they have bvFTD.
I sometimes compare my brother's situation and mine. There are similarities. His wife became self-absorbed, non-empathic, her personality changed, but while these changes sound like what happens in MLC, this is a totally different ballgame. And unlike me, my brother knows exactly what the end result will be. Soon my SIL will be going into a nursing home and she'll stay there until she dies within the next few years.
My brother's family is involved in ongoing testing for this condition. It's almost guarenteed that one or more of his children will contract it and it strikes early. My SIL is only 57, like me, she's had this for a little over a year, and it's already reached the point where you can't hold a conversation with her and my brother is afraid to leave her by herself. I went for a run while I was with them last weekend after my SIL wandered off and we didn't know where she went.
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MBIB, I didn't realize when I posted that it is fatal. I had read about this before, but even if MLC is not the same as this, I think that there is some interesting crossover. I know this thread is for people who are interested in the physiological aspect of MLC, and perhaps there are some clues in frontotemporal lobe dementia as to what MLC might be. (Just reading about it ... it sounds like you are witnessing first hand and it is far more extreme.)
I'm so sorry for your brother, and your sister-in-law, and your family.
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Thanks, Velika, and I agree with you. I wouldn't be surprised by frontotemporal involvement in MLC. The similarities are interesting.
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Velika, I too discovered FTD early on and thought I had hit the nail on the head, until I read that it is usually fatal within 5 years.
I came to the conclusion, that MLC must affect those same areas (science already knows that the blood supply decreases to the frontal lobe in depression, and that the longer you leave it untreated, the greater the chance of developing dementia. Plus inflammation of the brain is also bandied around as being a potential cause).
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I understand the need to find an explanation. I'm the same, trying to understand what's going on. However, by reading bits and pieces of neurology without a deep insight into medicine, neurology, etc., and cherry picking the bits which seem to make sense, we're likely to go wildly off track. Believing MLC= behavioural variant FTD is an example.
I wonder how many people here are qualified to talk about neuroscience? I think there are one or two who have occasionally posted; likewise psychology. I'm not, despite including a significant amount in my PhD (concerned with a specific area: choices). MOOCs and reading are insightful but don't count as qualifications.
Moreover, our spouses have only one thing in common... We believe they are in crisis. They may not think that, neither may a psychologist in some cases. In some cases it's apparent that they are confused, or depressed, etc. In other cases they are stressed but not all of them are.
The sooner we accept that we should focus on ourselves rather than fix our spouses, the better we will be.
This is a good insight:
if this is biochemical, what is the common thread? What do all of our spouses have in common?
I am not sure that all of our spouses have to have the same biochemical/developmental/ physiological cause.
Let's take something like heart disease. There are many factors that cause heart attack and stroke. Your risk increases with the number of risk factors you have but people can have different factors yet still end up in cardiac arrest.
So, cardiovascular disease can be due to obesity, smoking, genetic history, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, stress, lack of physical activity, unhealthy diets and/or harmful use of alcohol. Some young women who take birth control pills will have a stroke.
So, unlike infectious diseases, that have a specific cause, other illness can be due to many factors. We have all heard of an athlete who has a heart attack, often due to heart malformations that were never detected.
So too with our spouses. There have been several possible reasons for their crisis but there is no definitive test to determine what caused such a break in their personality.
Edit fix quote -OP
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Mermaid, I know I can't fix my MLCer. I don't think it's unhealthy to try to understand. I actually think it is a positive to discuss -- amongst ourselves, with our friends and family. There have been a lot of strides in areas of women's health advocacy -- eg PPD, infertility, breast cancer -- by people breaking taboos and discussing their experiences openly. This helps eliminate shame around the topic and opens the door for more women to share, get help, and for partners to support them correctly. I think ultimately this also creates an extra push for doctors and scientists to more fully address.
You don't have to be an expert about something to be curious about it or ask questions or share what you have learned. I think many people come here not trying to fix their spouse but just to make sense of things. Most people learn very quickly that there is no way to reason with the spouse or persuade them to get help. But I think at bomb drop many of us are assuming our spouse is the same person we have always known. It can take several months at least to realize this is not the case. By then we usually know that the normal ways of interacting with someone will not work with a MLCer. But I think we still need an outlet for our questions and observations.
Perhaps if more people start to discuss this, ask questions, and treat this like the medical issue it likely is then it can be normalized so that spouses/friends/family have better knowledge of how to handle when it hits. My husband is the fourth person in his family to have a MLC in three generations, three of which were very extreme. All of the FOO issues he has stem from these MLCs. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Many advocacy movements begin with laypeople with shared common experience to start to discuss. I think it is human nature to want to try to understand.
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Nodding my head Velika. Completely agree with you.
It's a mighty frustrating experience waiting for science to catch up with our experience.
My MLCer said around BD that 'something had shifted in his head'. Even he initially recognised the sudden and extreme changes.
From what I've read of your experience Mermaid, possibly your H hasn't had the extreme 'light switch' change that our MLCers have had? There may lie the difference in our attitudes, experiences and the information we are seeking.
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Great post, Velika! I think in a way trying to understand what happened to our MLC spouse is a form of working on ourselves because it helps us to figure out how we should respond and ultimately where we want to go with our lives. We may occasionally go down the wrong path, like with bvFTD, but that's not unusual when searching for new insight and even if it does turn out to be the wrong direction often these wrong paths will provide new information, like the relationship between the symptoms of bvFTD and MLC, that can lead us in new directions.
I agree that I'm not qualified to practice psychology or neurobiology or to research and publish in those areas but I don't think that means I'm not qualified to locate and evaluate qualified sources of information about them, read and analyze that information, and draw conclusions from it. And there are some pretty smart people on this forum so I don't think I'm the only one who can do these things.
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I'm enjoying this discussion, thanks Velika. Some similar questions came up on Anjae's thread.
I understand the need to find an explanation. I'm the same, trying to understand what's going on. However, by reading bits and pieces of neurology without a deep insight into medicine, neurology, etc., and cherry picking the bits which seem to make sense, we're likely to go wildly off track. Believing MLC= behavioural variant FTD is an example.... I wonder how many people here are qualified to talk about neuroscience? I think there are one or two who have occasionally posted; likewise psychology.
Moreover, our spouses have only one thing in common... We believe they are in crisis. They may not think that, neither may a psychologist in some cases. In some cases it's apparent that they are confused, or depressed, etc. In other cases they are stressed but not all of them are.
The sooner we accept that we should focus on ourselves rather than fix our spouses, the better we will be.
You make many good points, Mermaid. But I think we perhaps should separate the need to understand (which is actually a road to a kind of clinical detachment) from the unhealthy need to fix. There is no fix for MLC, you're quite right - at least not from our end of the tightrope.
There is likely a biochemical basis for this disorder, as there is a biochemical / neuropsych basis for depression, anxiety, personality disorders, etc etc. It's just that the biochemistry isn't the only explanation (and in life, it's usually an explanation unavailable to us). There are even decent animal models for lower order brain dysfunctions like dementias and depression, so we can know about the biochemistry - but not for complex, higher order processing dysfunctions like MLC, so data are scarce (and frankly nobody gets funded to research something that's considered the punchline of a bad joke!). Yeah FWIW I do have the on-paper qualifications to speculate on this; but humbly, I don't think anyone ought to be disqualified from speculating, that's all we've got right now, no? And eventually, that's how the best hypotheses get winnowed out for testing.
While my H was in crisis, and for months after he ostensibly returned to himself, he steadfastly refused to accept there was anything wrong. H is an emergency doc, and he emphatically didn't do mental health stuff! I had worked in the mental health field before, had put in time as a counselor before segueing into science... and to my eye, H had all the signs (couldn't place my finger on a diagnosis; but then officially, MLC isn't exactly a thing). Even afterwards, H could only stammer "that nonsense was old H talking. I'm not that guy now". Sigh. More recently though, H does admit there was something seriously wrong with his mind during those bad years, with the way he was processing information and handling his anger. This is an N of 1 and not conclusive - every MLCer is a different mix of signs and symptoms, not superimposable - that's much the same with any disease. But someday, if RCR or anyone else tabulates the feedback of MLCers emerging from the fog, there may emerge a consensus that this is MLC is a mental health issue - akin to depression (probably not dementia), perhaps with abnormal cause-effect processing and executive functions, perhaps abnormal amygdala fight-or-flight activity, perhaps things we haven't guessed at yet.
You're all quite right that none of this theorizing changes our own role in the mess. We have to get busy rescuing our own selves, and can't do anything to fix our partners. There isn't a drug, there isn't a cure, and likely there never will be. But I do feel the mental health theory of MLC aided me a bit with achieving compassion/agape for my hapless, raging MLCer (in a nicely detached way). As my kindly mentor kikki once memorably put it, "my H has broken something in his head and that makes him behave this way. I could wish he had broken a leg instead, but this is how it is". Don't have the quote exact, but it sure helped me!
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But I do feel the mental health theory of MLC aided me a bit with achieving compassion/agape for my hapless, raging MLCer (in a nicely detached way). As my kindly mentor kikki once memorably put it, "my H has broken something in his head and that makes him behave this way. I could wish he had broken a leg instead, but this is how it is". Don't have the quote exact, but it sure helped me!
I think that this helps with coping as well. Right after bomb drop, I kept telling people, it's not so much the breakup but the personality change that is the most traumatic. It was so shocking, in fact, that whereas in a typical breakup you mourn the loss of the relationship, I think that for me and others on this board this loss becomes secondary to the trauma of sudden, radical behavior and personality shift. Key to this for me (and perhaps others here) is loss of empathy.
I think that understanding this as a neurological event can help the LBS accept that we cannot reach the person we thought we once knew, and central to this is their ability to empathize with us. I believe the ability to empathize is extremely damaged for many MLCers, and so consistently that it does not seem possible that this is simply psychological self defense mechanism. If the MLCer was basically empathetic before the MLC — as most likely were — I think many of us spend a lot of time trying to get through to them in the weeks and months after bomb drop and are additionally traumatized with each encounter.
When we compare notes and look at our own observations, even anecdotally, it is quite possible that many MLCers truly cannot correctly empathize, and that this ability gets worse over time. Knowing this forces the LBS to detach and also to protect him or herself emotionally. When you know that the person you are dealing with cannot empathize, you are forced to seek solace from others, not the MLCer. You don't try to point out their bad behavior to them hoping to shock them out of it. You realize the horse is dead. (This does not make it any less sad.)
Regarding the individual issues that come up during MLC. Perhaps a parallel is a woman who feels extra weepy in the week leading up to her period. Maybe she is crying over something that deep down does bother her — but it is not making her cry the rest of the month. She is able to manage these emotions the rest of the month not because she is choosing to but because her hormones are not affecting her the same way. I remember as an adolescent when I started my period and had never heard of PMS. I didn't understand why I felt so bad sometimes; it made me feel out of control and even ashamed. When I knew what PMS was and how it affected me, then I was able to at least know what to expect and not become overwhelmed by something I knew would pass.
I wonder if MLCers are in some way like this unknowing PMSer. It sounds like some do sense that something is wrong, but it only makes them feel more out of control and ashamed. In that way, even if there is no cure (like there is no cure for PMS, sadly), they might be able to better identify and put their symptoms into perspective with greater awareness of it as a medical issue (not a joke).
CAVEAT: It's possible that I am totally wrong and lack of empathy is just a symptom of affair, as I have read elsewhere. Maybe someone who has MLCer with no affair could address. In my own experience, though, there is a difference between a breakup where one person has emotionally detached, and a breakup where one person cannot empathize. Having been on the initiating and receiving end of breakups (including where I had reached the point where I had detached completely), I know that while some are preceded by fights, accusations, and criticisms, there is usually a basic decency extended to the other person afterwards and a line that is not crossed over and over as you see so consistently with MLC. (E.g. emptying bank account, intentionally flaunting affair, continued harassment.)
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I think that this helps with coping as well. Right after bomb drop, I kept telling people, it's not so much the breakup but the personality change that is the most traumatic.
I agree. And as you realize how significant the changes are to the MLC spouse's personality, you mourn not just the loss of the relationship but also the loss of the person you knew. But then you occasionally see glimpses of the person you used to know and that kicks you into ambiguous, or never-ending, grief.
You're also right about the lack of empathy. If my wife's lack of empathy were limited to me, I might suspect that she can empathize but just doesn't care. But when it extends to our children, our grandchildren, my family, and her family then I can't believe that she just doesn't care.
My wife and my granddaughter were like twins. When my granddaughter told her she had to choose him or us, my wife said she chose him. A couple of months later when my daughter, grandchildren and I returned from a trip and found my wife had come to the house and taken a lot of stuff, my granddaughter called and told her she hated her and wished she had a different grandma. My wife's response was that she would feel differently once grandma had a place of her own. TEN MONTHS LATER with no change, when my granddaughter went to dinner with my wife shortly after my granddaughter was hospitalized for cutting and taking an overdose of ibuprofen she told my wife that she did it because she didn't want to go on seeing her grandma hurting everyone. That was nine months ago and it didn't seem to have any impact. The affair chemicals don't seem to be playing a role any more because she's been making comments about being on her own for the last 19 months. The comments started about 5 months after BD. There must be something else.
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I'm feeling the need to clarify...
I don't think it's unhealthy to try to understand. I actually think it is a positive to discuss -- amongst ourselves, with our friends and family.
Absolutely, I'm not against trying to understand or to discuss. I'm all in favour of it, as I said. It's partly what this site is about, understanding, to help us cope.
I'm saying that picking random bits of a complex area like neurology is rife with dangers if you understand little of it. I've seen this on other forums too (nothing to do with MLC). The dangers are obvious to me; people are looking for something that seems to fit, and pick something completely erroneous. It doesn't increase understanding or insight.
There have been a lot of strides in areas of women's health advocacy -- eg PPD, infertility, breast cancer -- by people breaking taboos and discussing their experiences openly. This helps eliminate shame around the topic and opens the door for more women to share
This isn't a question of breaking taboos, it's about getting accurate insight. What taboos are being broken, do you think? Actually, I know I'm being the maverick, by questioning this approach. I don't want to be unkind, just provoke discussion about how we research and how we look at these crises.
You don't have to be an expert about something to be curious about it or ask questions or share what you have learned.
This is true... But I'm questioning back. I was spurred on to do so because of the wildness of some of the conjectures. I'm not suggesting people should not to think or read... Just to realise that what appears to be an explanation might not be. Realising that, we should read more, deeper, and especially in a more critical way.
I think many people come here not trying to fix their spouse but just to make sense of things.
In the 6 years I've been on this forum, a recurrent problem is LBS wanting to do the right thing to fix their spouse. I passed through that stage too. But yes, as I said, understanding what's going on is a major aspect of this forum.
Obs, thanks for your comments. It's also useful for us to know here who has expertise in some areas. Hopefully you can shed light on some issues.
I've got no doubt that neurology underpins some disorders. Yet we know that, even in cases of clinical depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, it's the interaction between the social world, genetic propensity and physical environment which can trigger, worsen or ameliorate the conditions. We can no longer talk about nature and nurture alone, or even social constructivism in isolation. They are interlinked.
However, after 6 years on this forum, and after extensive reading, I really do doubt that what we call MLC is one thing at all. In fact, there's no evidence for it. 10% of American men do have a something they crisis, but it's likely to be a cultural construction as this is not so prevalent outside the US, and absent in some cultures.
I've got no doubt that some people have deep crises. Our spouses on this forum represent a spectrum of these. They are quite different in many ways, as we've often noted. It's quote comforting to label these... Vanisher, boomerang, low/high energy. Obviously many (not all) of these spouses were confused and trying out different roles for themselves to see what worked (mine did... It was strange to watch, and disconcerting). It's confusing for us, so we want to understand. It's comforting to think that there may be hope... But quickly learn from other members to manage our expectations.
However, if we look at all the different variations, they don't add up to one thing. There are cases of clinical and non clinical depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, personality changes, immaturity, stress/ burnout, hormonal changes, unresolved issues from childhood or adolescence, and some which just seem like bad behavior. And that's to name just a few! So increasingly I have found it hard to accept that there is a single neurological malfunction underlying all of this.
Yes, exactly Kikki, my H really didn't have the same "light switch" change as some people have faced. Which is my case in point. There's a huge variety out there.
So in conclusion, I aim to provoke, not to undermine anyone's research. I'm all for it! There was one influential writer on this forum in the early days who said she'd only read one book, because that was all she needed. She didn't question whether it was accurate, or true, she accepted that point of view wholly and simply.
Reading and learning is great, so is discussion, but to avoid serious misconceptions, bias, partial thinking, etc. we need more study, analyzing our points of view for accuracy, depth, breadth and relevance, and questioning our assumptions and inferences.
Love Mermaid xxx
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Reading and learning is great, so is discussion, but to avoid serious misconceptions, bias, partial thinking, etc. we need more study, analyzing our points of view for accuracy, depth, breadth and relevance, and questioning our assumptions and inferences.
This sounds like a good idea but this is an Internet forum, not a peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps if the people who are studying, analyzing, questioning, and publishing in peer-reviewed journals were to show some interest in this topic we might soon learn whether MLC is a thing with multiple ways of presenting or multiple things that are being grouped together and given one label. Perhaps one of those qualified researchers will stumble across our haphazard and misinformed attempts to understand MLC and decide to do some real research and resolve this for us.
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Mermaid, thank you.
The only part I disagree with you is if MLC exists or not. There is way too much evidence for me for it not to, despite what the medical community says. And it takes a whole lot to convince me of anything!
I wonder why MLC is not considered and treated as a true disease/condition?
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Reading and learning is great, so is discussion, but to avoid serious misconceptions, bias, partial thinking, etc. we need more study, analyzing our points of view for accuracy, depth, breadth and relevance, and questioning our assumptions and inferences.
This sounds like a good idea but this is an Internet forum, not a peer-reviewed journal.
It doesn't need to be a peer reviewed article for people to think critically. And thinking critically is only part of what's needed on a peer reviewed article.
Perhaps if the people who are studying, analyzing, questioning, and publishing in peer-reviewed journals were to show some interest in this topic we might soon learn whether MLC is a thing with multiple ways of presenting or multiple things that are being grouped together and given one label. Perhaps one of those qualified researchers will stumble across our haphazard and misinformed attempts to understand MLC and decide to do some real research and resolve this for us.
Um, they have actually. Extensive research out there. The broad conclusions are that there are all forms of crises, and even a few may happen specifically at midlife. My own H's crisis was, and even among my psychologist faculty colleagues, we still refer to it as his MLC. But looking at his case in particular, I now understand his behavior to be way deeper than a MLC. Looking at the stories I've read on here, he's not the only one.
It's just that MLC is just too much a blanket term for all the varieties of behavior out there.
The only part I disagree with you is if MLC exists or not. There is way too much evidence for me for it not to, despite what the medical community says. And it takes a whole lot to convince me of anything!
I wonder why MLC is not considered and treated as a true disease/condition?
Because it's not one thing only... Although There are actually psychology specialists who treat crises that arise specifically at midlife.
Cfxyz made the comparison to heart disease. I'll make a comparison to headaches. You can take a pill for a headache, which is fine for primary headaches (if we get tired, have a hangover, etc.), even though these may have different causes (although if they go on, we have to find out what they are) but completely useless for other physical and neurological conditions causing head pain. Tumors, strokes, some types of migraine, aneurysms, poisoning, concussions etc.
Similarly, we're all here to talk about something called MLC... But it's really a symptom, not a disease. The underlying issues vary hugely, as do many of the manifestations.
One piece of research that might be interesting (actually a whole set) is about the happiness U-curve. Our happiness as a species decreases from our twenties, hits a low point in midlife, then does a U-turn. This happens in all cultures, and even in other ape species.
Could this be a trigger point for those with other issues in their lives?
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Interesting discussion!
MBIB I agree with you. This is an online forum, and this thread is about biochemistry and brain research. If there are peer reviewed articles on this as pertains to MLC, midlife depression, or other symptoms often described by LBS I would love to read them and hope someone could post.
No one here is posting about how to perform amateur exploratory brain surgery on MLCer using simple tools at home. We are just sharing articles of interest, maybe that list some symptoms that sound similar to MLC, maybe just wondering. These are conversations academics, professionals, friends have informally all the time about all sorts of topics. We are just having a discussion, right, but we don't live close to one another and can't meet at a cafe to discuss/joke/ask questions so we do it here. I'm not sure it matters if these discussions end up going down the wrong road or taking a tangent. MLC is horrible but it is also pretty fascinating.
I agree that MLC is an umbrella term. However, I am only one year in and I can see that it is possible to predict behavior and even language patterns, at least among certain subsets of MLCers. Since the onset is apparently so sudden in these cases, it makes sense to want to figure out which region of the brain might be affected.
I think there is a taboo regarding MLC. It is that women in particular are often left with a stigma that their husband "left them for someone else." The stereotype of MLC is that the husband is a silver-haired man in his fifties driving a nice convertible next to a beautiful younger woman. This simple stereotype helps lend to the notion that the man is acting in a way that is harmless, in his own interests, or at least vaguely comical. It makes the wife feel ashamed, not the husband. The stereotype normalizes his behavior and trivializes the impact.
But when we share our stories, we help explain that not only is this not what has happened, there is more to the story. We help show that the shame of abandonment and abuse belongs to the husband, not the wife. We show that the abandonment is just one aspect of a series of behavior changes, sometimes radical and sudden.
The silver-haired man has an empty look in his eye and is behaving erratically at home and at work. His children haven't seen him for weeks, and he has heaped emotional abuse on his wife and blamed her that he has left the family. The woman next to him is his age, twice divorced, and is taking selfies so that the wife (or one of her kids) might see them together on social media. He used his youngest child's college fund to pay for the car. Just one year earlier he was a happy, devoted family man who had regularly told his wife how much he loved her. Almost overnight he seemed to despise her. He has lost most of his friends due to how he has treated his family. He avoids many of the people he used to love.
I am someone who was so bewildered by MLC I told a lot of people about what was going on, hoping to meet someone who had a similar experience. Because I explained in detail what was happening, my friends and family understood that this was not a normal situation or breakup and no one treated it as such. I think it is sad for MLCers that this is not discussed more openly. Maybe some would be encouraged to seek help if it were.
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Several of the last posts on this thread were moved to the Discussion thread: http://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=7571.0
They were not about neuroscience, but about MLC. Please be so kind to continue the discussion there. Thank you.
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Some interesting findings on depression and forward thinking impairment
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201811737/depression-impairs-forward-thinking
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Very interesting, Kikki! Thanks for this!
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Interesting, but we had already figured that out, haven't we? ;) :) In case anyone is interested, here is a link for the several types of memory and the brain parts used by each http://www.human-memory.net/brain_parts.html
This one is about a different type of neuroscience finding. It has to do with restoring feelings and movements to paraplegic patients They did with "exoskeleton, sessions using virtual reality (VR) technology and a non-invasive system that links the brain with a computer."
It is truly amazing.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/11/brain-training-technique-restores-feeling-and-movement-to-paraplegics-virtual-reality
The article also refers other things that are being tried for the same purpose "The study parallels other approaches to spinal cord injury: there are hopes of stem cell therapy that could make possible natural repairs to the nervous system, and of electronic implants that might bypass a spinal cord injury to transmit the brain’s message to the muscles."
I'm truly looking forward for it to become as common and available as paracetamol. Not exactly the same thing, but, still, it looks more and more a reality.
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Interesting, but we had already figured that out, haven't we? ;) :)
Posted the link because some people may prefer to listen rather than read. :)
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I know I'm really going for the win on the most theories from widest variety of disciplines on Hero's Spouse, but I have yet another kind of tangential and half-baked one based on something I saw on a nature documentary with my son.
Okay so here we go — this is not exactly neurology but seeing as there is no zoology thread on Hero's Spouse ...
Yesterday my son and I were watching a documentary on African elephants where there was a description of musth, a kind of frenzied state in which a male elephant becomes violent and irrational due to radically increased testosterone (40 to 60 percent) levels. Apparently when this occurs in captivity it can be so dangerous that afflicted elephants are often isolated and even tranquilized.
I covered this in my own thread as well, but I wonder if MLC could be in some way a type of human musth. One of the theories of musth is that it strikes when there is a change to the dominance order of the herd. I think in some ways this can be seen in MLC, where some men experience it when they have reduced status and other men when they have increased. It also seems to strike when someone has died; again, change to order of herd. It is not well understood how this is an adaptive quality or what the function/purpose is.
Here are the symptoms of musth. Does this sound familiar?
- autistic behaviour
- aggressive outbursts when the bull feels disturbed
- does not tolerate any noise and sudden movements
- does in everyday contact hardly react to familiar commands of the keeper
- tries to attack even familiar elephants and humans
It is also linked to sexual arousal/dominance establishment.
I know this does nothing to help my situation but I did find it thought provoking. It really resonated! Sadly, there is no mahout to tie my MLC husband to a tree, however.
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Interesting read! I would have thought it would be the decrease in testosterone. My H's boss is younger than him. I also think his parents aging and starting to be less responsible for their actions affected him. As if if he acted younger it would stop their aging. Or he wants to reenact his teenage years either because they were good or because he feels he miss out on something. I think mostly because he's pouting and feels he was cheated out of something. Hence the screw everyone attitude!!
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I know this does nothing to help my situation but I did find it thought provoking. It really resonated! Sadly, there is no mahout to tie my MLC husband to a tree, however.
Ha ha! Sounds like a good idea and a cure!!!
More seriously... although humans don't have truly instinctive behaviours, there's no reason why testosterone changes might not play a part in some of these MLCers. Most likely a drop in hormone levels. But some have had it tested, and there's been no change, so certainly not true for all.
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I wrote about this elsewhere, but has anyone noted (anecdotally or in research) a connection between dementia, MLC, and Alzheimer's?
A neighbor's mother had pretty severe MLC (divorce, pregnancy, much younger man). He told me she ended up having Alzheimer's.
If this is biochemical I'm thinking it takes a huge toll on the brain, but I could be wrong.
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I know Kikki had some powerful links about this prior that are likely on one of these three threads. A quick google and I remember it had to do with frototemporal lobe degeneration. It's still in the news, too, so there's some similarities that are being noticed still.
http://bottomlineinc.com/frontotemporal-degeneration-the-dementia-doctors-mistake-for-a-midlife-crisis/
http://www.healthcentral.com/alzheimers/c/42/136856/frontotemporal/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3513263/Dementia-victims-wrongly-told-s-just-mid-life-crisis.html
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It does occur to me that I missed the tipping point with my H. At some point he peaked at being an adult man than started going the other way. He has digressed to where is maturity level of a 20 year old is. At that age he had married his first wife of four years. He was very unhappy then. I have often thought those are the days he wants the do over for. The adult man he was is the man I miss most and still love. I doubt I will ever see that guy again. That is my heartbreak!!!
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Depression and MLC co-exist and there is a reported connection between depression and dementia.
Don't be so sure you won't see that guy again. MLC takes time but for most it does eventually end and so does the regression.
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There is no definitive knowledge regarding depression leading to a greater risk of Alzheimer's. In papers and classes it is usually said it may/seems, and some patients.
People who have never had MLC or depression have Alzheimer's. And people who have had MLC and/or depression do not have Alzheimer's.
I think most people who have Alzheimer's did not had a MLC. Some may had suffered from depression, some may not.
It would make sense if depressive episodes increased the risk of Alzheimer's, but no one knows for sure.
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http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/22163
http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/journal/v7/n6/abs/nrneurol.2011.60.html (http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/journal/v7/n6/abs/nrneurol.2011.60.html)
http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=786350&resultclick=1 (http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=786350&resultclick=1)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-1614.2001.00967.x (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-1614.2001.00967.x)
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/202/5/329.short (http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/202/5/329.short)
http://www.europsy-journal.com/article/S0924-9338(16)01711-9/abstract?cc=y= (http://www.europsy-journal.com/article/S0924-9338(16)01711-9/abstract?cc=y=)
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Interesting article on connection between migraines and bipolar, depression, and even personality disorder:
http://www.everydayhealth.com/headache-and-migraines/webcasts/migraines-and-mental-illness-whats-the-connection.aspx
My husband started getting severe migraines a few months before bomb drop and continued having them after. He hadn't had migraines prior, although this was also around time he started taking SSRI (Paxil).
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Has anyone investigated the ventromedial prefrontal cortex? I came upon this mentioned in a forum on brain damage and sociopathy and looked it up.
I found this very interesting because damage to this specific region of the brain looks a lot like MLC. I'm taking this from Wikipedia (for simplicity's sake) but found other articles on this topic as well that may be of interest. Highlights are my own.
To me, this entire description pretty much provides a unified theory as to what could specifically happen to the brain to cause a MLC. Everything is there.
Decision making
Patients with bilateral lesions of the vmPFC develop severe impairments in personal and social decision-making[4][7] even though most of their intellectual ability is preserved.[7][8] For instance, they have difficulties in choosing between options with uncertain outcomes, whether the uncertainty is in the form of a risk or of an ambiguity.[9] After their lesion, these patients have an impaired capacity to learn from their mistakes, making the same decisions again and again even though they lead to negative consequences. These patients choose alternatives that give immediate rewards, but seem to be blind to the future consequences of their actions.[7] However, the underlying mechanisms of this behaviour are not yet fully understood.[7]
Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (especially in the right hemisphere) has been connected with deficits in detecting irony, sarcasm, and deception.[10] Subjects with damage in this area have been found to be more easily influenced by misleading advertising.[11] This has been attributed to a disruption of a "false tagging mechanism" which provides doubt and skepticism of new beliefs.
People with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex still retain the ability to consciously make moral judgments without error, but only in hypothetical situations presented to them. There is a gap in reasoning when applying the same moral principles to similar situations in their own lives. The result is that people make decisions that are inconsistent with their self professed moral values.[4] People with early damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex are more likely to endorse self-serving actions that break moral rules or cause harm to others. This is especially true for patients whose damage occurred the earliest in life.[12]
Emotions and an understanding of social norms are used to provide reasoning of the moral nature on our behaviors, beliefs, and the people around us. The vmPFC works as the neural basis in allowing emotion to influence moral judgement. The trolley dilemma is a classic situation testing emotional involvement in moral judgment. In the trolley dilemma, participants imagine a runaway trolley heading toward five people who will be killed if the trolley is to continue. The participant is to decide whether to allow the trolley to run its course, or to shunt the trolley off to another track where it will only kill one person. Most people choose to throw the switch, concluding that it is moral to save five by sacrificing the life of one. In a variation, there is no switch at hand to shunt the trolley, instead the participant has the option to push someone on the trolley tracks to stop it from moving. Most people are repulsed at the idea of pushing the man to his death, even though outcome is the same as the first dilemma, with five people surviving and one person dying. The more personal nature of pushing someone onto the tracks discourages this response, and the role of emotion is proposed to be the difference in the reasoning. In functional imaging studies, increased activity in the vmPFC is associated with thinking of these personal moral situations, while making harmless decisions does not.[13] Patients with vmPFC lesions made the same decision in non-moral and moral personal dilemmas. Dysfunction of the vmPFC causes failure in using correct moral emotion, which explains why these patients showed less emotional responses when facing these dilemmas.[14]
Regulation of emotion[edit]
The vmPFC plays an important role in regulating and inhibiting our response to emotions. VmPFC seems to use our emotional reactions to model our behavior and control emotional reactions in certain social situations. The inputs of the vmPFC provide it with information from the environment and the plans of the frontal lobe, and its outputs allow the vmPFC to control different physiological responses and behaviors. The role of the vmPFC is especially highlighted in people with damage to this region. A damaged vmPFC causes impairments of behavioral control and decision making, consequences which are rooted in emotional dysregulation. The first and most famous case of someone with defects to this region was Phineas Gage, a railroad construction foreman who in an accident 1848, had his vmPFC bilaterally destroyed. Before his accident, Gage was described as “serious, industrious and energetic. Afterward he became childish, irresponsible, and thoughtless of others.”[15] Another patient with vmPFC damage wasted away his life savings on foolish investments and failed to make appropriate decisions in his personal life. In patients with vmPFC damage, evidence shows that there is a correlation between emotional dysregulation and dysfunction in real world competencies.[15]
The amygdala plays a significant role in instigating the emotional reactions associated with anger and violence. With the vmPFC’s outputs to the amygdala, the vmPFC plays a part in preventing such behavior. Evidence has shown that impulsive murderers have decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex and increased activity in subcortical areas such as the amygdala. This imbalance can enhance actions that are created by negative emotions and limit the ability of the prefrontal cortex to control these emotions. Lower activation in the prefrontal cortex is also correlated with antisocial behavior. The dysfunction of the ventromedial cortex seem to, in part, be caused by lower levels of serotonin release.[15]
The vmPFC also is involved in courage. In experiments with participants allowing snakes to come near or away from them, acts of courage correlated with activation in the vmPFC, specifically the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex.[15][16]
Activation of the vmPFC is associated with successful suppression of emotional responses to a negative emotional signal.[17] Patients with vmPFC lesions show defects both in emotional response and emotion regulation.[8] Their emotional responsivity is generally diminished and they show markedly reduced social emotions such as compassion, shame and guilt. These are emotions that are closely associated with moral values.[8] Patients also exhibit poorly regulated anger and frustration tolerance in certain circumstances.[8]
Patients with focal lesions in the vmPFC show personality changes such as lack of empathy, irresponsibility, and poor decision making. These traits are similar to psychopathic personality traits.[18]
The right half of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was associated with regulating the interaction of cognition and affect in the production of empathic responses. Hedonic (pleasure) responses were also associations to orbitofrontal cortex activity level by Morten Kringelbach. This finding contributes findings suggesting ventromedial prefrontal cortex being associated with preference judgement, possibly assigning the ventromedial prefrontal cortex a key role in constructing one's self. Studies with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) also supported the idea that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is an important component for reactivating past emotional associations and events, therefore essentially mediating pathogenesis of PTSD.[19][20] Dysfunction of the vmPFC has also been identified as playing a role in PTSD-affected parents' response to their own children's mental states.[21] Treatments geared to the activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were therefore suggested for individuals and parent-child relationships affected by PTSD. The right half of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, being active during emotion regulation, was activated when participants were offered an unfair offer in a scenario. Specific deficits in reversal learning and decision-making have led to the hypothesis that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a major locus of dysfunction in the mild stages of the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia.[22]
The capacity for mature defense mechanisms such as intellectualization, compensation, reaction formation, and isolation has been tied to proper functioning of the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while more primitive defense mechanisms such as projection, splitting, verbal denial, and fantasy have been found to rely on other regions, primarily in the left hemisphere .[23]
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Interesting!!!! This does sound like MLC. Have you found what might cause lesions in the frontal cortex?
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The Washington Post had a story yesterday on Robin Williams dying of Lewy body dementia, and I know that he had also spoken openly of his battle with depression. So I started digging around, comparing cases of celebrities who may have been MLCers and exhibited depression and/or dementia in later life. Here's what I compiled:
Celebrities with possible MLC and later dementia
Robin Williams – married to 1st wife ages 27-37. Started affair with the nanny age 35 and married her when she became pregnant. Divorced her at age 49 and remarried a third time before committing suicide at age 63. Diagnosed with Dementia with Lewy bodies.
Otis Chandler – married to 1st wife ages 23-53. Married OW one month after divorce was final. Thrillseeker – crashed a motorcycle at age 68 and a Ferrari at age 61. Diagnosed with Dementia with Lewy bodies.
Casey Kasem – married to 1st wife at age 40; divorced her at age 47 and remarried OW 23 years younger within a year. Diagnosed with Dementia with Lewy bodies.
Charles Bronson – married to first wife ages 28 to 44, 2nd wife 15 years younger 47-69, 3rd wife 77-81. Died of Alzheimer’s.
Ronald Reagan – married to first wife ages 29-38, 2nd wife 10 years younger 41-death. Died of Alzheimer’s.
Abe Burrows – married to first wife ages 28-38; 2nd wife 40-death. Died with dementia.
Norman Rockwell – married to first wife ages 18-36, 2nd wife late 30s-55 (she died), then 3rd wife. He was treated for depression throughout his life & died with dementia.
Peter Falk – married to first wife ages 33-49, remarried within a year to 2nd wife 22 years younger (he was 50 and she was 28) and they were together 33 years. The Daily Telegraph said of Falk and Danese, "Unlike the uxorious Lieutenant Columbo, Falk's relationship with his second wife, the actress Sheralyn Danese, remained unpredictable. So frequent were their numerous break ups and reconciliations that they were known in Hollywood as the 'Fighting Falks'. 'She makes me laugh,' Falk said of his 23-year-old wife, 'but if I had to say what we had in common I guess it would be that we both like the colour blue.” Dementia denied but strongly suspected.
Early signs of dementia (everydayhealth.com and prevention.com):
• Changes in mood
• Shift in personality
• Apathy – loss of interest in former hobbies/activities, friends and family
• Frequent falling
• Loss of sense of social norms (stealing, driving violations, and inappropriate interpersonal behaviors, such as sexual comments or actions) as early as 30s-40s – this was the first sign of dementia in 14% of cases in a JAMA study
• Poor judgment/ineffective decision-making
• Loss of empathy: If someone who is usually sweet, considerate, and polite starts to say insulting or inappropriate things — and shows no awareness of their inappropriateness or concern or regret about what they’ve said — they could be exhibiting an early sign of dementia. In the early stages of some types of dementia, symptoms can include losing the ability to read social cues and, therefore, the ability to understand why it’s not acceptable to say hurtful things.
• Lack of embarrassment about situations that should be embarrassing
• Difficulty with money management
• Depression – individuals over 50 at the start of a study who showed signs of dementia 7 years later were twice as likely to report having been depressed at the start of the study
• Changes in food cravings
• Walking more slowly (due to beta-amyloid buildup)
• Hoarding/compulsive behavior
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OMG my STBEXH has all of those symptons.....What can we do about it?
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I've been reading with interest too about Robin Williams and dementia with Lewy bodies.
You've gathered some interesting cases there IANTE.
I haven't specifically heard of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex Velika, but have looked into prefrontal dementia. Many of the symptoms are a real fit for MLC too, except that most people do not function physically all that well after 10 years of the other symptoms appearing.
It's always amazed me to read of people believing that someone 'just' had a MLC when in fact it turned out to be a brain tumour, or some sort of dementia. I want to ask what on earth they think MLC is then? To me it's always seemed a no brainer (pardon the pun) that something is seriously awry in their brain. Especially a MLC of the severity that many of us have witnessed.
Still waiting for the science to catch up.
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Velika
I read with interest the article you added about ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
My therapist, as some may know is a Neuroscientist who felt that MLC was like Post natal depression and a chemical imbalance which suppresses parts of the brain, including the amygdala.
Its interesting to note this article talks about the amygdala.
I did a few searches on ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala and found it very interesting.
I know the article you posted talks about legions and damage but if you take my therapists believe of a chemical imbalance in the same area of the brain it would make a lot of sense. Because legions and damage would be permanent, meaning no chance of an 'awakening', yet as we know many MLC'ers awaken and come back, or at the very least contact the LBS years later.
The hardest thing we LBS's struggle with, IMO, is because this is not a recognised condition and therefore there is no formal recognition or diagnosis, we fight our own internal battles between knowing this is NOT the person we have known and loved all these years, yet having little or no acknowledgement from others close to us.
Sometimes, to me its as if I am the one who is going mad (or maybe that's not the right thing to say, maybe I should say the one with the problem).....as to the outside world its him moving on.........and me not being able to let go.
If my H had been diagnosed with a breakdown, then attitudes and support would be very different
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1Trouble, I honestly believe it is a smoking gun. When I read this information, I realized: this has to be it. Everything is there. It explains everything. PTSD, projection, lack of empathy, poor decision making, inability to learn from mistakes, poor emotional regulation, gullibility, lack of irony -- even inability to read certain cues about the opposite sex. (An ability that theoretically might help stop someone from reading signs that a partner was unsuitable). This explains why my husband who had a really great and subtle sense of humor suddenly thought cat videos on YouTube are hilarious. (Some are, I know. I don't have MLC.)
There is a mention that serotonin can affect this region. I wondered if it was possible for inflammation to affect as well. The immune system is directly linked to the brain. I would like to contact a researcher to have them explore this further.
I had the same thought as you: in some people this is permanent, but in others it resolves more quickly. Rather than look at it as some "issue" or "process" the MLCer is working on, if this somehow flares up or the brain is able to recover, then it makes sense why some people would have more clarity, some might recover permanently, some might never recover, and some might only recover partially or relapse.
I 100 percent agree with you that this is one of the main problems. We sense that our spouse has had something happen to them, but have no name to put to it. If this is about the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the article is correct, a person with a deficiency in this area can retain intellectual and even moral decision making abilities apart from their own choices. (Which is why a MLCer is not demonstrating across-the-board psychopathy.)
I believe my own husband (ex pretty much now) has a very extreme case. I think this is why it is noticeable to others. From your posts I feel that you are in a similar situation. It could be that people who are drawn to this aspect have also experienced more extreme versions and it is clearer therefore that this is not just psychological.
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I'm well versed in disorders of the central nervous system (neurology) along with tests given by doctors in that region of the brain.
A year or two before BD, on his own H went to see many doctors and was prescribed tests to take to rule out and known illness.
Of course I really had no idea at the time why he was doing this. He had MRIs of every angle, cat scan even x-rays of his brain and everything came out normal. He wanted to find out what was wrong with him.
Since nothing abnormal was detected, that is when it was concluded he was having a MLC. Some look at it as a normal life transition, sort of like grown man puberty.
I suspect past childhood FOO issues determine the severity of the MLC, as well as hormone balances.
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Scans are not reliable to diagnose mental illness. Many present overlapping systems. Also, I'm not sure that scans are routinely used to detect inflammation.
Here is an article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-brain-scans-diagnose-mental-illness/
It was only recently confirmed by American researchers what older forms of medicine already knew, which was a brain-immune system connection. This is not something that is looked at in routine tests: https://news.virginia.edu/illimitable/discovery/theyll-have-rewrite-textbooks
Autism for example is a systemic disease. Patients with schizophrenia often improve when they take activated charcoal: http://kellybroganmd.com/case-gut-induced-mania/
If this were about FOO, then "MLC" would be more widespread because so many people have FOO. Also, it would not present with so many other symptoms, sudden and radical behavior and personality changes. Talk therapy -- or even love and concern of family -- would likely make a difference to at least some.
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My H told me he had changed. He recognized that something has happened to him. I found out recently that he was going to therapy for months before the BD. It would be interesting to know what he thought he needed to be treated for. We had have some financial and emotional set backs I truly think he took harder than I imagine resulting in a form of PTSD fueled by excessive drinking. Now in looking back, how long before BD do you think your spouses exhibited signs of MLC?
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My H told me he had changed. He recognized that something has happened to him. I found out recently that he was going to therapy for months before the BD. It would be interesting to know what he thought he needed to be treated for. We had have some financial and emotional set backs I truly think he took harder than I imagine resulting in a form of PTSD fueled by excessive drinking. Now in looking back, how long before BD do you think your spouses exhibited signs of MLC?
The 18-36 month "entry" window RCR talks about fit for my xH for this biggest 180 flip. I think there were things before as well that were red flags (leans into the bipolar area). It is hard to gauge because really, all I can do is theorize. He did admit that he had "checked out" long before he said anything. He also got tests and spoke to professionals, and I can't discredit their expertise. I too have found disorders that fit (most notably Pyroluria, in my case, which not all doctors even see as a thing!). He was googling too for brain tumors and thyroid problems, so I know he was feeling lost time and fear. And some of these brain disorders fit. And personality disorders! But we all tick off for things on paper, so I can't take that past the theory point without a willing participant in going further to get and actual diagnosis. And the reality is, it's his health, and his responsibility. HIPA laws may have stopped me, but if I had a time machine and knew what I know now, I would have attended every doctor's appointment or psych appointment with him. I would have put myself in the loop, and made these doctors my allies. But as it is, I don't even know if they knew he was married. He lied about so much during that time, I only know he went to the appointments because I got the bills. :-\ But that proves right there that even WITH help, there's little that can be done if they are unwilling.
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Ready,
Mine knew also. I found out after bd he had been ordering different over the counter mood drugs. One being St. John's Wart.
He also ordered self help books through Amazon. One was about self help for Social Anxiety, on was to help you find your happiness, or something like that.
So I can see he knew something was wrong but had no idea what to do about it.
I did talk to our doctor (which they welcome btw) and when I told him how strange he was acting he was concerned because it could have been a brain tumor.
Lastly, one night after he had done something SO out of character for him I said.."This is just not like you!" He looked at me and said.."Yeah, well I don't feel like me anymore."
All I can say is, I personally think, with my H it was more hormonal than anything else. After 3 years his hot flashes, depression and anxiety started to lift, slowly. Still see some confusion sometimes but that's about it. Could testosterone replacement have helped him? I'll never know.
But I still don't consider MLC a mental illness. I think it's a combination of several things. FOO issues, hormones, debt problems, avoidance personality, death of a loved one, etc..
To who ever (sorry can't remember) said, if it's caused by FOO issues then why doesn't everyone with a bad childhood have a MLC, I think it may be because some people have an avoidance type personality, some people don't handle stress well. Might just be a personality thing. The inability to handle stress.
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It isn't just plain vanilla FOO issues. A lot of it also has to do with attachment and abandonment issues from childhood, stressful and traumatic events that occurred during childhood, and the effect these have on the developing brain. The end result can vary greatly depending on where the child is in the developmental cycle when these things happen.
http://www.drdansiegel.com/books/the_developing_mind/ (http://www.drdansiegel.com/books/the_developing_mind/)
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I agree, MB.
Also I remember reading a story about some woman who had multiple personalities. Yet her sister, a year older, was perfectly fine.
Both grew up in the exact same horrible environment.
After studying the 2 of them they found the one sister who turned out fine was more of a fighter. She fought back when things happened and could shrug them off. The one with multiple personalities was very meek and internalized everything that was done to her.
2 different personalities, 2 different outcomes.
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I think that someone who was abusive, controlling, unfaithful, impulsive, duplicitous, irresponsible throughout marriage is working out childhood issues.
I think someone who is basically responsible and then suddenly isn't -- or basically calm and sudddnly isn't -- has experienced some sort of neurological problem that has to do with brain structure and susceptibility to environmental triggers, including stress, hormones, depression, medication, and even gut flora imbalance.
That said, I think there are likely many things going on on this this forum. Some might be things that lead to same behavior for neurological reasons and some may lead to the same behavior for psychological reasons.
I think if you see extreme and self destructive behavior with sudden onset accompanied by physical symptoms it is likely neurological. I have very extreme "high energy" MLCer with family history of mental illness, depression, and MLC -- as well as FOO stemming from all of these. I can see how it is a fine line.
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Exactly. Good example. You can't just look at someone and say they should be fine because others have gone through the same or worse. It doesn't work that way.
Thunder mentioned an inability to handle stress. They've proven that certain highly stressful or traumatic events occurring at specific points during a child's development can permanently alter the structure of their brain in a way that reduces that person's ability to handle stress and makes them more susceptible to lifetime problems with depression and PTSD. Other events can cause alternate ego states to develop that can lie dormant for years or even decades until something happens that triggers the emergence of the alternate ego state.
BTW, the concept of multiple personality disorder is no longer accepted. The current belief is that everyone has just one personality but they can have multiple ego states and that the personality can become fractured.
Many conversion disorders, fugue states, and other conspicuous amnestic disorders present few or no problems in diagnosis. However, making the diagnosis in less clear-cut situations can be challenging (Abse, 1966). Clues to the presence of dissociative disorders and ego-state problems include amnesia for significant portions of childhood, childhood recollections of trauma or information from family members that such trauma occurred, and a history of marked changes in behavior during childhood. Patients who are highly responsive to hypnosis should always be screened for dissociative symptoms. The presence of symptoms that are ego-dystonic is an important clue. So also is the presence of the "language of parts" within the interview situation. The patient who says, "a part of me wants to do this, and another part wants to do that," is expressing a divided self and may be a candidate for ego-state exploration, as is the patient who says, "I found myself doing thus-and-so, and it just wasn't like me at all."
Sometimes using the language of poetry and metaphor to describe symptoms (Frederick, 1993) for example, using terms such as "pools of sadness" or "wellings" to describe depressive symptoms is suggestive of dissociative problems. Intrusive behaviors such as muscular jerking or trembling, tics, spasms, tightness, a loss of motor power, or minimal voice changes should alert the therapist to the possibility of a dissociative disorder.
Within the sensory realm such phenomena as transient pain, parasthesias, itching, "weird" feelings of heaviness or lightness can suggest such problems. Other behaviors that raise an index of suspicion are certain psychophysiologic reactions indicative of post-traumatic stress, such as nausea, headache, diarrhea, or vasomotor changes. Marked changes of affect or affects out of proportion to the individual's current situation are also suspect. Finally, refractoriness or unresponsiveness to treatment should always lead the clinician to suspect an undetected dissociative condition meriting hypnotic exploration.
http://www.maggiephillipsphd.com/product_book1_chap1.html (http://www.maggiephillipsphd.com/product_book1_chap1.html)
I thought this was interesting since I've been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder and both my wife and I have developed unexplained facial tics over the past few years. The part about patients finding themselves doing something that wasn't like them at all is also interesting.
I think that someone who was abusive, controlling, unfaithful, impulsive, duplicitous, irresponsible throughout marriage is working out childhood issues.
I think someone who is basically responsible and then suddenly isn't -- or basically calm and sudddnly isn't -- has experienced some sort of neurological problem that has to do with brain structure and susceptibility to environmental triggers, including stress, hormones, depression, medication, and even gut flora imbalance.
Not necessarily. There are dissociative disorders such as complex ptsd that can lie dormant for years and then fully erupt following a trigger event.
PTSD symptoms can occur soon after a traumatic experience, but this is not always the case. Here are some common symptom patterns:
Some Veterans begin to have PTSD symptoms soon after they return from war. These symptoms may last until older age.
Other Veterans don't have PTSD symptoms until later in life.
For some Veterans, PTSD symptoms can be high right after their war experience, go down over the years, and then worsen again later in life.
http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/types/war/ptsd-older-vets.asp (http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/types/war/ptsd-older-vets.asp)
Reports 2 cases of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in World War II veterans (aged 68 and 72 yrs) whose individual onset was delayed for over 30 yrs after their wartime experiences. The onset of PTSD symptoms seemed to be associated with the stresses of late life, including bereavement, social isolation, and chronic medical illness. Theories regarding the etiology of PTSD are reviewed, and a hypothesis suggesting a heterogeneous condition is proposed. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1995-21604-001 (http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1995-21604-001)
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Not sure if this has been discussed previously, but I saw this story on our local news and wanted to put this our there that there could be some physical issues that affect the brain. Interesting read.
HENRICO, VA (WWBT) - A Henrico woman thought she'd lost her husband to a mid-life crisis.
When he started swearing and running away, she was ready to leave. Then came a diagnosis she never expected, that explained all of the bizarre behavior.
The pictures of the Plagemans tell a story of 39 years together. Wayne and Peggy met at just 17 and lived the life with two beautiful daughters. He retired from a life of service in the Henrico Fire Department to the Chesapeake Bay.
They laughed often and loved large. He still holds a record for a fishing catch - but considered her the catch of his life.
Until it all went horribly wrong.
Wayne started cursing, moved out to see other women, would run away - and get angry easily, accusing Peggy of outlandish things.
"Slowly I'd say, 'something's wrong,' or it's a midlife crisis or male menopause or whatever," said Peggy Plageman. "We had our ups and downs. We split."
It was blow after blow - until Wayne sat down with Peggy.
"He said, 'something's not right,'" explained Peggy.
The couple sat down with doctor after doctor, and diagnosis after diagnosis...until they finally got the right one, years of frustration and problems later.
"It's called Frontal-temporal dementia (because it's the front and the sides)," said Peggy. "His was more on the right side, which affected behavior. Rather bizarre behavior."
The diagnosis explained the behavior, but didn't make the situation much more bearable. There is no treatment for FTD or medication to help slow it down.
FTD can impact language, behavior, movement, and emotion.
Here’s a link to more information on the diagnosis, and what the warning signs are: http://www.theaftd.org/
"Those years in between were horrible," remembered Peggy. "He took out his frustrations on me. You become a trigger. He wanted to escape wherever he went. His hygiene, he didn't want his hair cut. There were times where I was accused of all kinds of things."
Finding a place where Wayne could live and be treated safely was near impossible. He was kicked out of at least one facility, and several other housing options didn’t work out because of his behavior problems. It was expensive and exhausting.
"He knew what was going on," said Peggy. “He wanted to die."
He even tried to take his own life. Try to imagine behaving horribly toward the ones you love, but not being able to control it.
Wayne died slowly, over the course of a long painful process for his family. It was so difficult, saying goodbye was in a way, a relief.
"I knew that he was in a better place and he wasn't suffering," explained Peggy, who acknowledges his death has brought a lot of different emotions. "But it's been a little over a year, and I'm still grieving for him."
Now, Peggy finally has the chance to mourn the man she married and fight for the man she lost. That’s why she's sharing her story - to raise awareness about a medical condition with very little research or funding...and the potential to devastate families.
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I would say beyond a doubt that i have seen my wife exhibit multipule personalities. Ego split, whatever.
Shes acted in many ways that resembled the rebelious foster daughter we had, who she tried in vain to stop from chatting with guys on the internet and other stuff. Personality 180 for sure...
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Bailmor, I think MLC affects the same part of the brain and accounts for behavior change. I 100 percent believe this is a neurological condition and it is tragic.
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We don't know for sure which parts and components of the brain MLC affects. But there is a big difference between Frontal-temporal dementia and MLC. MLCers get back to normal after the crisis. Someone with Frontal-temporal dementia, or more to the point, Behavior variant frontotemporal dementia is that, so far, there does not seem a come back from it.
"Behavior variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD.). This condition is characterized by prominent changes in personality, interpersonal relationships and conduct that often occur in people in their 50s and 60s, but can develop as early as their 20s or as late as their 80s. In bvFTD, the nerve cell loss is most prominent in areas that control conduct, judgment, empathy and foresight, among other abilities."
The other Frontal-temporal dementia types are:
"Primary progressive aphasia (PPA). This is the second major form of frontotemporal degeneration that affects language skills, speaking, writing and comprehension. PPA normally comes on in midlife, before age 65, but can occur in late life also. The two most distinctive forms of PPA have somewhat different symptoms
In semantic variant of PPA, individuals lose the ability to understand or formulate words in a spoken sentence.
In nonfluent/agrammatic variant of PPA, a person’s speaking is very hesitant, labored or ungrammatical.
Disturbances of motor (movement or muscle) function. There are three disorders that are a part of the frontotemporal degeneration spectrum that produce changes in muscle or motor functions with or without behavior (bvFTD) or language (PPA) problems.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which causes muscle weakness or wasting. ALS is a motor neuron disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Corticobasal syndrome, which causes arms and legs to become uncoordinated or stiff.
Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), which causes muscle stiffness, difficulty walking and changes in posture. It also affects eye movements.
PBoth bvFTD and PPA are far less common than Alzheimer’s disease in those over age 65 years. However, in the 45 to 65 age range, bvFTD and PPA are nearly as common as younger-onset Alzheimer’s. Only rough estimates are available, but there may be 50,000 to 60,000 people with bvFTD and PPA in the United States, the majority of whom are between 45 and 65 years of age." http://www.alz.org/dementia/fronto-temporal-dementia-ftd-symptoms.asp
Aphasia also occurs in strokes. Stroke patients often suffer from Aphasia. For some it is temporary, for other it becomes permanent.
As for the motor neuron diseases, along with ALS, they are Progressive bulbar palsy (PBP), Progressive muscular atrophy (PMA), Primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) and Kennedy’s Disease. http://www.mndassociation.org/what-is-mnd/different-types-of-mnd/
The dementias, along with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and the mentioned Frontal-temporal dementia, also include Vascular dementia, Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), Mixed dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Normal pressure hydrocephalus, Huntington's disease and Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome. http://www.alz.org/dementia/types-of-dementia.asp
MLC does not seem to be a dementia. It is reversible (with time I believe so will dementias be). Once out of crisis the person regains their normal mental functions and behaviours.
But to make things more complicated, and since some believe MLC can later lead to dementia (I think in that context dementia is synonymous of Alzeimer's) Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome is a dementia connected with the lack of thiamine (vitamin B1) that is a common factor in those with alcoholism. Many MLCers drink a lot. And some who were not alcoholics before MLC seem to become so during MLC.
Does this means at a later date they will be more vulnerable to Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome? I don't know. Do the ones who suffer from alcoholism before MLC are more at risk that the ones who only got into alcohol during MLC? Maybe.
But we really do not have studies to correlated MLC with all those dementias.
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Very interesting reading. I have wondered so many of these things during the past 3 years . I absolutely thought he had a brain tumor and the doctor agreed to do some tests, but of course , my husband refused . I have tried every imaginable explanation and here is what I have found about my husband. I do not know if any of it directly caused his "MLC", but I sure have researched any possible connections.
1. He was born extremely premature to a 15 year old mother in 1957 . He weighed under 3 lbs and was not expected to survive . He still has eye issues from incubator / eyes not covered. He was in an incubator for the 1st 3 months of his life . So we know that no cuddling, touch , bonding happened..attachment injury right from birth. Different brain pathways do not develope normally. When he was released to his mother , she was already 3 months pregnant .
2. At 3 years old he remembers extreme violence ( screaming/ fear) as his father stabbed his mother . He never saw her again. He imagined she was dead as he grew up. His counsellor says a "searing" locked his developmental growth / PTSD / attachment trauma
3. He vividly remembers being taken from his grandmothers home at age 5. He was "spanked" (beaten) because he would not stop crying for her . Just the start of more deep abandonment/ attachment injuries.
4. At 9 he was sexually assaulted by his fathers friend . He told me about this after 3o years of marriage after he returned home. I had no idea.
5 By age 15 , he had moved 19 times . A very huge red flag in school boards now for children at risk . He was sleeping the high school locker roomer to avoid going home. His coach fed him.
6. He has ACOA Trauma Syndrome / PTSD
7 He has anxious avoidant attachment style / extreme people pleaser
8. six months prior to BD he was diagnosed with diabetes, high cholersterol and high blood pressure. He went from zero medication to 4 . ( I asked doctor several times ... could this behavior be all this medication?)
9 . Very odd... I noticed increased hair growth on his chest . Hormones like a teenager ? he said " I guess I am finally a man". No concern .
10. When he left he had stage 2 kidney cancer . We were not aware of this . He was diagnosed shortly after returning home. How was that affecting him mentally?
11. He is scared. He believes he had a complete mental break/ physchological split . He has been in therapy for 2 1/2 years . I believe he is afraid of anything like this ever happening to him again. .. so he keeps going to counselling .
How can anyone be "normal" in anyway after such a history. I am amazed he was able to be a good solid husband and father for 3 decades. It slowly begins to be less about "how did this happen?" and more about how could it not have ? His counsellor sometimes refers to all his "compartments " in his brain that absolutely ensured his very survival ... finally gave way.
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This seemed like the most logical place to put this. My neighbor is MLC and also in treatment for PTSD/OCD (therapy and drugs). He's been in ICU since Wednesday because he either had an allergic reaction to one of his drugs, or mixed it with alcohol and suffered tremendous side effects. He got violently ill and began having severe hallucinations. It's unclear what will happen with him moving forward. :( He was stabilized once on Friday and in his own room, then freaked out again and they ended up in ICU doing more tests.
I bring it up because of the mixture of very clear MLC symptoms (manic spending on big luxury items, lots of trips/fun/constant going despite inability to work and isolation from major relationships with his children, etc) and other more complicated disorders and drug treatment. And if it is something like a drug allergy, he was literally in a state of panic because rats were on the ceiling and evil people were trying to get him. It speaks to the side effects those of us with drug-treated MLCers may be experiencing that are completely out of left field and identity altering.
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This is all so much to think about. My H didn't have any issues at home. Growing up a very normal family life. Parents are still together . Dad coached baseball , nothing traumatic.
The only thing I worry about is the heavy mental illness in the family.
Bipolar sister , four aunts , and his grandfather commutes suicude after losing his business. Before that he deserted his family.
My MIL thinks my H is having a breakdown. We had financial stress and he is unhappy with where he is at.
The total change in personality and values can not be ignored. He too knew something was going in with him. He told me before I even knew what it was , that he thought he was having a MLC ! Two weeks after BD. I saw articles bookmarked on the computer.
He td me he was depressed and using pot to cope. He was looking at inspirational quotes on Pinterest about being positive and happy.
Once I asked him where is my sweet husband , he says I'm trying to come back to you , do you think I like being this way ? It was heartbreaking.
Now he says things similar but I monster. Before he'd cry. Now he says your husband isn't home right now ! Or you have no idea what I'm capable of not in love. And I'm not the same person. The marriage changed me.
Or just plain you don't really know me.
I think he started using the harder stuff to try and feel normal. I don't know what to think. It drives me crazy. He too went to the doctor on his own. To get blood work and his heart checked. FIL has major heart issues. Heart is fine but he never asked about his mind. I think he thought blood work might rule out stuff.
They did find diabetes that is not being treated now. He refused meds. Wanted to work out and diet. Never happened. He goes back next week. And I see his doctor too. Hoping to find clarity. Diabetes affects hormones too doesn't it ?
Velika ,
I read an article done in the UK that says cocaine use affects the same part of the brain that you talk of. So of course I can't imagine the damage on top of his MLC. Having a real diagnoses would help. I am starting to lose my mind with all of this.
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BEHAVIORAL VARIANT FTD (BVFTD)
I found this little snippet:
Patients typically start to have symptoms sometime in their 50s
Emotional Symptoms
1. Lack of insight into the person’s own behavior develops early. The patient typically does not recognize the changes in his or her own behaviors, nor do they exhibit awareness or concern for the effect these behaviors have on the people around them, including loved ones.
2. Emotional blunting develops early in the course of the disorder, and is manifested as a loss of emotional warmth, empathy and sympathy, and development of what appears to be indifference toward other people, including loved ones.
3. Mood changes can be abrupt and frequent.
My X was showing all 3 of those at the age of 51, her poor mum died june 2014 of dementia and her dad had a stroke many years ago, is it hereditary
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Definitely hereditary. My brother's wife has this. Her mother died from it, one sister has already passed due to this, another sister will be gone soon, my brother has just reached the point where he has to start putting his wife in day care. Some group that's researching this flew my brother, his wife, and their children to Missouri so they could participate in some kind of research project about 3 months ago.
The thing about this that distinguishes it from MLC is that once it starts the person who has this loses their ability to function. My SIL is like a 2 year old right now. You have to watch her every minute because you never know what she might do. She started displaying symptoms about one year ago. One of the nice things about this is that my SIL doesn't seem to have any idea this is happening and while it's almost impossible to communicate with her, she's very good-natured.
My SIL is the same age as me, 58.
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My X is the youngest out of 4, 2 brothers and a sister, they're all fine and show no signs of any problems.
could just 1 out of the 4 be effected
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Anjae, thanks for posting about Behavior variant frontotemporal dementia. Your explanation makes it clear that MLC cannot be confused with this. I believe it's important that people understand this.
I understand that people want to find explanations for what appears to be sudden, and strange behaviour. But we shouldn't confuse things in this way.
If some of us have spouses who have spontaneous neurological disorders, these will be specific and exceptional. Most are not this case. Of course, for every event in life, for every thought, every emotion, there are corresponding neurological events. Emotions make learning and self-identity possible.
There do seem to be a number of cases of spouses who may have experienced some existential insecurity at crucial ages, or emotional events that will impact on their emotional development. These may stay hidden for years, and arise at moments of crisis.
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This is a thread for people interested in examining the biological aspect of MLC. I think comparing it to better understood conditions helps us get an idea of what regions might be affected and explain some of the behavior and personality changes.
I think that Jungian descriptions of MLC are also interesting and resonate. They provide a very poetic and profound description of the spiritual struggles of humans. And this can include the midlife breakdown we all have witnessed.
I think a key clue to neurological aspect is the eyes. Most people whose spouse has had a severe change report eyes looking odd. In many cases there is also systemic illness, digestive or autoimmune.
Our understanding of how disease manifests in the body and the systemic nature of mental illness has increased in recent years. Scientists are still exploring now even basic functions like memory work in the brain.
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You're welcome, Mermaid.
I agree, it is important that people understand the difference between MLC and Behavior variant frontotemporal dementia.
Like you, I understand that MLC may seem like a lot of other things, ranging from Behavior variant frontotemporal dementia to bipolar, but it is different from them. While bipolar and MLC are very similar in many ways, once the crisis is over, the person no longs shows signs of bipolar.
Also agree that some of us may have spouses who have spontaneous neurological disorders, but most of us do not. Does MLC affects the brain? It does. Just like depression (any of its types) affects the brain. But the MLC do not seem to be permanent. Once the person leaves the crisis behind, the brain and personality go back to normal.
Its_unreal, I am fairly sure that you wife is having a MLC. Bar from something else that may happen, she will regain her normal function once the crisis is over.
Please, lets do not compare MLC to hereditary and/or degenerative diseases. Once the crisis is over people return to normal. I know I have said it a couple of times before, but I think it is important to stress it.
Jungian theory was how I get here. I Google MLC + Jung. The thing with Jungian theory is that it is all beaty, poetry, transformation, self, rebirth, etc. Nowhere does it really talks about what really happens when one is having a MLC and the real destruction that comes with it.
I was familiar with Jungian theory, but at BD and for a while after, I was not able to to together that it and what Mr J was having where the same thing. Only later, when my friend who is a psychiatrist said Mr J was having a MLC did I made the correlation. What a shock is was. The beautiful Jungian theory and reality.
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Its_unreal, I am fairly sure that you wife is having a MLC. Bar from something else that may happen, she will regain her normal function once the crisis is over.
Please, lets do not compare MLC to hereditary and/or degenerative diseases. Once the crisis is over people return to normal. I know I have said it a couple of times before, but I think it is important to stress it.
Sorry, I was just reading through and found this thread, just always looking for answers for my X drastic personality change
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I too agree that MLC is not the same as a degenerative disorder, and will likely be less permanent than bipolar. That's the kicker - we won't know, though, which it is, until it's resolved. We can only make assumptions and explore until then. Hats off to all of you who have seen some form of satisfactory resolution to know for sure what you dealt with.
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R2T I agree with you.
Many people with strokes recover. I have a neighbor who suffered traumatic brain injury. He eventually recovered over the course of several years.
All to say that just because someone recovers does not mean it is simply psychological and not a physical malady in some form.
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The other day I watched a news program about a man who was on multiple medications and no longer recognized his wife as well as having other side effects. He had been taking 19 different medications, for many years. When many of his medications were discontinued, he became "normal" again and resumed a happy relationship with his wife of many years. One of the medications mentioned was for hypertension.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/aging/if-you-re-taking-too-many-pills-you-may-need-n672761
This article is of great interest to me as my husband has been overweight his entire life. I would not be at all surprised that his obesity as well as other medical conditions are somehow related to his MLC.
I took the liberty of copying some of the things that stood out for me from the following article:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161031-why-obesity-damages-your-mind-as-well-as-your-body
"In doing so, Cheke has contributed to a small but growing body of evidence showing that obesity is linked to brain shrinkage and memory deficits. This research suggests that obesity may contribute to the development of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease."
"some signs that obesity affects areas of the brain known to be used in memory and imagination. In 2010, for instance, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine reported that healthy, middle-aged adults with increased abdominal fat tend to have slightly lower overall brain volume. In particular, the hippocampus, a deep brain structure sometimes called the brain’s printing press thanks to its role learning and memory, was significantly smaller in obese people compared to leaner individuals."
"More recently, a brain scanning study including more than 500 participants confirmed that being overweight or obese is associated with a greater degree of age-related brain degeneration. These effects were biggest in middle-aged people, in whom the obesity-related changes corresponded to an estimated increase in 'brain age' of 10 years.
“For example, insulin is an important neurotransmitter, and there’s a lot of evidence that diabetes is associated with changes in learning and memory,” she adds, “but there’s also evidence that high body fat on its own leads to inflammation in the brain, which can also cause problems.”
"Inflammation is another potential culprit. Psychologists from the University of Arizona examined data from more than 20,000 participants in the English Longitudinal Ageing Study, in which measures of memory, BMI, and blood plasma levels of an inflammatory marker called C-reactive protein were collected every 2 years between 1998 and 2013.
They found that greater body mass was associated with a decline in memory function, and also with higher levels of the inflammatory protein. Although these links are indirect, the results suggest that brain inflammation is one plausible mechanism by which differences in body mass might influence cognitive function in otherwise healthy, aging adults. "
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XYZ, it is interesting how mental illness is increasingly recognized to be systemic. Hopefully this will change the landscape of diagnosis and treatment. I once had a philosophy professor who theorized that one day we would regard the concept of "emotions" in the same way we now view "humors." It makes you think!
I'm back on the neurology thread after a conversation with my mom today, who is a longtime genealogy enthusiast. She told me she recalled my MLC-H's great grandfather having been imprisoned at one point. I asked her to look it up again and sure enough he was -- for deserting his wife, sometime befeeen age 44 and 48.
So this means my husband's:
Sister
Dad (paternal)
Grandfather (maternal)
Great-grandfather (maternal)
All left their spouses. Bizarrely, each of these men was in in-law to the other, meaning they were not all directly related.
I feel that there must be some hereditary component to this. I wish we knew more! Makes me worry for our son.💔
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I feel that there must be some hereditary component to this. I wish we knew more! Makes me worry for our son.💔
You feel it. You look and fit what you see to something which gives you an explanation. I understand the need for an explanation, when it seems inexplicable. But if you want to be scientific, follow logical scientific procedures. See http://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html (http://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html)
There are many here whose forebears did not behave in this way, including my H. My H was, and is still, suffering from depression and the feeling of being overwhelmed by life events that I will not go into here.
In psychology/ neurology and even medicine, you cannot separate a behaviour from a person, their perceptions and their life course.
If their is one factor that most MLCers faced, it is stress. Sometimes not extreme stress. So look at the neurobiology of stress. But stress has its interpretative components. What is stressful for one is stimulating for another. Why can some people take incredible amounts of stress and still seem to thrive? Why do others flake out at the thought of daily behaviours? There may be a neurological resistence, but as the brain is plastic, this can be trained.
On the other hand, those who have had deeply traumatic events early in their lives may find it difficult to overcome the fear of catasthrophy and insecurity later on.
The point is this; look at neurobiology, but understand its context. And be careful of clutching at straws.
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Yes I am following steps 1 to 3 in this informal setting: making observations, asking questions, forming hypothesis. Like many who have experienced sudden or ongoing trauma I am trying to make sense.
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However, after 6 years on this forum, and after extensive reading, I really do doubt that what we call MLC is one thing at all. In fact, there's no evidence for it. 10% of American men do have a something they crisis, but it's likely to be a cultural construction as this is not so prevalent outside the US, and absent in some cultures.
I just joined the forum because I wanted to participate in this discussion. I feel strongly that this is a medical issue and i will explain more why in another post but as I am reading through I had to respond to this. My husband is from a different culture. He spent 3.5 years in the US but we married in his culture and after that time in the US we returned to his culture and we live in his hometown now. This is when his midlife crisis started. And while there are certain cultural variables that have made it very different in its manifestation, his behavior is EXACTLY like what your typical American man going through a midlife crisis does. He's following the script. This is NOT due to cultural effects, because he is not familiar with the typical MLC concept in the US.
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Interesting discussion!
MBIB I agree with you. This is an online forum, and this thread is about biochemistry and brain research. If there are peer reviewed articles on this as pertains to MLC, midlife depression, or other symptoms often described by LBS I would love to read them and hope someone could post.
No one here is posting about how to perform amateur exploratory brain surgery on MLCer using simple tools at home. We are just sharing articles of interest, maybe that list some symptoms that sound similar to MLC, maybe just wondering. These are conversations academics, professionals, friends have informally all the time about all sorts of topics. We are just having a discussion, right, but we don't live close to one another and can't meet at a cafe to discuss/joke/ask questions so we do it here. I'm not sure it matters if these discussions end up going down the wrong road or taking a tangent. MLC is horrible but it is also pretty fascinating.
I agree that MLC is an umbrella term. However, I am only one year in and I can see that it is possible to predict behavior and even language patterns, at least among certain subsets of MLCers. Since the onset is apparently so sudden in these cases, it makes sense to want to figure out which region of the brain might be affected.
I've actually searched PubMed, which is the database of medical research, and I found NOTHING has been done (or at least published) regarding MLC from a neurological/biochemical/hormonal perspective. It's NOT good science to say MLC is a myth, that it doesn't exist, or that it has no scientific foundation, because until the research is done to prove or disprove it, anyone saying it doesn't exist is as much unfounded in their comments as us speculating on what parts of the brain are involved. And even if research is done and they don't find something right away, it doesn't mean there isn't a basis to it, it just may be they haven't found it yet.
For other mental illnesses, e.g. schizophrenia, Tourette's syndrome, scientists may not yet fully understand the chemical/genetic/etc. basis for them but the do know there is a basis. And those illnesses manifest themselves outwardly in clear behavioral and speech patterns. I think anyone who reads "MLC for Dummies" and has a husband in MLC can say that it fits them to a T. It's supposed to be like a joke yes, but there is a deep truth in it. They follow a script. That's what everyone says. And it is true. And the fact that there is really nothing we can do to shift their behavior. Logic doesn't work where it might have previously. Emotional pressure doesn't work where it might have previously. I don't know enough about the brain to speculate about the details here, but obviously parts of their brain that were receptive before are no longer receptive.
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I feel that there must be some hereditary component to this. I wish we knew more! Makes me worry for our son.💔
You feel it. You look and fit what you see to something which gives you an explanation. I understand the need for an explanation, when it seems inexplicable. But if you want to be scientific, follow logical scientific procedures. See http://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html (http://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html)
But you have done the same in denying there is MLC and saying it is a cultural construct. As I pointed out above, no one has done scientific research to prove it one way or another. I don't think any of us here CAN actually perform the scientific research ourselves but these are all hypotheses that are possible.
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I think I am going to take a new approach and contact the authors of these articles. Like many others on this thread in particular, I believe there is a neurological/biophysical reason for what we are observing, and that the specific family issues that come up are secondary to this loss of brain regulation — or in fact simply a repeat of previous episodes of same illness in other family members.
Watching MLC unfold is both horrifying and I have to admit fascinating. It makes you really wonder how the brain works and what is going on. Perhaps others on this thread have done so already, but I think it would be interesting to approach researchers and ask them how their work on the brain might apply to sudden changes in midlife. Since MLC seems quite similar to bipolar, BPD, and major depression these are likely good areas of research to focus on.
For what it's worth. I hate to feel I am helplessly standing by in all this. I appreciate all the research others here have done on this complex topic.
Velika, I have had similar thoughts as you. I want to contact researchers who work in similar fields and suggest that someone look into this. Nothing probably can be achieved to solve our problems in time but no one should have to suffer as we and our spouses do if there is something that can be done or at least understood.
What really gets me is that all our spouses started out with unique personalities, unique to them, and then suddenly they lose their original personality and adopt a new one, and that new one looks like the personality of every other person going through what we call MLC. Why is it we can all relate to eachother except due to these similarities? It's like our husbands lose themselves and put on a costume, and everyone has the same costume. This can't simply be coincidental. I'm not going to speculate why but the brain has to be reshaped in a certain way to work like this.
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Hope you stick around, Changing4Ever. We may be outliers among outliers in the standing community, but even the few of us who feel this way can make a difference if we band together. :)
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R2T I am glad you commented on this as I hadn't seen C4E posts, which got me motivated again to look into this. (C4E I didn't see them before, for some reason I don't get alerts so don't always see updates/responses to threads I try to follow.)
C4E what you wrote really resonated with me, especially how all these MLC spouses had nuanced personalities until this took over. I am not sure if you saw what I posted on ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but if you read what happens when this part of the brain is impaired you have a very similar description to what we are calling MLC.
For what it is worth, every single medical professional I have talked to has told me this is neurological/psychiatric. I have written this elsewhere on the forum for I believe that if it weren't for the affair then this would be a recognized medical condition.
I was thinking maybe I will look up neurology conferences and try to notice who is presenting on topics like depression that many believe is related.
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Changing,
I agree with everything you said.
In order for this to get any traction there needs to be studies done, and how on earth do you get subjects for this study when none of the MLCer's admit they have a problem? Who do you study? Their not going to volunteer.
Ok, you could interview the LBS's but there are 2 problems with that.
1, Every MLCer is unique, similar but still different.
2. We have no idea what goes through their head, so it's all a guessing game as far as I'm concerned.
I guess I don't see how any kind of real studies can be done. :-\ How would they even start?
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Well, it wouldn't be a study they could do quickly. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, it would be helpful to have a baseline of the sufferer's condition before the MLC started, as well as after. So you would need to recruit a bunch of married couples at an earlier age, say 30, do tests on them periodically, interview them periodically, then if either party started to show the behavioral symptoms of midlife crisis, you would look for physical manifestations. Follow through until those manifestations pass, see if there is any change in anything. Compare them to people whose behavior never changes. We are talking here about a multi-year if not multi-decade study. And then there would be the issue of what physical aspects would you look at?
The thing is whoever took this on as a research topic would be starting from nothing. Another approach would be to lobby the psychiatric community to get MLC in to the next DSM. No one is going to want to fund research on something that no one even recognizes as an illness to begin with. Once it was recognized, then there would be a reason to research it to look for a cure.
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C4E what you wrote really resonated with me, especially how all these MLC spouses had nuanced personalities until this took over. I am not sure if you saw what I posted on ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but if you read what happens when this part of the brain is impaired you have a very similar description to what we are calling MLC.
Velika I went back and looked at some of your earlier posts and I couldn't agree with you more. There was something you said in one of your earliest posts:
One of the most confusing things about this is how suddenly my husband's entire personality has changed. He seems completely detached from me and the memories we have shared and has totally departed from long held plans and goals. I feel that if he could have seen what is happening a year ago he would have been horrified -- but now I can barely get through to him. The result is so disconcerting that it is almost eerie to be around him.
That's exactly what i have been feeling about my husband. There was a conversation we had about 3 years ago maybe. I don't remember the details but I remember where we were sitting when we had it and basically he was criticizing other people in our community for certain behaviors. He thought they were terrible people, no morals, no respect for their spouses etc, and he said he would never do something like that. I told him you don't even need to say that because I know you won't. And what happened? He has done it himself. I keep thinking if the man that had that conversation with me were able to travel forward and time and meet the man he has become, he would be so ashamed and hate himself. In fact, I think he may actually at some deep level be ashamed and hate himself.
The other thing was that at some point a couple years ago too he wrote me a letter, promising me that he would never do a specific thing that would hurt me. I never suspected or expected he would do it, but he went out of his way to promise me he wouldn't. I did nothing to prompt him to write the letter. It came from his own mind. Again, all the promises he made in the letter were broken. And he seems to have no remorse for it.
Our long term goals and the goals we made right before all this happened are pretty much intact and we are moving forward with them, so that is different in our case, but that's all that is moving forward. The practical aspects. The emotions and the closeness and the intimacy, gone. He's focused on doing the practical things but nothing more. In fact, he is better than he ever was before about most of the practical things, oddly enough, but I think for him it is a substitute for the other things.
My husband actually had some self-awareness going into it. Partially maybe because of there was a certain deliberateness in his actions that is usually lacking in most cases. In fact, as he started to descend into the midlife crisis we had some long heated talks that actually brought us closer to one another with a greater understanding than ever before. And then after that incredible closeness was achieved, he disappeared down a hole. He asked me for patience, to give him time, that eventually he would come back a proper husband, he told me he didn't want to hurt or humiliate me, he even at one point kissed my foot, which in his culture is something that would be so humiliating that it showed he had nothing but the utmost respect for me. He even had the self-awareness to tell me he would get bored of the OW after a while. As he started to fade into the fog, I challenged him about his feelings, and he said that of course he has feelings for me but he can't show them. As if to show them is too much for him to handle. As if he was afraid that it would hurt him too much to show me. For a while he was in a state of self-awareness, now he has slipped away.
There's one big issue that has been the biggest wedge between us about this whole thing. There's something I really need from him that he has withdrawn from me. I have told him it is important that I am not happy because of his withholding it. That I NEED it. His response? Besides some weak lame excuses, he repeated the words, "I can't." "I can't." "I can't." Not, "I don't want to," not "I'm not interested." but "I CAN'T." It was like asking someone with paralysis to move their leg. He can't explain why he can't but I truly could tell from his voice he can't. I told him ok, I'll be patient, like I promised. It's not something he CAN'T do. In fact, it's really quite easy. But something in his brain has taken his ability away. Just like the nerve to the legs is severed in paralysis. It's things like this that make me really believe there is something going on in the brain.
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As for depression, definitely I can tell my husband is depressed. Sure he sometimes jokes and he laughs then. But he does not smile or have the relaxed feeling about him that he normally used to have on a regular basis. He's definitely not happy. Even at one point I said to him, "Smile" and he said, "Why should I smile?" in a deadpan voice as if smiling was just not something that people do. If MLC were about finding a better woman that makes them happier, they would not look so dark and down all the time. There's an emptiness and a sadness in his eyes. It wasn't there before. He used to be up and down somewhat, now he is just down.
Then there is something else that I have noticed. He had certain habits, certain things he used to say all the time. Some of them he just suddenly stopped saying about a year ago when he first started showing the earliest symptoms of midlife crisis. They haven't come out of his mouth once, even though they were something I might hear at least once a week, if not more often. And there is no reason for him to stop them. It's as if certain parts of his brain where these habits were stored have just been locked down and they can't come out. Like you talk about the memories disappearing, for me it was the habits.
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Changing,
I think maybe where they could start would be to interview therapist. You can't tell me they have not seen patterns with their patients who have MLCer's. I'm sure they get plenty of them. Whether they believe in MLC or not they had to heard the same things over and over again. The dramatic personality changes, the complete emotional check out, the not caring about their kids, the huge selfishness and self-centeredness. When their spouses never had these traits before.
Also their ages. Most common age for a male MLCer is 46, for a women it's more like 40. How does that play into things?
Then how does their hormone's come into play? It's no different than a woman going through her change because of estrogen levels dropping. Men's testosterone levels drop also. Is that part of it?
I'm not sure there is a cure for this, but at least it would help the medical professionals diagnose what it is and really help their patients. Instead of just saying...welll, people change, like my counselor did. >:(
NO people change but not to the degree these MLCer's do.
I doubt anything they come up with will cure or change the MLCer. But it would help us to better understand we are not crazy and it is not about us. We would have some kind of validation.
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The fact that I strongly believe there is a medical component to this is 50% of the reason I am willing to ride this out. The other half is because my husband went into it self-aware and asked me to be patient and give him a chance before anything serious happened. A skeptic might say he took advantage of me but while he still had some self-awareness I know he did not do this because he wanted to hurt me in any way but he has now gotten in further than maybe he realized and it is now out of his control.
If I wasn't aware that there is a script that people follow and that there really is nothing you can do to snap them out of it, I would never in a million years accept any of this. But this is not my husband acting out, it is something bigger than his conscience or his conscious mind that is pushing him to do it. How can I blame him for that? I can't. I feel he is trying his best right now even if his best is crap.
So I think just an awareness that there is a reason behind this madness would help a lot of couples and families get through it with their marriages intact.
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Hormonal yes I definitely think there is something there. My husband has had a low libido for years. It was a bone of contention between us and he blamed me for it, but I always suspected that he may have an issue that he was covering up.
Surprise surprise, it came up quite by chance the other day he admitted he is having performance issues with the other woman, and he actually blamed himself for that (his own mood). That he has little desire for sex in general.
That said he was pretending he was going to be this big Casanova with her a couple months ago.
So yeah, hormones, testosterone, at least they could play some role in the physical aspect of it.
A few weeks ago he was still blaming me, but he actually has turned the blame on himself now. As I said he is a bit more self-aware and maybe honest than the average MLCer.
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There's an emptiness and a sadness in his eyes.
Yes.
there is a script that people follow and that there really is nothing you can do to snap them out of it
Yes again.
I have been on this site for over 6 years. The similarities in behavior, actions, change in character, loss of morals and values, treating their children with indifference and the contradictions in them are uncanny.
I have met many LBSers both here and in real life, and there is something that we understand about our spouses that family and friends don't see.
Many LBSers when they find Heros Spouse connect with somewhat of a sigh of relief, because something finally makes sense about the destruction of their marriages.
Unfortunately, even for those of us who firmly believe that this is a "dis-ease", due to whatever cause (developmental, biochemical, physiological, stress etc) the pain that it causes for the LBS is enormous.
Knowing more about this does help to accept and continue to love them with agape and unconditional love.
I do think sometimes this is like dementia, in that there is such a personality change yet many are still able to function and appear normal...and that is the hard part because we know they are not normal, yet they appear to be.
Thanks C4E for you thoughts on this. It is always a good reminder to me.
The dead and sad eyes remind me again that there is something terribly wrong.
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For the past 8 months i keep turning to the Heros Spouse articles and the Hearts Blessings ones again and again. These are written by amateurs, women who just happen to have husbands who went through this and are familiar with what others have gone through. But they nail it really. Even the stuff that made no sense to me early on, I can see how right they are. If there wasn't something underlying all this that contributed to the sameness, how could two really non-experts, non-psychologists, non-medical professionals, get it so right??? Yes, outsiders might miss it, but those of us exposed to it, totally can see this is all just too predictable.
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Here's an interesting study about testosterone.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26129722
One has to wonder if some of these men in such studies actually were suffering from MLC but they weren't looking at the big picture to see that.
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C4E I'm really glad you are posting here, especially as I am more detached but watching my husband's condition appear to get worse in many ways. How many diseases have started out so poorly understood or misunderstood, surrounded by taboos and stereotypes?
Two things you wrote really struck me. (Actually many but two I will point out.) First: the everyday way of talking. This was the same for me. My husband had a very good sense of humor. We were always joking. We were even always singing jokes to each other! As soon as this hit his sense of humor went from this very special gentle humor to cat videos on YouTube. Even when I have tried to bring in humor to the situation not as a way to reconnect but to help us both through it, he seems unable to participate. He often appears incredibly grim.
The second: "I can't." I have read this over and over again on these threads. People saying, "I have to leave." "We have to get a divorce." "It has to be this way." Some people will describe the eyes as well, looking like they are trying to communicate: I can't control this. I have personally seen this. It is scary and heartbreaking to watch, and I agree it is this uncanny experience that often leads me to feel, even when my husband has treated me the worst, that it is not right for me to vilify him, because something is very wrong here.
When you read about MLCers with more clarity, like your husband, it also shows there is some awareness that something is not right -- that something is going on beyond their control. I know one poster's wife knew she could not feel empathy.
My husband's grandfather, great grandfather, father, and sister all did this. A good way to research, I believe, would be to examine the children of MLCers. I think many would participate in a study having watched the incomprehensible behavior of their MLC parent. Periodic physical and psychological tests through midlife could reveal changes to brain function snd chemistry, hormone levels, and/or psychological process.
When this all started my young science-loving son kept saying, "Maybe daddy has a brain parasite." We have a book on all variety of animal parasites and there are some that can turn the infected into a zombie acting in the parasite's favor. It can even be so sophisticated as to create a multi-stage series of behavior to transport the parasite from one species to another or one setting (e.g. land to water) to another. Studies about toxoplasmosis show that this common, relatively benign parasite may have a significant influence on entire populations of people.
I was floored recently when I met a neurologist and homeopath who both, unprompted by me, told me that my husband may have a hereditary brain parasite. I had never heard of this and it was something I meant to look into again. One of the most bizarre things about my husband's family history is that some of the people who had severe "MLC" were not blood relatives. How can this be?
One reason I also believe this is poorly studied, in addition to the affair, is that men are afflicted more than women. Just anecdotally, it seems from what I see on the forum that a LBS man is more likely to have some level of acknowledgement/support from the family that something is wrong. Even when my SIL had MLC, the family got more involved. Many of her family members actively attempted to intervene. But when a man has an affair and traumatized his once-beloved family and even chooses bizarre or untrustworthy affair partner, the family and professionals will often refuse to intervene.
My MLC H and I went to two therapists after bomb drop. Both of them heard a well educated person (me) insist over and over again that this was a sudden and radical personality change. These are both two hallmarks of mental illness. Yet because of the affair, neither referred my husband to a psychiatrist. Neither asked him what medications he was on, or if there was a family history of depression or mental illness. They simply looked at this as a choice, when I feel quite certain if the roles had been reversed, they would have looked at the medical aspect much more closely.
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MLC is like a mental illness yet isn't. It's a temporary (yet long temporary) condition we've got try to accept as it is.
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I have to agree with Elegance, although MLC is like a mental illness its temporary to me its more like a mental breakdown............
And it is IMO firmly routed in depression, most of our MLC'ers have been dealing with a type of depression for most of their lives, that is hidden to even those who are close to them, this type of depression is not publicised and rarely talked about....
Ask any person on the street to describe depression and most will probably mention crying, not wanting to get out of bed, feeling hopelss, listless, no hope etc.
BUT there are many faces of depression and there are many people who are depressed without realising it, who run away from their feelings by doing everything to the extreme, they exercise too much, work too much, drink too much. take drugs, become obsessive about cleanliness, etc etc.....
And all the time they are doing this, they are not facing what they are thinking and feeling........which is scared.........
They carry on like this for years, looking for distractions, anything that stops them from thinking and in midlife for very many reasons it all catches up on them.....the sudden death in the family or a close friend, the illness, the kids leaving home.....whatever it is makes them suddenly stop with a jolt and think about their lives, the fear they have quailed for so long is there suddenly facing them and everything they have been running from is there, they feel a failure, a fraud all that energy they have put in to distractions wont shut these feelings out and so they shift the energy to escape...... finding something anything different from whatever worked before, because it no longer works any more.....
My H is one of those who said 'I have to go....' none of what he said after that made any sense when I asked him where, why how etc...it was all senseless and kept coming back to 'I have to go.....' looking back on what followed (he sobbed for days, then he was euphoric, then guilty, then the crying, then the evident guilt and shame, then the distancing.......etc)
It is clear to me that statement 'I have to go...' was almost primeval and need driven from deep within........
There is a form of depression which makes the sufferer feel they have to run away, the answer is to start all over again....(to them anyway)
This is never ever talked about, whenever I have watched programs on depression, it is never ever mentioned, the need to abandon everything, if only it was covered more, if only it was talked about and publicised about the other faces of depression being the obsession to work, exercise, clean etc being a form of depression and anxiety....
these are the routes to MLC to me, this and unresolved issues and resentments that in MLC are like a volcano erupting .....................
The more I see on here, the more I move through this with my H, the more I read, the more I think what my therapist said is right, this is a chemical imbalance initially which lasts 18 months -3 years BUT IMO........ what follows is the slow realisation of what they have done during the imbalance and the complete devastation and havoc they have caused......
Then IMO they are (as my therapist said) consumed with utter guilt and shame and a deep feeling of terror they maybe insane......................
And that is why when faced with what they have done and the fear they are mentally unstable, the vast majority find it hard to face us, some remain angry because they are just very very scared, some disappear and some appear to be 'happy' because to admit they are not is to face their fears........and some find the courage to talk, but these are in the minority.............
If we are going to stop this happening to others I think it has to be fought on many fronts...
The definition of depression has to be expanded to include the other symptoms I have highlighted, it has to be more widely known that to do things to excess can mean that people are running away from themselves.
Employers should be taught to look for signs of excessive working and have a duty of care to ensure their employees do not work undue excessive hours (my H was working and still does over 80-90 hours overtime a month).
The stereotypical view of MLC needs to change from the jokey image of someone dressing in young clothes and going off with a younger woman to the devastating life altering thing it really is
The term mental health needs to not have the stigma it has at the moment, at the moment mental health describes anything from mild depression to schizophrenia .....we don't really use the term physical health so much we talk about a sprained ankle and cancer in those terms
If it was more widely acceptable to look after your 'mental health' like we look after our 'physical health' people would seek help before they got to crisis...
There is so much more to this than a diagnosis IMO
Now I will get off my soap box and go to bed ;)
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Mine H too 1T has been dealing with depression most of his life. Male Depression is what many really should look into, it's worlds different than female depression.
My H shared he tried to commit suicide at age 5.
He's learned to wear a mask all his life because he was depressed from when he was a small child.
MLC is a form of Depression.
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From what I've read El, it's the grandfather of all depressions.
My H never was depressed in his life, that I know of until this crisis hit....and I've known him for 30 years.
It's just something some people go through, usually in their 40's. But yes, I do believe it is a temporary condition, not a long term condition...and medication will not help them. Nor will therapy until they are ready for it.
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I agree it is temporary but why does that make it not a mental illness but LIKE a mental illness? What's the difference between a real one and a 'Like' one?
I thought more about how scientists could approach this. There is some knowledge of the sorts of things that different parts of the brain are responsible for. And there are obvious common changes in thinking in MLCers. I will use the example of time perception being skewed, as I have seen this myself in my husband. The ability to estimate time has been suggested to be controlled by the supplementary motor area and the right prefrontal cortex. So would there be other aspects of MLC changes controlled by these areas? Or certain chemicals that are found in these areas and other areas that are clearly affected? This is meant as an example only. I'm not putting forth a theory, just a possible method for approaching this. I'm sure neuroscientists have methods like this that they use to approach figuring out a puzzle like this.
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There's another question I want to pose here? We all know that facing reality is part of the whole process of getting out of MLC That's natural as in anything that we do in life, it never turns out how we expect it. But I've also seen discussions that basically centered on the question, what can we do to get them out of the fog, with the answer being nothing. But even if we aren't able to do anything, is there something chemical happening besides just facing reality that leads to the fog lifting? If brain chemistry puts them in it, then is brain chemistry allowing them to come out of it? Obviously they have issues with the damage they have done they have to face, that makes coming out harder from a purely psychological perspective, but what is happening physiologically?
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C4E,
I'll tackle the first question. MLC is only temporary therefore not a mental illness which is permanent and while there are similarities, every MLCer is different pending severity of childhood trauma which varies from person to person.
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It's just something some people go through, usually in their 40's. But yes, I do believe it is a temporary condition, not a long term condition...and medication will not help them. Nor will therapy until they are ready for it.
But if you know it is due to brain chemistry, I think the LBS would approach it differently in many cases. In these sorts of forums, you see the bitter angry spouses and it is so obvious they are headed to divorce that they are a lost cause. Then you see the ones who are compassionate and kind and they often reach a point where they reconcile. I would say that someone is more likely to be compassionate and kind if they realize their spouse can't help what they are doing, that the spouse is not inherently an evil person or that they are to blame for it.
So whether medication would even be possible at some point in the future is not the only goal of identifying medical causes. 1trouble's point about the image is important. If I say my husband has cancer, people would show sympathy, if I say he has a midlife crisis, they laugh. MLC is no joke, I think we all know that. If it's an illness, it's a far more difficult illness for the spouse to handle than cancer.
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C4E,
I'll tackle the first question. MLC is only temporary therefore not a mental illness which is permanent and while there are similarities, every MLCer is different pending severity of childhood trauma which varies from person to person.
Mental illnesses are not all permanent. Read this very basic description of what mental illness is:
https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/mental-illness
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This is a good one to keep in the bookmarks. The serotonin section will have some insights: http://www.drjoecarver.com/clients/49355/File/Chemical%20Imbalance.html
Like with bipolar disorder, there is a shift in and out of mania that can be triggered by various things. If it could be predicted, it could be prevented? I'm sure a lot of sufferers wish that were so. I know a lot of people do believe childhood issues play a role, but clearly not all people who have troubled childhoods go through this, while others with seemingly easy childhoods are also here. What do we even define as a bad childhood? I'm just digging a deeper hole here. LOL
I think the part about us being able to do nothing is about how much control we have over anyone. I'm sure if anyone here has a child on drugs, or had an alcoholic parent growing up, etc, they know the reality of wanting to be there to help a person out of an obviously bad state, but not being able to sway the will of a person who does not want the help. Mental illness and episodes, whatever we are dealing with, are the same. We can't force these people to get help, so long as they are not a public threat, and since we are dealing with what I believe is a "blanket" term of MLC that covers a spectrum of different issues, we don't even have a very clear picture of what that help would be. Some addicts need to be checked into a facility with around the clock care, while some need to attend meetings and exercise willpower. Whoever pointed out that the uniqueness (Thunder I think?) played a role too I agree with.
I have tended over the last 5+ years (and a few before that when my xH was diagnosed bipolar) to choose compassion over anger. My anger is mainly situational. I get mad at the things he's done. Love the sinner, hate the sin kind of thing, I guess. I get mad at how it has affected my life. But never, ever do I consider what happened normal or chosen. I relive those early days in the familiar stories of the newbies and it reminds me how crazy the boy I'd known since I was a girl became. Saw a clip from "The Shining" earlier and it hit home a bit.
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I'm now in my latter 40's and before my H told me what he was going through, I never heard of anyone really going though this other than a running joke.
So I staunchly disagree with Thunder, saying that it's something 'normal people go though in their 40's'. (although I like her a lot :D)
That was me R2T that touched on 'uniqueness'
Indeed MLC is like nothing I've ever heard of or experienced (as a LBS) before.
MLC has been around for years and years yet not listed in the DSM5. Probably because not every person goes though it.
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I think what C4E is writing is very important, and that is if you isolate many of the peculiar patterns and then try to correlate with what is known about the brain, there may be a way to figure out what part or parts of the brain are affected, which may in turn offer clues as to what might have gone wrong.
I am like you C4E, I was away from my husband when this started so I did not experience the "overnight" change many people have, although in retrospect I can see clues that something was going on leading up to it. But it seems that in many of these stories there is a time when the afflicted person knows something might be wrong, and when a line is crossed.
I met a neurologist who told me that minor brain bleeds can have this affect as the blood that pools can take three years at least to drain. She told me that it is possible someone could have a self healed minor aneurism or stroke that could result in this.
Another marker seems to be rapid aging and changed appearance to the eyes. What is causing this plus the other symptoms we so uniformly observe?
I agree it is important for any LBS to understand this as a physical change and not an emotional/circumstial one. If for instance you see this as the brain not being able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, regulate emotions, understand consequence, feel empathy -- and not someone just "acting out" -- it is easier to manage responses that don't exacerbate the condition, especially in a state of shock and trauma.
C4E thank you again for reinvigorating this discussion and inspiring me to make the effort to reach out to researchers and neurologists.
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Research Male Depression Velika, as well as MLC. The answers are not harder than that.
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MLC has been around for years and years yet not listed in the DSM5. Probably because not every person goes though it.
Does every person go through schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, etc. that are listed in the DSM-5? Does every person get cancer, have a heart attack, or scabies? What you are saying it can't be an illness because not everyone gets it. Illnesses are disorders from the norm, not the norm. There's no logic to what you are saying.
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El,
I think you misread my statement. I never said normal.
I said "It's just something some people go through, usually in their 40's."
But thank you, I like you too. :)
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I agree it is important for any LBS to understand this as a physical change and not an emotional/circumstial one. If for instance you see this as the brain not being able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, regulate emotions, understand consequence, feel empathy -- and not someone just "acting out" -- it is easier to manage responses that don't exacerbate the condition, especially in a state of shock and trauma.
In my husband's case though I do believe that our circumstances (circumstances beyond our control) were the trigger and that if the circumstances had not been as they are, then this would never have happened. However, where MLC as a brain chemistry thing comes into play for me is not in why it happened but how it has played itself out. His ongoing behavior fits the MLC pattern.
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Velika,
Time for a new thread. :)
new thread: http://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=8607.0