[Ready2Transform]

Always know that there's nothing YOU did to cause the crisis, and nothing YOU could have done to stop it.  It's like saying, "If I'd only cooked more carrots, he wouldn't have glaucoma."   I mean, there may be external triggers and lifestyle things that didn't help, but ultimately, this is HIS biology, life experience, and choices that have been the path to this point.  I think we all did the best we could do at any given moment to balance our spousal duties of emotional care with our own self-preservation against what they've done.

[angelgirl]

I just wanted to stick in my two cents.

There are hormonal changes as well that go on during this time period. Blood tests may reveal that the levels are normal, but the levels may have changed for the MLCer. That is to say, unless they were tested when they were healthy, it's hard to tell that's there has been a drop. For example, my H never needed to have his testosterone and thyroid levels tested, but after this past year he did have these tested after his episode. They came up normal levels. But what were they before? A drop can lead to mood or psychic changes.

Also, H was on a blood pressure medication. While this medication can be useful and of course life-saving in some instances, it has a common side-effect of depression. H has a dependent personality and is passive. He tends to get seasonal depression as well (vitamin D or omega -3 deficiency or serotonin imbalances). He also went on a diet (food deprivation) and got less than 5 hours sleep per night (sleep deprivation) Combine this with lower hormone levels and a few non-physical MLC components and you have a recipe brewing that not many medical doctors or therapists can diagnose. But it's a perfect storm.

Imperceptible mini-strokes, Lymes disease, and even Strep-B exposure can also cause personality changes. For example, my D17 suffers from migraines, and her migraine auras can also cause mini-seizures in the part of her brain that controls emotion; after one of these episodes, she can be bedridden with sadness for several hours. (no worries, she is well-controlled by medication and has been aura-free for years). Even some over the counter supplements or food allergies can be a challenge for some people.

I am not putting the full blame on physiology, but I am suggesting, for conversation, that they can be factors, especially for people who are at high risk for MLC to start with.

angelgirl

[OldPilot]

There are hormonal changes as well that go on during this time period. Blood tests may reveal that the levels are normal, but the levels may have changed for the MLCer. That is to say, unless they were tested when they were healthy, it's hard to tell that's there has been a drop. For example, my H never needed to have his testosterone and thyroid levels tested, but after this past year he did have these tested after his episode. They came up normal levels. But what were they before? A drop can lead to mood or psychic changes.

This is exactly correct.
It is not the level of the hormones but the rate of change that exists and this is just one factor out of many that make up the crisis.

This is like measuring the content of water in a running stream.
You can see what it is right this minute but it could be polluted 4 hours from now and then clear again in 48 hours.

[angelgirl]

Excellent analogy OP.
Low blood sugar episodes can only be verified if you test the blood immediately upon feeling symptoms. To measure female hormones sometimes they have a saliva test kit to measure it daily for fluctuations. How about people who wear heart monitors or my daughter who had to wear wires on her head to "catch" the attack or seizure? Timing is everything.

But MLC is more than this as we know. I see now how the challenge of diagnosing my daughter has helped me through this. Not knowing she was having auras, doctors assumed she had a mood disorder. She could be frightened -- without cause -- one moment (and then she'd look to rationalize it) and then be depressed. Sometimes for days. We learned that the seizure episode was small -seconds long. But spreading to the mood center of the brain, it commanded the flight-or-fight response. The pituitary, adrenals and all sorts of organs and systems kicked in. the seizure was over, but the horses were out of the barn. The post-ictal phase of anxiety and depression stayed for as long as the resulting serotonin imbalance remained. The more seizures she had, the less likely she could recover from the earlier ones. After diagnosing her, controlling the seizures led to a control of her moods. But how her mind tried to make sense of that taught me a lesson. She wasn't "scared of the teddy on the desk". she was just SCARED. her brain naturally had to find the cause.

So too (at least how I feel about my H's MLC) he looked to find rational answers for an irrational behavior. (ie, the cause of his misery was his life with me and the girls). This may appear over-simplifying it, but honestly it was an "a-ha moment" for me.  After some comments he had made when he was at his worst, I suddenly became detached; i was as i was with my daughter. It isn't what he's saying and doing that mattered, but what triggered him to say and do what he's saying and doing. I was intrigued  to find the root cause, just as I had done with D17. H was OFF. Why? He admits to experiencing complete detachment and depersonalization during that time. why? It wouldn't be as "simple" as seizures. Even if he classifies it as a severe depressive episode, he still has to find out how he got there. While identifying some physical causes, he is still working on addressing the other factors and has made in wonderful progress...

 My sister made her H go for a brain scan before he could come home to her. Many years have passed since their reconciliation and she laughs about it now, and says, "Really, there HAD to be something wrong with his brain!" Turns out, he had vascular and heart issues. Of course he had psychological and childhood issues and "angry at God" issues and all sorts of MLC items, but the interruption of blood flow to the brain certainly didn't help. (he's ok too now).


angelgirl

[Thundarr]

Okay, as promised here is the summarization of the discussion between myself and my supervisor (Psy. D with several years of clinical and administrative experience with kids and adults) tonight concerning MLC and how it fits into accepted schools of psychology.  The more I have pondered this the more I see it as an evolution rather than a revolution of Conway's and RCR's theories and at the very least it filled many gaps in for me that I have struggled with concerning how such a phenomena can be occurring outside of the spectrum of behavioral science.  Some of the concepts here will be controversial, and as all of you that know me can attest I welcome any and all opinions and disagreements as long as they are respectful and considerate of other parties here.  Now, enough of this and onto the theory.  Please note, due to this post likely being incredibly long I will probably break it up into more than one so that I don't have to go back and re-type things as I tend to write fluidly based on my memory and may lose something important if I have to back-track.  Here goes:

Some popular concepts we often refer to and his take on them:

Covert depression - He doesn't believe in the concept or at least in the context we use it.  He likens it to the term "functioning alcoholic" and stated his take on this is that if a person can hold down and job, support their family and live up to their other responsibilities but choose to drink heavily at night or on the weekends then to what end do we diagnose them as "alcoholic."  On the same note, if a person is able to compartmentalize and go about day-to-day responsibilities then how can we diagnose them with depression, which by definition to be a disorder would have to cause some loss of order in their life.  Interestingly enough, he used the term "dis-order" for both of these concepts and also for MLC later on and noted the hyphen to differentiate it from being a DSM-IV recognized diagnosis.

Resolved and Unresolved Issues - He challenged me to define what a "resolved" or an "unresolved" issue is.  His take is that to determine any issue to be resolved or unresolved we must first assign a scientific method to do so and gave an example that in order to measure this we would have to assign parameters to determine if an issue were truly resolved.  In doing so we would assign a value of 0 to represent a resolved issue (meaning it had absolutely NO impact on a person whatsoever) and a variance between +1 and -1 to represent whether the issue was unresolved and to what degree as well as to determine whether its status of being unresolved has a positive or a negative effect on the person.  He challenged me to not only define these parameters but also come up with a way of measuring them.  There is not a way to do this.  His explanation was that issues were always fluid and never truly resolved OR unresolved as the impact of their presence will vary across different settings and circumstances.  There is no way to measure that an issue will have no psychological impact.

Liminality - This is the big one that lead into the full-blown theory explanation.  His assertion is that we are all fragmented by the different parts of our personality and that we create constructs of ourselves to adapt to different environments and situations based on what we learn from experience does and does not work.  For example, our identity at home when interacting with our spouses and children may be much different than our personas at work.  We may be in administrative positions which require us to be rigid and have an air of authority, but that persona may fail miserably in the home environment.  We learn to pick and choose which fragments to use in a given situation and sometimes try on different ones to see how others react. (Note from me - this sounds VERY much like the MLCer trying on different identities and keeping their 2 lives separate as their personas in the 2 lives are likely very different). 

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development - This forms the framework of his theory about human development, of which MLC is only a small part.  Apparently the popular belief on Erikson's theories are that they are accurate BUT they are not independent of each other despite being sequential.  We commonly refer to not resolving the crisis of a particular stage and revisiting it later in order to resolve said crisis.  His assertion is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to not resolve the crisis of a stage that you are moving through.  Also, each stage is affected by how the ones before it were resolved and each of them continue on until death.  This was the eye-opening part for me and I will continue it in the next post so that I don't lose anything.

[Thundarr]

Okay, here is his take on Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development and how they play out.  Notice that at times I will reference questions he posed to me as a way to help me connect the puzzle pieces on my own based on what I know of the concepts.  Given the technical nature of what I'm getting ready to write it may be advisable to re-read it in its entirety in order to better form an opinion one way or another.  I personally have gone through it multiple times already.

1.  He does not believe in the clean curve of development that has been accepted in the past, but sees development as a jagged continuous line with many bumps along the way.  Drew an illustration on the board to represent the timeline of a person's life from birth until death and put hashmarks on the line to represent each of Erikson's stages.  Now, Erikson's first stage is Basic Trust vs. Mistrust ("Can I Trust the World?) and the question he posed to me was whether I thought this stage could ever truly be "resolved" or not.  He gave an example of a person successfully navigating the stage according to the classic belief and said we shall say this person had their needs met as a baby and went on to form a basic trust of others.  Now, will that person ALWAYS hold that level of trust no matter what happens in their life?  What if their mother abandons them at 15 or if they have a string of unfaithful relationships?  Will they continue to trust everyone like they did as babies?  NO!!  It would not be good for their survival for them to continue trusting others after being taken advantage of and abandoned.  The "resolution" of their first stage of development could theoretically be altered based on their later life experiences.   Also, if they DID NOT have their needs met as babies and adapted to learn that trusting others to care for them may be dangerous then will they always feel that way?  And if they do finish this first stage with a basic mistrust of others what hope do they have to complete the later stages with the "desired" outcomes?  The person would likely seek out ways to trust people and research has shown that people can LEARN to trust others despite their early life experiences.  He drew the line of Basic Trust vs. Mistrust all the way from birth till death.  I will reference this paragraph toward the end when describing how he sees my W as fitting into this.

2.  If the latter stages are affected by the resolution of the first one way or another, it is likely that the person WOULD resolve the later stages in a negative way.  BUT, given the position that Erikson was only right about when the stages BEGUN and that they actually continue on from their beginning until death then that person has the opportunity to skew toward the positive of each stage he has begun SO FAR.  It is entirely logical to assume that the stages would have to begin at certain points in a person's life as their brain development and experiences would prevent them from beginning stages they were incapable of experiencing (for example, a baby would not likely deal with feelings of generativity or stagnation as the baby would have no frame of reference). 

3.  The effect of the person skewing more toward the negative outcome of each stage would only worsen as the person gets older.  Once they reach the stage we so often see MLC show up in, Generativity vs. Stagnation (age 40-64 according Erikson and illustrated by the question "Can I Make My Life Count?") the impact of skewing the negative direction would reach a crescendo.  He likened it to a person running out of gas and having to stop and look around at what their life REALLY is.  Perhaps the most controversial position he had was that the crisis the MLCer faces DOES NOT begin at this stage but rather it was ALWAYS HAPPENING.  The person has been in crisis since at some point they leaned toward the negative side in one of the stages and headed through each negative outcome until finally being on a dead-end course with stagnation (hence the fear their life and contributions were meaningless).  He believes there was chaos underneath all this time but it started out small and kept on building and building.  It WAS NOT one stage that they did not resolve in the desirable way but rather a progression of events that was never stopped for one way or another.  He sees the MLC as that person's attempt to get the train back on the tracks in order to head toward generativity before it is too late (OP, I think I've heard you say something similar to this...).  The problem is, as he states, that by this time the MLCer has several people in tow behind them and has attached all these labels to themself (husband, wife, mother, father) when the labels may not be them at all.  Once they are forced to see the chaos that has been there ever since the train first derailed then they must decide which pieces they want to keep.  * He sees the resolution of the MLC NOT as them dealing with "unresolved issues" but rather finding adaptive strategies to live with the chaos they now realize their life really is.  He believes the tendence IS to integrate their true selves with their "fake selves."

Now, as to how this relates to my W.  The funny thing is that it wasn't until after he had told me all of this that I said that he had probably deduced that I was picking his brain on this topic for selfish reasons and he smiled and said that he was aware from the get-go given my level of knowledge on the topic.  I told him my story for the first time (I've consciously chosen not to make my private life too open at work) and to my surprise he did not seem shocked at all.  He asked me if I wanted him to diagram it based on what we had been discussing.  I'll cover his take in the next post and I apologize to those who may not be able to follow given their unfamiliarity with my story but I would advise going back to my first ever post on here for reference if need be.

[BraveNewWorld]

He likened it to a person running out of gas and having to stop and look around at what their life REALLY is.  Perhaps the most controversial position he had was that the crisis the MLCer faces DOES NOT begin at this stage but rather it was ALWAYS HAPPENING.  The person has been in crisis since at some point they leaned toward the negative side in one of the stages and headed through each negative outcome until finally being on a dead-end course with stagnation (hence the fear their life and contributions were meaningless).  He believes there was chaos underneath all this time but it started out small and kept on building and building.  It WAS NOT one stage that they did not resolve in the desirable way but rather a progression of events that was never stopped for one way or another.  He sees the MLC as that person's attempt to get the train back on the tracks in order to head toward generativity before it is too late (OP, I think I've heard you say something similar to this...).  The problem is, as he states, that by this time the MLCer has several people in tow behind them and has attached all these labels to themself (husband, wife, mother, father) when the labels may not be them at all.  Once they are forced to see the chaos that has been there ever since the train first derailed then they must decide which pieces they want to keep.  * He sees the resolution of the MLC NOT as them dealing with "unresolved issues" but rather finding adaptive strategies to live with the chaos they now realize their life really is.  He believes the tendence IS to integrate their true selves with their "fake selves."

Wow, my wife used some of these very words to me - that her life was 'derailed' when her parents split up, and that now she could get it back on the rails after her dad died.

I can relate to a lot of this assessment.

The thing is, this is a whole new derailment. New chaos. Isn't it a moving target?

Thanks for this.

bnw

[Anjae]

Thanks, T. it is very interesting a lots of food for though.

My notes/comments on each of the topics:

Covert depression – I understand why he does not believe in the concept or at least as we use it. The classic and normal definition of depression demands that there is a loss of order in a person’s life. Still, can someone only de depressed part-time? Are our MLCers "functioning depressed"? A "functioning alcoholic" remains an alcoholic. I know a few, they do manage to hold jobs and support a family, then, at night, or when they go to bar, they drink to oblivion. I remember when my husband has his 2 depressions/burn outs many years ago. He managed to keep working for ages until the day he crashed. On this issue of depression, many of us have had our MLCers saying that they were depressed before they left/BD.

Resolved and Unresolved Issues – Agree, issues are never truly resolved or unresolved. Also, I’ve always had troubles to determine to which extent would issue A or B would be the cause of the crisis or when it was resolved/being resolved. I’m one of those that think the crisis has a huge chemical imbalance factor that is aggravated by the stress, adrenaline and so on provoked by all the running and replay.

Liminality – Yes, we all construct ourselves to adapt to different envirements. Like you wrote, we are not the same at work and at home. We are not the same with our parents and we are not the same with partner A and partner B. Circumstances demand that we adapt our persona and at times we all try different personas to see how it works and how it makes people react.

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development – Ok, if it not possible to crisis of a stage that you are moving thought, then, our MLCers are taking ages to solve a crisis of a certain stage. It makes a certain sense that each stage is affected by previous state and how things were resolved before. What I think happens in MLC is that the stages and the resolutions of the problems of those stages stops being fluid. Or, at least to us, LBS, it likes they are stuck for a long, long time revolving around something. It is not normal for a person to need years to realise that what they are doing is not leading them to the result they are looking for. Let alone to repeat the same mistake (here I’m talkimg specifically of my husband and his insistence on court cases.). Something at this stage is totally different from other ones. I don’t think MLC is only a small part of human development. If it last 10 years it will more than 10% of the lives of most of us. Even 4-6 years in human life time frame is a lot. Granted, teenage years can last some 7 years. That is still a lot in times of woman evolution.

1.  Would say that it depends. Some people seem to have a clean curve of development and some a jagged continuous line with many bumps along the road. No, the person will not always held the same levels of trust no matter what happens in their live. It changes with what comes along into our lives. And, yes, people can learn to trust other despite their earlier (or even later) live experiences.

2.  If there are stages, yes, they would have to begin at some point. Makes sense that the stages can only begin when we are ready for that stage.

3.  Don’t think it is possible that MLC was always happening. It certainly was not happening in a baby. And I don’t think it was always there. At least not like we experience it. There may have been things that were always there but passed unnoticed or become worse. That is in line with the leaning towards the negative outcome as the person gets older.

“He believes there was chaos underneath all this time but it started out small and kept on building and building.  It WAS NOT one stage that they did not resolve in the desirable way but rather a progression of events that was never stopped for one way or another.” With this I can agree. The chaos could had been there for ages (it most certainly was but for many years the person managed to, one way or another keep it under control). Still, I would say many LBS also have chaos inside and they don’t end up having a MLC.

“He sees the MLC as that person's attempt to get the train back on the tracks in order to head toward generativity before it is too late “ It is, from our view, a terrible way or trying to get the train back on track.

“The problem is, as he states, that by this time the MLCer has several people in tow behind them and has attached all these labels to themself (husband, wife, mother, father) when the labels may not be them at all.”
What about never married single people with no children that have MLC? And, I would say many of the labels were not imposed on them, they were willing to take them on their own free will.

“Once they are forced to see the chaos that has been there ever since the train first derailed then they must decide which pieces they want to keep.  * He sees the resolution of the MLC NOT as them dealing with "unresolved issues" but rather finding adaptive strategies to live with the chaos they now realize their life really is.  He believes the tendence IS to integrate their true selves with their "fake selves."
As you know, dealing with unresolved issues does not make much sense to me. I can get that emotional issues triggered something but I’m not a big fan of the unresolved issues theory. But the crisis made the chaos even worse… Had they managed to solve it before and crisis mode would had not be reached. Makes a certain sense that true and “fake” self are integrated. I think it can be translated with the keeping the new parts that fit along with the old ones that do.

Did he have any ideas why, after the crisis, they tend to come back to the LBS? Is it an attempt to minimize the even big chaos that they have created?

[Anjae]

T, shouldn't you change the thread symbol to the discussion one?...

[kikki]

Thanks so much for sharing this T.  Really interesting.

Covert depression - He doesn't believe in the concept or at least in the context we use it.  He likens it to the term "functioning alcoholic" and stated his take on this is that if a person can hold down and job, support their family and live up to their other responsibilities but choose to drink heavily at night or on the weekends then to what end do we diagnose them as "alcoholic."  On the same note, if a person is able to compartmentalize and go about day-to-day responsibilities then how can we diagnose them with depression, which by definition to be a disorder would have to cause some loss of order in their life.

I understand what he is saying - but isn't that kind of like having the ambulance waiting at the bottom of the cliff?
A 'functioning alcoholic' is still an alcoholic.  They may remain functioning, but may eventually cease to function, or kill themselves with an alcohol related illness.
Interestingly, apparently most death certificates will record something like pancreatitis or esophageal varices. Not death by alcohol!

Wouldn't the cessation of functioning with (house/ spouse/family/children/pets etc) responsibilities indicate some loss of order in the MLCers life?  Many do also tend to cease functioning at work, or cease functioning well at work.  I know your wife has been able to function well in this area Thundarr, as has mine.

But from a 'medical'/diagnosable perspective, it does help explain why MLC will probably never be in the DSM.

Note from me - this sounds VERY much like the MLCer trying on different identities and keeping their 2 lives separate as their personas in the 2 lives are likely very different).

Yes, I thought the same thing.

The effect of the person skewing more toward the negative outcome of each stage would only worsen as the person gets older.  Once they reach the stage we so often see MLC show up in, Generativity vs. Stagnation (age 40-64 according Erikson and illustrated by the question "Can I Make My Life Count?") the impact of skewing the negative direction would reach a crescendo.  He likened it to a person running out of gas and having to stop and look around at what their life REALLY is.  Perhaps the most controversial position he had was that the crisis the MLCer faces DOES NOT begin at this stage but rather it was ALWAYS HAPPENING.

This is really interesting, and makes a lot of sense. 

He sees the resolution of the MLC NOT as them dealing with "unresolved issues" but rather finding adaptive strategies to live with the chaos they now realize their life really is.  He believes the tendence IS to integrate their true selves with their "fake selves."

Could you explain this a little more?
Where does the MLC persona fit in?  True or fake self?

Thank you so much T.  A lot to ponder. 

I'm posting this before I have read your response Anne, so we might be discussing the same ideas here