Sometimes things are so fascinating, so complex that even I, 50,000 hours later am still amazed.
I've seen this woman three times now. She is in her mid-forties. She is very articulate, very in touch with her often scary, often overwhelming feelings, and can describe things in glowing, flowing detail. She says she has skills in reading, writing, synthesizing ideas, and creating images.
Yet, she she says her house is a total disgrace. She has piles and piles of stuff and she is afraid to put things away because she doesn't know where they go. Also, she has no sense of spacial relationships. I have never seen anything like it. She has trouble finding her way from the parking lot into my office. I can see her hesitate in the waiting room, trying to figure out which door leads to my office. She told me that if I had a pile of pens and told her to put the red ones in one pile, the green in another and the blue in a third, she could do that. But if I said, organize those pens, she would stare at them for hours and not know where to start.
The causes of this could be anywhere and everywhere and I am certain it is both. It is psychological, neurological, genetic, and the result of familial deprivation. She has had a terrible life, having been in an orphanage until three and then adopted by a caring but crazy mother. That lead to terrible, abusive relationships.
But those are over. Now she is just a total mound of exhaustion and anxiety. And yet she is charming, outgoing, friendly and very caring to her friends and the world at large.
I would love to run about $100,000 of neurological and physiological tests on her. I doubt that they would find anything definitive.
4 comments:
How overwhelming -- for both of you. I wouldn't know where to begin...
Sounds perfectly familiar to me. No, not the articulate and charming part, the other one.
Some years ago, I was busy hanging clothes while an older friend of mine watched on. Suddenly she laughed. Apparently I reminded her of a 9 y.o. I was 26. She showed me how it's properly done and said. "I understand. It's because your parents did not teach you these things in your formative years."
I was surprised by her insight. Most people just assume I'm a lazy good for nothing.
My mother would say "do this" or "do that" but she rarely showed me how. In addition to this my childhood environment rivaled that of Iraq.
Took 30 years to reach the average ability level of a 20 year old.
"but those are over"....oh no. those relationships are not over. believe me, the survival mechanisms acquired to survive, the negative belief system driven deep in the psych during the relationships are still there. the fall out lasts a long, long time.
Wow. That spatial confusion must get really frustrating. I hope she is on her way to finding herself in a safe, comfortable place.
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