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10: My Fathers Perspective
185 Plays3 years ago
My dad shares when he knew that something was terribly wrong and that history was repeating itself. What did the look on my face tell him and what advice does he have for those struggling?
To learn more about the products Laura mentions in this episode, visit podcast sponsor, Cindy Jenks, an ambassador with QSciences at myqwellness.com or email her questions at cindy@myqwellness.com.
Seeking The Still Website: Seekingthestill.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Seeking the Still
00:00:01
Speaker
Seeking the Still is produced by Jill Devine Media. Welcome to the Seeking the Still podcast with me, your host, Laura Fleetwood.
00:00:15
Speaker
In this safe space, we come together to seek the still amid chaotic lives, to get honest about what overwhelms us, to become connected to one another and to the divine, to step into who we were created to be. Always real, never perfect, and forever on your side.
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to today's podcast episode.
Exploring Anxiety and Diagnosis in Season 2
00:00:40
Speaker
It is season two of Seeking the Still. And in this season, I am talking to people in my life about the season I went through of intense anxiety and getting an anxiety diagnosis.
00:00:57
Speaker
To hear their perspective and their side of the story, I think it's important to recognize that when you get a mental health diagnosis, that it's not just the individual who's impacted, but it's all of the people who love them
Laura and Fred's Discussion on Anxiety
00:01:12
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as well. So right now, I'm going to be introducing you to my father.
00:01:17
Speaker
Fred Harm. And we're going to get his perspective about seeing his daughter go through that time and just see what advice he would have for those of you who are watching someone you love go through something similar, what he's learned. And we'll just see where the conversation takes us. So hi, Dad. How are you? I'm doing fine, Laura. Nice talking to you.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for coming on here. This is what I call the total truth zone. So I want you to be honest and don't hold anything back. The whole idea is to share what really happened in all of the light and darkness that it entailed so that we can just shine a light on this topic for other people. So I wonder if you could start by remembering
00:02:12
Speaker
Maybe the first time you recognized that something was going on, do you remember what that was that triggered that and how you felt at that time? Well, I guess it was when you had taken on the responsibility of something at church, a fundraiser,
00:02:40
Speaker
and you invited us to come over to it. Mom and I came to the house and you said you weren't going to go to it. That you'd had enough and you just couldn't face up to whatever it was that was a problem for you. Now, this is a bit unusual because you usually
00:03:10
Speaker
like to take on difficulties. And we're at your best at that. So I kind of forced you to go to the opening of it. And I thought I was doing the right thing. But then shortly thereafter, mom and I were out in New Jersey visiting my dad. And we got a phone call from
00:03:39
Speaker
And in this phone call, you said that you were in severe trouble. Didn't know what was going on. And you kind of wanted us to help. But we were a long ways away. And so we really couldn't help you much. But at that point, you start as a father and mother, you start
00:04:08
Speaker
thinking the worst because you were obviously not well emotionally.
Family Patterns in Mental Health
00:04:17
Speaker
So whenever that date is, and you can probably pin it down for me, that's when I knew that, well, that history was coming back to haunt me because my mother and to a certain extent my father had both
00:04:37
Speaker
at episodes very similar to that. Although I was much younger back then, but it hit me that no matter what we had, your mom and I had tried to do, you were having difficulties and similar difficulties to what had occurred to people that I loved earlier in my life.
00:04:58
Speaker
So it's interesting when you got that call and I don't remember making that call, but I do remember recognizing at some point that I had to ask for help that I was going to need, you know, support because Justin was traveling so much. And when you got that phone call,
00:05:20
Speaker
And you said that it kind of thought, oh, it's happening again. What do you remember without going into a whole lot of detail about my grandma and grandpa and some of the issues that they experienced?
00:05:40
Speaker
as a child, what do you remember seeing from them that now you might recognize as some kind of emotional struggle? Well, to a certain extent, the beginning of middle age creates stress for just about everybody. And when I was listening to you on the phone,
00:06:09
Speaker
By the way, it was 45 minutes to an hour conversation of us trying to kind of put you at ease. But it was obvious that that wasn't happening. But as I think back with my parents, there was with my mother, she had had difficulties, pretty severe difficulties. Although, you know, as a youngster, I was the second oldest
00:06:39
Speaker
in the family. And I had a brother who was five or six years younger than I. And then another sister who was two years younger than him. So there's like a seven year difference. And then twin sisters. And there's a good nine to 10 year difference between me and them. So I don't know that I realized that my mother was having
00:07:09
Speaker
difficulties because we had talked about it in regards to giving birth. And I knew that she isolated herself for months prior to giving birth and then afterwards. Now, I didn't know what that meant. I had no understanding of what that meant. In fact, I was angry that
00:07:39
Speaker
that was happening. Whether I thought she was weak or whatever, whatever a kid who's 9, 10, 11, now when the twins were born, is thinking it was not a sympathetic point of view, as I recall. So that, that she, she did need, then she was sent away for.
00:08:08
Speaker
several weeks and indeed her mother, my grandmother, came out from climbing hill or Sioux City, Iowa several times in a two or three year period to try to stabilize the household. And she did, she did a great job. We really looked forward to that. So the household with a mother who is struggling
00:08:38
Speaker
with what I now know you are struggling with, now six kids, was a very difficult situation. Later on when your mother and I would visit you for certain lengths of time, your mom
00:08:57
Speaker
stayed with you for a month or two months when you were having these difficulties shortly after the call when we were out in New Jersey. And I stayed with you then. Mom had kind of had enough because it's emotionally wrenching.
00:09:16
Speaker
because there's not too much you can do for the person who is like you, who's having these troubles. You realize you just can't put things into a perspective, words into a perspective that will necessarily be helpful. So while I was there for about three weeks with you, I saw immediately
00:09:44
Speaker
the same look on your face that I would see on my mother's face. It's a look of depression. It's kind of a hollowed out look. Your cheeks are almost hollowed out. Darkness underneath your eyes and kind of a vague look and a very internal
00:10:11
Speaker
way of looking at the world. You were looking at the world the only way you could through your thought. Well, in thinking back with my mother, I could see that you were in trouble, but I didn't necessarily look at my mother in the same sympathetic way that I was looking at you.
00:10:37
Speaker
I looked at that as a boy, athletically inclined, aggressive, to be a sign of weakness and of just not being able
Hereditary Aspects and Awareness
00:10:53
Speaker
to live up to responsibility. Now, that's silly, but that, you asked me what my perspective was. Now, that's a 10, 11.
00:11:06
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12-year-old perspective, realizing that as I, the first three or four or five years of life, we had a very calm and family life. But I think with my brother and then my fourth, the fourth sibling, which was a sister, the
00:11:35
Speaker
difficulties in pregnancy got much worse. I didn't pick up on that. If I did, I didn't. It was impossible for me to look at that in a sympathetic way. To me, it was the sibling rivalry was probably also involved, but there was a dramatic change besides just the rivalry so that I didn't like that at all.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think it's, you know, it's interesting to point out and important to point out that this kind of breakdown is a hereditary thing or it can be.
00:12:20
Speaker
And, you know, I didn't know that my grandmother had gone through that. So I wasn't necessarily looking for it or, you know, aware of it. And then after it happened to me, then I learned that, you know, my aunt, some of my aunts had struggled with it as well from your side of the family. And I think it's just important for us as we,
00:12:47
Speaker
as we learn things about our family to share it so that we can be on the lookout for these things. Because obviously there is a genetic factor that in midlife, I think, you know,
00:13:04
Speaker
Most of us, females who have experienced it, and even some males, were in our 30s and under a time of intense stress, whether it was tutu, the birth of more children, or for me, it was at a job responsibility and just in traveling. The stress can come from any direction, from any way.
00:13:29
Speaker
Some families may just have a tendency toward struggles of this kind of anxiety and depression. So I just want to point that out for anyone listening that if you know that something has happened in your family's past, just mention it to others so that they can kind of be on the lookout. I wonder, Dad, if you think about my childhood,
00:13:56
Speaker
now kind of knowing what we know. Do you see any characteristics that I had as a child or anything else that comes to mind that would lend itself to experiencing or going through a time of intense anxiety like I did? Well, let me first add to what you just said. In my family, I didn't talk about my father's episode.
00:14:26
Speaker
which were more dramatic and more public in nature and more embarrassing than me as a child. We never, once we got over it or seemingly got over it, we never talked about it. In fact, my younger sisters really didn't know anything about this till they were 16, 17, or 18 years of age. It was just never brought up.
00:14:56
Speaker
I pushed it out. I just, you know, I put my, I kind of shut up and calculate. I just kind of, you know, did what I had to do. So I never even thought about talking about this. And so one of the helpful things, you've been very open with this. I'm very proud of you, the way you have responded that we probably
00:15:25
Speaker
responded more selfishly, you have, and others, it might be the age too that we're living in, have been much more honest about these things. But to get to get to your question about your childhood, first of all, we have four girls. And in retrospect, I saw almost immediately within several months that each of you had
00:15:55
Speaker
totally separate personalities. That's something as a parent you begin to hone in on. Your personality was an intense one, relatively intense. Not necessarily physically, but academically and accomplishing tasks. In fact, all of your games, most of the games,
00:16:23
Speaker
that you played that I was aware of were very task-oriented. You could set up offices and you'd set up all sorts of things and play games like that. You were usually in charge. And you were usually in charge at all of when whenever our families got together. I noticed that people just kind of looked up to you. But in addition to that, you had a perfectionism.
00:16:51
Speaker
about you. Now, I never caught frustration about yourself being perfect, which obviously is a part of what you've talked about now. But I realized that you looked out at the world and saw things that weren't perfect, and it frustrated you. I could see that.
00:17:18
Speaker
But again, you were so competent, I guess is the word. I tended to dwell on that rather than maybe looking at things negatively. But I was always very proud of you and you were always very accomplished in whatever you did.
Balance and Support in Mental Well-being
00:17:38
Speaker
Now, I was always surprised, taken aback, not just by you, but all of my daughters,
00:17:47
Speaker
I'm a male with four daughters. I'm an introvert. I'm an INTP for anybody who is aware of the Jungian psychology or personality test, which puts me in a very small percentage of the population, extremely small. And I'm reasonably sharp, but emotionally, when you or the other girls
00:18:17
Speaker
or even my wife, Mary, would react emotionally. It always caught me by surprise. But when I thought about it, I could then see why it happened. But I could never anticipate these things. That was probably something I could have done better for parents that are trying to raise children, maybe
00:18:44
Speaker
be, look at things in a little more depth. But you see, parents are trying to make a living. They're trying to do the best that they can for their kids. And I just don't know how capable I was of doing much more than I did. But I would say your perfectionism and your
00:19:07
Speaker
Your take charge-ness and your intelligence were things that I didn't see that I looked at, tried to look at those as positive things.
00:19:18
Speaker
Right. And I think that is such the interesting thing about people who go through kind of a stress induced breakdown is that they are often the strong ones. They're often the ones that do get a lot done and people reward perfectionism and they reward accomplishments and all of that. And so over time,
00:19:43
Speaker
If we don't learn how to balance that pressure that other people put on us and that we put on ourselves, eventually it catches up to us because all of us are only human beings.
00:20:00
Speaker
It's just important to be aware of those kids in your life, and the adults too, who do take on a lot, who have a hard time with mediocrity. Just give an extra bit of attention to them.
00:20:19
Speaker
and go a little bit deeper when you ask them how they're doing, get beyond the task list and the accomplishments to, you know, when's the last time you took some time off? When's the last time you rested and had just did something that you enjoy? Those types of questions I think can be really helpful. It was interesting to me, you know, when you were talking back about Tutu and when she, I didn't know that she had gone away,
00:20:46
Speaker
to get help or to get treatment. I hadn't known that. But that as a kid, you just saw this weakness in her that why couldn't she just be the mom that she's supposed to be? And I was trying to think of how to describe that, but you can't. It's that your body and your mind get so overwhelmed with just ordinary life
00:21:15
Speaker
Like not even anything, you know, super, super stressful in the moment, but like the idea of having to cook dinner or the idea of having to go to the grocery store suddenly just becomes too much. It's, it's the strangest thing, but I think it's our body's way of screaming at us for attention that, hey, you know, you do have to,
00:21:40
Speaker
take a look. And so I'm glad that she got help in whatever way she did. I wish that I had a, you know, the chance to talk to her about that. It would have been interesting to hear her perspective, but like you said, she may not have ever wanted to admit that that happened. I'm sure that she would not have admitted that. And that is, I think it's a generational thing that hopefully we're
00:22:08
Speaker
trying to get past some of that stigma. But for a lot of people, you do feel like you failed. You do feel like in some way you're less than because you couldn't keep up. And so for anybody who's on the brink of that or in the midst of it, I just want to say it's not weakness. It's humanity. And
00:22:31
Speaker
And there is helps, but you have to admit that something's going on in order to get the help. So make the phone call, speak the words, send the email, whatever it takes. Just keep asking for the help until you get it. The few times that I did try to break through with you when you were younger, that was almost an impossible task to do.
00:23:00
Speaker
you knew your mind, or at least you felt you did. So that advice is great advice, but I don't know exactly that being the father, how I could have broke through on that. No, you're right, because I would have never admitted that
00:23:28
Speaker
that I was anxious or stressed out. I always say that it took me literally falling to pieces before I would admit that I wasn't perfect or that I didn't have it all together. That was part of my unlearning that I had to do.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, so sometimes we just have to go through our own darkness to find out who we truly are. I mentioned Jung earlier. You're sounding very much like Jung. This process of what he called individuation, he said there's first half to life and there's the second half to life. And in between there is this time of crisis for men and women.
00:24:21
Speaker
Men seem to hold it in a little bit more, but when they break, like my father, it was a very public break. So I think it's a process that everybody goes through, but definitely you being, and anybody who is a perfectionist, that is an extra task that you have to work through. That's a difficulty, that is a real difficulty.
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I appreciate all that you've done for me and your wisdom. And I know we've had a lot of intense talks along the way. I'm going to interview mom next. She'll be on the next episode. And we'll get more into, you know,
00:25:10
Speaker
The emotions of things, I think coming from a mother's perspective, she felt the weight emotionally of that time, maybe more than you did. But you guys were both there for us and I really appreciate that.
00:25:26
Speaker
I want to take just a minute before I ask you one more question and just tell the listeners again about our sponsor for this season, which is the sponsor is Cindy Jenks.
Discussion on Naturopathic Supplements
00:25:38
Speaker
She's an ambassador with Q Sciences. And I've been telling you guys about the supplements that I've really been enjoying the benefits of through Q Science. And I wanted to mention to you, Dad,
00:25:49
Speaker
because I know that you are a big believer in naturopath medicine. You and mom got me in touch with a naturopath here in the St. Louis area that I've been working with over the past few years and Q Sciences partners with a naturopath in developing all of their supplements. And that's one of the things that I really love about the company is that they're always
00:26:14
Speaker
improving the product. So like I take the Q-Core from my morning and evening supplements and they are always looking at the formula of that from the perspective of a naturopath doctor who they work with and always making improvements to it. So it's a very natural product and they use
00:26:39
Speaker
the goodness of the earth that God has given us in some of these healing supplements that we can use to improve our health. And I just want to encourage any of you, especially if you're experiencing brain fog, which was one of my big frustrations going through anxiety, is that my mind didn't
00:27:00
Speaker
respond as quickly as I was used to. And when you're a fast thinker normally, a creative person and used to, you know, just your brain functioning at a high level, that brain fog is super frustrating and the Q-Core have all but taken that totally away. So it's really been amazing and I encourage you guys to look up those products. You can go to myqwellness.com and that is Cindy's webpage or you can email
00:27:30
Speaker
Cindy at Cindy at myqwellness.com and she will answer all of your questions. I'm a huge believer in those products.
Reflections on Journey and Positivity
00:27:40
Speaker
So dad, as we wrap things up here, what would you say your biggest takeaway has been seeing me and my family kind of go through this, go through the breakdown, the diagnosis and then the healing, which has been, you know,
00:28:01
Speaker
years, five, six years now on the other side of working through some of these issues. What would you say you have learned and how have you seen maybe me change as I have kind of learned my way through? Well, first of all, I was always positive that you would see your way through it. That's just the way I looked at it. Now, that's
00:28:29
Speaker
neither here nor there, but I wanted to add that, that I had confidence. I think that we all have a destiny and that for a time, we find ourselves, get ourselves trapped in living our lives. And it's inevitable that people will
00:28:58
Speaker
as the prodigal son eventually come to themselves without living in sin like he did. But there is a kind of a necessity for people to come to their senses. Now, there are people, as you've mentioned, either genetically or family-wise or stresses in family. We didn't necessarily talk about that there's abuse.
00:29:25
Speaker
and everything else, which make then the movement from one path to another much more difficult. But I am of the opinion that our culture is really trying to help. The culture has come to their senses.
00:29:50
Speaker
and realize that in general, most people are going to need help, and especially those that may be within the family structure, points that they're going to have even a higher chance of needing some sort of emotional
00:30:14
Speaker
help. But I, you know, as I look back and I look at you, it's a bit of a fog raising for children. What could I have done differently? What do I think now? I think of you the same way. I'm proud of you. I think you'll be successful at whatever you do. But it's your destiny that has to be played out. It's not mine. Maybe sometimes I
00:30:45
Speaker
pushed a little too hard. But I don't necessarily feel badly about that either. It's just something that had to happen, Laura. And fortunately, it seems to be working out. But you have to live every day as you can. But you have to live out your destiny. And I'm proud that whatever that is, I think you are now finding.
00:31:13
Speaker
You are now coming into touch with it. So that's a real positive. I can't necessarily look at this negatively. It's something that you had to go through and others have to go through. But you've got to have a positive outlook on this, that it's something that almost has to happen, not at the depth,
00:31:42
Speaker
that you had or others have. I understand that. Or that my mother or my father had. But I think it happens to just about everybody. And circumstances are fate has a lot to do with, and maybe God's will, depending on how you want to interpret that, as to how then people react to that. You must stay positive. You must believe in what's happening and that there is
00:32:12
Speaker
a purpose to life and this is all working to the greater good as we've been promised. Absolutely. That's my final words
Conclusion and Symbolic Quote
00:32:24
Speaker
on it.
00:32:24
Speaker
Okay, well, I agree that it's taken a lot of time, but I do look on it now as a necessary thing that I had to walk through and that I continue to walk through and that God continues to teach along the way. So I always leave the episode with a quote.
00:32:46
Speaker
And I know this is one of your favorite songs, Dad, so I'm just going to read the first stanza of a song that I think fits our conversation.
00:32:59
Speaker
It's the long and winding road by the Beatles. And the first verse says, the long and winding road that leads to your door will never disappear. I've seen that road before. And of course, you can interpret the song in all kinds of ways, but I have come to think of the long winding road as the road from me to God.
00:33:28
Speaker
And, you know, that road was put into place when I was born. And the winding road, even though it winds, it always is going to lead me back to his door, no matter what happens, no matter what situation. So we will leave the listeners with that. The long and winding road
00:33:51
Speaker
that leads to your door will never disappear. I've seen that road before. Be still.