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Life Coach, Pearl Lee Schroy, Ph.D., shares about her personal struggle with her bipolar mother

For some, going home to visit family is a welcome, loving even healing experience to look forward to. For others, like myself, going home begins with the sense of a welcoming experience that quickly turns into a battlefield loaded with triggers. The way I see it, I have two options: either get shot down by all the traumatic memories and emotional hostility or take it on as my training ground as a life coach.

The following is an excerpt from a journal entry I wrote about 8 months ago during my last visit home:

“…This morning, my mother was triggered into an episode and I remembered why it can sometimes be so difficult to come home.The last thing I want to do is fall into the role of playing victim. Indeed, my question is how can I transcend the pain and not dwell in the sadness of the situation? I’m not really sure how many experiences could hurt more than the experience of being harshly judged and rejected by my own mother. I noticed as my chest became really tight and my whole body went numb. I tried to become a filter through which her force could just pass through with no resistance. When she enters that place, I watch her soul disappear, it’s as if a demon has resurrected her corpse. Who is this woman? I ask. She’s my mother. Yet I have no idea who she is. And I see she has no idea who I am. All she knows in the fiery moment is that I am her enemy so she goes into attack mode.

I feel myself disconnecting. Tears run down my face as she continues to scream at me. I call my father because I’m desperate to make it stop. In the past, I would’ve yelled back but who I am now refuses to battle and knows it would be futile. Only peace. That’s what I must bring into the space. My father lovingly reminds me that it’s her disease, not her. I pass the phone to her and she begins yelling and then changes the subject rapidly to how she needs a new music CD to listen to in the mornings, Al Green. She laughs for a second. Her sentences become incoherent. Her thoughts are fragmented and the anger begins to fragment as well.

Finally, she returns to herself and she sees my tears. She apologizes. She tells me that she loves me and I tell her I love her too. Meanwhile, all I really want to do is get on a plane and fly back to my home in Colorado that, probably by no accident, happens to be thousands of miles away.

I watch my thoughts take on the old unconscious, conditioned patterns, of not being enough, fear of all the hurtful things that she said being true, full disempowerment in my frustration of not being able to help her heal. I’m a joke, what kind of a doctor, what kind of coach am I?”

The human kind, I remind myself. I come back to the question, “How can I transcend the pain? How can I transcend the self-destructive patterns? All I want to do is run.”

This time, I’m not running. This time, I’m not surrendering to the machine created in the wake of some disease. If there is to be any hope at all, for me, and for others like me, I must rise to the challenge of reinventing myself so that I can love in the wrath of a violent storm.

I know there are many others, like myself, who are faced with the challenge of having relatives who have been diagnosed with psychiatric conditions. While it’s not easy to create and maintain healthy, loving relationships with those relatives, it is possible. The trick is to believe in the possibility and never give up. While my mother still relapses from time to time, I could write an entire book describing the leaps and bounds she has made over the years and continues to do so.

My family is living proof that there is hope. And my heart grows larger every time I choose to rise to the challenge.

If you have a story or an experience you’d like to share on this topic, I’d love to hear it.