The following is an interview of an adult
female whose name has been withheld to protect her identity due to the
sensitive nature of the information contained herein. Lucy, as she will be
called, is currently 50 years of age and in the developmental stage of middle
adulthood. According to Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, Lucy is
presented with the psychosocial crisis of Generativity vs. Stagnation. In
recent years, generativity has been described as a person’s concentration on
future generations and a commitment to care for and support others (such as
children or other mentees). On the other end of the spectrum, stagnation is
described as a lack of concern for future generations or a difficulty in
creating a life worth passing on to the next generation. Previously Erik
Erikson and his psychosocial theory of development described this as Hope. (Wojciechowska, 2011).
According
to Lucy, she feels as though she has successfully resolved this crisis and come
to a positive resolution. At this point, her focus is on making the best of
life and sharing it with her friends, 3 daughters, and 2 grandchildren.
Admittedly, it took Lucy quite some time to come to a positive resolution of
the crisis in this stage. Until age 4, Lucy lived a normal life, at which time
her life became filled with pain, stress, and chaos. At this age she became the
victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather. The sexual abuse did
not end until his death when Lucy was around 10 years old. She doesn’t have
much recollection of how she coped with the abuse during those years but is
sure she began drinking alcohol around age 10 to cope and later moved on to
marijuana use around the age of 13. She continued to abuse drugs and alcohol
until the age of 18 when she joined the Army and moved away. Shortly after
enlisting in the Army, she was raped by a high-ranking commanding officer. She
did not report the rape for fear of retaliation. To cope with the fear and
pain, she chose to marry a man she hardly knew and that marriage ended shortly
thereafter. Not long after, she married a second time at age 22 and decided to
leave the Army and start a family.
Between the ages of 25 and 31 she had 3
daughters and when she wasn’t pregnant, spent her time working, partying and
abusing drugs and alcohol. She felt during this time of her life that things we
spiraling out of control. Up until this point, she had not utilized proper
coping skills to overcome the challenges of her past and decided to begin
counseling at the age of 32. Shortly thereafter she found herself in trouble
and was charged with a DUI and went to rehab. At age 35 she was diagnosed with
Bipolar Disorder and began medication treatment. When that failed to adequately
alleviate her symptoms, she left her husband and her daughters at the age of 38
and moved to another state to be with her mother and father. During this 10-year
period, she only saw her daughters about 5 times. She spent the time away caring
for her dying father, dealing with his death, and then caring for her mother
who had been hurt in a fire accident. Her mother passed away a few short months
after the fire due to complications from her injuries. Also during this time,
Lucy was involved in a lesbian relationship. At the time she felt it was right,
but in hindsight, she describes that period of time in her life as her way of
hiding from men. She did so by dating women and gaining a substantial amount of
weight. At the time, she believed that it was only a matter of time before
another man set out to hurt her and so she felt safe with a woman. In her opinion
this was her way of coping with the sexual abuse, rape, past domestic abuse,
and two failed marriages. Close to the end of this 10-year period, Lucy began
to struggle with psychosocial crisis of Generativity vs. Stagnation. This lead
her to evaluate her life, decide what was important to her, and determine how she wanted
to spend the years left in her life. She has moved back near her children who
now have children of their own, and is focusing on getting her life back in
order. She is no longer abusing drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism and she has also stopped all medication used to treat her supposed bipolar disorder. She feels
much better now that she is off of her medication and believes that her diagnosis
is incorrect, contributing her past symptoms to unresolved psychosocial crises.
At present time, she feels as though her future is bright and that she is where
she should be. She wants to continue developing relationships with her
daughters and making amends for being gone for much of their lives.
Much of Lucy’s successful crisis
resolution can be attributed to resilience, which is best described as “a
measure of the ability of an organism to adapt, and to withstand challenges to
its stability” (Karatoreos & McEwen, 2013). According to neurobiologists,
the brain is the vital organ accountable for resilience due to its function of
assessing threat and creating “fight or flight” behavioral responses. Due to
one of the brain’s primary functions of creating and maintaining a state of
homeostasis, any threat to that equilibrium, be it real or perceived, results
in a change in one or more of the body’s physiological systems. This system of
protection results in changes to the state and function of the brain throughout
the lifespan. This would explain why the subject, Lucy, was most likely
diagnosed with bipolar disorder in earlier years, yet is functioning as a
normal adult without medication of any sort at current time. Although her
extreme set of circumstances and experiences caused changes to her brains
functioning in earlier years, those changes were merely a means of protection
from the threatening experiences. Being that the brain can enter and re-enter
periods of plasticity under the right set of circumstances, negative aftereffects
can be mollified and alleviated, even in the later years of life (Karatoreos
& McEwen, 2013).
References
Karatoreos,
I. N. and McEwen, B. S. (2013), Annual research review: The neurobiology and
physiology of resilience and adaptation
across the life course. Journal of Child
Psychology
and Psychiatry,
54: 337–347. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12054
Wojciechowska, L. (2011). Basic hope and generativity in middle
adulthood. Polish
Psychological Bulletin, 42(4), 188.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10059-011-0025-7
Thank you so very much for being willing to share this heart-wrenching story. It is clear from this narrative that the woman with whom you spoke has been tenacious in her pursuit of wholeness. After reflecting on the explanations you provided regarding the many life choices of this woman, I find it astonishing that she has been able to maintain her sense of hopefulness about the future. It is clear that this woman has endured the infliction of countless wounds, both physical and psychological in nature. It also seems obvious that, in the past, this woman chose to numb her pain by indulging in alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity. I can only imagine the courage it must have taken for her to give up her former coping skills, and begin the uphill climb towards recovery.
ReplyDeleteWhat was especially interesting to me about this interview was the woman's description of her same-sex experiences. As we know, research indicates that sexual abuse is occasionally a precursor for homosexual behaviors and inclinations. Thus, it stands to reason that this woman would seek solace, not from a man, but from another woman. It could be that she found women to be less threatening to her, or it could be that her emotional precariousness yearned for a more sensitive presence. Whatever her motivations, I commend her for being brave enough to sacrifice even that last bit of relational comfort, and seek instead the restoration of her connection with her daughters.