Where Would I be?
Where would I be....if I had finished my Ph.D at Indiana University? For some reason this is what I woke up thinking about this morning. I rarely dwell on anything in my past, especially things I could not control, but, with the changes that have happened with how we communicate with others, being mostly through social media, what used to be covert in person behavior, has become more overt and easier to connect with motive. We believe that people do not pay attention to our digital behavior, but the truth is for the attentive, those behaviors are so much more obvious than they would be based on in person conversations and second hand conversations-which are gossip to most of us and untrustworthy of any type of judgement.
For example, I once had a boss who for the first two years I worked for her, hid her raging narcissism from me. She never yelled while I was around and did everything she could to make me feel valued-I should have noticed she was overcompensating, but alas, I wanted to believe she was being sincere. However, I always knew because of the posts on social media she liked, commented upon, or shared, that there was a sinister motive. She wanted something from those people, and they fell for it (and some still do) hook, line, and sinker. I have made my peace with this and you know what they say about the takers: they don't sleep at night.
In 2009, I was in my first year at Indiana University for my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. My divorce had become final the May prior to that, and one of the conditions of our divorce was an order to sell the house we had built in Indiana after we had been discharged from the Navy. In April of 2010, everything came to a halt. I made an appointment to meet with my advisors to break the news to them after a very rocky first semester-I have to admit, at the time I was feeling a bit relieved. Graduate school was the most stressful experience of my life-even before chemical alarms and inbound scud missile alarms in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq war. I was content with the thought I might die, but the thought of failing, that was something I could not cope with.
I will never forget what Dr. McGrew said to me when I told him I was moving back to Maine. He advised me I could withdraw so I could re-enroll in the future. I had to break it to him that once I left Indiana, I was never coming back. We had moved there to be near my children's grandparents, and they had moved away. My first semester of Graduate School-creates anxiety to think about now. I had nearly aced every test, quiz, research paper, and been a Teaching Assistant and the only Statistics Tutor for the Psychology Department as an Undergraduate. In addition, become a single mother with three-year old and seven-year old sons. I was still able to meet the demands of juggling all of these responsibilities and graduate with my Bachelor of Science degree from Purdue with honors. In Graduate School, I was matched with a new research mentor who I didn't really mesh well with. One of the first things I had to do was give her my class schedule so she knew when I was available for research work. I remember during one class, she called me twice-the first time I did not answer because I was in class, and she knew this. The second time she called, I thought there may be an emergency, so I hurriedly walked out of class and answered my phone letting her know I was in class. She said she knew and then asked me when I would have a task completed. I was so pissed off-there went any therapeutic alliance I may have had with her. I know now my coping skills for what I would find out later in the semester I was struggling with, were not conducive for Graduate School at that particular moment in my life.
I made an appointment at the Indianapolis Veterans Hospital. In addition to the battery of psychological tests I received, I asked for an IQ test. I wanted to know why I was failing miserably at school work that wasn't any more difficult that what I had completed as an undergrad. Besides the obvious life changes, but that was actually less stressful than being miserable in my marriage. The results of the battery of exams came back and the Social Worker I was seeing at the VA, explained what I was going through-also a relief because it was not due to my IQ or an inability to do the work-she explained to me that I have compound PTSD. What?? How did I make it through some incredibly stressful times in my life and not find this out until I was 36?? Triggers, perhaps. 36 was also the age I realized there is NEVER an excuse, including empathy, to think any type of abuse is ok, or normal.
I was also adamantly against psychotropic medication at that point in my life. Medication had not helped my brother cope with his symptoms of schizophrenia; I felt there would be more negative side effects that positive effects. I continued with counseling, but after every session I was more angry and jaded. That weekly catharsis became my norm and I ruminated on how those sessions made me feel worse because I was essentially forced to focus on the negatives in my past. I also knew that I was the lucky one of my siblings. Neither of my siblings, my sister Jennifer, or my brother Josh, had the life opportunities I had. Jennifer was only 15 when she died after living with 85% brain damage from birth. And Josh, after being diagnosed with schizophrenia at 19, stopped taking his medications because of the side effects and turned to self medicating. At the age of 26, he died from a heroin overdose. My siblings and helping others like them and their families is why I spend so much of my time trying to make the lives of others better. If I can prevent one person or family from having to know what it is like to lose a sister, brother, mother, father, or any one they are close too, Jennifer and Josh will have left a legacy for this world.
If I were still involved in research, I likely would have moved from studying evidence-based practices for people with severe mental illness to the Social Psychology of digital media. My first hypothesis would be "Do the digital interactions with others on social media predict perceived value?" I suspect they do-because I perceive them. I can generally guess with accuracy, when someone who I am "friends" with on Facebook is about to ask me for a favor. Weeks and months may have passed, and seemingly all of a sudden that individual begins interacting with my posts. Within three to four days, I generally get a private message from that individual. Maybe this is just an uncanny intuition? I don't believe so. The amount and quality of interactions we have with others digitally, is a predictor of how we value people. And as with any other way we communicate, I will always believe we should value all. Everyone has something to teach us because we cannot truly ever walk someone else's path through life.
Although I did not complete my Ph.D., I will continue to observe and reflect upon human behavior to discern the best policies to solve the biggest problems in our society. And I will continue to work in discovery of the best path to influence the creation of the policies that may save others from the anguish and injustice some of these problems create for other human beings.
For example, I once had a boss who for the first two years I worked for her, hid her raging narcissism from me. She never yelled while I was around and did everything she could to make me feel valued-I should have noticed she was overcompensating, but alas, I wanted to believe she was being sincere. However, I always knew because of the posts on social media she liked, commented upon, or shared, that there was a sinister motive. She wanted something from those people, and they fell for it (and some still do) hook, line, and sinker. I have made my peace with this and you know what they say about the takers: they don't sleep at night.
In 2009, I was in my first year at Indiana University for my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. My divorce had become final the May prior to that, and one of the conditions of our divorce was an order to sell the house we had built in Indiana after we had been discharged from the Navy. In April of 2010, everything came to a halt. I made an appointment to meet with my advisors to break the news to them after a very rocky first semester-I have to admit, at the time I was feeling a bit relieved. Graduate school was the most stressful experience of my life-even before chemical alarms and inbound scud missile alarms in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq war. I was content with the thought I might die, but the thought of failing, that was something I could not cope with.
I will never forget what Dr. McGrew said to me when I told him I was moving back to Maine. He advised me I could withdraw so I could re-enroll in the future. I had to break it to him that once I left Indiana, I was never coming back. We had moved there to be near my children's grandparents, and they had moved away. My first semester of Graduate School-creates anxiety to think about now. I had nearly aced every test, quiz, research paper, and been a Teaching Assistant and the only Statistics Tutor for the Psychology Department as an Undergraduate. In addition, become a single mother with three-year old and seven-year old sons. I was still able to meet the demands of juggling all of these responsibilities and graduate with my Bachelor of Science degree from Purdue with honors. In Graduate School, I was matched with a new research mentor who I didn't really mesh well with. One of the first things I had to do was give her my class schedule so she knew when I was available for research work. I remember during one class, she called me twice-the first time I did not answer because I was in class, and she knew this. The second time she called, I thought there may be an emergency, so I hurriedly walked out of class and answered my phone letting her know I was in class. She said she knew and then asked me when I would have a task completed. I was so pissed off-there went any therapeutic alliance I may have had with her. I know now my coping skills for what I would find out later in the semester I was struggling with, were not conducive for Graduate School at that particular moment in my life.
I made an appointment at the Indianapolis Veterans Hospital. In addition to the battery of psychological tests I received, I asked for an IQ test. I wanted to know why I was failing miserably at school work that wasn't any more difficult that what I had completed as an undergrad. Besides the obvious life changes, but that was actually less stressful than being miserable in my marriage. The results of the battery of exams came back and the Social Worker I was seeing at the VA, explained what I was going through-also a relief because it was not due to my IQ or an inability to do the work-she explained to me that I have compound PTSD. What?? How did I make it through some incredibly stressful times in my life and not find this out until I was 36?? Triggers, perhaps. 36 was also the age I realized there is NEVER an excuse, including empathy, to think any type of abuse is ok, or normal.
I was also adamantly against psychotropic medication at that point in my life. Medication had not helped my brother cope with his symptoms of schizophrenia; I felt there would be more negative side effects that positive effects. I continued with counseling, but after every session I was more angry and jaded. That weekly catharsis became my norm and I ruminated on how those sessions made me feel worse because I was essentially forced to focus on the negatives in my past. I also knew that I was the lucky one of my siblings. Neither of my siblings, my sister Jennifer, or my brother Josh, had the life opportunities I had. Jennifer was only 15 when she died after living with 85% brain damage from birth. And Josh, after being diagnosed with schizophrenia at 19, stopped taking his medications because of the side effects and turned to self medicating. At the age of 26, he died from a heroin overdose. My siblings and helping others like them and their families is why I spend so much of my time trying to make the lives of others better. If I can prevent one person or family from having to know what it is like to lose a sister, brother, mother, father, or any one they are close too, Jennifer and Josh will have left a legacy for this world.
If I were still involved in research, I likely would have moved from studying evidence-based practices for people with severe mental illness to the Social Psychology of digital media. My first hypothesis would be "Do the digital interactions with others on social media predict perceived value?" I suspect they do-because I perceive them. I can generally guess with accuracy, when someone who I am "friends" with on Facebook is about to ask me for a favor. Weeks and months may have passed, and seemingly all of a sudden that individual begins interacting with my posts. Within three to four days, I generally get a private message from that individual. Maybe this is just an uncanny intuition? I don't believe so. The amount and quality of interactions we have with others digitally, is a predictor of how we value people. And as with any other way we communicate, I will always believe we should value all. Everyone has something to teach us because we cannot truly ever walk someone else's path through life.
Although I did not complete my Ph.D., I will continue to observe and reflect upon human behavior to discern the best policies to solve the biggest problems in our society. And I will continue to work in discovery of the best path to influence the creation of the policies that may save others from the anguish and injustice some of these problems create for other human beings.
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