Thursday, October 14, 2010

Introduction III B

I don't know when I first started exhibiting symptoms of SAD.  I know as a young child I was extremely outgoing and social.  I would bring random kids home from different grades that I had met only minutes before on the street.  I first remember being afraid in grade 2, around the age of 7.  I moved from PA to Calgary for the first half of Grade 2 because my family was planning to transition back to Calgary, where we were originally from.  That didn't work out, and after Christmas we moved back to PA.  I was returning to my old school with my old friends who I hadn't seen in 4 months.  I remember being terrified they wouldn't remember me, or, if they did, they wouldn't like me anymore.  I tried to convince mom she shouldn't send me to school because I couldn't remember where it was and I would get lost.  It was hard to argue convincingly because we lived 1 block from Vickers and could see it from our deck.  I did go to school and it did turn out ok, but I relived this situation every time I went into a new grade or got a job.  By the time I graduated I was terrified of the real world.  I didn't want to leave home or go to school.  (Thankfully my friend, Gary, found me a job which helped me transition into life after graduation.)

That was the beginning.  The ending started sometime after I graduated.  One night I was randomly reading blogs after work, jumping from link to link, not paying attention, when I came across a blog of someone who wrote about living with SAD.  I had never heard that term before but, as I read his symptoms, I had a Kiros moment.  He was describing my life.  Every fear was listed there.  I finally knew what was wrong with me.  It was such an amazing relief to find out I was not alone.  Apparently there are a lot of us out there, but how would we know, all hiding in our bedrooms, not communicating with each other.  Thank you Interweb!  I have since forgotten the blog but this amazing person listed treatments he sought and what seemed to work for him.  There were medications and counselling and therapies.  Unfortunately for all us SAD-sacks, the most effective treatment was exposure therapy.  I had to expose myself to the things I feared.  The purpose was to experience the fear and realize that it would not kill me, or hurt me, or embarrass me or cause me to be rejected, and thus I would desensitize myself to the situation through constant exposure.  It sounds really simple, but it is difficult.  Examples would include calling the operator and asking for a phone number or going through an express check out line at the store with 15 items instead of 12.  The most difficult thing for me though, was joining groups of people, at parties, church, college and career, etc...  Remember, during my most formative years, when most people learn to socialize with adults, friends, the opposite sex, I was busy hiding from everyone.  Now I had to go and interact with these strangers and I didn't have the experience or social skills to pull it off at first.  I was like a bull in a china shop.

My first real "exposure" was a newly started College and Career group.  I dropped out after 4 or 5 weeks because I just couldn't seem to connect with anyone.  I didn't give up though.  I enrolled at Fountain of Life School of Ministry which just opened up in PA the year before.  That really was my first big breakthrough.  It was also the place of many setbacks for me, socially speaking, but it was a great experience.  During FOLSOM I started teaching Sunday School at my home church, Gateway Covenant.  I had to speak and lead worship occasionally for morning chapel, and I even preached at the Apostolic church in front of a congregation of several hundred people. Through FOLSOM I went on a promotional tour of the province, speaking and teaching at many churches in many cities.  I started leading a youth group in Saskatoon on weekends at Harvest Christian Fellowship after they approached FOLSOM looking for a youth pastor.  I played guitar regularly during worship and sometimes bass and drums (which I learned from watching other people play them).  Also through FOLSOM, I assisted at the Christian school as a TA, interned at the Provincial Correctional Institute (once teaching a class on decision making to inmates by myself), and took a brief internship in Regina at the Sanctuary Church.  Soon after, our youth pastor in Prince Albert left and myself and a few others took over the youth group in the interim.  I even delivered a few sermons at Gateway.  All these things helped me immensely get over my fear of being judged and rejected.  Then, to top it all off, I ran for city council (somewhat impulsively) in the Spring.  There were interviews with the newspaper and door to door campaigning and signs, of which I still have a few for souvenirs.  I didn't win, but that was a good thing.  Several months later I would find myself moving to another city.

At that point in time I felt God leading me to Covenant Bible College.  I can't say I have felt God leading me all that often, but this particular time I can.  So, several years after all my friends, and my younger brother had gone to CBC, I packed up, and really moved away from home for the first time to start another crazy adventure.  I left everything and everyone I knew, except for Logan (who helped run the PA youth group and came to CBC my year) and moved to a place with 86 strangers all living in the same complex together.  Now that was exposure therapy.  CBC was great.  Some of the best and worst experiences of my life were there.  I could talk about it a long time, and if you are ever interested, ask me some questions and we can chat about everything that happened my year.

If that random website was the beginning of my recovery, CBC was the middle.  I was not totally fixed by the time convocation rolled around but I had experienced some incredible breakthroughs.  God worked in my life both spiritually, and in social situations, and I am so grateful for my experiences there.  Since CBC I have managed to put myself in a lot more interesting social situations, which will probably come up in future posts, and I have become a relatively normal and socially functional human being.  I occasionally have setbacks, but I can usually reason my way through them.  I can make phone calls, talk to strangers, and go to weddings without feeling like the walls are closing in around me.

Continue on to Introduction III C

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I was just going through your entries again to read your comments and somehow I missed this one...

Well moving from PA to Calgary at age 7 would be very traumatizing I agree but then you had to move back again and start all over. I love that you tried convince your parents that you couldn't find the school! ROFL

Clinton said...

Surprisingly, the moving thing wasn't really a big deal to me. I was from Calgary originally, before moving to PA, and most of my family still lives there.