Mark

John: This is Doctor John Dacey with my weekly podcast New Solutions to the Anxiety Epidemic. Today, I have an old friend of mine, by the name of Mark. He’s going o talk to us about his own experiences with Anxiety. Good morning, Mark. How are you?

Mark: Good, John. How are you?

John: Fine. First of all, I’d like you to tell us a little about yourself. What work have you done and where are you at today?

Mark: I was born and brought up in Massachusetts. I was in the family business, I became a truck driver for 35 years and most recently my company filed for bankruptcy.

A note to my listeners: When I interviewed Mark, I had no idea which of the 8 types of anxiety he would say he had a problem with. He alleged that he had no problems with the first 7, only a serious problem with the last one. So I’m going to skip that part of our interview and go right to the last type of anxiety: Post-traumatic stress disorder.

John: Having been through an extremely stressful situation and sometimes getting flashbacks from it.

Mark: Maybe.

John: Can you tell us a little more about that?

Mark: The death of a parent.

John: Oh, of course. And which parent was that?

Mark: Mother. 1973.

John: Ok. You say this was ] traumatic for you. Why was this such a hard thing for you to deal with, if you’d be willing to share with us?

Mark: Growing up without a mother I was just a young boy.

John: How old were you?

Mark: I was 13 years old.

John: Oh that’s really terrible. Can you tell us how she died?

Mark: She died in bed. She was a sick woman, but she died at the age of 49.

John: Oh, that’s really sad. It was more than just very sad for you. You think it might have been traumatic.

Mark: Yeah I think it was traumatic for me.

John: Is it still traumatic? Like, do you miss her terribly every day? Or have you gotten more used to it?

Mark: I’ve gotten used to it.

John: How do you think you got to the place where you felt pretty used to it?

Mark: Can I give you credit.

John: Sure.

Mark: When I met you, you were just a man at an AA meeting, and then when I was 10 years sober, then we talked.

John: You don’t mind saying that you were my client for a while.

Mark: Not if you don’t mind.

John: No I don’t. I’d love to take the credit. So we talked about your mother, didn’t we?

Mark: We did.

John: Can you tell us a little bit about — was that successful? Do you feel like you were able to do better after that?

Mark: I dealt with my pain with alcohol and booze and I was at a crossroads in my sobriety and you helped me through that without drinking.

John: That’s terrific. I’m really proud of you and I think 34 years is an incredible achievement. Do you have any children?

Mark: None.

John: Ok. Who is the person you are the closest to, would you say?

Mark: My oldest brother.

John: So he went through the same trauma. How old was he when your mother died?

Mark: He was probably 15.

John: Do you think he had a really hard time with it also?

Mark: No- Yes. I think he had a hard time but he picked a different avenue to deal with his pain.

John: Okay. I’m not going to pry into that. What about your father? Was your father around at this time?

Mark: My father passed away 3 years ago at the age of 97.

John: Oh my God. 97 that’s . . . So how old was he roughly when your mother died?

Mark: He was a few years older I believe.

John: So around 50 years old.

Mark: Yes.

John: Was he helpful to you in dealing with such a young kid to lose his mother? Was he helpful to you?

Mark: He would’ve been, but I didn’t know how to express myself.

John: So he would’ve been there for you but you just weren’t able to tell him about it?

Mark: Correct.

John: This was pretty much something you kept to yourself.

Mark: Correct.

John: Did the therapy help the most because you were able to talk about her?

Mark: Among other things, yes. I can handle death better. I don’t need to drink or drug. I can walk through the pain.

John: And you give a lot of credit to Alcoholics Anonymous for that?

Mark: Among other things.

John: It’s often occurred to me that I feel sort of sorry for people that aren’t alcoholics because it’s such a wonderful club. It’s such a great deal of help. The 12 steps says that if somebody is hurting and they’re a fellow alcoholic, you have to help them. All over the world, I’ve traveled quite a lot and if I ever got into any trouble, I call up AA and they got an English-speaking person on the phone for me. Several times I’ve met with them, several times I just talk to them on the phone but it’s a wonderful club to be a member of. Don’t you agree?

Mark: I agree.

John: Well, Mark, thank you so much for talking with me today. I appreciate it and I wish you the very best.

From my own life, briefly, about post-traumatic stress disorder. Not my own. If you listen to podcast 3 you know the story of the fire that happened to my family that killed my mother and two brothers and two sisters. The next day, the local newspaper, The Binghampton Press, had published on the front page on the center at the top of the paper a photograph that was the most poignant I think I’ve ever seen. It is a picture of our driveway next to our burned down house with five body bags lined up on it and a very good friend of our family’s father, the Rev. Leo Crawley, standing with his hat in his hand. Next to him, kneeling on the ground, is my uncle, who is also a Catholic priest. He was delivering the last rights to the bodies and in the picture, one of the body bags has been opened somewhat and he’s reaching in, as all priests giving the last rights have to do, and he put a blessing on the chard bodies of one of my family. I don’t know of course which one. This is with his right hand and with his left hand, he’s got his hand up to his mouth, and he just looks the epitome of the grieving person. Six months later he was dead, and I would hear stories about him going into the hospital and coming back out again. I asked one of the nuns who took care of him at the local Catholic hospital. I asjed a nurse what was the matter with him and she said, “Oh he has some kind of stomach disorder.” I have never heard anybody say exactly what his problem was but I can only assume that it was alcoholism and that he had to go in the hospital from time to time to get straightened out. The nuns of course were very good to him. He was the head of Catholic Charities for upstate New York. It was a huge job. I remember that when I went into the seminary to become a priest myself after high school, I had to go and visit the bishop in Syracuse upstate New York. He never asked me any questions about myself, but only about my uncle and how he was doing. The bishop said, “He’s a wonderful director of Catholic Charities. He does a great job, but I’m very worried about him because he’s sick so much.” This is only by way of saying that not only is PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, the most serious of all the types of anxiety, but it actually can be a killer. It can be as much of a killer as the Corona Virus. And it got my poor uncle. I remember when I was going into the seminary, I went to see him and he said to me, “John, don’t do it. It’s a very hard life. Don’t do it.” I was amazed. I thought he was a very happy priest, but it was very clear to me that he was not. I think that this having to give Extreme Unction as it’s called, the final rights to my family, just pushed him over the edge. I’m sorry to tell you such a sad story but often times anxiety can be a very serious problem. I’ll talk to you next week.