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What if we really can prevent most so-called mental illnesses?  I think we can – but being silent about the truth is not going to get us there.

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As I dig holes by my fence to plant my bare root roses in, as I sweat the job out in the heat of the desert sun now because I chose to write while it was cooler outside instead of run outside and get to the day’s job immediately, I am thinking – and thinking hard not only with my two brain hemispheres (who each see life differently from one another) but also with my senses, with my emotions, with my body and its memories.

I see an image that has been in my mind since the early days of my Alaskan childhood on the mountain homestead:  When wolves are hungry and they decide they want a giant moose for dinner, all the have to do is gather together as a pack, chase down the moose, assign one wolf to race up front while the rest remain at the rear.  The pack tears out the Achilles tendon of one of the moose’s hind legs followed immediately by the wolf up front tearing out its jugular vein.  Great for the wolves.  Very bad for the moose.

As I think about this process of nature, I think also about how far behind we would all be if nobody had ever been willing to break the conspiracy of silence about cancer.  If speaking about cancer had remained taboo, think about what we would have all lost.  I don’t have to detail it.

Borderline Personality Disorder is as serious a disease as is cancer.  By joining the conspiracy of silence about telling the truth about this disease, I would be removing my efforts from the side of “Let’s get real about this disease and do something about it,” and joining the ranks of the timid.

Along with the near volcanic-sized eruption of new neuroscience facts about the impact of trauma in childhood on the developing body-brain, comes the very real possibility that not only is Borderline Personality Disorder probably nearly completely preventable, but so might be the vast majority of so-called mental illnesses.

Considering the facts, am I willing to remain silent about the truth of my story and demote myself to the ranks of, “Gee, I really have nothing useful to add, but I sure do like to complain about my childhood – thanks for giving me audience?”

I believe IN THE NEAR FUTURE, when all the attachment and the infant-child developmental experts put their heads together, they will come to understand that what we call ‘mental illness’ – no matter which one and under which name we may call it – is a result of a developing infant-child’s immune system response to extreme stress from inadequate caregiving that IS an attack on the body.

This means that although we cannot currently cure ‘mental illness’ there is very possibly a very common sense means to accomplish its prevention:  Adequate parenting.

I would rather put my energy into thinking about how to accomplish the changes that can lead to improved parenting than put my energy into enabling the silence about the causes and consequences of ‘mental illness’ – along with possibilities for its prevention – because of my reluctance to NAME the life-threatening disease of my mother’s (the same one that determined how she died at the end).

So if naming my mother “My Borderline Mother” is the equivalent of tearing out the Achilles tendon of this disease and bringing it down by its jugular vein forever – well, perhaps my Word Warrior self truly is out there with a wolf pack.

Don’t worry – still thinking —— nothing decided yet.

NOTE:  In our language-culture it’s OK to say, “I have cancer” rather than “I am a cancer.”  We need to improve our logic!  We do not = our illnesses.  At the same time, I realize that I cannot think of one aspect of my mother’s life that was not filtered through her illness!

I am finding nothing in the current research literature that even suggests that we are born with a so-called mental illness like we are born with our blood type.  Research is far from being advanced enough to understand the interactions between the influence of environmental factors on how genes manifest.

What is known (in my opinion) is that the same genes that are connected to the greatest gifts of our species are linked to risk factors that can more easily result in ‘mental illness’ if the genes are told early in development that the world is hostile and malevolent place.  Giftedness is ‘expensive’ in genetic terms.  I believe that the more gifted a newborn is (even before birth) the more their eventual well-being is put at risk by inadequate early parenting conditions during the beginning of their body-brain development.

“Mental illness’ is, in my opinion, just a species-wide signal, or means to communicate about the conditions of the world that MADE the individual the way that they turned out.  Looking at my mother, it is obvious that something was very wrong with her childhood environment!  Her early world was malevolent in some significant way that forced her immune system to take a detour in her development – that activated her gifted genes in a different way than they would have been activated in a benevolent world as a response.

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It is not to the hardy and naturalized native desert plants that I am paying my closest attention to in my yard right now as I dig them wide holes, mix great amendments into their soil and as I place them in line with my soaker irrigation hose.  I am paying this extra special attention to the ‘gifted’ plants, the resplendent plants – my roses.

If I neglect to care for the native plants, they will manage pretty dang well all by themselves.  But if I want the roses to survive, and then bloom their every loving hearts out, I cannot expose them to much of a range of deprivation, now, can I?  Gifted people are no doubt just about this dependent upon extra careful tending during their developmental stages.  I would stake my cotton socks on a bet that this is true!

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