Biting my Tongue

It was one of those things you say without thinking. Julie was helping me make dinner, the radio was on and we were relaxed, chatting easily about one thing or another. I went to dry my hands on the towel and found it dirty, caked and spattered with tomato. "Now what's happened here?" I wanted to know. Even as I spoke I could hear how harsh it might sound, how accusatory. I cursed myself for a fool: I could sense Julie's sudden tension, her brittle fear. All her high spirits evaporated suddenly. I tried lamely to turn it into a joke, then decided I would have to confront it head on, however clumsy it seemed. "Look, baby, I don't care about the damned towel - it's just something I said. People can sound cross sometimes but a dirty towel is not important. You don't have to worry."

"But I'm bad." she said, "I forgot to wash my hands and I just wiped them on the towel. It means I'm bad.". She was rapidly shrinking into herself.

I cast around in desperation, "Well if getting a towel dirty is the worst thing you ever do in your life... it's not exactly evil."

"Well no, I suppose it's not exactly Osama bin Laden..."

"Well no now he would probably have torn the towel off the hook as well."

It was a relief to be able to laugh about it, and I was glad it was Julie who put it into perspective, but for a while we skated carefully around each other. I was afraid to speak for quite a while in case I accidentally frightened her again. I am blunt by habit - not used to monitoring what I say. If I find a thing awry I speak out, and deal with people's feelings afterwards if I need to. I had always assumed that my children were used to me, and not troubled by my grumpy outbursts, but I worry now about Julie. I realise how anxious she is, how quickly she takes small things to heart, how difficult it is for her to forgive herself for tiny transgressions. It is only a short spiral between that feeling of guilt over a dirty towel, and profound depths of self-hatred.

I have been reading Stuart Sorensen's blog series on high expressed emotion. This and his (many) other blog series are very helpful introductions to the world of mental illness and how to live and work with people who suffer from it. But it seems inevitable that no matter how much theory you absorb, practice is always going to be a matter of judgement. On one hand I know that I need to be extra careful how I parent Julie now and really think about the balance of praise and criticism she gets at home, to encourage and support her during this difficult time. On the other hand, if I censor every word that comes out of my mouth, I will end up less of her mother and more of her carer. And in the long run, it is exactly those little episodes at home - the sarcastic putdown from a brother, or a sharp remark from a harrassed mother - that teach the sort of resiliance you need to manage in the outside world. If Julie is ever to survive in the outside world, she will need to rub along with grumpy housemates, or insensitive colleagues at work.

But it is very early days yet, and survival in the outside world is still a distant dream. For the moment, we are just learning to walk again, and need to keep the stress levels down while Julie slowly picks up the reins that she dropped when she went into hospital last year. School, studying, friends, public transport, crossing roads, crowded streets, are the challenges we are focussing on at the moment. Half term holiday week stretches ahead of us, largely empty of commitments, ready for us to experiment in. And, of course, like any teenager, ready for Julie to catch up on much-needed sleep!