Like a Ship Without an Anchor

When I think of my mother I think of a beautiful actress on stage performing the 1938 play ‘Gas Light’, written by the British dramatist Patrick Hamilton. I was only a young child when I first riffled through her press clippings marvelling at her past acting career. My mother beamed as she told me how she used to get a standing ovation.

After she married my father Lionel and gave birth to my sister and me, Lily gradually moved back into the work force. She worked in an art gallery and arranged marvelous soirees where artists would gather and meet prospective buyers. She worked in a fashion boutique and knew exactly how to adjust a belt, a pleat, a shoulder pad, convincing every woman that this garment was made for her. She worked in travel using her grace and charm to seduce friends and colleagues to book their next trip through her. From the outside she was doing exactly what she wanted in life.

But it was not always so. Hidden from public view Lily would occasionally wax lyrical that she too could have been a psychologist, a great actress or even an author. She could not bear criticism of any kind and needed everyone to think well of her.

When I asked why hadn’t she become a psychologist or an actress she shrugged and said she just married, had children and ‘after all, my priority was to look after your father.’

About fourteen years ago Lily began to show signs of dementia. The first signs were so subtle that they were easy to dismiss. She began to ring me a few times a day and every conversation began by her asking what my plans were for the day. At first I told her she had just called me and she would argue this was the first time she had spoken to me that day. She became frustrated with my father when he would innocently correct her. She occasionally forgot someone’s name, but as dementia progressed she forgot everyone’s name, except Lionel’s.

So what is Dementia? Dementia itself is not disease but rather a group of symptoms that may accompany certain brain diseases or conditions. In Alzheimer’s disease there is an accumulation of a protein substance in the form of plaques, or clumps of fibres, in the brain’s gray matter. These plaques contain hard, waxy deposits that affect the blood vessels around the brain. Scientists believe that the plaques and tangles cause neurons to shrink and eventually die, first in the memory and language centres of the brain, and finally throughout the brain.

During the writing of my latest book, ‘Looking for Lionel’ I spoke to a number of people, all of whom knew someone with dementia. I began to wonder why some people have a propensity to this illness. What makes some people susceptible and others not? I began to wonder why is dementia so prevalent in the 21 Century?

As a clinical psychotherapist it was only natural for me to look at the mental, emotional and psychosomatic conditions that may play some additional role in an individual developing a dementia. In order to fully understand any physical illness a Gestalt psychotherapist needs to look at the individual holistically.

I formulated a hypothesis. It is scientifically untested and yet I believe well worth consideration.

Over the years I have observed many people with dementia and it appears to me that they are no longer grounded. Being grounded means being fully present: physically, emotionally and energetically. It means your mind is not wandering or pulling your energy elsewhere. Your heart and soul are not searching somewhere in the past or looking somewhere into the future.

People with dementia have lost their anchor. If a ship cannot put down its anchor it will float aimlessly upon the ocean. If a tree is not rooted into the earth it will fall over. If a balloon is not held firmly it will fly away.

One of the things that keep us anchored in the here and now is our connection to the earth and its cycles. When we let go of the land, we become vulnerable. Humanity has more and more let go at being one with the land and instead it dominates the landscape. We have begun to bow down to technological genius and erroneously believe it to be more significant than a sunrise. We begin to feel a sense of dis-ease. We feel tired and rushed and pressured and yet when the sun sets and the Earth invites us to rest, we often ignore her invitation.

That kind of vulnerability can and often does, lead to disease. In the 2009 first UN report on ‘The State of the World’s Indigenous People’, a collaborative effort organized by the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, it says that Indigenous peoples “life expectancy is up to 20 years lower than their non-indigenous counterparts.”

It states that, ‘In the United States, a Native American is 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis and 62 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.’

Suicide rates of indigenous peoples, particularly among youth, are considerably higher in many countries, for example, up to 11 times the national average for the Inuit in Canada.

In Australia, an indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot. The life expectancy gap is also 20 years in Nepal, while in Guatemala it is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, of the Igorot peoples in the Philippines and head of the U.N. forum on indigenous peoples says, ‘We are not poor. We are impoverished because our access to our lands and our territories and resources have been curtailed very drastically by states and corporations.’

Connection to the land grounds our energies. Being in and with nature connects us to our own inner stillness. It reminds us to stop and breathe. It helps us to reconnect to our soul, our spirit. When we forget to notice the stars in a winter sky and the falling leaves of an old oak tree, or the dripping ice cream rolling down a child’s arm, we lose contact with the earth. What keeps us anchored in the here and the now is our connection to nature and its cycles, night and day, summer, autumn, winter, spring.

With the rapid increase of fast computers, mobile phones, instant connections and instant disconnections, life has sped up. I believe this wave of fast technology has impacted the electro magnetic energy field of the earth itself. People become agitated and little by little begin to detach from the present because it has become uncomfortable. We live in a society where multi-tasking is the norm. There has been research done into multitasking and it is unanimously agreed that the brain simply isn’t very good at spreading its energy between different things. It can take on average around twenty minutes to get your mind focused on the task in hand. Start trying to do two things at once and that number will increase dramatically. What’s more, once you get distracted from your work and break that focus, you basically have to start the whole process again.

Multi-tasking is an outgrowth of our computer and media-generated era. As computers and electronic devices have become higher powered and more sophisticated, the features they offer have grown in number and complexity. A cell phone was initially just a mobile phone. But in time, it became a camera, a video camera, an iPod facsimile, a GPS device, a handheld computer, and all kinds of other things. We seem to have a fixation in our culture with ‘more is better’, but we're not so good at figuring out "how much is enough?"

As a consequence, because of what is being allowed to develop unchecked and un-balanced, those individuals who particularly need an anchor, loose it. We have forgotten how to balance our lives through nature. We have lost our healthy respect for the elements, fire, water, air and earth.

As people lose their connection to the land they also get caught up in the ‘shoulds’, ‘musts’ and ‘have to’s’ of everyday life. They long for the good old days of the past. They yearn for the day they can stop whatever they are doing and relax. But that day never comes. Rather than leaving a job that no longer satisfies them, they prefer to suffer rather than face an unknown future. They visit friends they were no longer interested in, because it is easier to just go along. They are the dutiful husbands and the silent wives who continued as they always have, because choosing something different is too terrifying. They dare not toss caution to the wind, nor take any risks fearing intolerable consequences. And sometimes, like Lily, they spend their life supporting others to be what they themselves dreamed of being.

These people often feel an underlying and even unconscious sense of dis-ease and believe they are powerless to change it. Is it possible that dis-ease can become disease if it is ignored long enough?

We can so easily get caught in the world of ‘if only”. If only I had enough time to study acting.

If only I didn’t have this huge mortgage. If only I could travel alone without hurting my family

If only I had known he was never coming back.

These thoughts take us out of the present. They make living in the present a painful experience. Attaching to the past is the first step to detaching from the now. In time our connection to our dreams fade, and we become more vulnerable to disease. Mentally we begin to detach from the past as well. And then we lose that anchor also. One moment we are present and the next moment we are gone. As Alzheimer’s disease progresses, connection to the present and the past becomes more fragile.

Recently I visited my mother who now lives in a dementia care centre. “Look! There are some quoits over there,’ I said pointing to wooden stick holding six soft black rubber rings. Lily walked over and picked one up. At first she did not know what to do with it. “Can I go first?’ I asked and took one of the rings. I threw and missed. I threw again. By now Lily had got the idea and she threw and missed too. She looked at me. “Throw another one. Go on throw again,’ I tell her. She prepared herself, took aim and threw. The black ring spun around the wooden post and landed, clunk. Lily screamed in delight.

A few residents and a nurse wandered down the hall to see what the noise was about. She threw again. The ring hit the top of the wooden stick and stopped for a split second before sliding down and resting on the base. We screamed and clapped and laughed and so did all the residents who had gathered around to watch. Again she threw; again it hit its mark. Lily was beaming with joy. Everyone clapped and Lily bowed as she received one more standing ovation. H